The world has a responsibility to protect the people of Gaza. Will it rise to the occasion?

You don't need to be a legal expert to know that Israel is committing war crimes against the people of the occupied Palestinian territory.

Maria Kari 

PRISM/DAWN

Published November 22, 2023 

We are approaching the seventh week of Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Our screens are still littered with mutilated bodies and murdered children and there is little hope for a total ceasefire, even as Israel has finally agreed to a brief humanitarian pause.

With almost 20,000 dead, one must ask when, or if at all, the UN or any Western and Muslim world leaders will rise up to hold Israel accountable for its deliberate and wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people.

To be sure, we have international law and other legal mechanisms in place since the end of World War II to prevent the very type of mass murder we are witnessing in Gaza today. One such tool, which has the potential to provide much needed relief in the present conflict, is a doctrine called the Responsibility to Protect (R2P).

Who bears the responsibility?

The R2P is not law — it is a principle rooted in existing international humanitarian laws relating to sovereignty and armed conflict. Since Gaza is an occupied territory without recognised statehood or governance, the responsibility for its population’s well-being falls on the occupying power, Israel.

In its simplest form, the R2P says that if a state — in this case, Israel — fails to protect its people from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, the international community has a responsibility to intervene. This intervention can be carried out in different ways — from political and economic sanctions to international criminal prosecutions or even, as a last resort, military force — the latter, with the permission of the UN Security Council.

Over the years, the UN Security Council has invoked the R2P in over 80 UN Security Council resolutions, including for crises in the Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Libya, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen. It was, however, fully implemented only once during the Libyan civil war.

In 2011, in response to growing civil unrest, Muammar Gaddafi called for his supporters to “cleanse Libya house by house”. By invoking the R2P, the UN Security Council was able to authorise Nato to use military force to prevent mass murder in Benghazi. While the first phase of the intervention did save lives, R2P’s implementation in Libya was deemed a failure in the long run because the international community did not stay in the country long enough to rebuild the political and economic infrastructure.

Unfortunately, Libya left the doctrine of R2P with a bad rap. Even since, the preferred approach by the UN and superpowers such as the US is to “wait-and-see” — a decision that has led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands in countries like Syria and Myanmar and has forced the doctrine of R2P onto the UN’s top shelf, where unused international laws and doctrines gather to die.

But the current conflict in Gaza has revived calls for the R2P.

You need not be a legal expert to know that Israel is committing war crimes against the people of the occupied Palestinian territory. Indeed, since its creation, the state of Israel has routinely flouted numerous international humanitarian laws.


But this time feels different, more dire. Perhaps because almost half of the dead are children? Or maybe because the world is watching a genocide on their smartphones in real time?

Over the last few days, Arab states, Russia, China and several other countries have lobbied for a ceasefire. It is unlikely that, individually, these countries’ lobbying efforts hold much sway at the UN Security Council — particularly in light of the waning influence of Arab nations at the world body in recent years. Over the next few days or perhaps weeks, it will become clearer whether powerful Muslim nations like Saudi Arabia are going to be able to pressure the United States and the other permanent members of the UN Security Council to join in efforts to condemn Israel.

Either way, public support for and perception of Israel is at an all-time low. And with the American presidential election looming large and ever-increasing pressure on Muslim leaders to do more than share thoughts and prayers, the question is surely on the top of the mind for members of the UN Security Council — what, if anything, is it going to do about Israel’s collective punishment of 2.3 million people?

Romeo Dallaire, a lieutenant-general with the Canadian Armed Forces who was on the ground during the Rwandan genocide, once said: “How do we pick and choose where to get involved? [Countries] have become accustomed to acting if, and only if, international public opinion will support them — a dangerous path that leads to a moral relativism in which a country risks losing sight of the difference between good and evil …”

Modern history tells us that the international community can reach consensus to stand up against aggressor states. Take the Russia-Ukraine war, for example. When Russia invaded Ukraine last February, within days the US, UK and EU unequivocally condemned its actions and imposed harsh economic and political sanctions.

Many of these nations continue to send millions in military and financial aid to Ukraine. The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution demanding Russia immediately withdraw its military forces and abide by international law and, earlier this year, the International Criminal Court also rose to the occasion by issuing an arrest warrant for Vladmir Putin.

