Is it a war between the weak and the strong? On the meanings of victory and defeat in Gaza Opinions

In its Western linguistic context, the word “meaning” denotes the meanings of “destination” and “road,” just like the word “intent” in the Arabic language, which in turn refers to intention and walking in a specific direction.

Thus, the seeker of meaning is like someone seeking to determine the direction of movement and action. Just as someone who is devoid of meaning in reality is devoid of direction, he does not know where he is going or what he will do. Or if you want, you can say: The person who lacks meaning is, upon investigation, a lost person who has lost his way. Misguidance may be near, or it may be far away.

What evidence of distant misguidance is clearer than the persistence of Israel – and the West behind it – in the wrong direction, as they insist on eradicating the Palestinian person and destroying the foundations of life in their space and domain and on their land?

Whoever reads the novel “The Old Man and the Sea” by the American writer Ernest Hemingway must be struck by the phrase of the novel’s hero, “Santiago,” which says: “Man may be destroyed, but he cannot be defeated.” What these words mean is that you can destroy and kill a people, but you will not be able to defeat them. Rather, what you consider a victory will actually be your defeat.

Despite all the efforts made by commentators to justify what is happening in Gaza, the scenes of random killing and genocide committed by the Israeli army against defenseless people remain lacking in meaning. Rather, if you wish, say: What is happening in Gaza today is based on essentially assassinating meaning, and persisting in error and misguidance, far from the goals determined by chivalry, morals, religion, common sense, and sound reason.

If the desired meaning or intended destination is to achieve victory through Israel’s military operations against defenseless Palestinians, then it is very clear that these operations have gone wrong and strayed from the meaning. Those who were responsible for acts of systematic sabotage and destruction – from the Israeli army – missed the point that victory had meanings in which it could be achieved.

Whenever a person takes the wrong path towards these meanings, he is not safe from falling into the meanings of moral defeat. Does moral defeat have a meaning other than insisting on displaying power in places other than its homeland? The strong believe that victory is achieved by annihilating opponents, throwing missiles at children from the sky, killing the surrendering person raising the white flag, blocking the road to ambulances, demolishing hospitals, and abusing prisoners.

All of these heinous acts committed by the Israeli army make it clear that what Israel seeks is to achieve pure material victory, without any consideration of the moral aspects of victory.

Whoever reads the novel “The Old Man and the Sea” by the American writer Ernest Hemingway must be struck by the phrase of the novel’s hero, “Santiago,” which says: “Man may be destroyed, but he cannot be defeated.” What these words mean is that you can destroy and kill a people, but you will not be able to defeat them. Rather, what you consider a victory will actually be your defeat.

This is because man is body and soul, matter and meaning. If you destroy the body, you will not destroy the soul that inhabits this body. Others may grant you your material superiority, but they will not grant you moral superiority, or the right to leadership in terms of values.

This is why we find the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche asking in his book “Menschliches, Allzumenschliches” about the best way to achieve victory, and he answers: “You do not desire victory at all if your only intention is to surpass the opponent by a hair. True victory brings There is joy in the souls of the defeated, and there is something of a divine nature that removes the feeling of shame and embarrassment from the defeated.”

These words of Nietzsche enable us to find answers to what is happening in Gaza today. The more ferocious the Israeli aggression, the stronger the spirit of resistance becomes, because nothing that Israel does – in its pursuit of victory – reflects that divine nature that prompts those who are less powerful than you to surrender to you the right to spiritual leadership and moral heroism.

One of the strange ironies that strikes the contemplative is that among the Israeli parties – which call for the annihilation of the Palestinian people and seek to find a justification for this – there are parties that are considered to be on the extreme right supported by religious parties.

This makes us confused. We do not know how the authority supervising the management of the conflict from within the State of Israel – calling for extermination and killing – combines the religious sense, on the one hand, with excessive humanity, on the other hand!, since it is not right for a person to be religious. He asks for a kind of victory that only a person who is too human can ask for, this person whose self-deification blinds him from thinking about the spirit, and you see him going too far in destroying the body. Thinking that he would be able to resolve the conflict.

