Amid the anguish and shock over Hamas’ devastating Oct. 7 cross-border assault, Israeli officials have used many different terms and euphemisms for their war aims in Gaza.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the goal is to “crush” the Islamist militant group that has ruled the Palestinian territory for the past 16 years. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has said Israel will “eliminate ... Hamas from the face of the Earth.”

And former military chief Benny Gantz, an opposition politician brought into the coalition last week as part of an “emergency unity government,” has said the objective is to “change the security and strategic reality” of the entire area.

Yet how Israel means to achieve these objectives, at what cost to the people of Gaza while not triggering a wider Middle East conflagration, and what would follow on the ground in Gaza, remain unclear.

The consensus is that Israel will mount a massive ground invasion to root out what is assumed to be a well-prepared and dug-in enemy, something it had previously avoided because of the costs to both sides. Israeli military officers are clear this will not be, as one said in reference to countless previous hostilities, “just another round with Gaza. It’s something else.”

Unprecedented visit

President Joe Biden is set to arrive in Israel Wednesday for an unprecedented wartime visit, as rockets from Gaza still rain down on much of southern and central Israel and Israeli fighter jets continue to bombard the coastal enclave.

His goal will be to find some middle ground between – as he has said – his “iron-clad support” for Israel’s security in the wake of the horrific Hamas atrocities, and his desire to also ensure that Gaza does not collapse into a humanitarian disaster.

Over 1,400 Israelis were killed in the Hamas attack, mostly civilians including children and older people, according to Israeli authorities. Nearly 200 Israelis have been taken captive in Gaza. Both numbers are still expected to rise from the worst attack in the Jewish state’s history, say Israeli analysts.

Doaa AlBaz/AP

Palestinians search for survivors in the rubble of a family house of Ayman Nofa, one of the top Hamas commanders, following an Israeli airstrike at the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023.

Inside Gaza, some 2,800 people have been killed in Israeli strikes, and 9,700 wounded, according to Gaza health officials, and Israel has laid what some senior officials have described as a “siege” around the territory, cutting off water, electricity, and the entry of goods, including medical supplies.

U.S. officials have said their immediate goal is to alleviate the humanitarian situation inside Gaza. Yet Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has been traveling around the region, has so far been unable to broker a deal that would move aid convoys from Egypt in, and dual-national foreign-passport holders out.

At the same time, the United States has solidly backed Israel in the military realm, deploying two carrier strike groups to the region. Airlifts of U.S. munitions and other advanced weaponry land in Israel near daily. President Biden himself has warned Iran and its Shiite militia proxy Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, to not fully enter the conflict.

“Don’t,” the president said last week, in a pointed address to both parties.

Israeli officials and the general public have been greatly appreciative of the U.S. president’s solidarity, with his public remarks last week aired repeatedly on television as a sort of rallying cry in lieu of commercials (which given the wartime footing and national grief have all been suspended).

Skirmishes with Hezbollah

Israeli analysts are hopeful that the threat of direct American military involvement may yet deter the powerful Hezbollah, which has a vast arsenal of rockets and precision missiles at its disposal, and spare Israel the costly need to fight on two fronts.

The U.S. military deployment “makes clear to our enemies that if they think about joining the attack against [us] there will be an American intervention. Israel will not be alone. This strengthens us, and also stops them from taking adventurous risks,” Israeli national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said Tuesday.

Since the outbreak of hostilities in and around Gaza, there have been near daily cross-border anti-tank missile and mortar attacks by Hezbollah into northern Israel, as well as attempted incursions, with retaliatory Israeli air and artillery strikes. Both sides have taken casualties. Despite the often-heavy fire, Israeli officials maintain that it still has not reached the level of open war.

If it came to it, one senior Israeli military officer said, “we’re ready and of course we can” fight on two fronts simultaneously. But Israeli officials are clear that they would rather not.

Francisco Seco/AP

Israeli soldiers get ready to patrol along a road near the border between Israel and Lebanon, Oct. 16, 2023. Skirmishes between Israel and Hezbollah, in Lebanon, have increased as the fighting in Gaza continues.

The focus for now, they maintain, is Hamas in Gaza. The objective as laid out by the Israeli cabinet?

