There is a troubling aspect to civic discourse that is getting progressively worse. As a constituency, we (the Irish public, the ‘western’ public) seem increasingly less able to disagree without falling out, or to hold nuanced or contextualised positions on almost any aspect of civic engagement.
This degeneration of discussion is in part fuelled by the propensity to engage in political, social, cultural or economic discussion online rather than face-to-face (the Twitter effect) but also to form communities in the ether rather than in the rag and bone shop of the heart, in physical communities where we have to meet people in the flesh, to cooperate with them despite our differences while being necessitated to find common ground through mutual interdependency.
Trained by algorithms that funnel us into virtual communities that reinforce our starting positions, that confirm our biases, fuelling anger and entrenching positions, when we encounter disagreement, rather than meeting a flesh and bone person who is a reflection of our own humanity, we meet merely names – frequently anonymities and avatars (oftentime bots) – whose utterances appear as mere words with which we disagree but that challenge our ever shallower online personas through which we live (almost vicariously).
Isolation
The result of our fake and unidimensional lives is physical isolation for some (the incel in the basement being the frequently cited example), the desensitisation to the humanity of our antagonists, and an inability to see nuance and context beyond our entrenched positions.
The conflict in the Middle East has been divisive for over one hundred years amongst observers. As social media makes commentators of us all, our positions and interpretation of this intractable and seemingly interminable battle are limited to the number of characters on our social media posts and defined by the communities that are formed online as we digest our news and our opinions through the lens of unretractable public statements (the internet is forever) and the fear of being doxed or cancelled (the online mob is unforgiving).
Yuval Raphael was the Israeli entrant to the Eurovision Song Contest, ultimately coming second and getting the largest popular vote (the audience) despite a public campaign to have Israel banned from entering the competition as was Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. The merits of those arguments are not relevant to this discussion, however the treatment of Raphael is.
Raphael survived because others died, protected by their dead bodies. She was there, under the dead, for eight hours before being rescued”
Yuval Raphael is a survivor of the October 7 attack which triggered the latest phase of the Middle East conflict. She was attending the Nova music festival in Israel when the attack started. Paragliders and jeeps of Hamas militants attacked and killed nearly 400 young people who just wanted to dance. Raphael took refuge in a bomb shelter with 50 others. The shelter was found and those inside were treated like fish in a barrel. Only 11 came out alive. Hand grenades were thrown in as well. Raphael survived because others died, protected by their dead bodies. She was there, under the dead, for eight hours before being rescued.
She was an innocent. A victim and survivor of a gruesome attack. For that, she deserves sympathy and, I feel, admiration for overcoming that to represent her country in the Eurovision. But she is Israeli. She was representing Israel at the song contest, so was subject to harassment and intimidation as she prepared for the concert.
Her rehearsals were interrupted by people who waved oversized flags and tried to drown her out with whistles. A couple of people attempted to confront – or possibly attack – her during the final of the song contest, but were thwarted.
Contextualise
Many news reports of these incidences omitted to contextualise their coverage with Raphael’s back-story which some have argued is not relevant to the protests against the Israeli State. But of course her back-story is relevant. It is relevant to the context of the current phase of the conflict for obvious reasons but it is relevant to our diminishing humanity in how we engage with people.
For those that think her backstory is not relevant, she is reduced to a symbol of the conflict, she becomes an avatar for people who chose to merely engage their entrenched positions and cannot see beyond their bunkered perspectives, to offer and to feel, human empathy.
She is a young woman who has been subjected to an absolutely horrendous ordeal, no doubt traumatised but also grieving in the aftermath of a brutal attack. She was an innocent. She had to lie beneath dead and dying compatriots, fellow festival goers, fellow Jews, as they were shot in cold blood, with nowhere to go. Her only fault was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Extended, she was there because she is Israeli, because she was Jewish.
For some, that seems sufficient to justify her not being offered the basics of human decency. For anyone to have gone through such an ordeal, and to recover to represent their country only 18 months later, would be a story of human resilience, of bravery, of celebration. Anyone who would try to deny the survivor the full enjoyment of their success would be rightly told of their insensitivity, their cruelty and their diminished humanity.
This is not what we are meant to be as people. We are parodies of humanity where our political or ideological positions blind us to the humanity of our adversaries or of those we disagree with”
Instead, her back-story is a not even a footnote. Her survival is not worth acknowledging. Her success nor her courage are celebrated in many corners. She is not a young woman overcoming the most horrific adversities. She is not a survivor. She is a representation of one side in a conflict and deserved, in the eyes of many, of the opprobrium, intimidation and disregard she has encountered because of that.
This is not what we are meant to be as people. We are parodies of humanity where our political or ideological positions blind us to the humanity of our adversaries or of those we disagree with. This happened in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks where the murder of over 1,000 innocent Jews quickly became an afterthought before their bodies were barely cold. This happened with the plight of the Israeli hostages whose release was ubiquitously a footnote to the debates around a ceasefire. On the other side, the lives of Palestinians in Gaza are equally dehumanised as the conflict entrenches and a calculus of evil predominates.
Legitmacy
There are voices who have thrown doubt on the legitimacy of Yuval Raphael’s story with no evidence, just as many attempted, despite the horrendous evidence provided by Hamas attackers’ own footage of murder and rape, to deny the veracity of the October 7 attacks. At the same time, claims from Gaza of numbers of fatalities of Israeli bombings are met with counter assertions of misinformation, just as claims of how the conflict is being carried out with breaches of the ‘rules of war’ being met with assertion and denial. The numbers of deaths – over 55,000 – are reduced to statistics and seemingly futile debates of whether they are women and children or active combatants. The facts of course are important but throwing doubt provides succour to greater entrenchment of positions. Not only can the facts and figures be doubted, but so too the bona fides of those reporting them, creating a vicious cycle where purported misdeeds of adversaries are compounded by lies. And if our adversaries can do such terrible deeds and then lie about them, they are even more deserving of our disdain and disregard.
Misinformation and disinformation fuel the online degeneration of dialogue and discourse, but more egregiously, combined together they erode – even erase – the humanity of all of those involved. We no longer see those we argue with as real people. And we no longer have to believe anything they say. There is no common ground for engagement. King Lear said “That way madness lies. Let me shun that. No more of that.” Humanity needs to find a way out from the path it is currently on. The attempted delegitimisation of the story Yuval Raphael is just one example of the debasement of our common human endeavour. It is not the only story but it is an important one.
