Throw Granny in Front of the Bus: The Ethics of Violence in Gaza

        

        Many people claim that all violence is equally wrong, as if harm alone defines morality, but this is a misunderstanding; violence must be judged by context, intention, method, and purpose, and failing to make these distinctions obscures the difference between deliberate terror and defensive action, which is why comparing Israel’s military campaign to Hamas’ attacks demonstrates how moral evaluation depends entirely on circumstances and objectives.

        This is precisely why, in my military ethics class, we spend time on examples that force students to confront how intent, circumstances, and foreseeable outcomes shape moral judgment.

        One example we use is the case of the grandmother and the bus. Imagine you are standing on a street corner and a grandmother is about to be struck by an oncoming bus. You push her out of the way, she breaks her hip but survives, and you are rightly called a hero. Now imagine an almost identical situation, except this time the bus is a few seconds earlier and the grandmother is still standing near the curb. You push her, she breaks her hip, falls into the street, and is run over and killed. You are now a villain.

        The physical action is the same, a grandmother being pushed. The injury is nearly the same, a broken hip. Yet the moral evaluation could not be more different. The difference lies entirely in context, intention, and the relationship between the act and its outcome. Ethics has always understood that harm alone does not determine moral guilt, and anyone pretending otherwise is either unserious or willfully evasive.

        This distinction matters when discussing Israel and Hamas. There is a profound difference between deliberately moving through civilian neighborhoods like Kfar Aza and Kibbutz Be'eri, burning families alive, including infants and children, beheading civilians with garden tools, and taking civilians hostage to torture, starve and kill them, and conducting a military campaign in one of the most densely populated urban environments on earth against those same terrorists who use their own people as human shields and deliberately embed themselves in churches, hospitals, and schools.

        In both cases women and children die, and that fact is tragic, but tragedy does not erase moral distinctions. One campaign is targeted butchery pursued for the sake of terror itself. The other is a state under siege attempting to dismantle an enemy that openly celebrates rape, torture, and slaughter, while trying, however imperfectly, to protect its own population and limit civilian casualties under extraordinarily difficult conditions. Complaints about Israeli settler violence or other Israeli imperfections are largely attempts to obfuscate that difference and function as apologies for terrorists rather than serious moral analysis.

        The goals, attitudes, and methods used by the two parties remain entirely different, despite both using violence, and those differences matter. Israel’s use of force and the resulting deaths of Gazans are regrettable, they are still just in the moral sense because they are directed at stopping future atrocities and defending a population from an enemy that has made clear its intent to repeat them.

        Ultimately, the responsibility for the suffering of Palestinian civilians lies with Hamas. Israel’s campaign is imperfect, as all wars are, and many of the alleged crimes attributed to Israel rely on casualty figures and narratives produced by wildly Gazan sources and uncritical and even propagandist international organizations. Even where mistakes occur, a mistake made in pursuit of a just cause is morally different from deliberate evil.

        Hamas deliberately uses its own people as shields, operating from hospitals, schools, and residential buildings precisely because civilian deaths serve its propaganda goals. Despite this, Israel takes measures that are historically rare in urban warfare. According to John Spencer at the Modern War Institute, Israel has fought the most careful war in history. Israel provides advance warnings of operational zones, allows vaccination campaigns for children, and according to the United Nations itself facilitates the entry of millions of tons of food into Gaza. Israel possesses the military capability to kill the entire population of Gaza several times over, and supposedly seeks their genocide, yet it continually restrains itself and conducts a limited campaign aimed at dismantling a terrorist organization while simultaneously providing aid to the very population that organization endangers.

        In a perfect world violence would not be necessary, but we do not live in that world. In the end, recognizing the moral difference between deliberate terror and measured military defense is not a theoretical exercise but a practical imperative; Israel’s campaign is imperfect and tragic, but it is conducted with restraint, guided by the goal of protecting its citizens and dismantling an enemy that celebrates mass murder, while Hamas’ violence is indiscriminate, celebratory, and aimed at civilians, and anyone who refuses to distinguish between the two fails to grapple with the realities of war and the obligations of moral judgment, and the only responsible stance is to condemn the perpetrators of terror rather than those who act to stop them.

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Is Starship Troopers Fascist?

 

        The 1990s version of this movie was such a good satire of fascism that most don’t realize it was satire, or that it didn’t accurately reflect the book.

        In the book version of Starship Troopers anyone can participate in government by simply volunteering for the military. In other words, the government in Starship Troopers is a democracy, but suffrage is based upon military service and not simply being born in the country and reaching a certain age. The civics teacher in the book explains why, and it boils down to only those that have skin in the game get to have a say in policy.

