Tag Archives: Genocide

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A total and final destruction of innocence

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At this late, late stage in white colonialism’s lifecycle, you could be tempted to ask: when is it enough? Shouldn’t the greed be quenched already? Shouldn’t the domination impulses be satisfied already? Thinking like a normal person, you’d probably consider things like that. You probably may have once or twice in this genocide thought that precisely.

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But if we do entertain such naive thoughts occasionally, it’s only because we haven’t yet realized how absolutist,  or totalitarian, colonialism really is.

I mean: why couldn’t Israel be satisfied with just pre-1967 borders? Or why couldn’t European settlers in the Americas take just half the continent, and leave some to the natives? Or, more in the present, why does the US have to have 800 military bases around the world, and why does it have to meddle so intensely and inconsistently in the affairs of every country on the face of this earth?

Why does it seem white, European colonialism, knows no bounds? Why does it always, always have to expand, and pushes to expand even when it appears to be dominating virtually every aspect of human life everywhere? Where does this crazy insatiability, this urge to own and control all of it come from?

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As always, I am looking for explanations in the psychological, or, more correctly, the psychopolitical realm.  We have here a political universe that appears incapable of containing itself; that must invade, meddle, bomb, scheme, steal.

Because colonizers are people, and because people have an innate and always-present capacity for morality,  and because people always need to feel both protected and moral, we can assume that white colonizer expansionism is related to the need to be protected and moral.

Yet while you could claim, in some bizarre world, that invading every piece of land and enslaving every human in the world is supposed to make you safe (if you kill and subjugate everyone you will be safe, except from the many, many psychopaths you have cultivated at home), such an endeavor could never make you feel moral.

A colonizer always has guilt: it is inevitable. Some shame and some guilt are inseparable from hurting people, except maybe among the true sociopaths.

But if nobody knows that you’ve done something wrong, have you really done something wrong? If you’re in a position to kill anybody who was witness to your crime,  shame and guilt are not your problems anymore; your problems, in this case, become operational, or logistical.

Once they have dehumanized the rest of humanity, white European colonizers have only one solution to their problem, and that is the existence of remaining native communities, who bear witness to the crimes of colonialism (if white people in South Africa annihilated all black people there, Israel’s and America’s genocide in Gaza would have faced no legal challenge).

To feel moral, the colonizer must destroy all native life, everywhere.

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But this is not all. It is not only their knowledge of the colonizer’s crime that drives them crazy. It is their innocent existence. The fact that natives, no matter where on earth, have a simple understanding of morality and justice. They prefer their land over profit, and their dignity over fame. They do not see the ancestral homeland as real estate, but as a source of their innermost vitality, and honor.

Natives have compassion and believe in proportionate punishment, and forgiveness: they are never expansionists. They are not cynical: they treat their rules with great respect and gravitas. To a native, it is not a game of monopoly: it is life, and its dignity must be preserved. This does not mean that all understanding of justice among native is right and perfect and that native communities could never use reform. This means that the serious and holistic approach to life among natives, compared to the always double consciousness of the colonizer, makes their existence a constant insult.

When you have no dignity, people with dignity become your greatest fear: you cannot tolerate their presence. Think about it: for a slaver of a land grabber, is there a greater insult than the humble peasant, looking to inherit their small plot to their offspring? A native mother breastfeeding her baby in quiet, is she not the biggest tormentor of the colonizer? Of course she is. Her natural, simple, morally easy existence makes his calculations and shamed conscience look so shameful. So dirty. He has to destroy her.

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Children are our living manifestations of innocence, of a life free from scheming, of an inability to deceive. How beautifully transparent children are: whatever they feel, you see it immediately. it is out there.

It is no coincidence, then, that children in Gaza have become such a prime target in this genocide. They represent the pinnacle of innocence: childhood in its purest human form, untainted by adulthood or by domination and expansionism. Colonizers can’t bare their existence. They have to destroy them.