We need to demand our elected leaders to adopt a similar, principled approach against Israel. For far too long, countries like the US, UK and even Saudi Arabia have let Israel off with a get-out-of-jail-free card. This time, the indiscriminate nature of Israel’s bombings, the mounting death toll of civilians, the blanket denial of food, water and other necessities, and the bombing of facilities such as mosques, churches, schools and hospitals — places unequivocally protected by international law — is both morally and legally too egregious to ignore.

In 1948, when the UN passed the Genocide Convention, we agreed “never again”. Yet, in Palestine, we can’t risk normalising “again and again”.

Header image: A Palestinian man reacts as he carries the body of his niece, Hanan Kaloob, who was killed in an Israeli strike, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip November 22, 2023. — Reuters

WEDNESDAY

Jenna Ortega exits Scream VII day after co-star Melissa Barrera fired for pro-Palestine posts

Media reports deny that Ortega, who is very pro-Palestine, left because of her on-screen sister being fired.

Images Staff
23 Nov, 2023

Actor Jenna Ortega has exited the Scream franchise — reportedly due to a conflicting filming schedule with Wednesday, Netflix’s smash hit. Publications such as Deadline and Variety are denying that this has anything to do with the firing of Ortega’s on-screen sister Melissa Barrera over her pro-Palestine comments. Ortega has expressed strong pro-Palestine views over the years.

Ortega and Barrera played Tara and Sam Carpenter in Scream V and Scream VI and were set to reprise their roles in the seventh instalment of the film.

Barrera’s firing was announced on Wednesday, over ‘antisemitic’ comments she made. “Spyglass’ stance is unequivocally clear: We have zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form, including false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion or anything that flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech,” the production company said in a statement.

The company claims she made antisemitic posts when she referred to Israel as a “colonised land” and repeated an antisemitic trope when she posted “Western media only shows the [Israeli] side. Why do they do that, I will let you deduce for yourself.”

Though some publications are claiming her exit has nothing to do with Barrera’s firing, the news breaking a day after has left the internet speculating, especially when coupled with the pair sharing similar views on Palestine.

Previously, the film’s director Christopher Landon reacted to Barrera’s exit in a now deleted statement on X (formerly Twitter). “Everything sucks. Stop yelling. This was not my decision to make,” he said.

 

People believe this is an act of solidarity

 

People believe this is an act of solidarity

In a statement posted on Instagram on Thursday, Barrera remained committed to her advocacy.

Sea Turtle Nests Break Records on US Beaches
November 24, 2023 
Associated Press

A loggerhead sea turtle makes it way to the Atlantic Ocean in this undated photo in Juno Beach, FLA

INDIAN ROCKS BEACH, FLA. —

Just as they have for millions of years, sea turtles by the thousands made their labored crawl from the ocean to U.S. beaches to lay their eggs over the past several months. This year, record nesting was found in Florida and elsewhere despite growing concern about threats from climate change.

In Florida, preliminary state statistics show more than 133,840 loggerhead turtle nests, breaking a record set in 2016. Same for green turtles, where the estimate of at least 76,500 nests is well above the previous mark set in 2017.

High sea turtle nest numbers also have been reported in South Carolina, Alabama, North Carolina and Georgia, although not all set records like Florida, where Justin Perrault, vice president of research at Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach, said the number of nests is remarkable this year.

"We had more nests than we had ever seen before on our local beaches," said Perrault, whose organization monitors Palm Beach County and broke a local record by 4,000 nests. "That's quite a bit of nesting."

There are seven species of sea turtles: loggerhead, green, leatherback, hawksbill, Kemp's ridley, olive ridley and flatback. All are considered either endangered or threatened. They come ashore on summer nights, digging pits in the sand and depositing dozens of eggs before covering them up and returning to the sea. Florida beaches are one of the most important hatcheries for loggerheads in the world.

Only about one in 1,000 sea turtle hatchlings live to adulthood. They face myriad natural threats, including predators on land and in the ocean, disruptions to nests and failure to make it to the water after hatching. This year along one stretch of Florida's Gulf Coast where 75 nests had been counted, most were wiped out by the surge from Hurricane Idalia in August.

A loggerhead sea turtle hatchling makes it's way to the Atlantis Ocean in this undated photo, in Juno Beach, Fla.

