This is so sick and while this might be or evenly could likely be the reason we see what we see, I hope it is not. Although, whatever the explanation turns out to be most accurate, it is disgusting. Is there some privileged comfort in keeping such vile acts, in the incomprehensible category? Maybe. I think in one way, I do not want to understand the why. I just want it to stop.
I have been reading the academic literature about genocide for about a year, so I’m not an expert by any means, but it seems clear to me that there is a heavy psychological aspect to the phenomenon. If we’re to get a fuller idea of what lies at the root of this, the more likely we are to untangle it and prevent it from recurring.
I may or may not be on the right track with this supposition derived from Storr’s insight but, looking even at other genocides through history, or even some aspects of war, there seems to be an element of play, just as there is play at work when a feline stalks its prey. And clearly, if you go back to de Sade — the originator of sadism — there’s an element of play. I think this avenue of thought with regards to genocide could be useful, in terms of understanding.
Another aspect that I didn’t explore here is related to something that Leah said. She makes the point that Israel’s genocide upon Gaza seems to be tied to imperialism. There’s truth to that. I think nailing down the particulars will be a challenge, if not least for the fact that ‘imperialism’ is a fraught term. But I do believe that Israel, as a nation-state, is being ushered into the fold of what once were known as first-world nations; and it does not behoove its people to have this unresolved facet of their history where they were not simply imprisoned on a massive scale but nearly snuffed out. That does not befit a great people.
So it would appear to me, with a bit of cynicism, that the U.S. is allowing Israel to recover its mastery, by displacing its sorrow and anger and bitterness on the local people. This is like training wheels in the ways of imperialism, a tutelage of power.
Makes sense to connect imperialism to genocide. There is this idea that some people are meant to be ruled, their resources exploited and the idea that they are lesser people so it’s an excuse for genocide. On one hand, we want to believe in the goodness of mankind. But then you see the obscene cruelty we are capable of. I appreciate your willingness to do the research and try to get to an explanation. It is easy to just accept that people are just evil. It is far easier to accept that than to do the work required to try to understand what causes people to behave with so much cruelty. I appreciate your strength. And your efforts.
I appreciate you reading and for joining in on this conversation! That helps to make this worthwhile.
I think I was fortunate to fall into a major that had social science at its core, because one thing that I couldn't help but come away with was the fact that we're all the product of processes. I can't write someone (or a group of someones) off as "evil," because given another set of processes they possibly would have turned out very differently. In fact, one of my biggest pet peeves is the introduction of moral language into anything outside of the religious realm. Calling someone or something "evil" essentializes that person or thing and labels them irredeemable. We'll never get to root causes or have a chance to improve society as a whole if we rely upon such reductionist thinking.
By the by, I notice that you say that we want to believe in the goodness of humankind. That, I think, is one of the core differences between the left and the right (to flatten the political landscape in such a way). Conservatives _don't_ believe that. They believe in the badness of man as a creature, and it is this that informs their worldview: that it's a jungle out there (Jungle World hypothesis), that people do rotten things and basically are just trying to take advantage of you (so you should take advantage of them first, or dominate them so that they don't get the chance), etc. It's a fundamental, irreconcilable difference in terms of worldview. That's an aside from what this essay was about, but your comment brought that to mind.
I would dispute the notion that the Holocaust is Israel’s jumping off point. It’s actually the Dreyfus Affair, as that was the catalyst that convinced Theodor Herzl, the founding father of Zionism, that Jewish people would never be truly accepted (by other white Europeans, of course) as long as they were in diaspora. Herzl believed that the reason for European antisemitism was that Jews were “rootless” and seen as perpetually “foreign.” Thus, if they had their own nation-state, they would just be a people like everyone else (in Europe). If you go to the Project Gutenberg website, you can read translations of Herzl’s works and they come off as pretty self-hating and racist, not just towards non-whites, but towards Jewish people who were being Jewish in ways he didn’t approve of.
Herzl was always open that Zionism was going to be a partnership with the established imperialist powers, so it’s odd to see his modern acolytes claim otherwise. He and early Zionists weren’t even particular about where to put a hypothetical Jewish homeland, as Argentina, Kenya, and Uganda were all on the drawing board as potential sites for settlement. I feel that if one of these alternate sites had been chosen, the colonialism charges would have been impossible to deny (not that it isn’t risible to suggest that it’s not happening in current day Israel).
In any case, Israel has an odd relationship to the Holocaust and its survivors. On the one hand, Israel claims that the Holocaust illustrates the need for a Jewish ethnostate. On the other, Israelis also look down on Holocaust survivors as weak losers who are/were walking demonstrations of how soft diaspora Jews are, as the gun-toting sabra farmer-warriors would never allow themselves to be in that situation. I don’t know the exact statistics now, given that most Holocaust survivors have died now, but many of them lived in poverty in Israel. Ever so often there used to be news articles about this scandalous state of affairs, but I don’t think much was ever done to help their plight.
