Source: Liberal Currents
by Matthew Downhour
“It is high time to recognize the humanity of all victims of warfare. The images of bombed-out high rises and shattered hospitals coming out of Gaza could just have easily come out of Mariupol or Severodonetsk a year ago. But the response of too many liberals has been strikingly different. Many of us have extended the benefit of the doubt to the Israeli Defense Forces as they explained the apparent necessity of destroying civilian objects in a way that we wisely did not to the Russian Armed Forces. The affinity for a state that looks much more like our own liberal democracies in the west is understandable, but liberals with a sense of history should understand that militarism and the desire for territorial expansion can lead institutions ostensibly rooted in liberal values to commit atrocities.” (11/09/23)