From Gaza to Ukraine, peace always seems just out of reach – and the reason isn’t only political | Simon Tisdall
TThe quest for peace in major conflicts has rarely been so desperate and so futile. In Gaza, talking about ceasefire, trèings and breaks generally ends in tears. In Ukraine, war is now good in its fourth endless year in sight, despite the new deadline for 50 days of Donald Trump. Syria burns again. Sudan horrors never stop. Last year, state -based conflicts reached a peak – 61 in 36 countries. It was the most recorded total since 1946. This year could be worse.
The scale and depravity of war crimes and other atrocities in the conflict area are extraordinary. The deliberate and illegal targeting and the terrorization of civilians, the murder, the mutilation and the kidnapping of children, and the use of famine, sexual violence, torture and forced displacement as weapons of war increased almost. The murder of Israel last week of children is queuing for water in Gaza was shocking, made doubly by the fact that scenes like this have become so common.
“Blessed are the craftsmen of peace,” said Saint Matthew, but today, impartial mediators are in life. Certainly, everyone agrees: the murder and massacre of the innocents is morally indefensible. So why is the Devil allowed to continue? This same question is shouted aloud by parents struck with sorrow in Rafah, kyiv and Darfour, by UN workers, in chairs, pubs and parliaments, during street demonstrations and Glastonbury. For what? FOR WHAT?
The curse of moral relativism provides an index. The fact is that not everyone agrees. What is absolutely morally indefensible for a group of people is relatively authorized or justifiable for another. It was held true throughout human history. However, the geopolitically and economically divided world of today is also ethically and morally fractured to a possibly unequaled degree. Accessive, the norms observed – which the American writer David Brooks calls a “permanent moral order” – are missing.
The collapse of the international order based on the rules is reflected by this crisis of the moral order. Without accepted universal principles, the peaceful settlement of conflicts, foreign or domestic, becomes very problematic. “We have no objective standard to determine that a view is good and another vision is bad. Public arguments therefore continue indefinitely, at higher levels of indignation and polarization, ”says Brooks. What remains is coercion and manipulation.
No individual better personifies moral-relativist confusion permeating contemporary life than Trump, the master coaches and manipulator. He believes, for example, that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize 2025. However, Trump, collusion with Israel, recently bombed Iran and killed many civilians. In his morally confused vision, this act of illegal aggression was justified because he restored the peace he had just broken.
In a world married to war, the venerable peace prize in Alfred Nobel seems more and more anachronistic – and politicized. Barack Obama won it in 2009 to do nothing. If only Trump would do nothing for the next four years. Worse, he was nominated by Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, enemy of peace and morality. It might be better to replace the prize with a Warlord of the Year Prize – and put a bonus on the winner’s head.
It can be confusing, even controversial; Ask any church or mosque chief. For many people, it seems, morality is a dirty word these days. It is fungible, negotiable and emotional – a question mainly of individual choice and cultural belonging, and not of duty, obligation or loyalty to a higher law. How can we explain otherwise why so many Americans close their eyes to Trump’s astonishing moral turpitude, illustrated again by the Jeffrey Epstein affair? Social identity prevails over social conscience.
A large part of the Russian public suffers from a similar chronic moral deficiency by contemplating the devastation of Vladimir Putin of Ukraine. Intimidated dissidents avoid the subject. Others believe that disinformation fairy tales turned by media controlled by the regime. The majority lives in a state of deep ignorance on the crimes committed on their behalf. When it is finished, the Russians can claim, like the Germans in 1945, which they did not know. Amorality is attenuated by lies.
The denial of peace of Israel in Palestine also has a high moral cost. His reputation is in tatters, his Prime Minister has an arrest warrant issued against him for war crimes. Anti -Semitism increases internationally as a consequence. How can so many Israelis live with the unleashing of Gaza of their army, with the specter of 58,000 corpses? Some say everything would stop if only the last hostages were released; Others than all Palestinians are Hamas. Some on the far right, forgetting the history of their country, suggest that the idea of a Palestinian nation is fiction. They want the 2 million Gaza residents to be in a huge concentration camp.
Many Israelis are passionately in disagreement. They want peace. Their inability to force a change in government policy is moral and political. The Americans, the Russians and all in Great Britain and in Europe, the politicians and the public, who do not express themselves, are also at fault, who did not speak, who look at that murder and chaos, wherever they occur, are relatively tolerable, if they claim murder and chaos.
This very modern failure, this retirement in subjective morality and makes you, this renunciation of shared responsibility, is reversible. Universal ethical standards are still applied. They are defined by the Geneva conventions, by other secular instruments of international law, by religious faith and by the social contract. They must be respected and reinforced. They are necessary, sometimes annoying truths.
Ordinary people in ordinary times can choose their moral battles. But putting an end to major conflicts and softening the suffering of millions, is a moral imperative that requires a determined collective response from all the persons concerned. In this way, it’s peace. In this way, it’s salvation.
