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Executive Summary
Atrocity events have historically functioned as turning points that reshape societies, consolidate ruling interests, and justify wars. The 9/11 attacks in the United States exemplify this pattern, serving as the archetype of what John McMurtry terms the atrocity playbook. Through trauma-driven narrative construction and policing of dissent, the official conspiracy theory of 9/11 legitimated systemic payoffs for military industries, surveillance systems, and geopolitical expansion, while disabling life requirements both abroad and at home.
The October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel has been framed as “Israel’s 9/11,” reproducing the same pattern: trauma was mobilized to consolidate political power, justify mass military retaliation, and silence dissent. Yet Gaza differs from earlier cases in one decisive respect. For the first time, international legal institutions — including the United Nations Commission of Inquiry and the International Criminal Court — have explicitly named genocide during the unfolding of atrocities, creating an unprecedented planetary contest between life-blind state narratives and life-coherent legal standards.
McMurtry’s life-value framework provides the universal criterion for navigating this contest. The distinction between the money sequence of value (profit and systemic power) and the life sequence of value (universal necessities of survival and development) clarifies the structural contradiction at the heart of atrocity-pretext politics. Whereas the money sequence thrives on destruction, the life sequence insists that legitimacy must be measured by what enables rather than disables life.
The paper concludes that Gaza represents a civilizational test: whether humanity will continue to be governed by the atrocity playbook or transition to a coherence-first planetary order anchored in the Primary Axiom of Value. Strengthening the independence of international law, institutionalizing life-value audits, and empowering civil society as a global immune system are identified as key pathways toward systemic coherence.