I think the sadistic acts we see being committed against Palestinians has more to do with settler colonialism than with the Holocaust. Big Daddy USA and the EU vassal states are always going to look the other way when it comes to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Israelis know there aren’t going to be any consequences to their sadism, so why not be as crazy as they want?
One thing that I've taken from my exposure to Herzl's ideas is that -- and I'm happy to be corrected on this -- Herzl himself smuggled anti-semitism into Zionism. In my opinion, that's why Zionism can't really get away from anti-semitism: it's embedded in the belief system (or, if not the ideology itself, then in the underlying universe of thought in which its signature founder inhabited). But I recognize I must go to the source to verify my inkling.
I agree that there is an inherent tension in terms of how the first generation of Holocaust survivors were perceived in Israel. Jay Gonen touched upon this in his 1975 _A Psychohistory of Zionism_; and of course Norman Finkelstein has written and lectured about this as well, among others. I think the ideology of Zionism was so unbending, at least in terms of it rejecting the stereotypical "soft" (Gonen calls this "feminine," even though he's speaking of males) Jewish figure -- trading the scholar for the farmer, wholesome and earthy -- that there was already a dualism built into the ideology of hard/soft, powerful/powerless. At the time, some saw the victims of the Holocaust as "lambs to the slaughter," not fighting back sufficiently enough, and that was taken as a source of shame. Another generation would pass -- particularly energized by the improbable yet thorough victory of the War of 1967 -- before that view would be rehabilitated.
As for the sadism, I think it's not a means to an end, not entirely. I do think the overall project is about the land. I think that's indisputable. But I think the manner in which the clearing of the people is taking place is an end in itself. It's instrumental violence, ranging from coldhearted callousness to full-throated enthusiasm. For Israeli society to believe that the identified IDF soldier accused of rape is entitled to his assault indicates that there's more to this than just expedience or exploitation. We know on some level that this is revenge; it's a restoration of pride (either societal or ethnic, possibly both). In that sense, that means that what we're seeing is a manifestation of the psychological. Otherwise, there'd be more discipline in the ranks. Instead, soldiers are being allowed to indulge in their darkest urges, on a systemic level.
I can’t stand the sight of their ugly faces!
You mean the two nice Jewish guys? Well, considering what they said, I can’t blame you.
This is so sick and while this might be or evenly could likely be the reason we see what we see, I hope it is not. Although, whatever the explanation turns out to be most accurate, it is disgusting. Is there some privileged comfort in keeping such vile acts, in the incomprehensible category? Maybe. I think in one way, I do not want to understand the why. I just want it to stop.
Absolutely! We’re in complete agreement.
I have been reading the academic literature about genocide for about a year, so I’m not an expert by any means, but it seems clear to me that there is a heavy psychological aspect to the phenomenon. If we’re to get a fuller idea of what lies at the root of this, the more likely we are to untangle it and prevent it from recurring.
I may or may not be on the right track with this supposition derived from Storr’s insight but, looking even at other genocides through history, or even some aspects of war, there seems to be an element of play, just as there is play at work when a feline stalks its prey. And clearly, if you go back to de Sade — the originator of sadism — there’s an element of play. I think this avenue of thought with regards to genocide could be useful, in terms of understanding.
Another aspect that I didn’t explore here is related to something that Leah said. She makes the point that Israel’s genocide upon Gaza seems to be tied to imperialism. There’s truth to that. I think nailing down the particulars will be a challenge, if not least for the fact that ‘imperialism’ is a fraught term. But I do believe that Israel, as a nation-state, is being ushered into the fold of what once were known as first-world nations; and it does not behoove its people to have this unresolved facet of their history where they were not simply imprisoned on a massive scale but nearly snuffed out. That does not befit a great people.
So it would appear to me, with a bit of cynicism, that the U.S. is allowing Israel to recover its mastery, by displacing its sorrow and anger and bitterness on the local people. This is like training wheels in the ways of imperialism, a tutelage of power.
Makes sense to connect imperialism to genocide. There is this idea that some people are meant to be ruled, their resources exploited and the idea that they are lesser people so it’s an excuse for genocide. On one hand, we want to believe in the goodness of mankind. But then you see the obscene cruelty we are capable of. I appreciate your willingness to do the research and try to get to an explanation. It is easy to just accept that people are just evil. It is far easier to accept that than to do the work required to try to understand what causes people to behave with so much cruelty. I appreciate your strength. And your efforts.
I appreciate you reading and for joining in on this conversation! That helps to make this worthwhile.
I think I was fortunate to fall into a major that had social science at its core, because one thing that I couldn't help but come away with was the fact that we're all the product of processes. I can't write someone (or a group of someones) off as "evil," because given another set of processes they possibly would have turned out very differently. In fact, one of my biggest pet peeves is the introduction of moral language into anything outside of the religious realm. Calling someone or something "evil" essentializes that person or thing and labels them irredeemable. We'll never get to root causes or have a chance to improve society as a whole if we rely upon such reductionist thinking.
