The Balance of Power and the Legitimacy of Bloodshed in the Ethics of the Abyss
Today, the human conscience faces an unprecedented moral and political dilemma, as glittering slogans about democracy and human rights shatter against the bloody reality of the Middle East. Against the backdrop of horrific scenes emanating from Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Sudan, as well as Syria prior to its liberation, urgent questions arise, seeking rational answers that are lost in the corridors of “blind justice” and international double standards.
When politicians—led by Benjamin Netanyahu—engage in what they describe as “counter-terrorism” to protect their people, the world finds itself facing an inverted equation: Is it conceivable that deterrence is achieved through the annihilation of the land’s inhabitants? Does preserving the security of one front justify the killing of hundreds of times more innocent civilians—women, children, the elderly, and unarmed youth? Here, we are witnessing not merely a war, but an “holocaust of security,” where survival is legitimized through the eradication of the Other, through the destruction of both stone and flesh. If the acts directed against Israel are abhorrent, why is such abhorrence met with something even worse and more lethal?
The answer to these dilemmas does not lie in international law, but in the “reality of power”; the contemporary global system is no longer built on the foundations of justice, but designed to ensure that major powers and their allies possess the “right to absolute deterrence.”
This “strategic ambiguity” and “normative chaos” are evident in the nuclear file; Israel refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and shelters its arsenal from any inspection, while other parties are demanded to strictly adhere to its provisions. Here, a logical question strikes us: Why is it not possible to disclose everything or prevent these lethal weapons from being acquired by all in the first place? Why do the powerful have privileges that others do not?
This moral collapse of systems that claim to be democratic leads us directly to “ethics of the abyss,” where the reaction becomes more abhorrent than the act itself, and the deception of “self-defense” transforms into a strategy of collective punishment and total destruction.
The current approach goes far beyond the concept of “security defense,” entering the realm of imposing sovereignty through excessive force and attempting to alter the demographics on the ground. A vivid, contemporary example of this twisted method, which obfuscates the given reasons, is seen in the wicked aggression against vital facilities and civilian areas in Gulf states. This does not merely demonstrate an absence of desire for peace, but rather reflects Tehran’s conviction that the Gulf geography is the vulnerable flank through which major powers can be hurt, even if the price is burning diplomatic bridges with neighbors who have long called for peace and non-interference in their internal affairs.
Human and historical logic consistently confirms that violence begets only violence, and that the glaring injustice in the distribution of rights—whether regarding land or the right to possess deterrence tools—is the primary and constant driver sustaining the conflict.
In the end, the final question that imposes itself on the reader’s consciousness remains: Do international organizations, led by the United Nations, possess the real tools to implement “equality” and enforce the law? Or have they become merely a facade and a mask to facilitate the will of major powers and manufacture abhorrence in a world governed by the logic of the jungle?