"Unfortunately, the nests pre-Idalia were almost all lost due to the high tides and flooding on our barrier islands," said Carly Oakley, senior turtle conservation biologist at Clearwater Marine Aquarium.

Female turtles generally lay eggs in a three-year cycle, leading to up-and-down years of nests, she said. "The nesting process is very exhausting, and, in this break, females regain the energy to do the process again," Oakley said.

Climate change has added to those challenges, reducing beaches as sea levels rise and causing more powerful tropical storms. Hotter air, water and sand and changes in the ocean currents turtles use to migrate also lower the odds of surviving, according to Oceana, an international conservation group.

Sand temperatures play a major role in determining sea turtle sex. In general, warmer temperatures produce more female turtles, and sand temperatures are projected to increase dramatically around the world by 2100, according to researchers at Florida State University.

"So the warmer the nest is, the more likely that nest is to produce females," Perrault said. "Additionally, hatchlings that come out of warmer nests are much smaller and often slower."

A study led by FSU professor Mariana Fuentes that was published recently in the Global Change Biology journal found sea turtles will have to nest much later or much earlier than they currently do to cope with changing environmental conditions.

Even that may not be enough for every species, said Fuentes, who works in FSU's Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science. Turtles have adapted to altered climates over millions of years, but today's rapid changes could happen too quickly for them to evolve, she said.

"We have found that even if they do change the timing of their nesting, that's not going to be sufficient to maintain the temperatures of current nesting grounds," Fuentes said.

A pair of green sea turtle hatchings make their way to the Atlantic Ocean in this Aug. 8, 2023, photo at the Canaveral Sea Shore in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

Sea turtle mothers already have to lumber out of the water to find a good spot to nest, which can be difficult in areas where humans have built seawalls. Some female turtles make several attempts, known as false crawls, before finding a suitable location.

Racoons, coyotes and other predators raid the nests and hatchlings, once they dig their way out, have to crawl to the sea before being snatched up by birds and other animals. Electric lights can disorient them, causing turtles to head the wrong way on the beach instead of following light from the moon and stars. And when the lucky ones finally start swimming, hungry fish await.

Michelle Pate, biologist at the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, said tens of thousands of hatchlings don't make it to the water, even as nest numbers trend higher across much of the Southeast.

"If we can't get hatchlings to emerge and make it to the ocean, then an increase in nest numbers doesn't help," she said.

The increase in turtle nests this year conceals an ominous future for the animals, Perrault said.

"Yes, we're seeing record numbers, but our hatchling production may not be that great," he said. "And so in the future, 20 to 30 years from now, and these things come back to nest, we may not be seeing these record numbers that we're seeing now."

‘Brave’ Geckos Found in Indian Cave Are Identified as New Species

Researchers found the small geckos in 2021 in and around caves 100 miles southeast of Mumbai

Published 11/23/23 

Rachel Askinasi

Ajanta caves in IndiaFrédéric Soltan/Contributor/Getty Images

Researchers recently identified a small gecko in India as a new species, according to a Nov. 18 study.

The Miami Herald reported Tuesday that researchers discovered the geckos — which they described as "dwarf"-like with "relatively short" bodies, curved claws and pointed spikes among scales — in 2021 in a Buddhist cave in Maharashtra, India.

The study, written by Amit Sayyed and published in Taprobanica: The Journal of Asian Biodiversity, identifies the creature as the second-smallest known Indian dwarf gekkonid at 2.3 inches in length.

A member of the species from the northern Western Ghats in India, the creatures did not retreat significantly when approached by humans, and researchers called their behavior "unexpected," the Herald reported.

They've been dubbed Cnemaspis fortis, or "the brave dwarf gecko."

Researchers reportedly said the geckos showed "remarkable boldness" with "notable" bravery, which both contributed to its name, wrote Sayyed.

The species has been found around the Gandharpale Caves of Maharashtra, roughly 100 miles southeast of Mumbai and about 700 miles southwest of New Delhi, the Herald reports.

Can Burned Maui Town Be Made Safe? No One Knows


November 24, 2023 
Associated Press

Daniel Skousen vacuums his home, damaged by August's wildfire, on Nov. 3, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii.

When Daniel Skousen scrubs at the ash and soot covering his Maui home, he worries about the smell.