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The crazy, inconceivable crime, or everlasting series of horrendous crimes, that is white European colonialism, is incapable of doing anything else at this late, metastasized state it’s in. The only way forward it imagines it has is the total erasure of innocence from every square inch of soil on this planet.

If they can make everyone cynical, consumers, traders, subjects, and users, they will have won, at least in their minds. They don’t care that in pursuing this antihuman they are bound to live humanity without its foremost guarantees of sanity, and that is innocence and a unified consciousness that is both wholly present and connected to its environment and part of a bigger universal oneness.

The quest to destroy all native life on earth, all authenticity, all honesty,  all spontaneity,  is the real cause of this late colonialist attacks that we’ve been seeing. It is the only thing colonizers believe can save them from the paranoia, haunted conscience, and homelessness they always feel.

They have no idea how wrong they are, and have no clue how tormented their souls is, or how twisted their worldview.

But for our sanity as a species, for us to have any future that offers any normalcy whatsoever, the colonizers must not win. We must fight to retain our innocence as a species. We must fight to protect native children and native childhood.

When I found this image for this post, I started tearing up immediately. I had never known what this picture meant before this genocide. What it truly, emotionally means: what the innocent people of this tribe must have felt. But now I know. You can read more about the context of this image here.

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Self-hating Jewish-Arabs, and a short AJ+ interview

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Last week I gave an interview to AJ+, in which I talked a bit about the dehumanization of Palestinians and its progress over the years in Israel, to its terminal current phase (see some more on this topic here). Below you’ll find some thoughts on the Arab-Jewish aspect of things, and how self-hate relates to them.

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One very important thing I have to say about all the videos and images of IDF soldiers mocking Palestinians and making all those displays of shaming and humiliation that we saw – mimicking Arab women crying and mourning their dead children, and showcasing their underwear like a collector of art shows their cherished items.

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If you zoom out of the “conflict” as propagandized by Israel and its wacky supporters in the West, you realize many of those IDF soldiers are actually ethnic Arabs. Their grandmothers, or grand-grandmothers, looked and sounded exactly like those mourning women they deride (do you start to get the levels of self-hate, and self-denial?).

By making such a huge deal of public humiliation of Arab stereotypes, those soldiers are really declaring to us, to the world: I have rejected all in the name of Zionism. Look at me humiliate my own sister, my own mother, my own grandmother, my own language, my own heritage, in the name of my new, fabricated identity (“Judaism as told by Zionism”). ‘

This is a major part of the psychological dynamics at play here. In recent decades, being an Arab Jew has become very popular in Israel. Everybody adores Arab food and constantly flaunts the little Arabic they know (in the form of curse words or some very short idioms).

This process is part of the cultural rehabilitation of Mizrahi Jews, who have been brutalized, sidelined, and exploited immensely by the historically Ashkenazi Israeli establishments. But this process of restoring a place for the Arab Jew on the popular Israeli stage was hysterically apolitical: you are allowed to love Arab food and Arab music, but god forbid you will love Arabs. God forbid you will see them as human, and equally.

Arabs have been reduced to representing folklore only (Mizrahi Jews, being the political idiots they always have been in Zionism, not getting that this prejudicial view deflects heavily on them, and reduces their identity to empty performance, to a depoliticized, simulated native, fake as everything else in the colonizer’s world).

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So this phenomenon of public shaming and humiliation can be seen as a cleansing ritual: young Israeli men, who would be considered Arabs if they were born in any other time in the past millennium, show the world that they are not. That they are, in fact, nothing but empty vessels filled exclusively by content created and approved by the Zionist state.

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For me, the opposite process was precipitated in this genocide. As my country and my society took on a monstrous aspect, and as the West completely failed on the most basic form of morality (dying, starving, mutilated children, for god’s sake, how can anyone fail this test?), I was left with nowhere to turn to but my Arabness. I was left with nothing but memories of the kindness and gentleness of my Jewish-Arab father, and the disestablishmentarian wit of my Oud-playing Jewish-Arab uncle, and their families, and the humanity of Palestinians and Arabs I have seen and met over the years. For me, nothing else is left.

