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| Here’s a cat cafe in Gaza It seemed appropriate. |
Those who know Curmie personally know that he and Beloved Spouse recently came to the awful but necessary decision to have their elder cat, Olivia (aka Skeezix), euthanized. That sent him back to his “other,” seldom-used blog, to a post about when Skeezix was the younger cat in the family and her older “sister,” Helena (Catbert), was dying.
As I wrote five years ago:
...seeing her sister’s lack of appetite, Olivia made sure that her sister had had first shot at anything she might want. It was more important to her that Helena eat than that she herself get the choicest food. She didn’t make a big deal of it; she just did it. And then, when it became clear that Catbert wasn’t going to be wanting any food [when we came home from the vet’s without her, clearly very sad], she calmly reverted to her normal behavior.
It is a sad but ultimately ennobling fact for our species: our pets have better ethics than we do.
Olivia was always a great comfort to Curmie and Beloved
Spouse; whenever we were ill or sad, she magically appeared on the scene to
help us through the bad times. She never
got along quite as well with her younger sister, Hermione (Snippet) as she did
with Helena, but in Skeezix’s last days, Snippet showed obvious concern for her
sibling, touching noses in what was clearly a gesture of compassion, for
example. Her yielding of the choicest
morsels to her elder sister wasn’t as obvious as Skeezix’s had been, but it was
there. Empathy is not merely a human
quality; it is innate across much if not all of the animal kingdom.
It’s also worth noting that the outpouring of sympathy and
support from friends (over 200 reactions on Facebook alone) to our loss has
been both overwhelming and much appreciated.
Curmie has heard from more than a few former students he had no idea
were still on Facebook, and from professional colleagues he’s never even met in
person. Current students (Curmie is back
in the classroom as a sabbatical replacement this semester) who barely know me
have been especially kind, and, no, I don’t think it’s to increase their
chances of a good grade. We are, in some
way, hard-wired to care about others.
Well, most of us are.
In one of those coincidences that lead to blog posts from
people like Curmie, I happened across an essay decrying the media’s presumed
obsession with chronicling the suffering in Gaza. The inhabitants asked for it, you see, by
electing Hamas, and the Israeli military is just trying to protect their
citizens from further attacks by a terrorist organization.
To this, Curmie responds in a manner familiar to his
students, especially in his Asian theatre classes: yes and no. I have no sympathy for Hamas, but of course
they’re not the ones bearing the brunt of the Israeli attacks, because active
belligerents make up only a small percentage of the residents. It may indeed be true that the average Gazan
now supports (as opposed to “joins”) Hamas, but it doesn’t take a strategic
genius to figure out the idea that someone might be less likely to align with
the folks who are bombing you than the ones opposing the bombers. “The enemy of my enemy…” and all that.
It’s also more than a bit of a stretch to say that current
Gazans elected Hamas. Half of the people
in Gaza weren’t even born the last time there was an election there. Half of those who were hadn’t reached voting
age. Not everyone voted. Oh, and Hamas got a plurality, not a majority,
of the votes; the got a majority of the legislative seats, but not of the
votes. In other words, the number of
Gazans residents who ever voted for Hamas is perhaps as high as 10%.
Is this relevant?
Sort of, to the extent that the pro-Israeli arguments are rendered less
legitimate. The overwhelming majority of
those dying, starving, and otherwise in peril in Gaza have done nothing to
warrant punishment. They’re simply in
the wrong place at the wrong time. Of
course, that is the way of war. Those
who make the decisions are seldom the ones who suffer most. The citizens of Melos in the Peloponnesian
War, of Antwerp in World War I, of Hiroshima in World War II (to name but three
from literally hundreds of examples), were innocent, but that didn’t save them. Those who perished in the Twin Towers on
September 11, 2001, were similarly targeted without cause.
It is certainly possible to view at least many of the untold deaths in similar circumstances over the last three millennia or so in primarily strategic terms: had this horrible thing not happened, then an even worse fate would inevitably have occurred.
Sometimes. But the key word in that sentence is “primarily.” It is reasonable enough to argue that capitulation to tyranny is never acceptable. Curmie is a native of New Hampshire, where the state motto is “live free or die.” I get it. And whereas it makes us uneasy to think in terms of how much “collateral damage” is acceptable, it is naïve to believe that such conversations are anything but commonplace… and necessary. Military decisions are in a different category than what to watch on TV tonight. There are significant real-world consequences, both positive and negative.
Getting into the weeds and weighing considerations like
responsibility and proportionality is fraught with peril. Everything becomes a matter of perspective,
and decisions are likely to tell us more about the decision-maker than about
the relative merits of opposing positions.
Curmie isn’t going to get involved in such disputes, as there is much to
be said on both sides. He’ll go only so
far as he’s already gone, when he wrote “Are the Israelis the “good guys” here? No. They’re the
less despicable guys.”
All that said, Curmie just can’t wrap his head around the
utter lack of even a modicum of sympathy for those caught in the proverbial
crossfire through no fault of their own.
No, Gentle Reader, they didn’t fucking “ask for it.” They’re just trying to survive a horrific set
of circumstances that they had little if anything to do with creating.
Even if we don’t agree that politico-military decisions
should override humanitarian concerns in at least some such cases, we can grant
that there’s an argument to be made. And
concentrating exclusively on the suffering of one set of victims (in this case,
innocent Gazans) while ignoring another set of victims (equally innocent
Israelis) is at best sloppy journalism.
But anyone who insists that basic human compassion and empathy for those who suffer are unwarranted simply because of who they are and what a minority of their ancestors thought was a good idea… such a person is just a little too close to a monster for Curmie’s taste. And Skeezix would not approve.
