Commentary
The moral test that ‘civilized’ nations are failing
In Gaza, what is tested is not individual conscience but collective conscience, expressed in our capacity to reason together about right and wrong.
What is happening in Gaza is a moral test in two ways, different yet connected. On the personal level, it is a moment that requires self-examination, because it forces us to confront something that shakes our certainties. We know very well this is not the first time systematic, brutal violence has struck a people so fiercely that its integrity, and even its survival, is at risk. But this is the first time such acts occur “under the eyes” of the entire international community. That phrase is no longer a figure of speech; we must take it literally. Anyone, almost anywhere, can connect to media that allows them to access images, voices and stories.
A few minutes after a bombing, we already know that a child has been killed with her family, or that a boy who went out to find food never returned because he was shot. In many cases we see those mutilated bodies in real time, or almost, or we witness the harrowing agony that is the last stretch of their short lives. We watch mothers and fathers mourning sons and daughters, brothers and sisters saying farewell, children who will carry the scars of merciless violence for the rest of their days.
All this is horrific and triggers in many people an understandable urge to turn away. Yet looking away does not soothe the conscience. In a definite sense, we would betray the respect we owe ourselves as rational beings if we chose to ignore those bodies, avert our gaze from those faces, refuse to hear those voices. Once we know, we cannot choose not to know. Even if we are not in a position to save Gaza’s inhabitants – because individually we lack the means – we can bear witness to what has befallen these victims to the full extent of our awareness, resisting the temptation to smother our dismay and anger by thinking of something else.
Witnessing is essential – just as it was for the Armenian genocide and for the Shoah – but it is not enough. We must also answer the question of why all this is happening. Can one atrocity justify another? Can the blood of one innocent compensate for the violent death of another innocent?
Even those who admit that force can be justified – for example, to repel a potentially lethal attack – could not answer yes to those questions. They cannot, because that would push them outside the bounds set out by the supreme principle of morality: the equal respect owed to all human beings.
This leads to the second sense in which Gaza is a moral test: the public one, which involves relations among people within a political community and among political communities internationally. Here, what is tested is not individual conscience but collective conscience, expressed in our capacity to reason together about right and wrong (and that is why those who want the massacre to run its full course are so determined to block any free conversation about the atrocities committed by the Israeli army).
In this realm, the questions concern rules first of all. The very idea of law is incompatible with double standards. If an act violates international criminal law, it always does, whoever commits it. The assault that Israel’s government – in complicity with the governments of most European countries and the United States – has launched on those rules is reshaping the legal environment in which our sons and daughters will live.
The latest news, especially the conversation between Trump and Netanyahu, suggest we are nearing the final phase of Gaza’s destruction, which could lead to what remains of its population being moved elsewhere.
What was once deemed “unthinkable” is becoming real again. By affirming double standards through their statements and actions, the governments aligned with Israel’s war against Gaza’s civilians also raise a question of public morality we cannot dodge.
Are we prepared to accept a return to the mentality of 19th-century jurists who reserved international law protection only for “civilized nations”? Are we willing to stand idle while a revived privilege of “Western civilization” masks an ever more aggressive supremacism to which even “moderates” are bowing their heads? Israel, said Friedrich Merz, “is doing the dirty work for us.” Do we want that phrase to stand in the history books as a description of who we were and the measure of our moral fiber?
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/il-test-morale-che-le-nazioni-civili-stanno-fallendo on 2025-07-09