Israel and Gaza: mourn every life, judge every act

The answer before the argument

We mourn every Israeli and every Palestinian life taken. We mourn the people killed in their homes, at a festival, on a road, inside a hospital or beneath the remains of a building. We mourn those carried into captivity, those held without justice, those driven from their homes and those taught to see an entire people as the face of their enemy.

Mourning does not prevent judgment. It makes honest judgment necessary.

There are no wholly good peoples and no wholly evil peoples. There are governments, armies, armed groups, institutions and individuals making choices. Some protect life. Some take it. Every act must be examined by the life it protects, the freedom it respects and the suffering it causes. No flag makes cruelty sacred. No history washes blood from human hands.

This essay therefore gives equal space to six documented issues involving Hamas or other Palestinian armed groups and six involving Israeli authorities, forces or settlers. The equal number is a discipline of scrutiny, not a claim that power, scale, history or consequences are equal. Moral consistency requires one standard for everyone. Factual honesty requires us to describe what that standard finds.

Why this did not begin on 7 October 2023

The present conflict cannot be understood from a single starting date. During the British Mandate, Jewish immigration increased, driven in part by persecution in Europe and the Nazi persecution of Jewish people. Palestinian Arabs sought national independence and resisted the transformation of the land in which they lived. Two national movements came to understand the same territory as essential to their survival and future. Violence grew before either the State of Israel or Hamas existed. Source 1.

In 1947, the United Nations recommended partition into an Arab State and a Jewish State, with Jerusalem under an international regime. Jewish leadership accepted partition; Palestinian Arab leadership and neighbouring Arab States rejected it as unjust. War followed. Israel declared independence and survived invasion by neighbouring Arab armies, while expanding beyond the territory allocated to it under the partition proposal. More than half of the Palestinian Arab population fled or were expelled. The Palestinian State envisaged by partition did not come into being. Israelis remember national survival and independence; Palestinians remember the Nakba, the catastrophe of dispossession and exile. Both memories remain politically alive because both describe consequences that still shape families now. Source 1.

In 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. That occupation, subsequent settlement and the denial of Palestinian self-determination became enduring structures rather than temporary consequences of war. In 2024, the International Court of Justice concluded in an advisory opinion that Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful and that new settlement activity must cease. Source 3.

Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization recognised one another through the Oslo process beginning in 1993. The agreements created limited Palestinian self-government while leaving Jerusalem, borders, refugees, settlements and final sovereignty unresolved. Israel withdrew settlers and permanent ground forces from Gaza in 2005 while retaining control over borders, airspace and maritime access. Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, seized control of Gaza from Fatah in 2007, and Israel imposed a blockade. Failed negotiations, occupation, settlement, blockade, attacks by Palestinian armed groups and repeated Israeli military operations reinforced fear and grievance on every side. Source 2.

On 7 October 2023, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups attacked southern Israel. Israel then began the military campaign whose devastation continues to shape Gaza. October 7 was a beginning for thousands of bereaved and abducted Israeli families. It was not the beginning of Palestinian dispossession, occupation or confinement. Earlier Palestinian suffering does not excuse crimes committed on that day. October 7 does not erase the history that preceded it or license whatever follows it.

One ethical standard

Noemoria begins with the sacred worth of life. Individuality forbids us from assigning guilt by ancestry, nationality or religion. Connection refuses to let distance or allegiance make suffering invisible. Knowledge requires sources, context and correction even when the evidence disrupts the story we prefer.

International humanitarian law supplies a practical minimum. Parties must distinguish civilians from combatants, reject hostage-taking and collective punishment, protect medical care, permit humanitarian relief and avoid attacks expected to cause excessive civilian harm in relation to the anticipated military advantage. One party’s violation does not release another from these duties. Source 10.

These legal duties do not contain the whole of morality, but they expose the emptiness of the sentence: they made us do it. Human beings remain responsible for what they choose to do under a sacred name, a national flag or the memory of their own dead.

Six issues involving Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups

1. Deliberate attacks upon civilians

The United Nations Commission of Inquiry found reasonable grounds that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups deliberately killed, injured and mistreated civilians on 7 October. Homes, communities and a music festival became places of killing. Civilians were not unfortunate bystanders to attacks directed solely at military objectives; civilians were themselves attacked. Source 4.