        The military service isn't forced or conscripted like you'd see in a dictatorship. In fact, the military gave the main character plenty of chances to back out of their contract, even after they’ve shipped off. Those that didn’t fulfill their term of service weren’t sent to the gulag. They still enjoyed all the rights of being a citizen except voting. Most qualifying terms of service were only two years long in non combat support roles. The main character grew into a such a man that he went career in the infantry.

        The government respected the rights of its citizens including free speech. There were no secret police rounding up minorities and dissidents like a person would expect in a fascist government. The court system, especially for the military, had protections for the accused. The main character witnessed his military leadership trying to help the average soldiers avoid the harshest punishments until they blurted out their crime and it was unavoidable. The main character is Filipino, showing there wasn’t some master race ideology that motivated the government.

        They are fighting a war, but there is almost nothing about higher strategy or the reasons for either side fighting it. The main character's hometown was attacked, so in contrast to the desire for greater East Asian prosperity sphere or “living space”, the war in Starship troopers was arguably defensive. But Rico literally says, the pawn doesn't interrogate the grand master about why its moved so that is secondary.

        The tactics displayed by Rico, particularly in the opening chapter are violent, but comparable to airborne operations from World War II, negating any charges of attempted "genocide." (Ever since Gaza that word has been overused to the point of meaningless anyway.)

        In short, the book is no more militaristic or fascist than the memoir of any real-life veteran. Any veteran reading this book would appreciate its focus on military life and culture but wouldn’t call it fascist. The message of the book was simply: a dumb kid finally grows up and learns how to be a good son, father, and citizen after joining the military.

        I highly recommend you read the book for yourself.

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When Pacifism Met Reality: A Response to Ward Radio's Jonah Barnes

      

         I recently spent over an hour watching a debate among Jonah Barnes and Luke Hansen at the podcast, Doctrine and Governance. It was illuminating mostly for what was left out and engaged. Since I literally wrote the book on the subject I felt it was worth explaining those points.

Failure to Define

        Barnes never defined pacifism beyond vague gestures toward “having a peaceful heart” and disliking violence. Having a peaceful heart is important, it's literally the first chapter of my book, but he never fully explains his position which makes it more sentiment than consistent theology. Nor did he ever explicitly state if he believed all violence is immoral. If he does believe that he’ll have to explain many, many, examples of divine violence. This is usually done using the pacifists’ favorite tactic of minimizing or discounting most scriptures.

        Barnes claimed, many, many times, he took a “non-accusatory” position on pacifism, even as he accused others of “twisting the scriptures” or just being “idiots.” Yet when he claimed he was on “The Lord’s Side” the moral framing was clear: if his view is the righteous one, then those who disagree must be immoral. That’s a great deal of posturing that might be good for a debate but makes for very poor dialog and ignores the need for justice in this world. In a massive case of projection he minimized clear war chapter verses (Alma 48:14; 43:47) a great deal, offered a tortured reading of D&C 98 and ignored clear statements that we are not command to lay down our arms (Alma 61:12-13).  Barnes never considers that if warfare were inherently sinful, why would the Lord direct His people in how and where to defend themselves (Alma 48:15; Exodus 14:14; Deuteronomy 20:4)? Why would the Lord join them in battle in DC 98:37, and bless them with victory if warfare was so sinful?

        I’ll return to this below, but a better reading is to see how all the scriptures fit together. So instead of discounting the Old Testament, the war chapters, and the command to use force in DC 98, a person should understand what it means to renounce war, proclaim peace, and know when to wield the sword. The answer to that seeming contradiction is the center of my writing, the first chapter of my book, and a subject of frequent discussion.

Pacifism Meets Reality

        The greatest weakness of Barnes' position was the failure to offer hypothetical but likely real world examples, even while claiming that pacifism “thrives in the real world.” To me, that was a tacit admission that pacifist theories don’t work in the real world. Reading scripture isn’t designed to articulate grand castles in the sky, it’s supposed to help us “liken the scripture” to everyday life (1 Nephi 19:23).

        Moreover, Jesus used parables, and the hypothetical example of the Good Samaritan, Lost Sheep, Talents, Wise and Foolish Builder, and Sower, to explain His principles. The Book of Mormon is full of examples where hypothetical beliefs met the sharp edge of the sword where faithful believers were commanded to defend their families and freedom. Alma 43:47, 48:21–23, and 61:12–14 all affirms the divine duty to protect the innocent, “even unto bloodshed.”