The point is that the aggression against Gaza stripped Israel and its allies of their moral character, and stripped them of the right to adhere to religious morality. This is because religion, in its noble meaning, came to bring man out of the stage of physical human heroism – where there is no deterrent to prevent him from persisting in killing – to the stage of moral heroism, in which the meaning of this killing is determined. This religious meaning appears clearly to us in the Almighty’s saying: “And fight in the cause of God those who fight you, but do not aggress. Indeed, God does not like aggressors.” This verse bears witness to one of the sublime meanings of religion that addresses mankind in the midst of combat, specifying for him the rules of engagement, asking him to adhere to moral limits and not to attack.

In vain, spokesmen for the State of Israel resort to new words, seeking a rational explanation for what they are doing. After Israel lost the quality of morality associated with religion in its general sense, we find its government and those within its orbit pleading with reason to justify the clear crime they are doing. For them, the mind has become a means of creating and constructing meaning.

A rational person would think that Israel, after its inability to hide the truth about the destruction and genocide occurring against the Palestinian people, will find itself forced to apologize for the loss of innocent lives and collateral victims during its fierce attack in order to dismantle the resistance, as it claims. However, we are surprised by the emergence of a discourse that invokes rational arguments to justify more ferocity in the attack on defenseless civilians and the insistence on humiliating, starving, and killing them, both quickly and slowly.

The controlling mind in Israel today is trying to rely on statements that it inserts into the core of mental axioms. In order to justify his war crimes, these are statements that were closely related to colonial thought. What does it mean for this mind to link affiliation to civilization, democracy, and rationality on the one hand, and the right to coerce others, force them to submit, and give them the choice between death or surrender?

This type of confusion falls within the scope of the abstract mind that creates meaning as an industry, far from the requirements of common sense. Just like the mind that justifies destroying millions of tons of food, either by burning or throwing it into the sea. To achieve an alleged economic interest, while millions of people are starving and dying. The person with a sound mind, while contemplating the consequences of preoccupying himself with this artificial mind of meaning, cannot help but repeat: “Oh God, this is reprehensible.”

Israel – and behind it Western colonialism – gradually gained material power as it used reason, so it began to use the latest rational means to manage its conflict with its surroundings and justify the crimes it is committing. Israel – as we see this through its dealings with the international community – no longer cares about the reality described, whether it proves or denies its truth. Even if the world came together to condemn her actions – based on what this reality proves – she insists on adopting the technological mind and the capabilities it provides to hide facts, falsify them, and manipulate minds. In order to impose a “programmed reality” governed by artificial meanings that are closer indicative of clear error than true meanings.

America’s continued defense of the idea of ​​Israel’s right to defend itself in a meaningless manner – and its persistence in accepting scenes of annihilation, displacement and starvation of an entire people – indicates clear mental bankruptcy. When contemplating what is happening before our eyes, we feel that engaging with the mind has reached the point where this mind has become a new type of sophistry that does not give weight to the truth.

Unlike the old sophistry, whose proponents practiced types of quackery and deception in order to convince minds of the existence of truth – that is, of a correspondence between reality and what they say – the new sophistry is not concerned with the correspondence of reality and truth, but rather is concerned with programming reality and creating meaning and truth.

Everything indicates that the battle in Gaza today is no longer a battle between Israel and the Palestinians, but rather a battle between clear meaning and clear error, a battle between truth and falsehood. Whoever believes that a misguided force can prevail is delusional, even if material force is on its side.

It was stated in Heidi and Alvin Toffler’s book on “War and Anti-War” that humanity is heading towards new types of wars, the major features of which have not yet become clear. After nearly thirty years, the war on Gaza came to clarify to us the nature of these wars.

The Gaza war today is a war between “the strong due to its weakness in its strength,” and “the weak in its strength due to its weakness.” As for the weakness of the strong, it lies in his error. As for the strength of the weak, it lies in the meaning it carries or the purpose to which it is intended.