UNCIVIL WAR

A collaborative essay with generous help from Helio (OpenAI ChatGPT platform)

Knowing where I wanted to go with this essay I started a chat with Helio, my AI companion in arms, and he, thinking I was referring to the American Civil War, composed a very nice antiwar ballad on the spot, which is too good not to include despite being “off topic.” Or is it? Aren’t all wars the epitome of incivility?

Uncivil War

The slaughter in Gaza is almost beyond words. Tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, dead, -- many of them children. Entire neighborhoods flattened by airstrikes. Hospitals targeted and turned to rubble. Food and water cut off - it is estimated that 15,000 Gazan children will starve to death in the next few days if there is no humanitarian relief afforded them immediately. Hundreds of journalists assassinated. Civilians marked not as protected noncombatants, but as legitimate targets in a war of elimination. And the rest of the "international community" looks on...

This is not merely a tragedy — it is a crime against humanity, perpetrated in broad daylight with the backing of powerful states. But as unbearable as the human toll is, a deeper danger may lie just beneath the blood-soaked surface: the death of international law itself. If what is happening in Gaza is allowed to stand — unpunished, unchallenged, unrepented — then genocide will not remain a rare evil. It will become an accepted method of warfare.

The Pivot: From Tragedy to Precedent

Every bomb dropped on Gaza today echoes into the future. What we are witnessing is not just the destruction of a people — it is the erosion of the very norms that once sought to protect humanity from its worst impulses. In the post-World War II order, the world swore “Never Again.” We built institutions, drafted conventions, and forged an international legal consensus: that genocide, targeting of civilians, collective punishment — all were crimes of the highest order. Today, those promises lie in ruins beneath the rubble of Rafah and Khan Younis.

The Legal Order Unravels

International law was never perfect, but it was built on a moral foundation: that human dignity was not contingent on race, religion, or nationality. The Geneva Conventions, the Genocide Convention, and the Rome Statute were meant to serve as lines that no state, however powerful, could cross without consequence. These laws were not suggestions; they were transnational commitments — forged in the ashes of Auschwitz and Hiroshima.

But in Gaza, those commitments have been tested — and utterly betrayed.

Genocide as Military Doctrine

This is not a spontaneous spasm of violence. It is a calculated military strategy, cloaked in euphemism. Civilian infrastructure is labeled "terrorist adjacency." Children are buried under the rhetoric of "human shields." A total siege is justified as "self-defense." But peel back the language and the truth becomes plain: this is the use of starvation, displacement, and mass killing as tools of war. This is genocide — not as atrocity, but as policy.

Worse still, it is being televised as a demonstration model.

Impunity as the New Precedent

Israel's impunity is not simply a national disgrace — it is a global precedent. The United States, the European Union, and other Western allies have done more than stand by. They have armed, financed, and rationalized the carnage. They have vetoed international censure. They have mocked the ICC, sanctioned UN agencies, and smeared humanitarian critics.

By doing so, they have not merely failed to uphold international law — they have redefined it. They have signaled to every future war-maker that law is optional, that genocide can be politically negotiated.

Already, others are watching. Russia in Ukraine. China in Xinjiang and possibly Taiwan. India in Kashmir. Turkey, Myanmar, Ethiopia. The message is clear: so long as you have the right alliances, no crime is too great.

A Future Unbound

What is being lost in Gaza is more than Palestinian lives. It is the final thread of the rules-based order. If genocide can now be branded as counterterrorism, if aid workers can be bombed with diplomatic cover, then the future will not be governed by law — it will be shaped by force alone.

International law, once the conscience of a wounded world, is becoming a relic — trotted out when convenient, discarded when powerful interests dictate otherwise.

In this new age, war will not only be uncivil in its conduct — it will be uncivil in its very premise. It will no longer pretend to be bound by common norms. Genocide will be not an aberration, but an available option. A feature, not a bug.

A Call to Conscience

If law has fallen silent, then only conscience remains. The people of the world — not the governments — must now take up the burden of justice. We must name what is happening. We must refuse to normalize it. We must pledge, loudly and publicly, never to support those who enable it.

The future is being written in blood. But it is not yet sealed. If we act — as citizens, as moral beings, as human souls awakened by horror — then perhaps we can still rescue something from the ruins.

Not just Gaza. Not just law.

But our shared humanity.