        I’m particularly interested in Abraham’s rescue of Lot. D&C 98:32 says the Lords Law of War was also revealed to Abraham. And yet when raiders captured Lot, Abraham didn’t lift a standard of peace and wait for three trespasses. He launched a sneak attack! But he was blessed by a prince of peace (Alma 13:18). Clearly, the Old Testament's explanation of D&C 98 differs from that of Barnes. The famous command “thou shall not kill” should read, “thou shall not murder.” That’s because Exodus 21–22, immediately after the Ten Commandments, discusses multiple instances of justified defensive killing.

        Discussion of the New Testament often focuses on the supposed pacifism of the Sermon on the Mount, but Jesus supported the use of force as well. When talking to soldiers neither John the Baptist (Luke 3:10-18) nor Jesus commanded soldiers to lay down their arms (Matthew 8:5-13). (John the Baptist addressed hypothetical future situations when told soldiers to be content with their pay instead of extorting the people for more.) Jesus praised the centurion for his faith!  Jesus described parables where the master used force to compel servants to enter during a hypothetical banquet (Luke 14:23). All four gospels describe Jesus using whips to cleanse the temple. (Mason and Pulsipher tried to explain this away as “only” violence against objects and animals. But similar violence in the Book of Mormon was enough for Ammon to main and kill people.) Jesus said that he didn’t bring peace but brought the sword (Matthew 10:34), and in another instance, fire and division (Luke 12:49). Jesus killed a fig tree for not being fruitful (Mark 11:12-14). When struck, Jesus didn’t turn the other cheek (John 18:22-23).

        Expanding to look at New Testament more broadly, Paul says the rulers are appointed by God as “agents of his wrath to the wrong doer” (Romans 13:4; see below). And Jesus promises in revelation that he will kill so many people that the blood will flow like a wine press for 200 miles (Rev 14:20).

        Last but not least, our new prophet, Dallin H. Oaks gave a talk where he described how we must ask ourselves, "where will it lead?" His entire talk was based on hypothetical situations where a person might take preemptive action. 

Twisting

        In addition to misreading scriptures, the claim of twisting scriptures with overburdened reasoning is a frequent tactic of internet sophists to sound simple but decisive, and make opponents look manipulative and weak with mental gymnastics.

        But matters of war and peace are not decided by who has the best slogan. That might sound strong on a discussion board, but ethics of war and peace are best determined by how dozens of scriptures interact with each other. (Such as how someone might “renounce war” and “resist bloodshed with your sword” at the same time.)

        For those who claim to be experts on peace and love, and pacifists are among the most arrogant people I've met, they should be able to move beyond bumper stickers to explain their point using scriptures, including likely hypotheticals. It’s not quite a bumper sticker, but Barnes’ catch phrases are an indictment of his shallowness, not my depth.

Moral Logic and Justice

        Finally, there was a singular point where Barnes declared: “Justice is the last thing I want.” That is an astoundingly privileged comment from someone who has never experienced a grave injustice. The victims whose blood “cries from the ground” (Genesis 4:10; 2 Nephi 28;10) deserve more than passive compassion. It sounds a bit like Game of Thrones but it’s accurate, until the afterlife, the only justice a person receives is what is delivered to people by a secular government. That is why God said that rulers are “agents of wrath to the wrong doers,” and Thomas Aquinas cited ruler’s need to “deliver the poor and needy” (Psalms 81:4).

        Justice entirely deferred to eternity is justice denied on earth. In short, tell the families of 9/11 victims or Jews in Europe during the Holocaust justice is the last thing they should receive.  They should be okay with the perpetrators of heinous rape, mutilation, and murder living their entire lives, smiling with the sun on their face, having meals and every joy they could have. Meanwhile the victims spend countless hours in tears, feeling like a storm cloud is always raining on them…all because Jonah Barnes has a vague aversion to violence to the point he says that he doesn’t want “justice.” But the Book of Mormon directly repudiates that opinion when Alma taught that mercy can’t rob justice (Alma 42:25). That is even more important in matters of war and peace, and explains why Bib Netanyahu, for example, seems so motivated to pursue war. Only eliminating Hamas, (or the less perfect peace deal that disarms them and bars them from power) was justice for the innocent victims of Hamas’ barbaric rampage and a defense against future attacks. 

Conclusion

        I didn’t even get to many other topics. For example, Barnes drew shaky parallels between modern conflicts and ancient wars, equating acts like Hiroshima or Pearl Harbor defense with evil. War is terrible but pretending that all use of force is immoral doesn’t make us holy, it makes us irresponsible and idle witnesses to slaughter. Scripture, history, and reason converge on a simple truth that peace sometimes requires courage.

