Nesrine Malik
The Guardian / July 29, 2024
Israel’s seemingly endless war is forcing the world to become accustomed to an obscene level of death and suffering.
On Wednesday, Benjamin Netanyahu received a standing ovation after his speech to US Congress. It was a moment that seemed to usher in a new phase of the war in Gaza – one in which it is not only tolerated as an unfortunate necessity, but is seen as something for which unquestionable support will continue without limits, without red lines and without tactical discretion. Israel’s relentless erasure of families, homes, culture and infrastructure – without end or indication of when any of it will satisfy its goals – is now just a part of life.
At the same time, the presumptive Democratic contender, Kamala Harris, makes a nonsensical appeal that “we cannot allow ourselves to become numb” to what is happening and that she “will not be silent”, when the only thing that matters is that the US continues to arm and fund Israel.
It all represents a dissolution not only of international law, but a fundamental human law. Of the transgressions that upend everyday life, death by murder, as has been alleged, is perhaps the worst, most degrading crime. The sanctity of human life, the notion that it cannot be terminated without the highest justification, is what separates us from barbarism. And so as the past nine months have unfolded, with each landmark episode of killing, there were many moments when you thought: surely this is it?
When the first grey children were pulled out of the rubble. When unarmed civilians were captured on camera being picked off by drone missiles. When the five-year-old Hind Rajab died, waiting for help among her dead relatives, and when the ambulance workers dispatched to help her were killed. When World Street Kitchen workers were struck by precision missiles. When a man with Down’s syndrome was attacked by an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) dog in his home, and then left to die after soldiers removed his family and prevented them from returning. But the war didn’t stop.
There have, of course, been attempts to preserve and enforce the fragile rules of international and humanitarian law. And again, you hoped that, as the judgments came, they would usher in the end of the assault. When the international court of justice (ICJ) declared that Palestinians had a plausible right to protection from genocide and asked Israel to halt its Rafah offensive. When the international criminal court (ICC) made an application for an arrest warrant for Netanyahu. And when the ICJ found Israel responsible for apartheid.
In that effort, they were joined by millions of protesters around the world whose actions roiled their domestic politics in a way that suggested the situation was not tenable. But the war has found its place again, nestled within the status quo. The issue of Gaza played out through our parochial politics and overlapped with its discontents. It produced protest votes that helped to send a record number of independents into parliament in the UK and delivered electoral upsets for establishment politicians. University campuses in the US witnessed historic scenes of protest and heavy-handed policing.
Even though what has come about is a landmark shift in global public opinion on Israel, it still matters not a bit to those in Gaza who are not even aware of what is happening as they dodge bombs, seek food and dig up their dead. All that came of it was even more defiance and belligerence from Israel, condemnation of legal judgments from its allies, and the vilification and dismissal of large numbers of people who just want the killing to stop. All of this seems to say: yes, this is the world we live in now. Get used to it.
What does getting used to it look like? It looks like accepting that there are certain groups of people who can be killed. That it is, in fact, reasonable and necessary that they should die in order to maintain a political system that is built on the inequality of human life. This is what the philosopher Achille Mbembe calls “necropolitics” – the exercising of power to dictate how some people live and how others must die.
Necropolitics creates “death-worlds” where there are “new and unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected to living conditions that confer upon them the status of the living dead”. In those death-worlds the killing of others, and the destruction of their habitat through epic military capabilities whose impact is never experienced by the citizens of the countries responsible, confer even more value on the humanity of those in the “civilized” west. They are exempt because they are good, not because they are strong. Palestinians die because they are bad, not because they are weak.
The cheapening of Palestinian life involves separating our lives from theirs, separating legal and moral worlds into two – one in which we exist and deserve freedom from hunger, fear and persecution, and a second in which others have demonstrated some quality that shows they are not owed the same. This is why it is important for defenders of Israel’s war to claim that there are no innocents in Gaza, that Hamas is hiding behind them, that those who you sympathize with would be the first to persecute you if you were gay or a woman. They are not like us. Once you are taught to cease to identify with others on the basis of their humanity, the work of necropolitics is complete.
The result is a world that feels as if it’s in the jarring middle of that transition. Where political events move forward with speed, folding Gaza into the normal. Images and accounts from Gaza, most recently of US doctors telling CBS News of children with sniper wounds to the heads and heart, compete with attention absorbed by the US election. With memes, farce and the trivial clutter of the digital world. Gaza comes to us in a montage of reels and posts: viewer discretion is advised/Kamala is “brat”/disturbing images/recipe details in caption/Rashida Tlaib holds a “war criminal” sign.
What world emerges after this? The war on Gaza is simply too big, too live, too relentless for its forced normalization to occur without unintended consequences. The end result is all of humanity degraded; the end result is a world in which when the call comes to aid people in need, no one will be capable of heeding it.
Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist
