Although in general I am peaceful and kind of law-abiding, there is a part of me, largely irrational, that evidently thinks that sometimes violence and confrontation—often low-level violence—is the way to go. This happens when confronted with an evident wrong for which there is evidently no legal recourse. Most of the time, basically always, I am self-restrained enough. But if a real estate agent treats an eight-month pregnant woman like shit, forcing her to clean away from storage the shitty old cabinets that were originally there while being very happy to keep those she had installed herself, then my natural reaction is to go and fuck up the lock of the entrance door to their office. If a car drives like a moron and brakes really hard in the predestrian crossing that my daughter is traversing, then what comes to me is to stay put in front of the car, expressing loudly and clearly what I think about all the driver’s dead ancestors. Same if an idiot is racing around on a motorbike so loud that it scares her to tears–this does not happen anymore. I am pretty sure that if I saw somebody kick one of my cats, or maybe any cat, I would have to exert all my self-control to not kick them back. I am not sure if I agree with my mother, who says that sometimes I am a bit of a taliban, but I am definitely no Gandhi.

Now, although I am no Gandhi, I abhor violence when it comes to politics within countries, at least in the countries I have lived in. I am sure I would have had no sympathy for that 23-year-old, super right-wing, super-Catholic math student who was killed a few weeks ago in Lyon while protesting against a super left-wing rally. But I really hope that the assholes who fatally beat him up spend a long, long time in jail. I also hope that voters punish those who, without having done anything illegal themselves, did fire up the criminals who beat that poor guy up. I highlight this case not only because it is relatively recent, but also because, although I don’t think I would have much positive to say about the woman speaking at that rally, I think I would feel more natural sympathy for the ideas of the killers than for those of the victim.

Now, in international relations, things are a bit different. I am not sure why, or how I can argue where the difference lies, but it exists. I guess that everywhere I have lived, the state—with all its defects and injustices—has been strong enough to enforce a set of rules that allow dissent and personal freedom, while putting guardrails in place to protect everybody. In international relations, there is nothing like that. International law, like law in general, is a fiction, a convention, a social construct. But the difference is that here there is no enforcer. This means that international law only applies between two parties if both agree to follow it. I would love for it to be something more practical, more enforceable, but there is nothing like that. At the end of the day, within France, I can count on the state—which not for nothing claims to have the monopoly of violence—to enforce the rules that allow us to live together. At least, I can hope that it mostly will to do it, and do it fairly. In international relations, if a state wants to enforce those rules, it relies, at the end of the day, on the violence it can itself bring to bear, or on that which other countries can bring to bear in their support. In some sense, claiming that it is illegal for somebody else to hit me on the street is, or could be, the beginning of an invocation of the state’s right to exert violence. In international relations, claiming that another country is breaking international law might well just be a moral stand.

Let me give an example. After October 7th, Israel could basically rely only on itself to punish the assholes who went to those kibbutzim and killed babies, raped women, and kidnapped whomever they could find, while WhatsApping about it. To punish means to exert violence. And, being no Gandhi, it is clear to me that Israel had to punish them, much like the French state has to punish the killers of that guy from Lyon. While the French state can exert violence by locking them up for a long time, Israel could only exert military violence.

Now, I very much expect the French state to lock these people up, but I would be appalled if, as punishment, it decided to shoot them and their families. I am not sure what the right level of punishment is, or if there is even such a thing as a “right level of punishment.” I guess it is again a social convention. But being a child of my time, I have a—surely pretty fuzzy—sense of what it should be. Below that level, it feels like justice is not being served. Above it, it feels like the guilty perpetrators become the actual victims of unfairness. In the case of Israel’s reaction to October 7th, that fuzzy level has been clearly surpassed. It is my clear opinion that what Israel has done to punish what was done on that day is as criminal, if not more so, than what was originally done. I guess it is the level of “collateral punishment” that tilts the scale, not the fact that it happens. At the end of the day, if the French state locks somebody up for years, this also punishes innocents like the parents or kids of the one being locked up, and I accept that. It was clear that Israel was not going to be able to surgically punish the perpetrators of October 7th. The scale of it—the number of people involved and the structure behind them—meant that some amount of “collateral punishment” was unavoidable. But there is a gulf between “unavoidable collateral punishment” and killing more than 57,000 civilians, among them more than 21,000 kids. For comparison, 36 kids died on October 7th. Here, “killing” means directly killing: those numbers, by now basically accepted by the IDF, do not include things like excess deaths.

Anyways, when violence is exerted, it matters who does it. Their moral standing. The French state, the French justice system, with all its flaws, has—in my eyes, and this is what matters to me at the end of the day—a sufficiently high moral standing to be trusted to decide how much violence to exert, to decide how long the killers of that guy should sit in jail. The French state makes mistakes, might not apply laws as blindly and impartially as one might wish, and there are loopholes that allow some criminals to walk scot-free. But in general, I trust that judges try to make fair decisions. There is structural racism, and laws might punish some people harshly while being too soft—in my opinion—when it comes to white-collar crime. But I still trust the French state to basically try to act fairly.

Does this matter? Does it matter whether I think that the French state acts, or tries to act, basically fairly? In practical terms, it matters little, but it matters because that is largely why I feel loyal toward the French state. That is why I grant it the monopoly of violence, only being willing to exert violence myself in cases where there is no possible legal recourse. I can’t trust the French state to do something about immoral real estate agents, or in the hypothetical case of somebody kicking my cat. But in general, I trust the French state to protect me by exerting violence in a basically fair way. In international relations, the moral standing of those exerting violence also matters. It matters if it is judged to be an appropriate and fair response. It matters because I vote, because I shop, because I decide whom I invite into my house, where I travel, when I walk out, whom I send a hug to, or to whom I write to make them feel better and less alone, and whose positions I am willing to defend. That does not amount to much, but it amounts to something.

In some sense, that was a long introduction to what I wanted to say. One can understand why Israel and the US feel no love for Iran. The people in the Iranian government are complete assholes. They have been complete assholes to Israel, to the US, and mostly to their own population. Whatever “punishment” might mean, they deserve punishment. Besides what they have done to Iranians, it can’t be left unpunished that they provided the missiles that for years were lobbed into Israel. It can’t be left unpunished that for years they have been psychologically terrorizing Israelis by telling them that their ultimate goal is to destroy them, and by continuously flirting with acquiring the weapons that could make that possible. And it is clear that punishment, unless it is going to be purely symbolic—like the kind I can exert personally, say, by walking out—must be military. It is also clear that “collateral punishment” is unavoidable. Mistakes are also unavoidable, like that bomb that fell, evidently by mistake, on a school and killed over a hundred girls. I had a nightmare about that after seeing a clip of a father, desperate because his 10-year-old daughter had been killed there—same age as the being—but as I see it, it was an evident mistake, not a moral flaw. A disaster for those involved, but if instead of a bomb it had been a bus accident during a school trip, that father would have been as crushed. And a bus accident is not a moral flaw.

Now, all that said, it is clear to me that neither the US—especially in its current incarnation—nor Israel has any moral standing to exert punishment. Since this has already been too long, I am not going to elaborate on it. I just wanted to write that, in my eyes, what is being done in Iran is absolutely unjustified. And this is so even when I consider that—as always in life—it is not impossible that something good comes out of it, although in this case it feels pretty unlikely to me. What is being done could be justifiable—in my eyes, and as I said this is what matters—if one could trust those doing it. But with their own history, actions, and statements in mind, it is as justifiable as a narco cartel going to war with another narco cartel.