What chemicals created the burning-trash-barrel scent that has lingered since a deadly wildfire tore through Lahaina in August? Should he believe government agencies' assessment of when the air, land and water will be safe enough for his family to return?

Or will political and economic pressures to rebuild and restore Maui's robust tourism industry — where visitors normally spend $14 million per day — lead officials to look at any testing results through rose-colored glasses?

"It appears very important to them to get that tourism tax revenue back," said Skousen. "It makes you wonder if the testing will be biased."

The fire blew out Skousen's windows and filled his home with ash, but the building is still standing, and he hopes someday to move back in. The home next door burned to the ground.

Skousen wants a second opinion on any government environmental assessments, preferably from an expert with a stake in the community. But the raw data isn't easy to find, and experts say the long-term health effects from fires like the one that incinerated Lahaina are mostly unknown. There are no national standards that detail how clean is clean enough for a residential home damaged by a nearby fire.

At least 100 people died in the Aug. 8 wildfire, and thousands were displaced. Nearly 7,000 were still in short-term lodging two months later.

The rubble left behind includes electrical cables, plastic pipes and vehicle tires that emit dangerous dioxins when burned; lead from melted vehicles or old house paint; and arsenic-laden ash from termite-resistant building materials.

After a major wildfire burned 1,000 homes in Boulder County, Colorado, in 2021, health officials learned that even professionally remediated homes were often still polluted with ash, char and other toxic substances long after the fire, said Bill Hayes, the county's air quality program coordinator.

The reason? High winds — like those that plagued Maui during the wildfire this summer — forced fine particulate matter into every crevice, Hayes said. Those particulates would sit inside window panes, behind light switches, between shingles and elsewhere until the winds started up again, re-contaminating the home.

 

The tide circulates around rocks as it rises at Wahikuli Wayside Park on Nov. 3, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii.

"Char is a carcinogen, so we don't ever say any level of those particulates are safe," Hayes said. "That became a challenge in the cleanup – determining the level of when is it clean enough?"

State and federal agencies have released regular updates on Lahaina's relative safety. The water in much of the town is still unsafe to drink, and visitors have been advised to use protective gear in impacted areas. Officials say pregnant people and kids should stay out of the burn zone, though the Hawaii Department of Education says the schools, which are above the burned part of town, are safe.

Crews have installed air quality monitors throughout town and are spraying a soil sealant to prevent toxic ash from being washed into the ocean or blowing around.

An attorney representing Skousen and about two dozen other Lahaina residents sent a public records request to the Environmental Protection Agency last month asking for all records regarding residential testing of contaminants in Lahaina and their impact to human health.

The EPA's reply, sent earlier this month, wasn't reassuring: "No records could be located that are responsive to your request."

EPA spokesperson Kellen Ashford told The Associated Press his agency did some environmental hazard testing in the burn zone, but only to determine the immediate risk for workers involved in the initial cleanup.

He referred further questions about such testing to the Hawaii Department of Health, which he said was responsible for determining longer-term safety for residents.

The Hawaii Department of Health's Environmental Health Services Division also told Skousen's attorney it had no records about residential testing of contaminants to release.

The Health Department declined interview requests. Spokesperson Shawn Hamamoto said in an email the department will pursue additional air quality and ash testing when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers begins removing debris from Lahaina.

The burnt house next to Daniel Skousen's home is seen from Skusen's front door on Nov. 3, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii.

"I think that they're playing 'hide the ball,'" said Skousen's attorney, Edward Neiger. "The question is, why do they feel the need to hide anything?"

Ashford acknowledged some residents are skeptical of the cleanup efforts. He said the EPA has people stationed at the Lahaina Civic Center and at work sites to talk to community members about their concerns.

Andrew Shoemaker, a fine art photographer who operated a gallery on Lahaina's famous Front Street, believes it's an important part of healing to go back to the burned areas to see what is left, but he has recently had a lung infection and doesn't want to risk his health.

"I don't even want to take the chance of going over there," he said.

Dioxins, toxic compounds that can be released when plastic pipes, tires and other household materials are burned, are a particular concern for Shoemaker. Dioxins can last for decades inside the human body, and can cause reproductive and developmental problems, damage the immune system, interfere with hormones and cause cancer, according to the World Health Organization.