“To destroy the military and governance capabilities of Hamas” and other Gaza-based militant groups, Mr. Hanegbi said, and to ensure that “Hamas will no longer be the sovereign ruler ... able to threaten us from Gaza.” 

Israel has already mobilized some 360,000 reservists and massed at least four divisions in southern Israel, bordering Gaza. Most analysts expect a major and deep ground offensive into Gaza, perhaps in the coming days, although President Biden’s visit to the region will almost certainly delay its start.

All previous Israeli governments shied from such a step precisely due to the heavy toll it would inflict on Israeli forces and Palestinian civilians as they fought their way through the densely packed territory’s cramped warrens and refugee camps. 

“We saw how Hamas organized and coordinated its offensive,” says veteran military analyst Amos Harel. “I’m sure they’ve prepared defensively just as well.”

Yet it now appears the Israeli public, as well as its military and political leadership, is firmly behind just such a move.

“No doubt a ground operation will be there,” retired Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, formerly the head of Israeli military intelligence, said on a call with journalists. “The idea that we don’t want to enter on the ground was based on the price. Since the price [of the Hamas attack] was so high, we won’t hesitate” this time.

Focus on northern Gaza

Israeli officials will not speak about their future operational plans in order not to tip their hand.

But in pure military terms, Israel has so far bombarded Hamas targets in Gaza from the air and sea and land, preparing the way for what are likely to be columns of armor and infantry, backed up by naval units, special forces, and close air support, analysts predict.

The Israeli military has for the past week warned residents of northern Gaza to head southward “for their own safety.” According to the United Nations, some 600,000 Gazans have already moved to the southern environs of the territory.

Most analysts expect the Israeli ground offensive to focus, at least in its initial stage, on Gaza City in the north, the territory’s largest population center and the hub of Hamas’ governing and military capabilities.

The inclination, Israeli analysts and officials contend, is not to reoccupy the entirety of Gaza – Israel withdrew all its settlers and army in 2005 – but rather to move in with force and begin destroying Hamas weapons stores and rocket arsenals, and to kill fighters and senior leaders.

Most worrisome for military planners is the extensive underground tunnel network, termed the “Gaza Metro,” that Hamas has been building for years.

“You’re dealing with this enemy on his own turf,” Mr. Harel warns. “He’ll dictate terms, too, and he’s been preparing.”

Maya Alleruzzo/Reuters

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has framed the current campaign as an existential fight for Israel’s place in the Middle East, and has begun preparing the public for what may lie ahead.

“Victory will take time; there will be difficult moments. ... Sacrifice will be required,” he said in parliament Monday.

But the Israeli public appears ready for the sacrifice, not least to ensure the ability of the shattered communities of southern Israel to return and rebuild.

Need for deterrence

Batia Horin, a grandmother from the Kfar Azza kibbutz where at least 100 people were slain, has now been evacuated to a different kibbutz in central Israel. She and her entire family mercifully survived; many of her neighbors did not.

“No one will go back to the [region bordering Gaza] if Gaza won’t be eliminated. I know that’s an abstract term. What it really means is that there shouldn’t be anything that can threaten [us] ... and all the other communities.”

Major General Yadlin allowed that such war aims were “ambitious,” but the atrocities committed by Hamas fighters during their assault were “pictures that Israel cannot tolerate.”

And, he added, it was also a question of deterring other actors across the region.

“At the end of the operation, the rest of the Middle East should contemplate what the consequences would be for trying to do this on another border.”

To the question of what may come after in Gaza, and after Hamas, if Israel indeed emerges “victorious”?

Israeli officials have no clear answer yet.

“We still don’t know what will be,” Mr. Hanegbi, the national security adviser, said Tuesday. “But we definitely know what there won’t be.”

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

A member of the Clerk's staff tallies the first round of voting for a new speaker on the floor of the House of Representatives, October 17, 2023. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio fell short of the needed votes to win.

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan came into Tuesday’s speakership election projecting confidence that he would win, telling reporters, “We need to get a speaker today.”

But in the initial vote on the House floor, 20 Republicans refused to support him – five times more than he could afford to lose. It was similar to the opposition that Kevin McCarthy faced back in January when the current narrow GOP majority first attempted to elect a speaker. 

