Hypocrisy

After the war, in the shadow of the graveyard, the nations of the earth sat down and wrote their conscience into law. They signed it. They meant, they said, never again.

A signature, we are told, is a kind of sacrament. It is the rule of law, the thing that is supposed to bind the strong as surely as it binds the weak.

But watch what happens when someone loud and unwanted carries that promise into a courtroom and asks, simply, that it be kept. Watch the judge reach, with great dignity, for a reason to set it down.

The promise was real. The signature was real. And still, at the very hour it was meant to shield you, it comes back marked insufficient.

Hypocrisy is a short, fierce book about international law and the human beings it was written to protect. It travels from the conventions of 1948, through Europe, into a British court, down to a few people standing at a fence with cans of paint.

It asks you to look, and not to look away.

Whether you march for Gaza or for the air your children will breathe, the truth is the same, and it is older than all of us. The law a nation signs is not the law its courts will use to save you. To know that, to really know it, is where the refusal to be made quiet begins.