        We can wield the sword with clean hearts, but we cannot lay it down while evil thrives. We should abandon bumper stickers like “war is bad” or Barnes’ favorite, “we aren’t commanded to pick up arms.” And realize that we must love our neighbor enough to stop their slaughter using our God given right to defense ourselves. 

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I'm creative too! You'll find my fiction under the pen name MT Deane. 

Blurred Lines: Why So Many Killers Confuse Terrorism with Justice

 

        The recent shooting at a Mormon chapel in Michigan is part of a disturbing trend: the growing justification of violence. A Catholic church was recently attacked, Charlie Kirk was assassinated, and the murderer of a health care CEO is treated as a romantic figure because of his looks. Even Lori Vallow, the “doomsday mom,” defended her killings by invoking Nephi’s slaying of Laban.

        These examples reveal how dangerously blurred the moral line has become between justified violence and terrorism. Increasingly, those who commit crimes are excused, while ordinary law-abiding people, working unglamorous jobs in average towns or simply attending church, are painted as guilty of society’s ills and, in some eyes, worthy of death. Such thinking only makes sense when guilt and innocence are determined not by individual actions but by membership in a group.

        This logic can be traced through intellectual traditions that divide the world into two hostile camps: the oppressors vs. oppressed of Marx, or the colonizers vs. colonized of Frantz Fanon. Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, praised by Jean-Paul Sartre and Cornel West as a revolutionary manual, has become particularly influential. Its vision of collective struggle and sanctioned violence echoes today in the defense of Hamas atrocities, the celebration of political assassinations, and even in some strands of leftist Mormon thought.

        This post examines Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth to show how violence is sanctioned when individual responsibility is erased and why Just War theory provides a much needed moral antidote.

Violence

        The Wretched of the Earth both justifies and minimizes intense violence. The first line of the book said, “decolonization is always a violent event” (1). Then, “decolonization reeks of red-hot cannonballs and bloody knives” (3). Fanon warned of a “human tide” that sounded like the French Reign of Terror (13.) Fanon says the colonized are filled with “blood feuds” and “fratricidal blood bath(s)” (17, 21). “It is clearly and plainly an armed struggle” (42). “For the colonized, this violence represents the absolute praxis” (43). And finally, “For the colonized, life can only materialize from the rotting cadaver of the colonialist.”

        His theories result in a Manichean view, his words, that erase individual moral virtue and justified murder. Because if a colonized person kills colonizer cops, he is a hero. As Fanon wrote “If the act for which this man is prosecuted by the colonial authorities is an act exclusively directed against a colonial individual or colonial asset, then the demarcation line [between right and wrong] is clear and manifest (30).”

Minimize Western Religion and Values

        When he does quote Christian teachings, he either invalidates or perverts them. According to Fanon, the teachings of love and harmony (3) are simply part of the “confusion mongers” that make exploitation easier (4).  Fanon said, “The last can be first only after a murderous and decisive confrontation” (3).

        Fanon says Christianity is the white man’s church, “as we know in this story, many are called but few are chosen” (8). After he told story of rebel that killed colonizers Fanon said it was a “baptism by blood” (46).

        He ignored Western values the same way. Without evidence he asserted that “government agents use the language of pure violence” (4). Discussions of Western values cause the natives to tense their muscles and grab a machete and sharpen their weapons (8). Fanon said the West wages a war in values, that the people don’t care about. All they care about is land appropriation and blowing the colonial world to smithereens (6).

Putting It All Together

        All the above matters because the Western values that he diminishes, which were often promulgated by Christian thinkers, established guardrails against the kind of bloodbath Fanon justified and unleashed and provides moral correction against the abuses that supposedly justify the violent outbursts of the colonized.[1]

        Salamanca school scholar Francisco Suarez wrote that revolt is only violence is just only “if essential for liberty, because if there is any less drastic means of removing him it is not lawful to kill him…always provided that there is no danger of the same or worse evils falling on community as result of the tyrants death.[2]

        Early modern scholar Hugo Grotius wrote about the same right to revolt if the king alienates his people, but also warned potential usurpers that it would lead to gory factionalism and “dangerous, bloody conflict.”[3]

        In similar language, Mosiah recognized the danger of revolt when he argued for the end of the monarchy: [Y]e cannot dethrone an iniquitous king save it be through much contention, and the shedding of much blood (Mosiah 29:21).