Mr. Jordan’s opponents weren’t the same hard-line lawmakers who forced Mr. McCarthy to endure 15 rounds of voting before securing the gavel, in what would prove to be a short, tumultuous tenure. Rather, today’s holdouts were a coalition of moderates and what might be called institutionalists – Republicans who want to deny the gavel to a lawmaker they see as an obstructionist. 

In a show of backbone that surprised many, these members declined to coalesce behind the latest GOP nominee, despite intense pressure from Jordan allies and despite the prospect that it would prolong this period of disarray in the House. Many made clear they were put off by Mr. Jordan’s tactics in the leadership jockeying. They said they did not want to reward the band of Freedom Caucus members and allied conservatives who had brought on the chaos of the past few weeks by ousting Speaker McCarthy and trying to bend the will of the majority to their demands. 

“When you have people that broke the rules, and ... now they’re saying, ‘You know, we need you to get on board’ – it doesn’t work for some of us,” Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who cast his vote today for Mr. McCarthy, told reporters on Monday night.

After the initial vote Tuesday afternoon, the House went into recess as the Jordan team tried to regroup. While his team projected confidence that another round of voting would take place later in the day, at press time it looked like a second vote would take place on Wednesday. There were also questions about whether the holdouts would eventually cave, if offered sweeteners or if it became clear this was the only way to get the House working again – or if their stance might actually inspire some Jordan supporters to defect. 

The House has now been brought to a standstill for two weeks, with no speaker to authorize floor activity – a highly unusual state of affairs for the modern Congress, despite recent gridlock.

Empower the temporary speaker?

If Mr. Jordan can’t consolidate support, one fallback option increasingly under discussion would be to empower Speaker Pro Tem Patrick McHenry for a short period of time. Democrats, for their part, are pushing for half a dozen Republicans to support Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. 

Alex Brandon/AP

Speaker Pro Tem Patrick McHenry of North Carolina presides as Republicans try to elect Rep. Jim Jordan, a top Donald Trump ally, to be the new House speaker, Oct. 17, 2023. If Mr. Jordan's candidacy ultimately fails, one option might be to empower Mr. McHenry to conduct House business as temporary speaker.

Whoever ultimately wins the gavel, the turmoil of the past two weeks does not bode well for that person to govern the Republican conference – let alone the House. Amid a raft of pressing issues, from a Nov. 17 deadline to fund the government to Ukraine’s and Israel’s urgent calls for military aid, the new speaker will face daunting challenges with razor-thin margins. 

“If we don’t have a speaker in the chair, we don’t have the ability to govern,” said Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee and recently met with the White House about concerns that the Israel-Gaza war could escalate and involve U.S. ground troops. “The United States is projecting weakness. And we can’t afford to project that dynamic anymore.”

The Hastert rule and beyond

Since the mid-1990s, House Republican speakers have followed an informal principle known as the Hastert rule: The majority of the majority must support a measure before it can come to the floor for a vote. The idea was to ensure that only legislation broadly acceptable to Republicans would become law, and to prevent measures from passing with more support from the other side.  

But recently, some Republicans complain, that “majority of the majority” rule has been replaced by something different – a small band of GOP hard-liners calling the shots on policy matters and even dictating the speakership itself.

“We have a minority of the majority kicking our butts,” Representative Bacon, who represents a Nebraska district that Mr. Biden won in 2020, told reporters Monday night. “They’ve been orchestrating this since January to get to this point with Mr. Jordan. And I think it’s unacceptable.”

The eight Republicans who combined with Democrats to oust Kevin McCarthy constituted less than 4% of the House GOP conference, effectively forcing the other 96% to bend to their will.

Those eager to demonstrate that Republicans can govern effectively were loath to reward such tactics by supporting another hard-liner like Mr. Jordan. 

A standout wrestler who went nearly undefeated in high school and college, he has cultivated a reputation as a fighter – some would say a bully – in Congress. He co-founded the Freedom Caucus in 2015 to challenge GOP leadership, and helped bring down Speaker John Boehner later that year.

But it’s not so much Mr. Jordan’s past reputation that is responsible for the resistance he faced among institutionalists. Rather, it’s the circumstances of the past two weeks and what they would be rewarding – “reinforcing this behavior and power dynamics,” says Liam Donovan, a former staffer for the National Republican Senatorial Committee and now a lobbyist.

