Can There Be Such a Thing as Humanity in War?

On February 24, 2022, the world rose in uproar when Russia invaded Ukraine. The international community rallied, offering support, aid, and solidarity. Social media was filled with fundraisers and donation drives for weeks and months. Yet while those efforts eventually faded, the war did not. By early this year, the conflict had displaced roughly 16 million Ukrainians—8 million internally and another 8 million forced to flee.

The United Nations reported that by September 2023, around 10,000 Ukrainian civilians had been killed since the invasion began. That number continues to climb. My intention was not to write about Ukraine, but about a question that has occupied me ever since Israel began what appears to be relentless attacks on Gaza: Is there such a thing as humanity in war?

As days turned into weeks, then months, and now over a year, the world seemed to lose interest in Ukraine and its suffering. Humanity, it seems, has a short attention span for war. Or perhaps humanity itself recedes, almost imperceptibly, under its weight.

Then came October 7, 2023. Hamas attacked Israel, killing over 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals and taking about 240 hostages. While the history of the Gaza conflict is undeniably complex, I was perplexed by the voices that supported Hamas while blaming Israel. I was especially struck by those who criticized Israel for counterattacking. What should Israel have done—in the face of those killings and abductions—ask that it not happen again, wait for the hostages to return, and hope for the best?

It is horrific that, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, roughly 15,000 Palestinians—including about 6,000 children—have been killed since October 7. I cannot help but wonder whether this outcome was precisely what Hamas anticipated. It is difficult to believe the organization did not expect a fierce Israeli response. If so, is Hamas not also culpable for the deaths of Palestinians, having been willing to accept massive civilian casualties as collateral damage in provoking Israel or seeking leverage for prisoner exchanges?

Yet none of this justifies the killing of even a single person—by Hamas or by Israel. No provocation, no political aim, no strategic calculation can justify the taking of innocent lives. Whatever the rationale, the outcome remains the same: lives taken, irreversibly.

War, by design and intent, cannot be fought humanely. No cause, however noble it may appear, can justify the act of killing another human being. War is constructed to harm, to destroy, to break. Violence is not a tragic byproduct—it is the mechanism.

I had hoped the truce between Israel and Hamas would extend into weeks, months, even years. Instead, Israel’s attacks seem to have grown even more intense and indiscriminate, their scale difficult to reconcile with restraint. Hamas provoked, and Israel is now seeking to reshape Gaza by eliminating Hamas—perhaps to secure its nation and prevent another October 7. Can we blame them for wanting to protect their people?

But at the cost of more than 15,000 Palestinian lives? The question lingers, unanswered.

As long as Israel continues its assault on Gaza, there can be no humanity in this conflict. Rather than searching for an impossible “humane war,” we should be seeking peace through the withdrawal of external support and, if necessary, sanctions. Military and financial aid to the Israeli government must be halted unless it ceases its advance into Gaza, withdraws, and remains within its borders. Vigilance and security for Israel are understandable and should be supported—but not at the expense of civilian lives caught within its reach, even in response to a horrific provocation.

War may extinguish humanity, but our policies and actions can end the war.

_____

More essays:

And Just Like That, It Isn’t Easy Being Us

Donald Trump and His 74 Million American Voters

Are We Abusing Self-Care?

Because We Don’t Live in a Perfect World

Breaking of Invisible Minorities

ESSAYS | RECIPES | STYLES | IG

Articles sélectionnés

I earn commission on qualified purchases.

Comments

Inspired by Bar Santos: Piri Piri Sauce

It is one of those rare places in Los Angeles where I can feel authenticity and genuine warmth. When I first stepped into Bar Santos in Cypress Park, I was still recovering from my Portugal trip. If you recall from my IG Stories , a canceled flight, another delayed flight, lost luggage, falsely confiscated jamón ibérico, and the mystery of how airlines cannot distinguish between hotels and motels were traumatic enough to leave a mental scar. However, Bar Santos healed whatever wound remained. Piri Piri Chicken at Bar Santos The second time was to sip their Porto Tonico. I rarely talk about prices when it comes to bars and restaurants, but $9 for a drink, and a refreshingly delicious drink at that, is unheard of, especially in Los Angeles. While Porto Tonico got me back to Bar Santos, it was their Piri Piri Chicken that made me fall hard for them. It is very rare for me to try to duplicate a dish. Partly because I don't like to intelligently dissect what I am eating because it takes...