The EPA has found that forest fires and household trash burning in backyard burn barrels — how Skousen now describes the scent of Lahaina — are both major sources of dioxin emissions.

Irva Hertz-Picciotto, a professor and environmental epidemiologist with University of California-Davis, said the air monitors are effective and can measure particles that are about 30 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

Still, there is a lot that scientists don't yet know about the long-term health risks posed by fires, Hertz-Picciotto said.

That post-fire smell noticed by Skousen can be a result of off-gassing, she said, which occurs when volatile organic compounds are absorbed into surfaces and released later.

Even with careful air quality monitoring, off-gassing can expose residents and cleanup workers to toxic fire emissions for months, and research shows only some volatile organic compounds can be trapped by high-quality air particle filters, according to the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

"If it smells like burned plastic or burned electrical cables, then probably those chemicals are in the air and not healthy," Hertz-Picciotto said. "The other side of that, though, is even if you can't smell it that doesn't mean it's safe."

Skousen is a teacher and runs a cleaning business on the side. He's spent his off hours in Lahaina working on cleaning his and his neighbors' homes. Skousen and his wife decided to homeschool their kids at their temporary residence outside of Lahaina for now rather than risk exposing them to possible health problems.

Most of the guidelines for human exposure to pollutants are based on industrial settings, where people might work 40 hours a week — not their homes, where they might spend 90% of their time, said Hayes, the Boulder County air quality coordinator. Whether a home can be made safe enough for residency comes down in part to the resident's risk tolerance, Hayes said.

"There is no black-and-white, clear-cut answer," he said. "If they have young children in the home, or anyone has respiratory conditions, they might want to do significantly more cleaning that what the guidance documents are recognizing."

Make noise! A murder and a movie stir Italians to loudly demand an end to violence against women

Anger has erupted in Italy over the slaying of a college student allegedly by an ex-boyfriend who resented her success and wouldn't accept their breakup

ByFRANCES D'EMILIO 

Associated Press
November 23, 2023

FILE - A student cries during a flash mob 'A minute of noise for Giulia' for Giulia Cecchettin, allegedly killed at the hands of her possessive ex-boyfriend, outside the Statale University, in Milan, Italy, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023


ROME -- After the latest, horrifying killing of a college student allegedly by her resentful and jealous ex-boyfriend, students from Turin to Palermo have taken to pounding on classroom desks in unison to demand a stop to the slaying of women in Italy at the hands of men.

Just days before the killing of 22-year-old Guilia Cecchettin, Italians were already applauding a blockbuster movie about a woman who endures beatings and belittling by her overbearing husband. The movie is set in 1946, 24 years before divorce became legal in Italy and on the eve of the first time Italian women were allowed to vote. The film's exploration of the suffocating role of patriarchy in Italian society is painfully resonating today.

The moment is a remarkable confluence of fact and fiction, driving demands across Italy to protect women and to eradicate patriarchal mentalities woven into society.

Giulia Cecchettin disappeared after meeting her former boyfriend, Filippo Turetta, for a burger at a shopping mall, just days before she was to receive her degree in biomedical engineering at the University of Padua.

Her ex-beau, a year younger, friends and family said, resented that she had finished her studies ahead of him and feared she’d move on to pursue personal and professional dreams. Everything was ready to celebrate Cecchettin’s degree — red bows were tied to the metal fence outside her family home in Vigonovo, a town of 10,000 people near Venice — and a restaurant was booked for family and friends.

While at the burger place, she texted her older sister, Elena, for advice on what shoes to buy for the ceremony. It was the last her family would hear from her.

“Giulia’s case shook all of Italy,″ actress and director Paola Cortellesi said in an interview earlier this week in Rome. “Because in her disappearance, all of Italy knew that shortly there would have been the discovery of a young woman slain at the hands of a man.”

“Because by now it’s the same routine. It’s chilling to call it a routine,″ she said, referring to Italian statistics indicating roughly every three days a woman is murdered in the country at the hands of a man — often a spouse, a partner or an ex.

For the seven days before Cecchettin’s body was found, on Nov. 18 — covered by black plastic bags in a ditch near a lake in the foothills of the Alps — the nation’s newscasts gave macabre updates.

