A must-read article by Amira Hass from Haaretz on why most Israelis are immune to the suffering of Palestinians. Thanks Tamir Sorek for bringing it to my attention.
What allows most Jews in Israel not to be shocked by the fact that in about two months we have killed about 7,000 children (temporary data) with the enhanced bombs that the United States provided us? What allows the majority of Jews not to suffocate in the horror of a compressing 1.8 or 1.9 million people in an area of 120 km, which is also constantly exploded, and not to cry out for the reports of hunger and thirst of 2.2 million Palestinian citizens and the diseases that spread due to the density and lack of water and hospitals? What enables the erasure and mass slaughter of children, with our active and passive participation? Here are some answers:
• Decades of education on the knees of absolute belief in the exclusive ability of a military power to ensure the existence and prosperity of the country, while denying rights from the Palestinian people.
• Deleting all "context" — which incitement has made it a synonym for supporting Hamas and justifying its horrors.
• The monopoly we took, the Jews, on the concept of suffering caused by the cruelty of the other.
• The choice not to know and not to watch the unbearable images that show Palestinian children trembling and gray-faced from dust, torn from the Russian walls. And you don't know who is more lucky: them or those who died.
• Every mass slaughter or tiffin-tiffin that we commit in Palestinians is years, every looting, humiliation, abuse, goes through thousands of media, psychological and academic filters. The crane product is the self conviction that their situation is better than that of Somalis or Syrians, so let's not complain.
• Remembering every massacre Palestinians have committed on us. You have forgotten every massacre we have committed.
• The decades-old practice of living in peace and well — who is more and who is less — five minutes away from our backyard, where israel (that is us) destroys for Palestinians and builds for Jews, flows water to Jews and exploits Palestinians. And all the rest is written in the reports "The Focus for the Protection of the Individual", "Betzelem" and "Adalea".
• Decades-old ignorance of warnings of "moderate" Palestinians, who robbed the lands and freedom and violence of the settlers with the help of the state — and inspired by its violence — reduce the horizons of their children and generate desperation and belief only in the power of weapons and revenge.
• The essential perception of the world: Palestinians are terrorists because they are like that. Born with the genes of hating us. A direct sequel to Hamelnitsky and Titus.
• The self-conviction that we are a democracy even though for more than 56 years we have controlled millions of people without civil rights, in their land and economy.
• The deep racial disrespect of Palestinians, that we developed in order to cognitively and psychologically justify their trampling under our feet.
• Denial of Palestinian history and the roots of Palestinian existence between the river and the sea.
• Elimination of Gaza is possible because since 1994 we have deliberately missed the opportunity — offered to us by the Palestinians — to get rid of our characteristics as an occupying and settling entity and to give them a state of 22% of the territory west of Jordan. I wrote in July 2021: "In the light of the talk about apartheid is fading and eclipsing the dynamic, active and dangerous dimension that is Jewish-ass colonialism." This is an ideology in which the Palestinians are 'giving up', it is the actions that have shaped this ideology, which are inspired and nourished by it. In short: it is possible and desirable that only the Palestinians are allowed. Their existence here is conditional, by grace and not merit, depends on our will and our kindness, it's a question of time. The 'luxury' ideology is a poison that spreads especially when the colonial process is in full swing. Settler colonialism is in a constant movement of land acquisition, eradicating historical boundaries, redesigning, and expulsion of the original inhabitants".
I then referred to the Palestinian "luxuries" in the West Bank and warned against the intentions of Gresham. I thought that the treatment of the people of Gaza as "giving up" resulted in the separation from their boredom and their families beyond the Erez checkpoint. But here, now the "luxury" is manifested in their deportation ("willingly", in the shadow of the bombs) and in the physical erase of the Gazats and plans for the renewal of the Jewish settlement in the Strip.
