Will history be kind?
We've all seen someone say "you're on the losing side of history" or "history will not be kind to you" in an argument. If we want to be cynical, it can feel like a more polite version of just yelling "I'll dance on your grave"! After all, if I could convince someone in an argument wouldn't I do that rather than appeal to some nebulous idea that future people will REALLY disagree with my opponent? And doesn't everyone think history is on their side?
But when I see denialism about Israel's war crimes, I can't help but think of the history argument.
It's not about optimism. I don't think there's a guarantee that the world will keep progressing morally. I've seen too much backsliding just in the last 10 years to believe that. It's probably more about what's happening out in the world. I think world opinion is shifting (read: old canards by Israel aren't working) and I can project that into the future.
To put it another way: there has been virtually no journalist access into Gaza for the last 6 months, the internet has been repeatedly turned off and the capabilities of Gazans to record and report on mass casualties have been directly attached. And despite all of that, there have been absolute mounds of evidence of war crimes coming through.
Given all of this, when it becomes actually possible to investigate Israel's actions in Gaza properly, do you really think that the sum of war crimes evidence will become LESS than we have today? That journalists will uncover mass evidence of hoaxing which would reduce the totality of evidence? Or do you think it's more likely that we'll find that the current evidence (death toll, qualitative testimony etc) was just the tip of the iceberg? That in fact Israel had murdered many more civilians than current estimates (eg. over 100 thousand or more), and in worse ways than we can even imagine? I know which way I'm leaning.
Sure, I could of course be wrong. But if you can make an educated estimate about the total sum of evidence, you then have a proxy for future world opinion. And from this we can infer a little bit about how history may judge things, at least in the near future.
Of course there's no guarantee that this will become the long-term world historical narrative. So if we could all do our bit to reduce the chances of the total resurgence of fascism world-wide that would be great.