Some Thoughts Concerning Moral Relativism and Ethical Inversion in Gaza - by Shimona Tzukernik

...In the words of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee: “Not one of the Palestinians would have died if Hamas didn’t insist on firing rockets into Israel and then using civilians as human shields. … I’m not saying this because I’m a Jew. … I’m not a Jew. I believe there’s a difference however between good and evil. And I would never tell good to restrain itself. Nor would I ever treat evil as if it were the same as good.”

Shimona Tzukernik..
Algemeiner.com..
19 June '17..

I remember the day that I made a decision to invest my energies in spiritual rather than political activism. I was on an anti-apartheid march at the University of Witwatersrand, and as we emerged from the campus into Braamfontein, I noticed that some demonstrators had joined with a broad banner at the head of the procession. Painted in quick, broad strokes, it screamed “Zionism = Apartheid.”

Since that moment, the thrust of my life has been to seek change through spiritual rather than political activism.

I think that all anti-Zionism has a spiritual root of antisemitism. But the moral relativism and ethical inversion that is rampant in the global perception about Israel is so widespread, so deep and so intense, that it strikes me as having extra-ordinary spiritual implications.

Someone I very much respect once videographed the Dalai Lama, and asked him for a message to the Israeli and Palestinian people. The summarized, distilled version of the Dalai Lama’s message was this: “Regardless of your past history, the current reality is that you have to live side by side.”

At first glance, these words seemed innocuous. But when I thought about them more, I realized that the Dalai Lama was taking no position on who was right, and who was wrong; he acknowledged the historical narratives of both people, and pointed no fingers at who was primarily to blame for the conflict.

I disagree. I believe that the need to acknowledge everyone’s narrative as equally valid has stuck us in the muck of moral relativity, and worse — ethical inversion.

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