The end of the fair fight

The history of human conflict has always included a set of rules, regulations, and ethical considerations to be followed to keep the fight fair. Whether on the playground or on the battlefield, all societies have a sense of a line that shouldn’t be crossed. Comedians are meant to punch up, not down. Schools have anti-bullying rules. Military conflict should limit civilian casualties. Many of these guidelines, like the Geneva Conventions, have been codified into international humanitarian law.

If your first thought was to immediately list the various times that those rules have been broken, then consider this: We now live in an era where we don’t even pretend to follow rules of fighting fair.  If we once gestured towards ethical guidelines for conflict, then later worried over the effects of moral relativism, today, we don’t even bother.

The point is that there is a significant difference between bending, manipulating or ignoring rules for conflict, and having no rules at all. As Rachel Kleinfeld, senior fellow in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, explains, “ideas that were once confined to fringe groups now appear in the mainstream media. … These shifts have created a new reality: millions of Americans willing to undertake, support, or excuse political violence.”

Rather than disagree, debate, or dialogue with an opponent, the goal now is total destruction.

We are witnessing the absence of meaningful guardrails in military conflict across the globe. In 2018 Doctors Without Borders declared "that the conduct of hostilities in Syria may violate the basic rules of war." That same year a British MP called out Britain’s complicity in Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen "for any violations against civilians and breaches of the rules of war."  Scott Paul, the humanitarian policy leader of Oxfam America, told NPR "It has become glaringly obvious that respect for international humanitarian law is in decline.” Basic guidelines for military conflict like not targeting civilians, not engaging in torture, offering detainees humane treatment, not attacking hospitals or aid workers, allowing civilians safe passage, offering access to humanitarian assistance, and avoiding unnecessary loss and suffering have been routinely ignored in recent conflicts. From Syria to Yemen to Gaza, there has been a total abdication of standard rules of engagement.

At first, this sea change may feel inconsequential. Didn’t the Puritans burn the village of the Pequot people? Who would describe the U.S. response to Pearl Harbor as proportionate? Didn’t the United States wage a war on a sovereign country because of an attack by terrorists who lived in a few of its caves? What about when the United States made up a reason to invade Iraq? Or Russia doing the same in Ukraine? Hasn’t China openly waged a war on Tibetans and their identity? In essence, have the so-called rules for fighting fair ever really reduced human tragedy? Or, even worse, haven’t they really only been used to justify the actions of the most powerful and minimize the losses of the weak? 

Both the just case for war, jus ad bellum, and just conduct in war, jus in bellum, have countless examples of transgressions, manipulations, distortions, and outright contraventions, but the point is that, even when the rules weren’t respected, there were still efforts to suggest that they were being and should be followed. The aggressors may have been only pretending to obey rules of engagement, but at least they played the game.

That is no longer true. Today, in conflict after conflict, there is not even the slightest pretense of trying to follow any rules of engagement, any codes of conduct, and any ethical protocols. But it’s worse. Because in today’s conflicts it is only one side that gets carte blanche to engage in conflict without limits. While those they attack are held to standards that exist for their side alone.

That is the definition of the end of the fair fight.

This is the context we find ourselves in as we watch Israel execute a punishing attack on Gaza. Observers almost all uniformly agree that Hamas crossed a line when they attacked Israeli civilians on October 7. There may be debates over whether Hamas had been provoked, but, in the main, there is consensus that the conduct of Hamas was reprehensible. In contrast, while there is lip service to the idea that Israel should uphold standards for conflict, there is almost no clarity whatsoever on what those lines are. 

What there is clarity on, however, is that with each passing day the suffering, loss, and destruction of Gaza only multiplies. Forget the fog of war or the idea that it is difficult to assess casualties. By whichever metric you use, the scale of destruction in Gaza is outpacing anything we have seen in recent history and that includes the razing of Aleppo or Russia’s bombing of Mariupol.

Even Israel openly explains that they plan to follow no rules whatsoever. While social media posts have mistakenly claimed that the Israeli government has explicitly stated that they plan to “abolish all the rules of war,” there have been ample public statements made by Israeli leadership that use more artful rhetoric to imply the same thing.

At the start of the Israeli response to the October 7 Hamas attacks, it became clear that there was a loss of proportionality. “We have only started striking Hamas,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized early on. “What we will do to our enemies in the coming days will reverberate with them for generations.”

How is such a statement even remotely inside the lines of anything resembling reasonable rules of conflict?

It hasn’t just been Israel that has suggested that the traditional rules of a fair fight are gone; the United states is complicit too. As Politico reported, “Biden administration officials want Israel to retaliate against the vicious Hamas attack in a ‘proportionate’ manner, but they won’t say if there are any lines Jerusalem shouldn’t cross.”

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Egyptian satirist Bassem Youssef called out the lack of rules for Israel in an interview on the Israel-Hamas conflict with Piers Morgan. When asked how he would respond to the Hamas attacks if he were in Israel’s place he replied, “I would do exactly like Israel did. Kill as many people as possible since the world is letting me do it.”

But here’s the thing, the end of the fair fight isn’t just about losing a commitment to rules of conduct; it is also about losing the idea that there are two sides in a conflict. There is a loss of the notion of reciprocity. One side has no rules; the other side is not supposed to fight, or defend itself, at all. Even worse, any effort at self-defense is seen as an attack that justifies even harsher retaliation. 

Youssef described this problem perfectly, calling Israel’s disregard for rules of engagement as the response of a narcissist: “Israel wants you to believe that they are the victim. Dealing with Israel is so difficult, it’s like being in a relationship with a narcissistic psychopath. He f*cks you up and then he makes you think it’s your fault. You look at Israel as Superman, but they’re really Homelander.” 

For the narcissist, everything that happens to them is a huge deal, while nothing that happens to you matters. When that logic translates to geopolitics, the disproportionate damage only magnifies. This is why Israel is not held to any standards, while those who question that logic are told to shut up. And if they don’t shut up, they are punished or threatened.

The ACLU reports that students wishing to speak out in support of Palestine are being silenced and censored on college campuses, with accounts of repressed student speech coming from Columbia University to all across the state of Florida. Suggesting Palestinians should not be forced to live in camps, that they have a flag, that they should be free, and that they should not be indiscriminatingly murdered sets off a flurry of aggressive acts that include censorship, firing, canceling, doxing, and outright violence.

Germany has effectively banned any public support for Palestinians. According to Reuters, supporters of Palestinians in Germany “say they feel blocked from publicly expressing support or concern for people in the Hamas-controlled enclave of Gaza without risking arrest, their jobs or immigration status.” Candidates and elected officials in the United States have threatened to revoke the visas of international students if they voice support for Palestine.

Palestinians are not allowed to defend themselves, and we are not supposed to even talk about it. Not one word. No debate, no dialogue, and certainly no defense of the innocent lives lost. In fact, some students at college campuses have been told not to protest in support of Palestine because they will be arrested.

How exactly did it come to be that even suggesting that Palestinians are people sounds threatening to Israeli apologists? Has the hangover of moral relativism gotten so bad that the brutal deaths of 1,200 justify a literally limitless response?

Human rights scholars know that the key to waging an unfair fight is demonizing and dehumanizing your opponent. Less attention has been put to the fact that doing that means that there are now no longer two legitimate sides in a conflict. You don’t have a fair fight because you actually don’t have a fight. When there aren't two recognized sides in a conflict, you get blood sport, not fighting.