I want to start off with a statement that is as obvious to me as saying the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. The life of a Palestinian child is worth exactly the same as that of an Israeli child. There is no “yes, but”. There is no “but it is more complicated than that”.
For those of you who do not find this obvious, I will say it again. The life of a child in Gaza is worth exactly the same as any Israeli child killed by Hamas on 7 October 2023.
If, as you read this, any part of you feels a “yes, but” coming on, then please stop reading, as what I am going to say is going to drive you into paroxysms of rage.
We all tell stories and narratives to make sense of a world that sometimes feels simple, sometimes bewildering, and often frightening. We also tell stories to explain our mistakes, exaggerate our good deeds, and occasionally to justify our cruelty.
Narratives provide us with reassurance when we are scared (“when you die you will go to heaven and be reunited with lost loved ones”); provide a sense of agency in a world full of capricious unpredictability (“I am a self-made man, luck had nothing to do with it”); and they hide our savagery (“children killed in this conflict are collateral damage”).
We may call these stories belief systems, or myths or ideologies. For the purposes of this article, I want to use a more technical term, and to call them “frames”.
A frame, or a framework, is essentially a mental shortcut that helps us make sense of our world. The shortcut can be positive when it brings attention to a neglected area. In my field of research, the use of the frame “toxic stress” has been highly influential in bringing attention to the impact of poverty and neglect on child and adolescent development.
They can also be neutral, albeit essential for our wellbeing, as in the belief in an afterlife.
But they can also be cruel and used to justify the most heinous of acts. Golda Meir, one of the first leaders of Israel, once stated “we will never forgive the Arabs for making us kill their children”. This is a savage and chilling frame. No responsibility, total transfer of blame, and said in the sure knowledge of her utter impunity.
Another example of a frame would be the world view of Douglas Murray, the right-wing associate editor of the Spectator. Murray is a fanboy of Western civilisation. He is also a rabid defender of anything Israel does, and a virulent racist who openly uses the word barbarian. If your frame is “Muslims are barbarians” (as Douglas Murray’s patently is), then 25,000 children being slaughtered is necessary to protect Western civilisation.
I contend that the response of most Western countries to what is happening in Gaza and Lebanon (with exceptions like Ireland and Spain) can be understood using the following frames:
- Israel is facing an existential threat.
- As a result of this existential threat anything Israel does is justified OR nothing Israel does violates international law.
- Israel can never be the aggressor.
- It is complicated.
- Israel always tries to limit civilian casualties OR Israel has the most moral army in the world.
- Israel is saving Western civilisation.
- Israel can never commit a terrorist act.
- The life of an Israeli child is more valuable than that of a Palestinian.
- Anti-Zionism is the same as antisemitism.
These frames have justified the most abhorrent and immoral acts every single day for the past year. In mid-September, Israel simultaneously exploded hundreds of pagers throughout Lebanon, indiscriminately killing at least 40 people (two of the first deaths were a 12-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy), and injuring more than 3,000 others.
Many commentators, using the frames above, saw these actions as a technical and tactical masterstroke. In fact, the act was flagrant state terrorism. The children who were killed became “unfortunate collateral damage because of course they must have a Hezbollah family member, and they should choose their parents or siblings better”.
Another use of these frames was a recent abhorrent op-ed in The Guardian by the novelist Howard Jacobson. In his article he makes the actual slaughter of children in Gaza equivalent to the appalling antisemitic trope of blood libel — a charge used routinely by the Nazis in their antisemitic propaganda. Jacobson is so steadfastly stuck in his frame, that he seems happy to justify and/or deny (I am not sure how far he will go), the slaughter of 25,000 children based on an antisemitic canard. The irony of his frame, of course, is that a canard is a lie used to justify prejudice.
On the night of 1 October 2024, while Israel was successfully shooting down hundreds of Iranian rockets out of the sky (with the only casualty being a Palestinian from falling shrapnel), the Israeli Defense Force bombed the Al-Amal Orphanage in Gaza, killing more than 60 people.
At the same time as the shredded corpses of toddlers were being pulled out of the rubble of an orphanage, we had to listen to the sickening sycophancy of “genocide Joe” (Biden) condemning the Iranian missile attack and worrying about how many people might have died. This is a genocidal frame. Children being burnt alive in an orphanage are invisible/collateral damage compared to the “potential injury” of another group of people.
All politicians probably have a dusting of the psychopath or terrorist in them. Benjamin Netanyahu, and in particular his far-right religious genocidal cabinet ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir are actual terrorists. Terrorists emboldened by the impunity with which they act, and by the forgiving frames of so many people who justify, defend and arm their genocide. This feels as clear to me as the sun rising in the east tomorrow.
Perhaps the time has come for Israel to stop the façade and drop the frame. Perhaps it is time that it admits that it is not a liberal democracy, that it is not moral, that in fact it is a rogue and terrorist state, and that it is committing a genocide.
Let us all stop the illusion of an international rules-based order, accept that Israel sees genocide as its only option, and that it is being enabled with the full and total support of most Western countries.
At least we could all then stop the charade and move on. I, for one, would welcome it. DM