Some lives are worth more than others. No, I'm not saying that. The Bible says so. The Old Testament says so, which distinguishes between God's elect and his enemies, whose annihilation God demands. Enemies like the Philistines, inhabitants of Gaza, where the Israelite Samson reduced the temple to rubble, and killed three thousand. There are no videos, and the writers of the Old Testament see no need to clarify this, but we can assume that women and children were among the dead.
Samson, by divine grace (and because of his long hair) the strongest man in the world, is the leader of the Israelites. The harlot Delilah betrays him, cuts his hair, the Philistines capture him, tear out his eyes and put him to work as a slave in Gaza.
As usual in the scriptures before Christ, the outcome is revenge, glorious revenge. "Then Samson cried out to the Lord, and said to him: 'I beg you, Lord... give me strength to take my two eyes from the Philistines once and for all.' Then he reached with his hands for the two central columns, on which the temple rested, and resting both hands on them he shouted: 'Let the Philistines die with me!'"
“Then he pushed with all his might, and the temple collapsed upon the heads of the Philistines and upon all who were there. There were more that Samson killed when he died than he had killed in his entire life.”
Both in the Book of Judges and in the top-grossing film of 1950, Samson and Delilah, the screenwriter invites us to applaud. A good number of Israelis (I know a few personally) are today applauding the biblical destruction of Gaza, where 16,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children, have died since Benjamin Netanyahu's armed forces began their campaign of revenge six weeks ago .
Blind revenge, yes, as in the case of Samsó. Moral blindness but also stupid blindness because the Palestinians will never forget this calamity, because killing Palestinian children – more than have died in the war in Ukraine in almost two years – was precisely what the terrorists of Hamas dreamed the Israelis would do after their much more calculated slaughter, the one they executed with their eyes wide open on Israeli soil on October 7. Eternal hatred against Jewish infidels is assured. Eternal war too: young Palestinians will be lining up to join Hamas and perpetuate the murderous cycle until the end of time, until God comes and reveals to us who the real elect were.
Some lives are worth more than others not only to the Bible, or to the sides directly involved in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but also to the millions of convinced people far from the combat zones, those who take sides in favor of one or the other, without ambiguity. Ours are good, others are bad. Ours are humans, the others are beasts. Fanaticism appears and compassion dies.
Take a look at the grisly details that have come to light in the past two weeks about the carnage that sparked the destruction of Gaza. Look at certain "pro-Palestinians" in the Western world, those who typically also have as their banner the cause of defending women against abuse. Yes, I'm referring to the progressive left, the MeToo sector, which proclaims that Luis Rubiales is Satan, or which builds a sideral at the first rumor that some politician (of course, on the right) is a misogynist, but turns a blind eye to the most savage violations committed in a single day on record since the Red Army invaded Germany in 1945.
Now let's see if those who give more value to the lives of some women than others pay attention. So much evidence has accumulated that UN Secretary-General António Guterres has just called for "a vigorous investigation into the many witnesses to sexual violence during the sickening acts of terror by Hamas." You should not envy the researchers. What they will see in the videos and photographs taken by the Hamas terrorists themselves and what they will hear from the survivors and the doctors is a sadism not seen even in the most perverse horror films.
Stop reading now if you love yourself more than having to think about images of men laughingly urinating on naked, open-legged women they've just raped, of dead young girls with scratches, bruises, blood and semen on their breasts and genitals, with their pelvises shattered from multiple rapes. Reports mention scores of victims, but there may be more. Oh, and this from people with religious beliefs who demand "respect" for women and denounce Western degenerates who display their faces and legs in the streets, the same streets where some of them go out to ask for Rubiales' head and chant the slogans of Hamas.
Today, December 10, is the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, approved at the UN in 1948 with the abstention of eight countries, including – oh surprise – the Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia. The declaration speaks of the rights of "all human beings" to life, to opinion, speaks out against torture, against racism, against assaults on women, against banishment and more. Quoting Shakespeare, these rules have been "honoured more in the breach than in the observance". By almost everyone, not excluding the country that pushed them, the United States, and today obviously not excluding those who use barbarism as an instrument of persuasion on the Israeli side and on the Palestinian side.
But you have to dream, you have to believe in these ideals because if not, well, let's turn off the light and go back to the jungle. The idealists on both sides who aspire for the Middle East to live in peace one day do themselves no favors if they do not have the empathy on which human rights depend, as a starting point, if they are truly universal. Until Israelis and Palestinians, and those who support them from afar, are able to recognize the equal value of the lives of both, there will not be the remotest possibility of imagining a solution. What they will do in the meantime, in their eagerness to boast that they stand for good and others for evil, is to contribute to the endless pain of all.
