by achrilock
israel
So, this morning, in response to a write-up about Israelis denying the genocide being committed in Gaza, and trying to place that into context with regard to the so-called “Jewish state,” someone in the comments said, to paraphrase, that they didn’t understand why it was happening. I replied with the following: “they’re doing it because they’re sad, angry, and afraid. Same reason anybody does it. Our job is to build a world where nobody has to feel that way ever again.”
Some folks had some thoughts about this statement (which is perfectly fine, you all can lay into my hot takes any time you wish and no hard feelings). Anyway, I thought I would elaborate a bit, for you. Because it’s important. I’ll do so here so as not to muck up their rather important thread on serious matters with any more back and forth. So, here we go.
The rebuttals centered around a few main points. That Israelis are colonizers (which, they are), that Israelis are not pursuing altruistic or proportionate goals and that they were behaving in a dehumanizing way toward Palestinians (which is true) and people found this hard to square with my rather charitable statements and with the history of Jewish people. Fair enough, for sure.
Believe me, I see what’s going on. I see the depravity, the disregard for life, the dishonesty, the duplicity, the attitudes of superiority, the appetites for harm and destruction, the refusal to renounce what is a fascist, colonial enterprise integrated deeply into the fabric of the Israeli state. I’m not a stranger to the darker hearts of men (or women). I know what people are capable of, and I’ve been watching this particular situation closely, not just since Oct. 7th but for decades.
I’m no fan of Zionism, nor the fascist mechanisms used to achieve its goals, goals which are anathema to both international law and basic human decency. But most of the participants on the Israeli side are still participating due to the reasons I stated earlier. Most of them do not have the information that we have, and many of those who do who continue to participate are doing so because they’ve been drilled since birth that this is the only way to ‘protect’ themselves and their families.
That Jewish history, mentioned both in the replies and in the original piece itself, has been twisted by the unscrupulous for self-serving purposes. And the population, and now much of the western world, have been brought along into the big lie, both that a genocide against Palestinians is necessary and that it also, paradoxically, does not exist. Even the American president has climbed aboard that nonsense train to Hell, and he smiles out the window at us all every day about it.
But the point here is that calling them ‘colonizers’ or ‘fascists’ or ‘inhuman’ for their actions might make a lot of people feel better. It might channel some of that pain and rage that we are all feeling for the Palestinians, and that people felt for the Jewish community during their times of tribulation before, but it won’t move the needle because it is a misunderstanding of how the process of fascism, dating back to the first instances of colonialism, works.
People aren’t born with a gene that makes them hate another group of people, that makes them want to steal land or resources, that makes them want to ethnically cleanse, to lie as a matter of course, to themselves and to others. They are formed into this by their societies, local and national, and by what the world will accept in terms of rhetoric and behavior. We all owe much more to these factors with regard to our morals than we do to some intrinsic nobility.
People are made into fascists by other people, usually a very small subset of the community, for very specific and self-serving reasons. But that subset needs two things to survive and persist in their goals. They need mass anger, fear, and suffering, and they need to systematize the mechanisms of radicalization that turn people into dehumanizing fascist monsters. This is why antifa is so hellbent on attacking fascism while it is small. Once it is systematized, it metastasizes.
And what has Israeli leadership done for nearly a century? Raised generations to believe that they are under constant attack from every place, that they live in a fortress nation against it, that they are chosen above others, that what others have is for them to take and that those they would take it from seek only their destruction. And Israeli leadership has worked hard to ensure that the surroundings of the Israeli state reflect this twisted version of reality. Then they controlled the press.
So you’re left with an entire nation of people who are internalizing what they have been taught and what they are seeing before their eyes, and coming to certain dark conclusions, which are being fed by the theocratic fascist apparatus at the heart of the Israeli state, and so you get Gaza, the West Bank, the attempts to expand that suffering further and farther, and a narrative about the whole thing that only makes any sort of sense from inside that bubble of twisted reality.
Israel’s genocide, its colonial project, and I would also argue its project of theocratic supremacy should be addressed and curtailed by the world. Absolutely. But we won’t save them by simply reprimanding them with our words or sanctions or even military actions. We must wake them up. Nobody will be safe until they see what they have become. And the best way to do this is with information, with truth, and with firm boundaries to prevent them slipping further into darkness and doing more harm.
Regardless of circumstances, let’s not pretend that Iran is some sort of victim. Israel’s strike on a group of Iran’s military leaders was a net-gain for everyone who matters, regardless of why. Iran is a theocratic fascist regime that murders children as a matter of policy. If one allies with or facilitates that, one has forfeited the right to continue to exist in a social space. One is a weed waiting to be plucked from the garden. Not for what they are but for what they choose to do. Fuck ‘em.
My view is no military aid for anybody. It’s often ineffective, used for purpose without adequate checks on principle or legality, you’re party to a war without control over it, and the process is corrupt as shit. If a war needs to be fought, send your military, that has full accountability to the people who paid for the weapons, to fight it. Evil is defeated. You shrink the military back down to training / logistic-ready levels. That’s how states worked before capitalist empires were a thing.
Israel shouldn’t get anything, at all, because they’re an apartheid state based totally on the concept of ethnically cleansing an entire region, controlled by a theocratic fascist government. It’s like a meaner Iran full of white people with US connections and interests. As to Ukraine, I support the aid because that’s all the wormy fucktards here and in Europe will do because they’re afraid and corrupt. It’s better than nothing. But eventually, you will have to actually fight that war. Be ready.
Citizens are reminded that fighter planes and heavy munitions do not eliminate insurgent fighters. They create new ones, often more than there were before. Furthermore, doublespeak is not as effective as the elderly might hope, and the domestic electorate is not as naive or as disconnected as they were in the 1990s. Is one fascist imperial foothold across the world worth another costly, crushing defeat? Remember the lessons of history. It is not your place. They are not, the hell, your whales.