I watch the news every day. My faith, my values, what I cherish above all else, is the sanctity of human life above all political squabbles.
It distresses to see humanity stripped from much discourse about Gaza. "They" did this, so "we" can do this.
What particularly upsets me is tit for tat 'yebbut' posturing telling me what I am not allowed to condemn, or pity, or mourn. Like some guy Hillel Neuer in a quote recently listing every current atrocity and challenging anyone to somehow associate any shred of condemnation of Gaza with them all, thus laying down the charge that to fail to do so is actually "anti-Israel". Then some pillock on a demo has a banner likening Israel to Hitler, which a stream of other twits claim is enough to render the entire march as wrong. Or those who think not enough Israelis have died to justify military action. It's all messed up.
It's all been reduced to banter on Twitter. Suarez, Gaza, the Golf, Ukraine, Michael Gove. Instant opinions and powerless passive aggressive nonsense.
It's wrong to kill on such a scale. Wrong to lob rockets indiscriminately, wrong to kidnap school girls in Nigeria, to blow airliners out of the sky above Ukraine. This should never become a zero sum battle of moral equivalence, that the scoring of points on social media is the ultimate forum - the goal, the triumph. Of course it isn't, but it feels like it's getting that way.
Where in our twisted humanity did we lose the capacity to be able to call something for what it is without the Pavlovian response of "yebbut what about what they did?"
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