Rights in a time of turmoil
Observing the Gaza conflict and the Ukraine war for the safety of Britain has been a lesson in picking sides and making ethical decisions based on what information I could uncover. It has also been an exercise in avoiding compassion fatigue, keeping an open heart as well and an open mind. Whereas it is easy for me to stand with Ukraine and express slava Ukraine at every opportunity, Gaza and the history of the levant has complicated my emotional response. It is also telling that my approach to rights with respects to those regions has shifted, with my usual desire to build bridges becoming blunter and hard edged. What the Russians have done to Ukraine is explicitly abhorrent, war crimes piling up to the point that the courts are overloaded. Gaza is easier to empathise with the Palestinian refugees, victims of both the Israelis and their own government, than it was before the current conflict broke out; yet, to point out that both governments are in the wrong immediately complicates the conversation. Rights are not a zero sum game, a cake which diminishes the more people claim a slice. Rather, equity is based on a person’s needs and situation, and in both Gaza and Ukraine we see innocent victims being denied their rights by state actors. For those victims rights are about overcoming oppression, not an idle abstraction of the courts.
