Moral Issues in Hard Times (A Modified Formulation)

Volume 12|Issue 47| Winter 2024 |Theme of the Issue

Abstract

The topic of the article is the ethical dilemmas facing humanity as a result of the heinous acts committed during the war on Gaza, and the means used to neutralize ethical judgment on the crimes and address them individually, despite the polarization and the identity politics associated with the war. The article does not start, as it does so, from the premise that ethics are limited to transcendent principles from which judgments are derived by comparison and rational judgment, but that ethics traces back to qualities presumed to exist in humans (such as the instinct to preserve life, aversion to causing physical pain to others, the aspiration for acknowledgment, etc.). These are not ethical principles in themselves but rather form a natural basis for the emergence of ethics (which can simultaneously constitute the nucleus of universal human values). Ethics cannot be sidelined during times of war, arguing that armies are forced to do so. Humans lose much of their humanity when they lose their ethics. The article argues that if Israel and its allies justify their crimes as self–defense, it is a pure lie because Israel is an occupying state, and occupation does not have the right to self–defense. The right to self–defense (a conditional right) lies in resisting occupation. As for describing Palestinian resistance in Gaza as "absolute evil," it is not an ethical judgment as much as it is a strategy aimed at preventing any attempt to understand the background of resistance operations. The article engages in an ethical discussion with Jürgen Habermas and Seyla Benhabib about their positions on the war on Gaza, criticizing their bias towards Israel and exposing the fallacies they have fallen into.

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General Director of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS) and Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (DI). Bishara is a leading Arab researcher and intellectual with numerous books and academic publications on political thought, social theory and philosophy. He was named by Le Nouveau Magazine Littéraire as one of the world's most influential thinkers. His publications in Arabic, some of which have become key references within their respective field, include Civil Society: A Critical Study (1996); From the Jewishness of the State to Sharon (2004); On The Arab Question: An Introduction to an Arab Democratic Manifesto (2007); To Be an Arab in Our Times (2009); On Revolution and Susceptibility to Revolution (2012); Religion and Secularism in Historical Context (in 3 vols., 2013, 2015); The Army and Political Power in the Arab Context: Theoretical Problems (2017); The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Daesh): A General Framework and Critical Contribution to Understanding the Phenomenon (2018); What is Populism? (2019); Democratic Transition and its Problems: Theoretical Lessons from Arab Experiences (2020); and The Question of the State: Philosophy, Theory, and Context (2023) with a second volume titled The Arab State: Beginnings and Evolution (2024).

His latest publication in Arabic titled Palestine: Matters of Truth and Justice (2024), is translated from English, originally published in 2022 by Hurst Publishers in London. Bishara's English publications also include On Salafism: Concepts and Contexts (Stanford University Press, 2022); Sectarianism without Sects (Oxford University Press, 2021); and his trilogy on the Arab revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria, published by I.B. Tauris, Understanding Revolutions: Opening Acts in Tunisia (2021); Egypt: Revolution, Failed Transition and Counter-Revolution (2022); and Syria 2011-2013: Revolution and Tyranny before the Mayhem (2023), in which he provides a rich theoretical analysis in addition to a comprehensive and lucid assessment of the revolutions in three Arab countries. 


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