There resides, in this war on Gaza, a far higher dose of magic than we are used to seeing in wars. Magic, here, refers to the attempt to convince us of things that our conscience and reason could never allow us to accept. It is, in this sense, not like “lying” that falsifies a piece of information here or makes something up there. It results from a mental framework that presupposes the negation of influential factors and factors that can rationally be assumed to be influential, and on the other hand, endows with influence factors that do not exist in the first place or whose significance is spurious. These non-existent or spurious factors are the product of the modernization of the “miraculous” events of the past, which humanity used to explain our world before science arose and philosophy took off.
As for calling this magic, it is not to belittle it or its capacity for justifying itself “logically” and “rationally.” There is an age-old tradition, in the history of ideas, that has tried to convince humanity of the “necessity” of denying what seems to be firmly rooted in reality, and on the other hand, the “necessity” of building on what seems to be hot air. This magic is, to a large extent, in line with contemporary phenomena like populism, fanaticism, social media going off the rails, the increasing prevalence of defamation, and the decline of rational public debate, as well as the universal ordeal under whose weight Enlightenment values are groaning.
We see this magic in the “language,” both explicit and implicit, that the Israeli war is confronting us with. For us to accept that this is a war of “self-defense,” we must take for granted things that we could never accept. Among them is accepting the killing of children in the large frequency at which they are killed, and even the notion that killing is itself incidental, that it should not count in wars, and that wars are not governed by laws, while mass displacement is another detail that is not high up in the hierarchy of importance.
This enchantment of the world and its meanings goes right down to the interpretation of some direct and procedural policies. Accordingly, the more official version of this war presents Netanyahu in the image of a dedicated leader who knows best – mind you, any fair evaluation of his role would make his remaining in office extremely objectionable. The fact is that this penchant for enchantment in Israel stems, in large part, from the circumstances of its initial foundation and the need to deny the ethnic cleansing perpetrated against the Palestinians that this “foundation” brought about.
However, it also takes scoops from the Zionist narrative’s bloated pocket of legends, especially those that are tied to the “promised land,” to say nothing about the concoctions that followed, which are not easy to digest, like reconciling the state’s “Jewishness” and “democracy”.
If it is true that magic is not merely a collection of lies, it certainly lays the groundwork for a continuous stream of lies and constantly relies on them.
On the Hamas side, where the mythological background operates more vigorously and rudimentarily, a strange method for evaluating “victory” emerges. In this calculus, territory falling under occupation, deaths by the thousands, and the destruction of cities, homes, and facilities, are not accounted for. Because these crushing and insistent facts are impossible to ignore, while the magical “victory” is independent of them, we see this strange juxtaposition between “Oh dear God” and “What a great victory”.
The origins of this magic predate Hamas, as many national liberation movements tried to circumvent the huge gulf between them and armies in terms of the technology and the lethal tools at their disposal. And so, in these “asymmetric” wars, a formula was developed: our humans versus their weapons. On this basis, more killing gives us more martyrs and strengthens international sympathy for our cause, thereby granting us an outright victory.
However, the strongest use of magic, as a triumphant rebellion against reason, is perhaps the portrayal of that part of Yemen controlled by the Houthis as an unrelenting source of hope for victory over the Jewish state. It’s as though we are saying, amid this state of affairs, that civil wars in one country contribute to the salvation of other countries and that the national consciousness that engenders solidarity with Gaza stems from forms of consciousness that far predate nationalism. As for totally inept governance in one’s own country, it is an unmitigated blessing to other countries. Meanwhile, a particular calamity can only be ended by granting it a universal scale that threatens to destroy everything and turn Gaza into a needle in the haystack of the world.
As for the particular function that magic serves here, it is to turn our attention away from the fact that the Iranian dimension is what ties the Houthis, Hezbollah, and the Shiite militias in Iraq together. We the enchanted are thus asked to believe that they alone, and no one else in this vast Arab world, have been and continue to be beacons of “Arab honor and authenticity.”
The Sophist Greek philosopher Gorgias framed his epistemological position around three denials of objective truths. He claimed that such truths do not exist in the first place, but even if these truths did exist, they could not be discerned, and even if they could be discerned, it would be impossible to convey them in words.
According to Gorgias, there is no real being, no real knower, and no real speaker. As for the truth, it can be reduced to opinion, and objective reality can be reduced to subjective appearances. With reason rendered nothing but the rationalization of desires and interests, words become mere weapons.
…In a world of violence, intolerance, and twisted meanings, Gorgias may have been right.