A few kilometers (miles) from her home, an industrial complex’s video camera on a deserted street captured the image of a man, alleged by investigators to be Turetta, chasing after Cecchettin who had bolted from the car before being struck repeatedly, knocked to the ground and bundled into the car, leaving hair and bloodstains on the sidewalk.

For days, roadside surveillance cameras recorded glimpses of Turetta’s car, first in northern Italy, then Austria, then Germany. On Sunday, Nov. 19, German police checked on a car parked on a highway shoulder and out of gas. Inside was Turetta.

On Wednesday, a German court ordered his extradition to Italy for investigation of suspicion of murder. A medical examiner’s report noted 26 wounds, apparently inflicted by a blade, on the woman’s neck, arms and legs, Italian media said.

As the real-life drama of Cecchettin's killing played out, the movie “C’è ancora domani” (There's still tomorrow) riveted audiences across Italy.

Cortellesi, who directed the movie, said her work swept up audiences “beyond the ordinary, precisely because, as I have been saying, it hit a raw nerve in the lives of everybody.” A noted Italian comic actress, Cortellesi also plays the lead role of Delia, an abused Roman wife hoping for a better future for her teenage daughter.

Cortellesi recounted how, at one screening, a woman stood up and revealed to a theater full of strangers that she, too, had an abusive husband, saying "I was Delia.”
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Among the film's fans is Daria Dicorpo, a middle-school teacher in Rome. “Unfortunately, the theme of violence against women is always actual,'' she said.

In the movie, women, from lower to upper classes, are told by their husbands to keep their opinions to themselves, or, more bluntly, to shut their mouth. ”Instead, no, we have to yell, we have to communicate the beauty of being women,'' Dicorpo said.

Italians had previously taken to the streets in silent, torchlit marches to protest the slayings of women. But Elena Cecchettin, Giulia's sister, offered an alternative: "make noise” to honor her sister. "If you have keys, rattle them,'' she called out.

In a letter to Corriere della Sera daily, Elena Cecchettin dismissed descriptions of her sister's alleged murderer as a “monster.” Killers are “not sick, they are the healthy sons of patriarchy," she wrote.

"Femicide isn't a crime of passion, it's a crime of power,'' Elena Cecchettin wrote, using a term that refers to the slaying of women precisely because they are women or because of the power men hold over women.

On Wednesday, after final passage of a bill to protect women with such measures as increased use of electronic monitoring devices for men stalking or threatening them, lawmakers from the opposition 5-Star Movement pounded rhythmically on their desks “in a minute of noise.”

Director Cortellesi appealed to the two most powerful women in Italian politics today — far-right Premier Giorgia Meloni and Elly Schlein, who heads the Democratic Party, Parliament's largest force on the left. She asked them to “do something (about women's violence) that doesn't have anything to do with keeping their electorate happy,” she said.

Schlein is pushing for bipartisan legislation to make lessons mandatory, starting in primary grades, to teach reciprocal respect between girls and boys, men and women. But the plan by Meloni's education minister envisions lessons on “relationships” for high schools.

Italy's RAI state TV reported that in the days since Cecchettin's body was found, calls to a national hotline for women fearing for their safety at the hands of men have jumped from some 200 to 400 a day— including from parents of young women.

“Women are afraid,'' said Oria Gargano, who heads Be Free, an organization fighting violence, sex trafficking and discrimination.

Among the handwritten notes tucked among the flowers, candles and bouquets left outside the Cecchettin family home was one reading: “Forgive us for not having done enough to change this culture.”

___

AP journalists Trisha Thomas and Silvia Stellacci contributed to this report.

The Psychology Of Violence In Sports — On The Field And In The Stands

I CAME FOR A BOXING MATCH 

AND A HOCKEY GAME BROKE OUT

Leonard L. Glass

In this Aug. 20, 2011 photo, football fans fight in the stands during a preseason NFL football game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Oakland Raiders in San Francisco. (Ben Margot/AP)

I thought my mother was a quintessentially maternal woman. But at one of my college’s football games, just before the last crucial goal line play, she yelled out her wish for the rival fullback: “Kill him! Kill him!” she shouted.

My father, always much more contained, leaned toward her and said quietly, “Pauline, that’s somebody’s son.”