Indeed, Mr. Jordan’s tactics of building support in recent days appeared to alienate some mainstream Republicans who might have otherwise supported him. In particular, after he lost an internal speaker nomination contest to Rep. Steve Scalise last week, his offer to endorse Mr. Scalise – but only for one round of voting, and only on condition that Mr. Scalise would then return the favor – irked many. Mr. Scalise then bowed out.

“You’re telling me that’s the way a team works? Not any team that I’ve ever played on and certainly not a winning team,” Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania told reporters last night.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

House members applaud Rep. Jim Jordan (seated, center) after he voted for himself to be the new House speaker, at the Capitol in Washington, Oct. 17, 2023.

But hard-liners have an asymmetrical advantage over frustrated colleagues like Mr. Kelly: They are willing to bring the wheels of government to a screeching halt in the name of reining in a bloated bureaucracy. By contrast, institutionalists – however conservative on government spending or other matters – have a vested interest in keeping government functional. 

“So while they may have been pushed to the point where they are willing to adopt those tactics, there is an inherent reluctance to do that because at the end of the day these guys want to be team players,” says Mr. Donovan, the GOP lobbyist. “They think it’s important to unify and get back to their job.”

Paradoxically, the “most approximate avenue to stability” at the moment may be electing Jim Jordan as speaker, he adds. 

And moderates have more to lose by blocking a candidate, adds Matt Glassman, senior fellow at Georgetown University in Washington. Whereas hard-liners’ brand is strengthened by resisting the party, he says, moderates depend on the party for resources and campaign help.

“They have a sense of party loyalty embedded in them, in part driven by these needs of electoral help, but it’s also baked into the cake of who they are,” says Mr. Glassman. 

Jordan’s weaknesses

To be sure, Mr. Jordan comes with plenty of liabilities. 

As a wrestling coach at Ohio State from 1987-1995, he overlapped with a doctor who sexually abused at least 177 athletes over two decades, according to an independent report. At least six former wrestlers say they reported such incidents to Mr. Jordan, who has denied knowledge of the abuse. 

In Congress, he has few legislative accomplishments. Since being elected in 2006, not a single bill he sponsored became law, though he was a co-sponsor on 64 bills that did. The Center for Effective Lawmaking, a joint project of the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University, has ranked him as one of the least effective House Republican legislators. Former Speaker John Boehner once called him a “legislative terrorist.”

But Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota, of the Main Street Republicans caucus, told reporters that most of the reasons he’d heard for voting against Jim Jordan were about “petty squabbles” and “the transgressions of yesterday.”

“We need to ask ourselves, who is the speaker for tomorrow?” he said. “Who is going to give us the best chance to secure conservative wins while avoiding a government shutdown? Who is going to give us the best opportunity to manage the different personalities in our conference?”

And indeed, as a darling of conservative media, Mr. Jordan is seen as someone who could provide some cover for House Republicans until they can get the government funded – even if it means some unpopular moves, including another temporary stop-gap measure like the one that proved to be a last straw for Mr. McCarthy’s detractors. 

In comments to Hill reporters, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky predicted Mr. Jordan would enjoy a year or two of immunity from right-wing “potshots.”

“His brand is the gold standard with the Republican base,” he said.

The attacks that the Palestinian militant group Hamas waged last week against Israelis, killing more than 1,400 people and abducting an estimated 200 hostages, were breathtakingly cruel violations of the law of warfare.

Israel has retaliated with massive airstrikes into Gaza, where Hamas rules, killing some 2,800 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Human rights advocates in turn warn that laws of warfare include not only not deliberately targeting civilians, but also avoiding indiscriminate attacks near them, too.

As the Israel Defense Forces prepares an expected ground invasion of the densely populated urban territory of Gaza – where nearly half the residents are children under the age of 18 – analysts fear more human rights contraventions to come.

More than 1,000 miles to the north, it’s clear that some Russian units invading Ukraine made a practice of summarily executing and raping civilians, and that officials in Moscow – allegedly including President Vladimir Putin – masterminded the deportation of Ukrainian toddlers to Russia.

