Thinking of Palestine with Compassion, Justice, and Righteousness
What is the minimum requirement to be human? What is the place of compassion, of justice and of righteousness in our attitude towards Palestine?
T
hinking makes man human. Humans are beings that can exist as long as they think. Sometimes you think about a weed, a tree, an insect; sometimes you think about an event that affects the whole world. In the world we live in today, there is a topic that we have to ask and think about: the attacks of the Zionist regime on Palestine.
We also need concepts to think about: we can think about the genocidal attacks of the Zionist occupation regime on Palestine, for example, in terms of compassion, justice, and righteousness.
Killing compassion with the sense of envy
Let us begin with a simple question: what is compassion? According to Schopenhauer, compassion is the virtue of loving people, “true morality,” and inherent in human nature. Therefore, to be human means to have compassion in all circumstances, in all places, in all countries. For Schopenhauer, the feeling of compassion is intertwined with pity, and the source of this feeling is the suffering, needs, and concerns of others.
Accordingly, compassion opposes behaviors that can cause pain by saying “Stop!” What happens is that compassion tends to protect and help the other as a shield at the expense of self-harm. Rachel Corrie, an American peace activist, was an example of this. She was crushed to death by an armored bulldozer of the Israeli Defense Forces in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on March 16, 2003, while helping to prevent the occupation regime from demolishing the home of a Palestinian family.
While compassion is intertwined with pain, its opposite is envy. Envy is another name for the hedonistic attitude of taking pleasure in the misfortune of others. The envy of the bulldozer operator who killed Rachel Corrie and many leaders of the Zionist regime is not hidden— it is openly displayed. This, in Schopenhauer’s words, is “diabolic,” and when there is no compassion, there is envy as its opposite. Where there is envy, discrimination is inevitable. Discrimination is either direct, based on personal characteristics, or indirect, based on language, religion, race, gender, age, and so on.
While characterizations such as “human animals” and “animals” against Palestinians are direct discrimination, discrimination based on the characteristics of “being Muslim, Palestinian or Christian” is indirect discrimination. Another aspect of discrimination is the stigmatization of support for those who are discriminated against. Such stigmatization almost creates the perception that the “person is not human.” The stigmatization and even imprisonment of those “in favor of Palestine” in Europe is a typical example. This is called “social isolation” and it not only prevents peace, but also paves the way for social disruption and chaos. This can only be prevented by a policy of social inclusion which requires a will.
Justice for inclusive will
What is justice and what is its framework? For Aristotle, justice is “equal treatment of equals and unequal treatment of unequals.” For Plato, justice is each person doing his or her part according to his or her abilities. For thinkers like Hobbes, justice is upholding the social contract. For J.S. Mill, justice is “utility.” For Kant, if there is no justice, there is no point in humans living on Earth. For Nietzsche, however, things are different: justice is a mask to hide one’s self-interest.
Whichever way we look at it, every definition and framework of justice can be applied to the Zionist occupation regime. In the end, to paraphrase Derrida, by way of the Zionist occupation regime justice is “the experience of the impossible.” In other words, justice does not work for the Zionist occupation regime because those outside of it are not equal; they are not part of its social contract and, as a result, they are not useful. As such, there is no reason for those outside of them to live. Therefore, the impossible justice that Derida speaks of is only possible through the use of “violence” against the Zionist regime.
From this perspective, the distributive aspect of justice is meaningless for the Zionist occupation regime. Distributive justice has four basic criteria: need, merit, work, and value. These do not apply to everyone, but only to those who are part of the racist ideology of the Zionist occupation regime. Thus, the Palestinian’s need is not to suffer in a hospital corner, but to die quickly and comfortably after being bombed.
Palestinians are already beings who “deserve” death. It may be possible to “work/serve” as a slave for the Zionist occupation regime in order to survive. The duration of survival by working for the Zionist occupation regime depends on the “value/quality” of Palestinian labor. This situation is a complete defeatism and oppression as the opposite of justice.
Holding on to truth to overcome oppression
Overcoming oppression requires the means of righteousness, because righteousness is essentially another aspect of justice, and righteousness has a significant impact on the establishment and maintenance of justice. However, the nature of righteousness varies according to philosophical views, religious beliefs, and understanding of science. For this reason, righteousness is explained in terms of “convenience, internal consistency, excess, and pragmatic approaches.”
In the oldest and most widely accepted approach to justice, the convenience approach, on which other theories of justice are based, justice means correspondence with reality. For example, if you say, “There’s an airplane up there,” all you have to do is look up to know whether it is true or not; if the airplane is visible, then the statement is true. Despite the open bombing of innocent people by the Zionist occupation regime, U.S. .and European politicians are playing with people’s minds, making statements that the Zionist occupation regime did not bomb the hospital. This has nothing to do with “truth” because “the airplane is up there” and “bombing innocents during a live broadcast.”
At the same time, the actions of the Zionist occupation regime are correct according to the “internal consistency approach.” This is because it is based on behavior that is consistent with what is believed to be right. If this consistency exists, then what is done is considered right. In this sense, one’s essence, words, and actions must be consistent. Thus, righteousness means upholding one’s self-proclaimed (moral) principles in all times and places. Therefore, the Zionist occupation regime is “righteous” in the sense of internal consistency because it acts in accordance with its beliefs. The bombing of Palestinian homes, schools, hospitals, mosques, or churches, and innocent people by the Zionist occupation regime is a righteous act! Anyone who thinks otherwise is ridiculous according to the Zionist occupation regime.
Another approach that complements the convenience approach and helps overcome its shortcomings is the excess/surplus approach. The basic idea of this approach is that the use of the word “true” in propositions is redundant. For example, instead of the proposition “It is true that there is a book on the table,” one could say “There is a book on the table.” Here, the media comes to mind as the force that determines the field of “excess” or “deficiency.” Depending on the position of the Zionist occupation regime, the media renders the statements of the Palestinians and those who support the Palestinians meaningless by categorizing them as necessary untrue” or “unnecessary untrue.”
A final approach to explaining justice is the pragmatist approach. Here, truth is “what meets the need,” truth is only relative to results. Truth is shaped by the hands of self-interested people, and absolute or fundamental unchanging truth is irrelevant. What is at stake, then, is a lack of virtue. Thus, Western countries and especially Islamic countries “justify” their position on Palestine by saying that it is against their national interests.
As a result, let us consider someone who believes that it is right to help people who are oppressed. This person is expected to act justly, i.e., with righteousness, in a way that is consistent with this belief. In doing so, they should also activate their sense of compassion. This is the minimum requirement for being human!