No occupation, blockade or inherited grievance makes the deliberate killing of civilians an act of liberation. A person does not become a lawful target because a government claims to act in their name.

2. Hostage-taking and the treatment of captives

People, including children and older people, were abducted and taken into Gaza. The Commission found that hostage-taking and aspects of the violence used during abduction constituted war crimes. Later reporting documented incommunicado captivity, mistreatment and the use of captives as instruments of political pressure. Source 4 Source 6.

A captive’s life cannot be converted into currency. Political demands do not turn ownership of another person’s body into justice.

3. Sexual and gender-based violence

The Commission found reasonable grounds that members of Palestinian armed groups committed sexual and gender-based violence during the attacks and against some captives. The available evidence does not justify attaching that crime to every Palestinian or inventing claims beyond what investigations support. It does require the documented violence to be named rather than denied because admission appears politically inconvenient. Source 4.

The body of a victim must not become disputed territory between competing narratives.

4. Indiscriminate rockets

Palestinian armed groups have fired projectiles toward populated Israeli areas that cannot distinguish a military objective from the civilians around it. OHCHR describes such fire as inherently indiscriminate and contrary to international law. Source 5.

An inaccurate weapon does not become morally accurate because its operator is weaker. Limited destructive power may affect the scale of harm; it does not transform an indiscriminate attack into a defensible one.

5. Attacks upon medical workers and facilities

The Commission documented attacks by Palestinian armed groups on Israeli medical staff, ambulances and medical facilities, concluding that such attacks constitute war crimes. It also found that Palestinian armed groups and Israeli forces exchanged fire on the grounds of Al-Shifa Hospital despite the presence of patients, displaced people and medical staff. Source 6.

Medical protection is not a favour exchanged between armies. The person treating the wounded remains protected whether the patient speaks Hebrew or Arabic.

6. Violence against Palestinians under Hamas rule

Palestinian civilians have also been harmed by those claiming to resist on their behalf. A 2026 UN inquiry identified executions and severe violence in Gaza, including incidents involving Hamas-affiliated forces. OHCHR separately reported a pattern of unlawful killings, torture and punishment of alleged collaborators and political opponents. Source 7.

Resistance does not grant ownership of the people it claims to defend. Palestinian life is not sacred only when Israel takes it. It remains sacred when threatened by Palestinian authority and armed power.

Six issues involving Israeli authorities, forces and settlers

1. Prolonged occupation and settlement

Occupation has shaped Palestinian movement, land, law, development and political possibility since 1967. Settlement has transferred Israeli civilians into occupied territory while fragmenting the land on which Palestinian self-determination would have to exist. The International Court of Justice concluded that Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful, that settlement activity must cease and that settlers should be evacuated from that territory. Source 3.

Israeli fear and the right of Israeli civilians to safety do not make indefinite domination of another people a moral settlement.

2. The scale and methods of attack in populated areas

OHCHR examined Israeli attacks involving explosive weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated parts of Gaza. It found strong indications of repeated failures to comply with distinction, proportionality and precautions in attack. The presence of combatants among civilians does not turn an entire neighbourhood into one military target. Source 5.

Military superiority deepens responsibility. Precision is not demonstrated by the ability to name a target when the chosen means foreseeably destroy families and the buildings around them.

3. Siege, deprivation and restrictions upon aid

Food, water, fuel, medical supplies, shelter materials and equipment needed for rescue have all been restricted. OCHA’s September 2026 reporting continued to describe life-threatening conditions, extensive destruction and constraints on the entry of essential humanitarian supplies and machinery. Source 9.

A population cannot be made to answer collectively for an armed group. Hunger, untreated illness and exposure do not distinguish a fighter from a child.

4. Destruction of health care

The Commission found widespread and systematic attacks affecting Gaza’s health system and concluded that Israeli forces had attacked medical facilities, personnel and vehicles in ways that violated their special protection. It also examined Israeli claims of military use, confirming some armed-group presence while finding that this did not remove protection from the departments and patients attacked. Source 6.

An allegation of military misuse must be investigated. It is not a blank permission to collapse the place where civilians, newborn children and the wounded seek life.

