Therapists characterize all or nothing thinking, the ability to see only polar opposites, as a cognitive distortion. Politicians, governments, and advertisers all rely, to greater or lesser degrees, on convincing people to make decisions that work against their own interests, so they find cognitive distortions very useful. Far too often, those of us who work for peace and justice accept these distortions without analyzing them, and when we do, we limit our effectiveness.
Governments have worked hard to promote all or nothing thinking in relation to peace work.. The idea of peace as an all or nothing proposition, with no possibility of any position between absolute passivity and unlimited, lawless violence has proved useful as a political strategy and as an administrative technique for authorities in charge of military conscription. To the extent advocates of peace and justice work have accepted this proposition, it has proved disastrous for us, and more important, it has done real harm to the people we work and advocate for.
In 1947, President Truman convened a board to look into cases of people imprisoned for violating the selective service act (wartime draft), with a view to granting pardons. In their final report, members of the board wrote:
We have not felt justified in recommending those who thus have set themselves up as wiser and more competent than society to determine their duty to come to the defense of the nation.
The men who wrote these words probably could not have imagined how extraordinary their dismissal of the individual conscience, on the question of going to war, of killing and dying, would sound to many of us today. Locating wisdom in "society" rather than in the individual conscience, denying the individual any right to assess the morality of actions by their national leaders seems inconceivable to many of us today. It also made the work of authorities tasked with delivering a stream of bodies for the needs of mass armies much easier. Without having to defend a specific war or the process by which that nation got into it, a draft board could invent any outrageous hypothetical enemy to confront objectors who, by fiat, had to defend total non-violence. This approach worked very well for governments intent on driving all of their subjects to participate in wars. It has done correspondingly serious harm to peace and justice movements, but far too often we accept the poisoned straitjacket governments forced us into.
To some extent, we did this because for many of us non-violence arises from spiritual sources that do not admit of exceptions. Unfortunately, too many of us ignored the falsehood in that proposition: that asserting the value of spiritual non-violence meant rejecting any compromise position, and refusing to ally with those who do not rule out participating in wars but refuse to participate in particular wars. That pure position proved disastrous when it encountered contemporary perspectives on oppression and privilege. Many peace and justice advocates have accepted our limits when it comes to passing judgment on the actions of people we deem oppressed. Disastrously, we accepted these limits without reconsidering the all or nothing thinking imposed upon us by governments; today, too many of us treat our entirely appropriate refusal to judge all use of violence by an oppressed and desperate people as an entirely inappropriate license for unlimited violence.
Oppressed people have the right to engage in armed struggle. The third Geneva convention details the obligations and restrictions on those engaging in armed struggle:
4.1.2 Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organised resistance movements, provided that they fulfill all of the following conditions:
- that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
- that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognisable at a distance (there are limited exceptions to this among countries who observe the 1977 Protocol I);
- that of carrying arms openly;
- that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
The laws and customs of war prohibit, among other things, the taking of hostages and attacks on civilians. We know Hamas has violated the first prohibition, and we have substantial evidence they have deliberately engaged in attacks on civilians. The laws and customs of war also prohibit rape, particularly when attackers use rape or other forms of sexual violence as a means to terrorize or demoralize an enemy.
We can, and we must, separate the crimes of Hamas from the general rights of the Palestinian people. We can, and we must condemn the criminal acts of October 7 while still affirming the right of the Palestinians in Gaza to break the enclosure fence erected by Israel, to disrupt the monitoring systems designed to imprison them, and to disrupt the cynical politics of the "Abraham Accords". Hamas could have accomplished all of these things without the rape and sexual violence credible authorities claim they committed. Even if they could not have accomplished all they aimed to do without taking hostages or killing innocent civilians, that does not change the laws of armed conflict, nor does it excuse us from at least recognizing and speaking out about those violations.
We have to escape the trap of all or nothing thinking in order to make peace. We cannot grant Hamas unlimited license to kill civilians, to hold hostages, to commit sexual violence, without also saying very clearly that we don't value Jewish lives or the dignity of Jewish people. We cannot hope to have our advocacy for peace heard on that basis. Honourable advocates for peace have proposed ways of thinking about the violence of October 7 and about the far more destructive response to it, which do clearly value Jewish as well as Palestinian lives. Until we can call for peace with justice for everyone, I can see little hope for us to meaningfully contribute to the critical, and immediate task: saving the children of Gaza.
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