To state the obvious, it’s clear that the mere existence of the Geneva Conventions and other such widely signed statutes is no guarantee of their success. Yet analysts say these agreements do still have an influence, helping to save civilian lives in practice, affecting how wars are waged, and, importantly, often resulting in legal action to hold violators to account after infractions occur.

In Gaza, applying rules of war is complicated, too, by the somewhat murky status of the conflict. Hamas is not a national army, but Hamas has in effect been governing Gaza and has a large fighting force. To many analysts, the conflict represents a “non-international armed conflict,” such as when a nation’s military engages a nonstate armed group during a civil war. Many of the rules of war would still apply, however, such as key provisions to protect civilians.

Ohad Zwigenberg/AP

The site of a music festival in southern Israel near the border with the Gaza Strip, Oct. 12, 2023. At least 260 Israeli festivalgoers were killed during the attack by Hamas Oct. 7.

What exactly are the Geneva Conventions? 

The First Geneva Convention, adopted in 1864, became a pillar of the law of war with the novel, humane idea that wounded people, and those helping them, should be protected. This also marked the formation of the Red Cross, its symbol – the reverse of the Swiss flag – being a nod to its birth country.

The concept of war crimes continued to develop around the dawn of the 20th century, despite some Western diplomats who argued that to talk of “humanizing” combat was “nonsense.” The Hague Conventions of 1899 banned asphyxiating gases, balloons that delivered explosives, and bullets that expand in the body – the latter over the objections of the British, who at the time were using them against agitating subjects in their colonies.

The Geneva Conventions (now plural) of 1949 widened the protection of noncombatants and have been adopted by every nation in the world. Further expanded with the 1977 protocols, they ban, among other things, murder, torture, and brutality against civilians, and require the free passage of food and medical supplies for them. They also prohibit the taking of hostages.

Grave violations of the Geneva Conventions can be – and have been – prosecuted in individual countries as well as through the International Criminal Court at The Hague, Netherlands.

Mike Corder/APFile

An exterior view of the headquarters of the International Criminal Court at The Hague, Netherlands, Jan. 12, 2016.

Groups like Hamas often use civilian​s as shields. Does this affect the rules? 

Gaza is a densely populated area, and Hamas certainly takes advantage of that. Legitimate military targets exist in Gaza, and Hamas fighters – who have committed atrocities that investigators are already documenting for war crimes prosecutions – aren’t entitled to civilian protections.

“I think it’s important to underline that,” says Tom Porteous, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch. But he says governments must always abide by a golden rule of international humanitarian law: “Atrocities committed by one side do not justify ignoring the laws of war on the other side.”

Israel has warned some 1 million Palestinians to evacuate northern Gaza in advance of expected ground operations. Hamas has called on people to stay in their homes.

The Israeli government’s warnings are precautions that attackers are required to take to minimize civilian harm. That said, Palestinians who choose not to leave their homes “would not thereby lose their civilian protections, including their protection from indiscriminate attacks or starvation as a method of warfare,” notes Tom Dannenbaum, a legal scholar at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced precisely this method of warfare last week in laying out plans for a siege to block electricity, food, and fuel into Gaza. “We are fighting human animals,” Mr. Gallant said of Hamas, adding that Israel will “act accordingly.”

Such an order, which could clearly result in the starvation of civilians, constitutes a “massive war crime,” says Mr. Dannenbaum. It is also collective punishment, which is likewise against the law.

Fatima Shbair/AP

Destruction from Israeli aerial bombardment is seen in Gaza City, Oct. 11, 2023. Palestinian health officials reported hundreds of deaths from Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.

What can the U.S. do to reinforce international human rights law?

In the wake of the Hamas attacks, the United States has been sending strong signals of support for Israel’s right to respond. At the same time, the Biden administration has pushed for minimizing civilian casualties. Additionally, Secretary of State Antony Blinken sought to address concerns this week by calling for a release of hostages by Hamas and for Israel to agree to allow humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza from donor nations and multilateral organizations.

As a general rule, money is one method by which the U.S. can seek to reinforce international humanitarian law. The U.S. Foreign Assistance Act makes it clear that countries engaging “in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights” risk having U.S.-provided security assistance revoked.

“Gross violations” of human rights is a term that has precise legal meaning, and includes torture, prolonged detention without trial, and forced disappearances. The U.S. government “appears to have rarely restricted assistance pursuant to this provision,” a March Congressional Research Report notes.

