The transformation of Israeli society since October 7
Think of how we got here. In October, when the Al-Ahli hospital was bombed, Israel swore vociferously that it wasn’t they who committed the atrocity, because they categorically don’t do such things. Fast-forward through the storming of Al-Shifa (sniping nurses, arresting doctors) to today where the raid of Nasser Hospital barely registers in the news, and we see the manufacturing of consent for such action one abhorrent step at a time. Now Israel no longer needs to defend itself with such protestations, because we decline anymore to even question such moves.
As that is true for the transformation of the Israeli armed forces, so much the parallel must be for Israeli society. When the citizenry has been ignited by words of incitement emanating from government officials, encouraged to create videos mocking their slaughtered opponents where they jeer poverty, gloat over having access to water, and pretend to be Palestinian corpses; to the point where they now, as part of groups, are barricading entry points and preventing aid trucks with food and other supplies to reach Gaza where 9 out of 10 people are starving. Citizens justify this action by saying all of the food would go right to Hamas, illustating how quickly the populace has become depraved.
Israelis now justify the killing of four-year-olds, saying the four-year-olds of the past set the terror attacks of October 7th alight, and any sane person on the outside looking in can see the descent into depravity, the entrance of sadism; yet these everyday Israelis think they are doing something upstanding and right.
Ervin Staub (1985) talks about the evolution that occurs during genocide. People act, and people change as a result of that action.
[P]articipation results in psychological changes[.] Human beings learn by doing, by actual participation, perhaps more than by any other way. [...] People learn to become perpetrators of violence by engaging in violent acts or in acts that are not directly violent but are in the service of such violence and contribute to others' suffering or eventual murder. In the process they learn to overcome the initial resistance they may have to directly or indirectly harm others. (“The Psychology of Perpetrators and Bystanders,” p. 74)
Engaging in a forbidden action makes it more likely that the transgression will happen again—people learn by doing, and with the personal prohibition lifted on the act, the person is free to keep learning. All the more so when the entire community is transforming all around one and providing those acts with its stamp of approval. Social proof becomes moral sanction.
A repentant white supremacist described this evolution, too, saying that with violence it’s a learning process, like any other.
“It started, for me, being violent, just . . . it sounds maybe strange, but yeah, just fighting with fists, and yeah, just, like, some bruises.
“You get better at violence, just like you get better when you train to ride a bicycle or go swimming. You just become better at it.”
The more you commit violence, the better you get. You gain skill. No less, what the Israelis are learning through their evolution through time. The populace has gone from raw shock and emotional numbing to consuming gruesome atrocity propaganda put out by their own armed forces, propaganda that encourages viewers at home to cheer when the bones of Palestinians crunch. That’s a learning process.
Gideon Levy recently said that he does not recognize Israel at this time, that he’s never seen this Israel before. He’s saying the transformation, so sudden, has been so deep that it has changed the face of society, has disfigured it.
We often wonder how it is that ordinary people can metamorph, can so alter themselves and the foundation of society that genocide can even take place. We see that metamorphosis in real-time, step by horrifying step.