Am I My Brother’s Keeper? Dostoevsky, Hubris and Palestine

Once read, it’s unforgettable. In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky pens a scene so devastating, so horrifying, that it burns itself into the very soul of any reader. A wealthy landowner, in a fit of cold and calculated malice, unleashes his hunting dogs upon a defenseless peasant child. The boy’s crime? He had accidentally injured the paw of one of these prized dogs. Before the boy’s very mother, who can do nothing but scream and collapse in despair, the dogs tear into the child’s flesh, shredding his life apart in a frenzy of primal cruelty. The landowner watches, not with regret but with satisfaction—the embodiment of power unrestrained, justice perverted, and innocence betrayed.

The visceral horror of this moment lies not only in the violence but in its profound violation of morality. A child, a being of pure innocence and blamelessness, is subjected to unthinkable cruelty, while the mother’s agony amplifies the injustice. What Dostoevsky evokes in this moment is an unflinching examination of human depravity, forcing us to confront the darkest depths of power when wielded without conscience.

It is a scene that defies moral comprehension, yet it is one that finds its devastating echo in the contemporary world. For the children of Palestine, the parallels are hauntingly clear. Each day, these children endure a torment no less profound than that inflicted on Dostoevsky’s peasant boy. They are trapped in a system that seems engineered to strip them of their innocence, safety, and future—caught in the jaws of a conflict they neither created nor can escape.

Bombs and bullets rain down upon their homes, schools, and playgrounds, reducing their world to rubble and ash. Hunger gnaws at their bellies, fear haunts their dreams, and the specter of loss is a constant companion.

Jessie Louise Vernon

The Blamelessness of the Victims

The boy in Dostoevsky’s tale represents innocence in its purest form. He had no malice, no intent to harm, and yet he paid the ultimate price for an accidental act. Similarly, the children of Palestine bear no culpability for the violence, poverty, and displacement that have become the hallmarks of their existence. They are born into a world already scarred by conflict, their lives shaped by forces far beyond their control. Yet, like Dostoevsky’s boy, they are the ones who suffer most acutely.

Poverty clings to them like a second skin, robbing them of their childhood joys and forcing many into premature adulthood. Bombs and bullets rain down upon their homes, schools, and playgrounds, reducing their world to rubble and ash. Hunger gnaws at their bellies, fear haunts their dreams, and the specter of loss is a constant companion. These children are not merely collateral damage; they are the deliberate targets of a system that seems to prioritize dominance over compassion and control over humanity.

The Mothers’ Agony

The mother in Dostoevsky’s scene, powerless to save her child, becomes a symbol of the unbearable anguish that comes with witnessing the destruction of one’s flesh and blood. Her screams reverberate through the pages, a raw expression of grief and futility that transcends time and place.

How many Palestinian mothers have screamed the same way? How many have cradled lifeless bodies, their children torn from them by violence that defies reason or justice? These mothers—their hearts shattered, their arms empty—are left to pick up the fragments, literally in most instances, of precious little lives destroyed by forces they cannot control. The world watches their pain, much as the landowner watched the peasant mother, with a mix of indifference, helplessness, or even tacit approval.

The Hubris Before the Fall

Dostoevsky’s narrative unfolds against the backdrop of a Russia teetering on the edge of transformation. The grotesque hubris of the landowner reflects not only individual depravity but the broader societal arrogance that presumes power can exist without consequence. History, however, is unforgiving of such hubris. The revolution and civil war that followed Dostoevsky’s time shattered the illusion of invincibility, bringing a reckoning that echoed the biblical warning: he who is first will soon be last.

This cyclical return to balance—a restoration of the moral and natural order—feels almost divine in its inevitability. The world cannot sustain systems that exploit and destroy the innocent. Whether through human intervention or the inexorable forces of history, the scales of justice will tilt back, asserting that the lives of children—of all beings—carry intrinsic worth that no power can erase.

For if we do not, if we allow innocence to be devoured without resistance, we become complicit in the very inhumanity we claim to abhor. And history, with its unrelenting balance, reminds us that such complicity will not go unpunished.

Jessie Louise Vernon

A Moral Reckoning

The suffering of Palestinian children is not merely a localized tragedy but a global moral failure. It challenges us to confront the systems and ideologies that perpetuate such injustice and to question the power structures that allow the innocent to bear the brunt of collective sins. The same forces of hubris that once led Russia to the brink now echo in a world where cruelty against the innocent persists without accountability.

If we recoil in horror at the fate of Dostoevsky’s peasant boy, how can we turn away from the plight of children who live and die under similar circumstances today? If we condemn the fictional landowner for his callousness, how can we justify our inaction in the face of real-world atrocities?

A Call for Compassion

The story of Dostoevsky’s peasant boy is not merely a tale of cruelty; it is a plea for empathy. It forces us to see the child not as an abstract symbol but as a human being with a life, a future, and a right to dignity. The same plea must be made for the children of Palestine. They are not statistics or distant figures on a screen. They are sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, with names, dreams, and whose laughter deserves to fill the air.

To read Dostoevsky’s account and feel outrage is to affirm our humanity. To witness the suffering of Palestinian children and do nothing is to betray it. The landowner’s satisfaction in his act of cruelty should haunt us not only because it is monstrous but because it reflects the indifference that too often defines our world. The question Dostoevsky asks—how can such cruelty exist?—is the same question we must ask ourselves today.

For if we do not, if we allow innocence to be devoured without resistance, we become complicit in the very inhumanity we claim to abhor. And history, with its unrelenting balance, reminds us that such complicity will not go unpunished.

So, in response, yes. You are your brother’s keeper. It is your responsibility to keep him from harm. For how can you fly while your brother is falling?

Thank You for Reading!

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