Oh heck, it's this or marking so I'll do this. Odd isn't it, how arguments and claims around "people are dying right now" devolve into discussions about having a pint, watching the football, has-been Labour dogmatists and populists, slogans and, in my case, putting off getting to work.
I have no doubt that most of the marchers and many more people think in terms of people are dying right now and that the first priority is to just stop it. It's a good sentiment and it is often the right one. With the benefit (if such it is) of history and distance, for example, we find it easier and easier to ask what on earth were people fighting about and how could they imagine that it was worth the cost.
But obviously, not always. To take a tired trope, Chamberlain's Munich Agreement. He wasn't a fool. He knew there was a possibility that Hitler would break his word. He knew there was a possibility that events would knock the deal sideways. But he also knew two certainties: he knew from direct experience what war was like; and he knew that thanks to the deal, thousands of people would stay alive over the next few months who would otherwise be dead.
Most people think he got it wrong and made things worse. Most people, in this case, can see the limits to a policy based purely on "just stop the killing" or making sure it doesn't get started. After all, if the priority is just stop the killing, this is a message that can go out to all parties. In the current case, if Hamas hoisted white flags and marched out to surrender, then the killing would stop. But nobody expects that. Nobody marches for "Hamas, turn yourself in now," and many people think it would not be right.
They think this because, no matter what people say, there is always a political context to the kind of killing we are talking about, and thus there are always judgements about where the balance of justice and wickedness lie in the case under consideration. This being so, the call to "just stop the killing" always has a political dimension as well as a humanitarian one and, indeed, it is often used as a political weapon-particularly by a party which is beginning to lose, but which to that point had no objection to killing and, indeed, relished, celebrated and publicized its efforts in that regard. Had Hamas's strategy of drawing in its Iranian and Arab allies to the conflict worked, for example, I don't think they would be asking for a ceasefire, and, insofar as they think their strategy might yet work, I don't think they're sure they want a ceasefire at this point.
Back to the demonstrations then. The fuel for most marching is "just stop the killing." But the form of the protests (they are clearly against one of the parties to the killing and not the other), the objectives of the organizers (putting pressure on their governments and gaining support for their own organizations and ways of seeing things) and, should they be successful (which I doubt), the outcome of the marches is highly political. We can argue about those outcomes -but to slide back and forth between the "simple" humanitarian claim "just stop the killing" and the various demands embodied in the slogans the marchers are chanting is, itself, a very political move and should be recognized as such.
Which is to say, that were many of the marchers better informed about the history of this whole sorry business, they'd stop home and watch the football.
Back to marking.