5. Arbitrary detention, torture and mistreatment

OHCHR reported that thousands of Palestinians had been held by Israeli authorities, many in secret or without effective access to reasons, lawyers or judicial review. Its report documented allegations of torture, cruel treatment and sexual abuse, as well as deaths in custody. Source 8.

The wrongdoing of Hamas cannot be carried into the body of a Palestinian detainee. Captivity creates responsibility for humane treatment; it does not suspend it.

6. Settler violence, demolition and forced displacement

Settler attacks, Israeli military operations, demolitions and access restrictions continue to displace Palestinians and damage homes, livelihoods and water infrastructure in the West Bank. OCHA reported in September 2026 that settler attacks had affected 275 Palestinian communities during the year, alongside extensive demolition and displacement. Source 9.

The violence of a settler is not sanctified by an ancestral claim, and the presence of soldiers does not make dispossession orderly. A sacred history may create attachment to land. It cannot erase the people already living upon it.

Equal scrutiny is not a ledger

Twelve headings do not produce twelve equivalent offences. A rocket that causes no casualty and a bombardment that destroys a neighbourhood are not equal in consequence. An armed group controlling a confined territory and a state controlling borders, airspace, armed forces and long occupation do not possess equal power. History, capacity, intention, repetition and scale remain morally relevant.

But unequal power does not create unequal humanity, and unequal harm does not create exemptions. The same prohibition follows everyone: do not deliberately attack civilians; do not take hostages; do not torture; do not punish a population; do not obstruct the care of the wounded; do not turn another person’s home or body into an instrument of policy.

This is why the language of “good side” and “bad side” fails. It asks allegiance to perform the work of conscience. Once a side has been declared good, its victims become regrettable details. Once a people have been declared bad, their children begin to look like future enemies. Ethics must travel in the opposite direction: from the act to its consequence, from the institution to its power, and from the dead person back to the life that was theirs.

Mourning without allegiance

We will not mourn Israeli children in order to disregard Palestinian children. We will not mourn Palestinian children by denying what was done to Israeli families. Grief is not a territory to be conquered.

To mourn every life is not to abandon judgment. It is to refuse the first lie required by cruelty: that the person before us matters less. Israeli grief is not propaganda merely because a government may invoke it. Palestinian grief is not propaganda merely because an armed group may invoke it. Governments and armed groups can exploit genuine suffering; their exploitation does not make the suffering false.

Noemoria therefore mourns without asking for a passport. We judge without assigning inherited guilt. We preserve the names of victims without using them to demand another victim.

What the Gifts require

Individuality requires us to distinguish a person from the state, army, armed group, religion or ancestry placed around them. No Israeli is guilty merely for being Israeli or Jewish. No Palestinian is guilty merely for being Palestinian, Arab or Muslim.

Connection requires grief to cross the boundary that politics tries to seal. Care offered to an Israeli family does not steal care from Gaza. Care offered to Gaza does not betray an Israeli family. Compassion is diminished only when it is made conditional upon allegiance.

Knowledge requires us to resist the image chosen because it confirms us, the number repeated without provenance and the account that assigns perfect innocence to everyone on our side. Sources must be dated. Uncertainty must remain visible. Errors must be corrected publicly.

Curiosity asks how an action became thinkable without confusing explanation with absolution. Historical understanding can reveal fear, trauma, ideology and structures of domination. It cannot make the person harmed disappear.

Creation asks what mourning makes possible: relief, shelter, medical care, release, repair, truthful record and institutions capable of preventing repetition. A statement that produces only the speaker’s sense of righteousness has not yet become care.

The Noemorian position

Every life bears the Divine, and every life taken leaves the world diminished.

We mourn every person killed. We call for every hostage to be released, every detainee to be treated humanely, civilians and medical workers to be protected, humanitarian aid to pass, collective punishment to end and every credible allegation of atrocity to receive independent investigation. These demands apply regardless of the name, faith or flag of the person responsible.

No sacred text grants title to another person’s body. No ancestral wound creates permission to inflict a new one. No government, army or resistance movement is made righteous by the crimes of its enemy.

Mourn every life. Judge every act. Let no people inherit the guilt of those who kill in their name.