Ever since Palestine became the media focus, we’ve been seeing this photo whenever the topic is Hamas:

Seeing this makes me think of two things. First, it’s important to notice that this is the true face of Hamas leadership, and not a group of young rebels sacrificing their lives for freedom as many on social media are making it look. Behind Hamas’ every action is more of the same: a group of older men, likely members of an elite class.

And second, this photo makes me think of this other photo:

This is Israel’s war cabinet, at least at the time of the first invasion in Gaza last year. Again, more of the same: a group of powerful older men.

Despite the tens of thousands of women and children who have lost their lives in this conflict (especially in Gaza), this is a war between Israel’s government and Hamas. This is a war between two groups of powerful men.

Of course, there are a few female members in Israel’s government and many women on both sides would give everything to see the the other group burn to the ground. But mostly, this is a fight between men, both the ones in power and the ones carrying guns on the ground. As it has happened all around the world ever since primates started walking on two legs.

I’m highlighting this fact because I think we can’t pretend anymore that this is not a factor.

At the same time, we need to be really careful in the way we talk about this. The “let’s blame their gender” road is a path that can easily lead to more tyranny instead of improving the situation.

And yet, men carrying guns and killing each other in these conflicts is such a widespread view that people have been using the term “women and children” to indicate that innocent civilians have been killed.

This is an expression that I have been avoiding, because 1- it indicates that it’s not as bad to have men dying by the thousands in this stupid war, 2- it ignores the fact that there are women and teenage boys who are likely also taking part in the violence and 3- it shows that there are some lives more disposable than others, which is a concept behind every mass violent action.

I want to approach this topic by a different route — the biological one. We often talk about the geopolitical and socio-economic implications of international conflicts, but we rarely discuss the thing that in my opinion is at the root of everything: our bodies and our old evolutionary need for survival.

And yes, we’re going to talk about testosterone but hear me until the end.

There’s one single factor that has been the common denominator for every human advancement, from ancient times to the 21st century, all around the planet — our biology. That’s the thing that deep down guides us all.

We invented agriculture to satisfy our constant hunger, we invented factories to satisfy our need for material security, we invented skyscrapers to satisfy our need for the ultimate shelter.

And we invented war to satisfy our need for territory, so we can get access to all the natural resources needed to satisfy our previous needs.

We love to think of ourselves as an enlightened and evolved species, but we all still have primate brains. Almost everything we do collectively can be traced back to our basic physiological needs. Crowds behave in the same way because our bodies all respond in the same way to the same triggers.

So in the end it’s all of us, not just men who behave like animals. But men have some extra ingredients that guide their biology. And yes, we’re talking about testosterone and aggressive behaviour, which sometimes comes out as competitiveness, and sometimes as physical violence. But you don’t even need to discuss the specifics of hormonal function. If you think of any group of mammals in their natural habitat, the male ones are usually the bigger and more aggressive of the sexes, including towards their own species.

I often hear nature-loving people sharing the rainbow view that humans are the only species that kills their own kind.

This couldn’t be further from the truth, and unfortunately, I experienced it firsthand.

I worked in a cat shelter for some years and one of our rules was to always isolate the females that were about to give birth to a litter of kittens. One day we failed to do that and accidentally left one pregnant cat locked away with the others in the shelter.

The next day we walked into a horror show.

She had given birth. The male cats had then attacked the kittens and killed them all. Later I found out that this is a common behavior between felines. Lions do the same thing — if a male spots a litter of cubs that don’t carry his genes, he kills them to end the chance of another male carrying his genes forward. This also forces the female to go on heat, since she’s not breastfeeding anymore. And then the male feline in question can spread his own genes.

Luckily, human males are miles away from that behaviour and we don’t see men going on a newborn-killing spree. However, if you think about it, a man finding out that his wife is pregnant by another man remains a very painful event that often leads to physical violence.

But in my opinion, there’s a more crucial way in which men’s behaviour is still linked to animal-male violence — the fight for territory.

When I look back at those two photos, this is what comes to mind: Netanyahu and Sinwar in their dance for total control of the territory. Of course, there’s more to it than that. There’s religion, political power, international influence over the area, poverty, displacement and oppression. But in the end, isn’t this all a more sophisticated way to explain the eternal fight between two mammal groups for natural resources?

Ever since I started seeing things in this light, I can’t un-see it.

It was on my mind when I started looking into the history of the Abrahamic religions, and the war between Christians and Jews that led to the second fall of the temple of Solomon around 70 CE. The Christians were a new group in the territory practicing a monotheistic religion and growing rapidly in influence.

Or the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, which put an end to centuries of Roman domain. Or the story of Alexander the Great, who in 331 BCE defeated the Persian Empire, one of the largest in the world, even though he and his men were largely outnumbered.

Deep down, isn’t this all the same male fight for territory, repeating itself over and over again and dragging with it everything on its path?

When we take away all the glory, the shiny armour, the sophisticated weapons, the political titles, what’s left? Isn’t it just two groups of primates fighting each other?

So how do we stop it, how do we get out of this cycle we’ve been playing on repeat for millennia?

I can already hear people saying to put women in charge of things. 

While it wouldn’t hurt to have more women in leadership roles, I don’t think generalizing it as a rule is the solution. Banning men from positions of power on the basis that they have too much testosterone to make rational decisions is definitely not the way to go. This is just more of the same tyranny, just with a more sophisticated label. It’s the same us-versus-them logic that led us to this mess in the first place.

And what’s more, having more women in power would not make that much of a difference if they still had to take positions that follow the same logic of dominance. Not to mention that this doesn’t solve the problem of violence on the streets, since in the end men will continue to exist, and violence will continue to be a scape valve.

I don’t know how to end all wars and generalized violence.

What I do know is that we need to stop pretending that testosterone does not play a role in the violent deaths of millions of men around the world, especially younger men in marginalized communities.

I believe that if we’re able to bring this topic to the table in a sensible way, maybe we can start taking actions that will really change things. After all, men have fought many wars, but they also established diplomatic posts and trade routes. If we start to genuinely see physical violence as the animal response that it really is, maybe armed conflicts will become so costly politically that men in power who support that kind of practice will start falling like dominoes.

Meanwhile, the one thing that we can do is to stop worshiping and electing violent mammals as leaders, for starters.