Letters from Tomis

The Gaza war, like so many conflicts that punctuate human history, serves as an indictment of the tribal instincts and ideological absolutisms that continue to haunt our species. To examine it dispassionately is to confront a series of tragic contradictions: the war is at once a struggle for survival and an expression of collective self-destruction; it is cloaked in the language of justice while unleashing the most unjustifiable forms of suffering. The causes are manifold, their roots tangled in the bitter soil of history, religion, imperialism, and geopolitics, but the consequences—death, despair, and disillusionment—are brutally straightforward.

The suffering of civilians, particularly the Palestinians in Gaza, is not merely collateral; it is central to this grim theater. It is a grim irony that those who invoke the sanctity of life often perpetuate its destruction in the name of security, sovereignty, or some divine mandate. The blockade of Gaza, the strikes on its infrastructure, and the countless civilian casualties are presented as unfortunate necessities. Yet necessity, as we know, is often the preferred mask of power. When a population is caged, bombed, and deprived, one cannot reasonably expect them to see their captors as benevolent—or even rational—actors.

This is not to absolve Hamas, whose cynical use of civilians as human shields betray a fundamental contempt for the very people they claim to represent. The firing of rockets into civilian areas and the glorification of martyrdom are not acts of resistance but of nihilism. They are calculated to provoke, to perpetuate cycles of violence that serve their own grim calculus of power. In this way, Hamas and the Israeli government find themselves as strange bedfellows: each relies on the extremity of the other to justify its actions.

Yet to pretend this is a conflict between equals is to succumb to moral cowardice. Israel, as the far more powerful actor, wields an imperialist state apparatus that includes a formidable military and the diplomatic cover of the world’s superpowers. According to liberal ideology, with such power comes a proportionate responsibility, a responsibility it has repeatedly abdicated in favor of policies that dehumanize and alienate. The occupation and the settlements are not defensive measures but offensive provocations, a slow-motion annexation that mocks the notion of peace.

The international community, for its part, continues its dithering hypocrisy, alternately condemning and enabling the violence. The United States, that self-styled beacon of democracy, writes blank checks to Israel while mouthing platitudes about human rights. Europe wrings its hands, China and Russia manipulate the crisis for their own ends, and the Arab states offer rhetorical outrage while quietly maintaining their own status quo.

What remains is the human cost, an ocean of grief in which truth and reconciliation drown. The children of Gaza grow up under the shadow of drones, their dreams shredded by war. Israelis live in constant fear of rockets and terrorism, trapped in a siege mentality that justifies ever greater repression. Both peoples are prisoners of a narrative that insists on their irreconcilable enmity.

Is there a way out? Perhaps, but not while religion sanctifies conquest and martyrdom, not while bourgeois nationalism precludes empathy, and not while the powerful are permitted to act with impunity. The Gaza war is not a tragedy because it was inevitable. It is a tragedy because it was not. It is the result of unfettered imperialist capitalism. Until we confront this fact with honesty and courage, we will remain in the shadow of this shameful, ruinous spectacle.