        In contrast to Fanon, Christian writers espousing what eventually became notable Western values recognized the same danger in revolution and warned against slaughter. At the same time, they recognized the rights of the oppressed and just war often became a catalyst for reform. Fanon dismissed the talk of rights as the “erstatz,” or fake struggle of the elite for the people “insipid humanitarianism” (28). Yet those supposedly insipid beliefs according to Fanon, or beliefs that are insufficient according to multiple LDS scholars,[4] are stronger than any of Fanon’s theories because they clearly address the morality of revolution.

        Despite being minimized by Fanon as abstract values that don’t matter, the Salamanca school scholars advocating for human rights of natives, the Grimke sisters arguing for abolition, the missionaries arguing for abolition, and the Christian missionaries that reported the abuses in the Belgian Congo suggest religion was often a reforming counter agent to colonialism. A focus on individual morality instead of collective guilt promoted by Fanon noticed the stark differences between the philosopher that opposed colonization compared to the politicians that wanted it, the ministers that built roads and bridges and the rapacious tax collectors, and the leaders of the Western Concession in Shanghai that shielded dissidents.

        Using collective accusations that erases individual moral responsibility is why we end up with Hamas apologists. Cornell West said the Palestinians most embody the “spirit of Fanon” (xii), so when they killed, they were simply part of the colonized oppressed and their actions turn them in to “heroes.” I quoted this earlier, but it is worth repeating what Fanon wrote regarding the morality of violence against the colonizers, “If the act for which this man is prosecuted by the colonial authorities is an act exclusively directed against a colonial individual or colonial asset, then the demarcation line is clear and manifest.” Even though their violence was a barbaric campaign of mass slaughter and rape against innocent families, the ideas of Fanon made all Jews guilty and all terrorists innocent.

        That is why Americans witnessed the bizarre spectacle of liberal groups making gliders their logo. (Gliders are how the terrorists travelled to the massacre at the Nova music festival.) And this confused moral logic led to tweets which argued the barbaric savagery of Hamas was “what decolonization looks like.”

        This collective guilt theory is why so many rationalized away the assassination of health care CEO Brian Thompson. (The other reason was the killer’s attractiveness.) He never killed anyone and arguably worked to provide health care to millions. But he was part of a hated industry, attacked for killing thousands. Thus, the nominal morality that opposes murder held less sway for the masses of morally confused. It’s true that the health care system really stinks but relying on collective guilt to indict one person as guilty and worthy of death and justify murder by another, is a dangerous slope and signals a dangerous erosion of clear moral standards.

Bad Categories Escape Morality

        In short, the problem was summarized from my post about the Visions of Glory. As I wrote about Visions of Glory, once a person starts labelling yourself as part of a righteous group, and their opponents as zombies, it becomes easier to justify killing them. When Fanon described an event as naturally violent (1) and a population existing in an “atmosphere of violence” (31) it’s natural to strike out.[5]

        The antidote is not to invent new theories or indulge in vague moralizing, but to return to the clarity of Just War principles and the wisdom of earlier thinkers. As both Christian tradition and the Book of Mormon warn, revolution comes only “through much contention, and the shedding of much blood.” That is not a license to glorify violence but a sober caution to resist collective guilt and hold fast to individual responsibility.

        We are judged by our own sins, not by the accidents of class, race, or category. If we truly wish to resist the age of blurred lines and confused morality, we must recover the values of love, harmony, and conciliation that Fanon dismissed, and recognize that peace is found not in collective vengeance, and random shootings, but in clear moral standards rooted in justice.

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[1] Morgan Deane, To Stop a Slaughter: Just War and the Book of Mormon, (Arsenal of Venice Press, 2024,) 104-106.

[2] Andre Azevedo Alves, Jose Moreira, John Meadowcroft, The Salamanca School, (Bloomsbury Academic Pro, 2013), 53. 

[3] Grotius , 73-76. Grotius also placed limits on potential usurpers that included another warning that it is difficult to determine the morality of a rebellion. He suggested that individual shouldn’t take it upon themselves to decide a question on their own, which involves the whole people.

[4] Patrick Q. Mason and J. David Pulsipher, Proclaim Peace: The Restoration’s Answer to an Age of Conflict (Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021), 135. Duane Boyce, Even Unto Bloodshed: An LDS Perspective on War (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2015), 223. Boyce states “modern just war framework…makes no explicit use of scripture…it seems obvious that it cannot be sufficient to address the concerns of Latter-day Saints.”

[5] There is an absurd double standard here as well. When conservatives do something as simple as enforce immigration law, they are attacked as evil for creating a “climate of fear.” But when a third world nation is on the verge of a horrific orgy of violence they honor scholars that call that violence natural, necessary, and heroic.