Many years later, as a psychoanalyst and sports fan, I continue to wonder about this dichotomy among fans: we view our team's athletic rivals as the enemy, but they are also us. Consider our reaction to the friendly chat between the first baseman and the new base runner whose single just knocked in a crucial run; the hug between two spent heavyweights who’ve been pounding one another for 15 rounds; the lingering chat at midfield between two opposing football players after the last play. Did they go to high school together? Were they teammates on a youth team? Are they perchance cousins?

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules, and sadistic pleasure in violence. In other words, it is war without shooting.

GEORGE ORWELL

When my kids were young, I coached their youth soccer teams. After every game the teams would line up to shake hands. Depending on the players’ age and maturity, this gesture was empty at worst and enforced proto-sportsmanship at best. I’d have to check to make sure the younger boys weren’t spitting on their hands to spite their opponents.

The handshakes are a ritual acknowledgement that, fundamentally, opponents are necessary for the game to take place and to make the play transcendent.

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George Orwell notably observed, “Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules, and sadistic pleasure in violence. In other words, it is war without shooting.”

If that sounds hyperbolic, we must acknowledge how easy it is for us to excuse the professional foul by our team. A bean ball by an opposing pitcher we call a headhunter. But when our guy throws it it's just a “brush-back,” a time-honored warning. We see our linebacker as a hard player; but last year, when he played for our rival, he was a thug. Did he have a criminal record then? Maybe, but now we imagine him redeemed.

Studies have shown that violence in the game, particularly if perceived as unfair, increases the likelihood of violent acts by spectators. Fan violence is further magnified by strong identification with the team, underlying racial and ethnic tensions, social alienation, alcohol consumption, and predominance of young men in the crowd. The 2011 savage beating of Bryan Stow, a Giants fan, by two Dodger fans is a recent and egregious example.

Most of us seek the spectacle of the game to escape the struggles and banality of everyday life: we want to see exceptional displays of skill, strategy, teamwork, character, and yes, aggression, but within the rules of the game, what researcher Jennings Bryant termed “sanctioned violence.” And that’s the purpose of penalties: to keep aggression in check.


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Spectators recognize a spectrum for permissible vs. unacceptable aggression in sport, and we’re gripped by the tension between them. To disavow our interest in the varied displays of aggression would be hypocritical, denying a core aspect of our complex humanity. Experimental evidence in mice supports Freud’s hypothesis that aggression is rewarding in itself, akin to sex; and it’s mediated by the same brain neurochemistry.

As the president of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), Dana White, tells CNN: “Everyone loves a fight. It's in our DNA ... if you're in an intersection and there's a basketball game on one corner, a soccer game on another, a baseball game on the third, and a fight on the fourth, everyone will go watch the fight.”

But we want to see that aggression channeled, contained, ‘sublimated’ as we analysts say, on artful but safe display. Jennings Bryant concludes that the fans’ moral judgment of the lawfulness of their team’s violent actions mitigates the satisfaction felt even at the defeat of a hated rival team.


When players genuinely recognize and acknowledge one another, it marks the game for us as a humane competition.

Since we seek organized displays of aggression, we cannot deny our complicity when players are routinely hurt in the service of our entertainment. Can we convince ourselves that the brain injury that so often and predictably comes from playing in the NFL is a side matter, separate from our enjoyment of big hits? Do we pretend that the New Orleans Saints’ bounty system for disabling opponents was an aberration? Don’t we feel queasy at the promotion of games as wars between enemies? Are we devoid of responsibility for uncritically supporting the NFL, which dangles enormous sums in front of players some of whom have little more to market than their capacity to inflict or bear life-altering injury?

We need to balance our appetite to watch aggressive sports action with the other side of our natures, the part that wants to affirm our identification with the humanity and vulnerability of the players on both sides. When players genuinely recognize and acknowledge one another, it marks the game for us as a humane competition. That exchange at first base tempers our sense of blood rivalry and reminds us that it is actually a game. We can indulge in the fantasy of do-or-die because we’re reassured that those are not really the stakes.

Related:

Are Fans To Blame For Violence In NFL?
2 Men Sentenced In Brutal Attack On Giants Fan
Bill Littlefield: Can We Really Expect Football Culture To Change If We Don’t Want It To?psychology

Leonard L. Glass Cognoscenti contributor
Leonard L. Glass, M.D. is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. He is also an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a senior attending psychiatrist at McLean Hospital.

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