Another round of Israeli air strikes has killed 11 in Gaza City, and the world yawns. Or rather, the world pretends to care. The ceasefire efforts were a mirage, a diplomatic dance that never had a chance to succeed. We watch the same play on a loop: rockets, retaliations, peace talks that go nowhere, and the inevitable collapse. This is not a conflict. This is a ritual, a blood sacrifice to the gods of national pride and geopolitical convenience.
Consider the historical parallels. The Thirty Years’ War began with a defenestration and ended in exhaustion. Here, we have no such clarity. The combatants are not fighting for territory or religion, though they may claim so. They are fighting for something far more insidious: the preservation of a narrative. Israel must be seen as the victim, Hamas as the aggressor, and Palestine as the eternal underdog. But in this theatre, the audience is bored. The same platitudes are uttered by the same politicians. The same videos of rubble and weeping children circulate. And nothing changes.
The fall of Rome was not a single event but a slow decay. Similarly, the international order’s failure to address Gaza is a symptom of a broader decadence. We prefer the comfort of outrage to the inconvenience of solution. Europe, America, the Arab League: all talk, no action. The United Nations is a talking shop, its resolutions impotent. The latest ceasefire attempt was stillborn, killed by the same inflexibility that has plagued every negotiation since 1948.
What would a Victorian gentleman make of this? He would likely marvel at our sentimentality and our cowardice. The Victorians were brutal in their colonialism, but at least they were decisive. We, however, have the power to stop the killing but lack the will. We fear the repercussions: the antisemitism accusations, the Islamophobia charges, the loss of petrodollars. So we send our condolences and urge restraint. We are moralists without morals, spectators at our own civilisation’s decline.
The 11 dead in Gaza City are just the latest digits in a grim tally. Their names will be forgotten tomorrow, replaced by another 11. The cycle continues because we allow it. We have elevated the conflict to a sacred status, immune to resolution. To solve it would admit that our past actions were wrong. Better to perpetuate the tragedy than to admit fault.
This is not journalism; this is obituary. Every report of a strike is an obituary for hope. And we, the readers, are the chief mourners, weeping crocodile tears. The ceasefire is dead. Long live the war.