By the by, I notice that you say that we want to believe in the goodness of humankind. That, I think, is one of the core differences between the left and the right (to flatten the political landscape in such a way). Conservatives _don't_ believe that. They believe in the badness of man as a creature, and it is this that informs their worldview: that it's a jungle out there (Jungle World hypothesis), that people do rotten things and basically are just trying to take advantage of you (so you should take advantage of them first, or dominate them so that they don't get the chance), etc. It's a fundamental, irreconcilable difference in terms of worldview. That's an aside from what this essay was about, but your comment brought that to mind.
I would dispute the notion that the Holocaust is Israel’s jumping off point. It’s actually the Dreyfus Affair, as that was the catalyst that convinced Theodor Herzl, the founding father of Zionism, that Jewish people would never be truly accepted (by other white Europeans, of course) as long as they were in diaspora. Herzl believed that the reason for European antisemitism was that Jews were “rootless” and seen as perpetually “foreign.” Thus, if they had their own nation-state, they would just be a people like everyone else (in Europe). If you go to the Project Gutenberg website, you can read translations of Herzl’s works and they come off as pretty self-hating and racist, not just towards non-whites, but towards Jewish people who were being Jewish in ways he didn’t approve of.
Herzl was always open that Zionism was going to be a partnership with the established imperialist powers, so it’s odd to see his modern acolytes claim otherwise. He and early Zionists weren’t even particular about where to put a hypothetical Jewish homeland, as Argentina, Kenya, and Uganda were all on the drawing board as potential sites for settlement. I feel that if one of these alternate sites had been chosen, the colonialism charges would have been impossible to deny (not that it isn’t risible to suggest that it’s not happening in current day Israel).
In any case, Israel has an odd relationship to the Holocaust and its survivors. On the one hand, Israel claims that the Holocaust illustrates the need for a Jewish ethnostate. On the other, Israelis also look down on Holocaust survivors as weak losers who are/were walking demonstrations of how soft diaspora Jews are, as the gun-toting sabra farmer-warriors would never allow themselves to be in that situation. I don’t know the exact statistics now, given that most Holocaust survivors have died now, but many of them lived in poverty in Israel. Ever so often there used to be news articles about this scandalous state of affairs, but I don’t think much was ever done to help their plight.
I think the sadistic acts we see being committed against Palestinians has more to do with settler colonialism than with the Holocaust. Big Daddy USA and the EU vassal states are always going to look the other way when it comes to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Israelis know there aren’t going to be any consequences to their sadism, so why not be as crazy as they want?
I still have yet to read Herzl in his original words, but I have encountered him in second-level analyses, by scholars such as Scott Ury.
https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article/123/4/1151/5114739
One thing that I've taken from my exposure to Herzl's ideas is that -- and I'm happy to be corrected on this -- Herzl himself smuggled anti-semitism into Zionism. In my opinion, that's why Zionism can't really get away from anti-semitism: it's embedded in the belief system (or, if not the ideology itself, then in the underlying universe of thought in which its signature founder inhabited). But I recognize I must go to the source to verify my inkling.
I agree that there is an inherent tension in terms of how the first generation of Holocaust survivors were perceived in Israel. Jay Gonen touched upon this in his 1975 _A Psychohistory of Zionism_; and of course Norman Finkelstein has written and lectured about this as well, among others. I think the ideology of Zionism was so unbending, at least in terms of it rejecting the stereotypical "soft" (Gonen calls this "feminine," even though he's speaking of males) Jewish figure -- trading the scholar for the farmer, wholesome and earthy -- that there was already a dualism built into the ideology of hard/soft, powerful/powerless. At the time, some saw the victims of the Holocaust as "lambs to the slaughter," not fighting back sufficiently enough, and that was taken as a source of shame. Another generation would pass -- particularly energized by the improbable yet thorough victory of the War of 1967 -- before that view would be rehabilitated.
As for the sadism, I think it's not a means to an end, not entirely. I do think the overall project is about the land. I think that's indisputable. But I think the manner in which the clearing of the people is taking place is an end in itself. It's instrumental violence, ranging from coldhearted callousness to full-throated enthusiasm. For Israeli society to believe that the identified IDF soldier accused of rape is entitled to his assault indicates that there's more to this than just expedience or exploitation. We know on some level that this is revenge; it's a restoration of pride (either societal or ethnic, possibly both). In that sense, that means that what we're seeing is a manifestation of the psychological. Otherwise, there'd be more discipline in the ranks. Instead, soldiers are being allowed to indulge in their darkest urges, on a systemic level.
Poop heads 👹💩
They’re not so nice boys!
But I believe them when they say that the sentiments they’re expressing are widely held in Israel.