Sweaters for Him for You to Borrow

One of the great signs of love is gifting. Another is sharing, which is why a very good men’s sweater should never be considered the sole property of the man who technically owns it. You bought it for him because you adore him, because he deserves something soft and handsome, and perhaps because you had the foresight to recognize that an oversized sweater looks particularly good with leggings, bare legs, or the vague promise of returning it someday. My favorite restaurant in Santa Barbara, California, Loquita There is generosity in this arrangement. He gets a beautifully chosen sweater, and you get visitation rights. Everyone wins, especially when the sweater in question has the right weight, the right drape, and enough room to suggest effortless intimacy rather than petty theft. Consider these eight options gifts for him, selected with love and impeccable taste. You will need to gently whisper to him that sharing is caring. 66 NORTH Varmahlid Shearling Sweater JavaScript is currently ...

Gwyneth Paltrow is Aloof, So What Are You?

There are days when I feel utterly disconnected from the world. It took an IG feed from Diet Prada for me to learn that Gwyneth Paltrow had starred in an ad for 51 Park, a luxury residential development in Herzliya, Israel. Herzliya is an affluent coastal city north of Tel Aviv, and the project is being marketed as a luxury residential development there. To be clear, 51 Park is not in Gaza. It is in Israel. But precision does not make the geography innocent: parts of present-day Herzliya overlap with or sit near the land of al-Haram, also known as Sidna Ali, a Palestinian Arab village depopulated in 1948. Lisbon, Portugal There is misinformation about where the 51 Park residential development is located, and the distinction matters. If our beating of Gwyneth Paltrow is going to be effective, it should at least be accurate. I have never liked her. I have never hated her. Even before the 51 Park ad controversy broke, I felt she was irrelevant. Her acting skills are not impressive. Would ...

Impossibility of Jason Arday

When I first read about Jason Arday, he had just resigned from the University of Cambridge. Accusations of plagiarism reminded me of Claudine Gay , the former president of Harvard University, who resigned after accusations of plagiarism surfaced. There certainly was more to her resignation than accusations of plagiarism. She was also accused of antisemitism following her congressional testimony. Her story ended with her becoming the shortest-serving president in the history of Harvard. When a second article about Arday caught my eye, he had been found dead at his home in South London. To this day, suicide has not been named as the cause of death, but I find myself speculating that it was suicide, given the circumstances surrounding his death and the absence of any reported foul play. I imagine many of us are wondering the same thing. I think about his last days. On August 5, the university announced that it had accepted his resignation and would open an investigation into allegations c...

The Grandeur of Mundaneness

Whenever I think of the word mundane, I think of Burning, the film starring Yoo Ah In. It was described once as being like watching paint dry. That comparison lingered. In many ways, the pandemic years felt the same—new coats layered endlessly over the wall, each variant stripping away the hope that the surface might finally harden. Kaanapali It feels almost obtuse to call the pandemic mundane. More than five million lives lost. Hundreds of millions infected. At moments, it threatened not just our survival, but our humanity—our ability to remain human, with hearts and intelligence intact. The first months were brutal. Our lives collapsed inward, reduced to rooms, screens, and routines that repeated without distinction. Before all of this, I had built a life around the belief that life itself is art, paired with a devotion to minimalism. I found serenity in ordinary things: cooking, reading, knitting, tending to plants, coloring, crafting. Even cleaning brought a quiet satisfaction, pun...

Seafood Jajang Deopbap

Jajang, born from Chinese zhajiangmian and transformed in Korea into the rich, dark sauce made with chunjang, has become woven into the fabric of Korean everyday life. What began as an adapted working-class meal of black bean sauce (jajang) over noodles (myeon) in port cities has evolved into a national comfort food, synonymous with quick delivery, moving days, and casual family meals. Jajangmyeon was the pizza and burgers of my childhood. End-of-school semesters and good test scores were acknowledged with jajangmyeon. My grandparents always had it delivered when I stayed with them during school breaks, a proper opening to days of my grandmother’s home-cooked meals to come. Ceramic bowls were wheel-thrown and glazed by me. Its presence is as cultural as it is culinary: from shared bowls among students and office workers to its symbolic role on Black Day, when singles gather to eat jajangmyeon together. It is the unofficially official meal on moving day. More than just a sauce, jajang r...

