Dear Sam,

You asked me where we, as Europeans, could still find moral ground in this catastrophe. I searched in laws, treaties, and tribunals. But everywhere power rules, rules bend endlessly. Words like war crimes, proportionality, genocide - they are kneaded into emptiness.

America, our self-proclaimed “guardian angel,” flies like a blind moth into the flame. It crackles, it burns, and yet it whispers: “Bless this candle.” Perhaps they believe that even forgiveness can be bought. What remains of human rights is a hollow mask: a banality that legitimizes the unbearable suffering in Gaza.

I also searched in the scriptures of three religions. But even there the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” faded behind mountains of bodies, produced on an industrial scale, live and unceasing.

And then I saw the image of a dead child.

In that silence I understood: there is no deeper law, no binding commandment than this concrete face. The death of a child is the axiom of our conscience. It is the zero point where all masks fall. No ideology, no necessity, no justification can withstand it.

Europe can hide behind traditions of reason, law, and enlightenment. But as soon as a child is degraded to “collateral damage,” the mask is torn off. There, in the darkness, only one touchstone remains: children must never be a means - only life’s purpose. Whoever forgets this loses not only their dignity, but also the right to call themselves civilized.

Israel invokes necessity. Europe invokes powerlessness. But before the body of a single child, necessity collapses into cruelty, and powerlessness into complicity.

I write this not out of hatred, but out of love. Because I believe in this continent: in its cathedrals and parliaments, its music and revolutions, in the fragile dream that human dignity knows no borders. Precisely for that reason I must denounce - because I want Europe to live.

The blood of innocent children seeps into the marble of our parliaments. The silence with which we watch erodes faster than any bomb. Unmasking is no longer a metaphor; it is the condition for survival.

Europe must cast off the lie. Dare to see. Dare to judge. Or disappear into its own emptiness.

Ultimately only one truth remains standing: the suffering of children is the ground on which humanity stands - or falls.

And if we do not answer them, we ourselves cease to exist.

With love,

Coma

My text is based on and inspired by two major literary works: one highly actual, the other timeless. Omar El Akkad, who dissects our violent-destructive times, and Dostoyevsky, who exposes the essence of the human condition.

In The Brothers Karamazov, specifically the chapter Rebellion, two brothers argue about the existence of God. Yet all theology, all metaphysics, falls silent before the suffering of a single child. That fragile face is the absolute breaking point. Today, in our world, the same truth confronts political power and military omnipotence: no ideology, no strategy, no necessity can be justified by the death of a child.

This is where Dostoyevsky’s question and our present tragedy converge. This is where reason ends - and conscience begins.