There are other monitoring tools Washington has at its disposal. The Leahy Law, named after former Sen. Patrick Leahy, who championed it in 1997, prohibits U.S. security assistance from going to any unit of a foreign security force when there is credible information that the unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.

Last December, a significant amendment came into effect to close a “persistent loophole” in the law’s implementation – the fact that it has been difficult for the U.S. to trace where its money is going, according to the Center for Civilians in Conflict.

And in August, the U.S. put into effect the first formal system for tracking any nefarious use of U.S. weapons provided to foreign governments. Through the new Civilian Harm Incident Response Guidance, U.S. officials will investigate allegations of human rights violations and potentially cut off the spigot of U.S. weapons to offenders.

“It’s not only the right thing to do from a moral perspective,” a senior State Department official told The Washington Post. “It is more effective for U.S. national security if our partners are using these weapons responsibly.”

Many experts say an important step America could take to bolster international human rights law would be to join the International Criminal Court (ICC), as the court that enforces that law.

Are there examples of progress?

Yes, especially on the justice front. Last year a court in Germany sentenced a former Syrian intelligence official to life in prison for crimes against humanity, and a French court convicted a Liberian fighter for direct involvement in torture 25 years earlier, Mr. Porteous notes.

Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik/Kremlin/AP/File

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a videoconference at the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, Oct. 21, 2022. The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Putin for war crimes because of his alleged involvement in abductions of children from Ukraine.

A decade ago, the conviction of the former president of Liberia for war crimes in Sierra Leone “sent a strong deterrent signal, at least in West Africa, at the time,” he adds.

Justice is hard-fought, Mr. Porteous acknowledges, but human rights law does reward determination.

In March, the meticulous documentation of Mr. Putin’s role in the deportation of Ukrainian children led to the ICC issuing an arrest warrant for him.

Though Russia – like the U.S. and Israel – is not a member of the ICC, signatories to the Rome Statute are required to arrest wanted persons who travel to their country.

Mr. Putin didn’t travel to an August summit in South Africa, an ICC member, because he could have been arrested there, Mr. Dannenbaum says. “That’s a significant impact.”

It might not happen quickly, but crimes against humanity “have no statute of limitations,” he adds. An arrest warrant from the ICC, in other words, “will hang over individuals for the rest of their lives.”

Candace Boissy

Alexandra Hudson is the author of "The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles To Heal Society and Ourselves."

For Alexandra Hudson, working in Washington, D.C., was a culture shock. Ms. Hudson hails from Canada, land of the nice, where her mother is a renowned coach of good manners. So when working at a U.S. government agency, she was taken aback by brusque, sharp-elbowed office politics. To her relief, she also met colleagues who were well mannered. “At first, I thought, ‘OK, these are my people,’” says Ms. Hudson, in a video interview from her Indianapolis home. “And then I realized that these people would smile at you, flatter you, and stab you in the back the moment that you no longer served their purposes.” It prompted Ms. Hudson to consider the difference between politeness and civility. Her first book, “The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles To Heal Society and Ourselves,” looks at how to bridge gaps and find commonalities. Ms. Hudson spoke with Monitor staff writer Stephen Humphries.

Can you recall an insight that surprised you while writing this book?

Clarity came when I understood there was a difference between civility and politeness. That politeness, I argue in my book, is a technique. It’s etiquette. Manners is the superficial stuff. Civility, by contrast, is a disposition of the heart, a way of seeing others as our moral equals and worthy of respect because of our shared dignity as human beings. 

The Latin root of politeness is polire, which means to smooth or to polish. And that’s what politeness does. It polishes over differences. ... Whereas civility comes from the Latin word civitas, which means city and citizenship. And that’s what civility is. It’s the habits and duties of citizenship that sometimes requires telling hard truths, sometimes requires protest and civil disobedience.  

What is the “soul” of civility?

When we are cruel and malicious to others, it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s not just us hurting someone else. We are hurt as well. It deforms us, our souls, as well. 

The soul of civility [is] acting in ways that cultivate our soul. ... We further appreciate the humanity and dignity and personhood of those around us. ... And in light of that, the differences that may exist between us are far outweighed by the commonalities we have as members of the human community. 

