There are moments when the news becomes almost impossible to watch. Reports of torture, arbitrary detention, humiliation, and the systematic destruction of homes in Gaza appear day after day. Entire neighbourhoods have been flattened. Families who once lived ordinary lives now live under tents, or not at all. The scale of suffering is staggering — and yet what troubles me equally is the silence that surrounds it.
In the West Bank, settler violence continues with near-total impunity. Villages are attacked, olive groves burned, farmers beaten, children terrified in the night. Today, settlers destroyed a mosque — another act meant to erase the fabric of a people’s cultural and spiritual life. These are not isolated incidents; they are part of a pattern repeatedly documented by human rights organisations and even by Israeli veterans’ groups. And yet, from most political and religious institutions, there is barely a murmur. It is as if the truth has become too inconvenient to acknowledge.
The scale of the cruelty is so severe that one’s natural reaction is to ask:
What kind of human being behaves this way?
In moments of deep frustration, the word “animals” comes to mind — not because these people literally become animals, but because the behaviour has lost the qualities that make us recognisably human.
Animals follow instinct.
Human beings, at their best, follow conscience.
When a person acts without conscience — deliberately harming, humiliating, or destroying — they lose touch with their own humanity. They remain human in biological form, but something essential has gone missing. The compassion that defines us, the awareness that binds us, the inner moral compass that prevents cruelty — all of it collapses. What remains is a human body driven by something far darker than instinct.
As Prem Rawat often reminds us:
You can look like a human being and still live without the qualities that make life human.
This loss of inner humanity has nothing to do with gender. Reports indicate that a woman has been leading some of the settler attacks. Cruelty does not discriminate by sex; when conscience collapses, any human being — man or woman — can become capable of terrible harm. The tragedy lies not in what we are biologically, but in what we choose to become.
What touches me most deeply is the historical echo. Many of the grandparents of today’s settlers endured persecution in Europe. Some were forced from their homes, stripped of their rights, pushed into ghettos, and treated as though their lives had no value. They knew displacement, fear, and the quiet terror of being at the mercy of others.
And now, three generations later, some of their descendants inflict on others behaviours that bear a haunting resemblance to what their own families once endured. This is not a claim of equivalence — history is more complex than that — but the resemblance in attitude, the willingness to deny others dignity, is unmistakable and profoundly tragic.
Perhaps even more shocking is that none of this can be justified by religion. If anything, the ethical foundations of Judaism stand firmly against such behaviour. The Mosaic laws forbid the oppression of the stranger, the theft of land, the mistreatment of the vulnerable, and the humiliation of another human being. These laws are clear, direct, and uncompromising in their moral vision.
This is therefore not a failure of Judaism.
It is a failure of people who invoke religious identity while acting in direct contradiction to the ethical heart of their own tradition.
What troubles me further is the silence of major institutions.
Not silence from individuals — because many Jewish voices around the world speak out with great integrity and courage — but silence from those with real influence: senior religious leaders, large communal organisations, and political bodies that could say, plainly and publicly, “This is wrong. This violates everything we stand for.” But most remain quiet.
And silence becomes a form of permission.
On the misuse of the word “antisemitism”
Because this topic has become so distorted, it must be said clearly: none of this is antisemitism. Antisemitism means hostility or prejudice toward Jews as Jews. What I am addressing here is not identity but behaviour — behaviour that violates human rights, international law, and the ethical foundations of Judaism itself. In recent years, the word “antisemitism” has been stretched and misused to include any criticism of Israel, no matter how grounded in evidence or moral concern. This distortion serves no one. It dilutes the meaning of real antisemitism and shields injustice from scrutiny by turning legitimate criticism into a taboo. Criticising cruelty is not bigotry. Remaining silent in the face of cruelty is not morality.
When cruelty becomes normalised, when injustice becomes routine, and when a whole population is treated as if their suffering does not matter, something essential in our shared humanity begins to erode. When people who know better choose to remain silent, the harm spreads more easily.
This is not a uniquely Israeli failing, nor a Jewish failing, nor a Middle Eastern failing.
It is a human failing.
History shows that whenever nationalism, ideology, or fear overwhelm compassion, any group — however persecuted in the past — can become the oppressor in the present.
Which brings me back to the question:
What are we when we lose our humanity?
We are human only in shape, not in spirit.
We are capable of cruelty without conscience, destruction without reflection, and violence without remorse. And that is far more dangerous than anything an animal could ever be.
If there is a lesson in this painful moment, it is not to condemn a people, but to condemn the behaviours that diminish the humanity of both those who suffer and those who inflict suffering. The moral duty — for anyone who still listens to conscience — is to refuse silence, to speak plainly, and to remember what it means to be human in the first place.
The world does not need more identity.
It needs more humanity — urgently.
Add comment