One of the outcomes of the ongoing genocide in Gaza has been a total collapse of any semblance of moral authority on the part of the West. Western nations have always been complicit in what Rashid Khalidi has called “the hundred years’ war on Palestine”, but the dereliction concerning Gaza today represents new extremes in terms of the scale of destruction, the scale of complicity of many powerful nations and the lack of plausible deniability of the world’s first “live-streamed” genocide.
Didier Fassin’s book surveys this moral abdication, focusing on how many western states and institutions have actively consented to the destruction of Gaza, particularly by obstructing and criminalising Palestinian solidarity. By foregrounding students and other activists who have defended the basic rights of Palestinians, the book also seeks to “attest to the existence of a refusal, shared by many, of consent to the obliteration of Gaza”.
For many media commentators, the demonstrations for a ceasefire represented a “pro-Palestinian camp” opposed to a “pro-Israeli” one, but when people demanded a stop to the slaughter of innocents, Fassin writes, “it appeared that many commentators found it impossible to imagine a different camp: the camp of life”.
Fassin’s strategic argument recalls an exchange on BBC Newsnight (October 30th, 2023), during which presenter Kirsty Wark described Francesca Albanese (UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories) as “advocating for the Palestinian people.” Albanese corrected: “I advocate for the application of international law, human rights, and justice.”
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Fassin and Albanese both suggest that the rights-based demands for Palestinians should not be viewed as exceptional.
Such arguments function as warnings against complacency towards the erosion of political norms and collapse of international law. For example, the impunity with which Israel has been able to destroy all healthcare infrastructure in Gaza makes it more likely that similar tactics will be deployed in future conflicts elsewhere.
Fassin examines how critics of this situation have been slandered as “anti-Semitic” or “apologists of terrorism. A cheapening of language has accompanied a cheapening of life and has rendered it even more difficult to find the words to adequately account for the unfolding horror. Restoring some sense of moral and political clarity thus requires defending “a language that might make the world more intelligible”.