In your own life, do you have any stories of being uncivil to someone and then, upon reflection, changing course?

I was on this very high-end store’s website trying to purchase an item. And I was frustrated that my coupon code that I got from registering with the store wasn’t working. So I called the customer service line and they told me, “Oh, sorry, there’s fine print. This is exempt from the discount.” I was apoplectic.

It was after [the customer service agent] had actually given me the discount because I had thrown this little mini tantrum that I was like, “Oh my gosh, what have I done?” 

I deeply apologized to her. And she so graciously forgave me. And looking back, you know, it wasn’t even about the coupon code. There were other things going on in my life that made me frustrated and less gracious than I otherwise might be and should be. ... 

That’s something that I’ve learned. When I encounter a person clearly having a bad day, [I try] to have that attitude of, “OK. There’s clearly something else going on here.” ... That might give us a greater spirit of graciousness and compassion that I was so grateful to have been shown when I was not at my best. 

You write that “our very civilization is held together by small common courtesies, which is why such small, simple daily acts matter.” Can you expand on why that is?

If we go through life without a care in the world for how our actions affect others, that has a negative, vicious ripple effect. We’re annoyed that our boss was unkind to us. Then we take that out on the bus driver on our way home from work, or the clerk at the grocery store, and they go home and are mean to their child. Then that child goes to school the next day and is mean to their teacher.

Less often do we hear examples of the inverse. Stories of one magnanimous soul’s power to sow seeds of light and grace that germinate and create a mellifluous echo across time and place. 

So we can’t change the world, but we can change ourselves. And if enough of us choose to reclaim the soul of civility, I think we might be able to change the world. 

How do we bridge divides when we don’t have contact with people who are unlike us? 

There’s a person I feature in my book named Joanna Taft, who is staging a revolution against this era of animosity and atomization from her front porch. She intentionally invites people to her porch from different racial, ethnic, geographic, religious backgrounds.

It’s essential to find opportunities to not just be around people like us and to have the exposure to people of different perspectives and from different walks of life. ... It’s an attitude towards others in the world around us. One of openness. It’s a welcoming spirit and one that wants to reach across the divide and to be a gatekeeper, not in the exclusive sense, but in the inclusive sense that welcomes people into our home and into our lives.

AP

Supporters of Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, celebrate at the headquarters of his party, Civic Platform, in Warsaw, Poland, Oct. 15.

When a democracy descends toward autocracy, sometimes not winning is a win. That helps explain comments from the leader of Poland’s Civic Platform party following one of Europe’s most consequential elections this year.

“I have never been so happy in my life as I am with this second place,” said Donald Tusk after Poles voted – in record turnout – for a new Parliament last Sunday.

While his party achieved a stronger showing than in the past, it also demonstrated something missing in the top vote-getter, the ruling Law and Justice party, known by its acronym PiS. Mr. Tusk’s party had made a pre-election pact with two other parties to restore freedom for news media and independence for the judiciary – both of which PiS had eroded over eight years in power.

“Poland won. Democracy won,” explained Mr. Tusk, a former president of the European Council. The combined votes of the three parties are expected to allow them to form a majority in Parliament, although the political horse-trading could take months and PiS may use its entrenched power to fight back.

While the election dealt with a host of hot issues, many voters rewarded the three parties for not treating one another as the enemy. Instead, the parties politely engaged so they might preserve the virtues of political pluralism or, in the words of the United States motto, “e pluribus unum.”

Those virtues include the humility to listen to different views and the goodwill to treat opponents in a way that one wants to be treated. That essence of democracy – nurturing mutual trust despite lively debates – has been in decline not only in Poland but also in Hungary. Both countries have faced European Union sanctions for their threats to democracy and the unity of the 27-member bloc.

Democracies gain when citizens cherish their engagement in discussing alternative views and when they remain open to self-correction. Demonizing opponents prevents an opportunity to refine the best ideas for shared purpose.

“There seems to be an assumption that what has won in Poland is liberalism, because illiberalism has lost, but actually what has won is pluralism,” Ben Stanley, a political scientist at SWPS University in Warsaw, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Or as Mr. Tusk, the second-place winner, put it, “We won our beloved democracy.”