The Israeli court psychiatrist who examined Eichmann found him a ‘completely normal man, more normal, at any rate, than I am after examining him,’ the implication being that the coexistence of normality and bottomless cruelty explodes our ordinary conceptions and present the true enigma of the trial.
― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
Another Nakba seems to be unfolding, now in Gaza city. Do the people of Israel suffer a pinch of guilt, or trauma, at what their nation is so relentlessly doing to the unarmed, innocent people of Gaza, and also in the armed, forcible settlements in the West Bank? Is there a slow and silent paradigm shift happening in the pathologically sick society that is Israel?
It seems so. Just on the margins, perhaps. Some youngsters are refusing to join the IDF. Others are protesting in small numbers, facing police repression. While the last mass protest in Tel Aviv had demanded: the release of hostages and that Benjamin Netanyahu must go. Genocide? Well, that has never been on their mind.
Indeed, Bibi cares a damn for the hostages – he never had. Now, he has bombed Qatar – the principle facilitator for ceasefire and hostage-release. QED.
Majority of them in Israel, since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, have whole-heartedly backed the mass murder in the Gaza Strip, especially that of children and women, especially that of young mothers and pregnant women, and premature children, dying in the incubators. Or bombed, droned, with their first breath on earth.
These just born – were they all supporters of Hamas?
Did the Israelis enjoy this grotesque spectacle? Yes, most of them did. They still seem to do.
If Israel is a mentally sick society, and if the US, Germany, UK, France, are allies, let’s enter this abyss once again in this daily hell that is the world.
People say, how can they sleep, after doing all this?
This is a question of morality. How can they sleep after doing all that they are doing: the cold-blooded murders of journalists, doctors, paramedics, pregnant women? How can they shoot kids between the eyes? Or, starving kids asking for a loaf of bread?
And, yet, they sleep. Bibi and his men and women. They sleep well. Because, the next morning, they will do the same. Like what Nazi officers like Adolf Eichmann did to 6 million Jews at the gas chambers and concentration camps.
And if, “There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism,” as philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote – not much has changed in the world. Barbarism continues to be normal.
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It has taken two years for many to call it genocide. Others, including in the big media, still refuse to call it genocide. The latest is that the US, for the sixth time, has vetoed an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza in the Security Council. It is the only nation.
Does Morgan Ortagus, who raised her hand against it, sleep well?
Speaking prior to the vote, she said that Washington’s opposition “will come as no surprise” – as it fails to condemn Hamas or recognize Israel’s right to defend itself, UN News reported. The whole world knows that this is a fake claim, now a morbid cliché, repeated ad infinitum by the Trump administration, as it was by the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris regime led by Democrats.
The majority resolution demanded the release of all hostages held by Hamas, and for Israel to lift all restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid. It sought to ensure that this aid is safely distributed to the population – in particular by UN agencies and partners.
The draft was put forward by the Council’s 10 non-permanent members: Algeria, Denmark, Greece, Guyana, Pakistan, Panama, Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia and Somalia. “Even though this resolution was not adopted today at this 10,000th meeting of the Council, 14 members of this Council have sent a clear message,” said Danish Ambassador Christina Markus Lassen.
Algerian Ambassador Amar Bendjama said: “Palestinian brothers, Palestinian sisters, forgive us.”
Olga Cherevko, UN spokeswoman, speaking to the BBC, said the situation in Gaza City is “nothing short of cataclysmic”.
The US veto has come days before the UN General Assembly, where the majority of nations recognize Palestinian sovereignty, and it might finally have France and UK recognize it as well – that is after backing the genocide to the hilt. As I write this, thousands are out on the streets in London protesting against Trump’s visit.
Surely, as the main ally of Bibi’s murder machine, he too sleeps well.
And yet, despite the everyday gloom, there are strong signs of hope. The non-stop, ad infinitum, breathless protests across the world, especially in the West.
Celebrities in Hollywood, 3000-plus, are refusing to do anything with Israelis in the film industry. Inside campuses, football stadiums, boulevards, homes and balconies, open-air cafes and auditoriums, international film festivals and concert halls, on sea beaches and parks, outside the Israeli embassy, factories, ports and docks, inside restaurants (while Trump goes for dinner) – some are 500,000 strong – and relentless.
These protests have stormed the world. Ceaseless. Endless.
Dead children are being displayed in bundles everywhere – women and men are crying. Holocaust survivors and orthodox Jews are opposing the killings, prime ministers like that of Spain, are seeking a total boycott of Israel, even in the complicit EU, its president has promised sanctions against Israeli cabinet members, settlers in the West Bank, (and Hamas).
Other countries are declaring sanctions, Zohrab Mamdani has said that if elected Mayor, he will arrest Netanyahu if he comes to New York, even the Right-wing Italian PM has promised to do the same. The spineless Arab conglomerate of American stooges in the Middle East seem to have half-woken up finally – that as and when the Israeli militarily subjugates them – which it will eventually – the US will leave to them to the sharks.
And the Freedom Flottila of 50 ships, with celebrities and freedom fighters, including the son of Nelson Mandela, is almost near Gaza. One of them has been bombed.
Truly, enlightenment, like humanity, is not dead. Bibi might want to become another Adolf Hitler, but he too must meet his fate. While Israel stands isolated, as a Rogue State, hated across the world.
Barbarism will stay, of course, but so will the resistance. And there will always be women and men who shall refuse to succumb, or compromise. The brave too must have their day.
At the sold-out Wembley Arena in London, with the who’s who of global celebrities attending, English actress Florence Pugh said: “Silence in the face of such suffering is not neutrality. It is complicity. And empathy should not be this hard, and it should’ve never been this hard,” said Pugh.
As journalist Mehdi Hasan said in Wembley, in his tribute to the murdered Palestinian journalists in Gaza: “We have been lied to, manipulated, misled, gaslit… Shame on those Western journalists who have said not a word about the mass killing of their Palestinian counterparts. Shame on them.” (Since October 7, 2023, 270 journalists have been murdered in Gaza.)
He said: “As a Western journalist myself, I can tell you all this, the Palestinian journalists, they are the best of us. They are the best of us because they are not just documenting a war, or genocide, they are documenting their own annihilation, their own starvation. In real time… They have shown the world that you can’t bomb the truth away.”