Oh Snap! BTS Just Made the Grammys Irrelevant

I am not ARMY. The first BTS member to intrigue me was J-Hope, who appeared last year on one of my favorite Korean shows, Chef & My Fridge, with his refrigerator in tow. There, I learned that he had performed at Le Gala des Pièces Jaunes at Paris La Défense Arena at the personal invitation of Brigitte Macron, France’s first lady. Naturally, I found the performance on YouTube. Thirty-five thousand people filled the arena as thousands of voices in France roared the Korean lyric, “adeuri neom jal nagaseo mianhae, eomma.” One need not own a purple light stick to recognize that kind of cultural power. Afterward, I became mildly obsessed with J-Hope and, by association, BTS. Original photo by Sudhith Xavier. Photoshop by ChatGPT. A song currently in heavy rotation on my playlist is SWIM, from their latest album, ARIRANG. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and remained there for three consecutive weeks. During its debut week, its songs occupied the top nine positions on the...

Perhaps Globalization Is Killing Us

This morning, the top five stories in my Apple News feed were: the U.S. and Iran trading strikes for the first time in weeks, from BBC News; one dead and 15 missing after sudden flooding at the Grand Canyon forced dozens to be airlifted, from Fox Weather; rescuers in Nepal racing to reach hundreds feared trapped in hydropower tunnels, from The Guardian; Congress finally talking about saving Social Security, from The Wall Street Journal; and, from ESPN, What Went Wrong? Novak Djokovic Knocked Out of US Open in First Round. Then, after months of food recalls and even a dog food recall, multiple states with impacted IVs as fiberglass detected in saline, from Newsweek, landed in my Instagram feed. Hermosa Beach, California, during record breaking heat While wondering how Novak Djokovic had managed to land among the morning’s apparent horsemen of the apocalypse, I laughed. None of it is funny, of course. Collectively, however, it is absurd. Perhaps my brain has been slightly cooked by the p...

All Is Not Fair in Marriage, But Should You At Least Get Some Justice?

Marriage is complicated. It requires more than love to sustain it. Divorce is a lot more complicated. It is rare for a single reason alone to cause a divorce, at least for most of us. I used to get offended when people inquired about why I divorced. That offense itself was layered with a need for privacy, the rawness of processing emotional injuries, and the reality that I did not know why he left. The only certainty was that I couldn't trust him anymore. It took more than a decade for me to openly talk about it. I am amused by Heather Ammel v. Kyrsten Sinema . It has all the elements of a good Lifetime movie: a cheating husband, a former U.S. senator, and an allegedly devastated wife. It extends beyond emotion, with legal questions unfolding as former Senator Kyrsten Sinema seeks dismissal on the grounds that while the affair happened, it did not happen in North Carolina, and therefore the state law forming the basis of the lawsuit is out of its jurisdiction. In North Carolin...

Life Must Go On with COVID and a Dose of Charles Darwin

About two weeks ago, I found myself seated outdoors among strangers, fellow Elite Yelpers, at a dinner event. As conversations unfolded, I quietly wondered whether gatherings like this would survive the winter. The Omicron variant, first identified in South Africa and detected in Europe, had begun dominating headlines. Even before Omicron entered the picture, we were bracing for another difficult holiday season. Parts of Europe had already reinstated restrictions as COVID cases surged once again. Photo by Adam Nieścioruk on Unsplash In the United States, breakthrough infections were becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. According to reporting by the Wall Street Journal, more than 1.89 million cases, at least 72,000 hospitalizations, and 20,000 deaths had occurred among fully vaccinated people this year alone. With fewer than 60 percent of the population fully vaccinated as of November 24, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was forecasting a rise in deaths by mid-Decem...

Exhaling Life

Search This Blog