How Politics & Strategy Override Moral & Legal Concerns in Gaza.

Under what circumstances does a political imperative take precedence over the lives of innocent civilians, and are those circumstances warranted, or merely a distortion of morality, religious doctrine & the use of Machiavellian rhetoric designed to fit the purpose at hand?

22 min readDec 13, 2023

The funeral oration of Pericles; a ceremonial address given in Athens for the first to die in the Peloponnesian War (431 B.C.). A man in Roman garb addresses the unruly crowd… — The funeral oration of Pericles; a ceremonial address given in Athens for the first to die in the Peloponnesian War (431 B.C.). “…/…We cultivate beauty without extravagance, and intellect without loss of vigour; wealth is for us the gateway to action, not the subject of boastful talk, and while there is no disgrace in the admission of poverty, the real disgrace lies in the failure to take measures to escape it…”, Thucydides (1), telling us the tale of the original ‘Clash of Civilisations.’

“It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”
Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisations (2).

How Politics & Strategy Override Moral & Legal Concerns in Gaza.

Under what circumstances does a political imperative take precedence over the lives of innocent civilians, and are those circumstances warranted, or merely a distortion of morality, religious doctrine & the use of Machiavellian rhetoric designed to fit the purpose at hand?

The political and strategic imperatives behind the murder of almost 20,000 innocent Palestinians…

Written by Peter Winn-Brown