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The West acts like a deluded psychopath

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Sometimes a psychopath gets so deluded they think they can avoid punishment not by escaping the law, but by making everyone else a psychopath as well.

This is the cultural story of this genocide, and to my knowledge, this is the first time in recorded history such a thing was ever attempted. Because this is what the US is doing right now: not only logistically making this genocide possible, but also morally and philosophically.

The US is not only trying to tell us this is not happening: it is telling us, explicitly but even more so implicitly, that this is ok and we need to accept it. Meaning: we need to embrace a psychopathic worldview and a psychopath’s persona.

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This genocide is a declaration of war on the idea that morality exists, or can be understood and experienced by normal people. America and the West are attempting to enforce a new morality: a psychopath’s morality, in which a dying baby causes absolutely no emotional reaction.

Do you think they are going to succeed? There’s no way this succeeds. It is acute megalomania, combined with paranoia, racism, and murderousness. It cannot become the norm. Human nature itself guarantees this will be rejected.

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American airdrop aid in colonial cinema production

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Some radical, fundamental things need to be said immediately about the mass murderer Joe Biden’s idea of air-dropping aid into Gaza First, it needs to be said that the genocide of Gaza is an American operation, funded and equipped by America and protected diplomatically by an automatic and unconditional veto in the UNSC. Israel is but the edge of a razor, or an axe, wielded by the US and slashing Palestinians. So why is the US wanting to aid while mass-murdering Palestinians? Here are some reasons.

  1. Management of image. The US wants to appear moral and merciful, or at least capable of deviating from the AIPAC line. So it does so mechanically, with stress on display and symbolism, as is usually the case with fake identities such as the white colonizer. It doesn’t know that to normal people this only accentuates the monstrosity, and by no means the humanity of the US.
  2. Management of consciousness. As part of an ongoing psychological warfare to weaken and confuse people, Western powers always talk from two opposing perspectives. Killing while providing aid to them is a prime example of that. You can not effectively fight what you cannot grasp.
  3. Helping Israel (to complete its genocide). By providing aid the US is mitigating mounting pressures to stop the Gaza holocaust.
  4. Sadism. The US wants Gazans to not know what to make of food air-dropped followed by bombers, or maybe even delivered at the exact same moment, by the exact same hand. This excruciating and debilitating confusion brings sadistic joy to the US, and it is also used to prime Gazans for annihilation.
  5. Strengthening the place charity has in the colonialist capitalist order. By portraying the murderer, enslaver, and exploiter as a savior through charity, capitalist colonialism, the basis for American political culture, can continue applying systemic injustice while reaping both unimaginable financial rewards and reputational benefits. Charity is a pillar of capitalist greed, corruption, and enslavement. –

    Two facts to keep in mind: A. Throughout its millennia of existence, Gaza never needed aid before Zionism (read: white capitalist colonialism). B. About half of Gazans originate from families and communities ethnically cleansed from 1948 Israel in the Nakba.

    Another aspect of just how ridiculous and divorced from reality this airdropping is:

    Gaza is a coastal city with direct access to the Mediterranean since ancient history. It is an hour’s drive from Tel Aviv, and less than that from Ben Gurion airport. It is 20 kilometers away from Ashdod seaport, Israel’s largest.

    Gaza can be accessed by land and sea easily. It has dozens of entry points. It is inseparable from the history and geography of the Mediterranean region, with Alexandria, Malta, and Crete just a few hours away by ship (maybe a day).

    Airdropping aid into Gaza makes it look like an isolated, exotic, far-off island. Somewhere between the Easter Island and Antarctica, and undergoing an alien invasion, and not an insane, delirious, hazy slaughter at the hands of America’s closest bestest ally in the world, smack at the heart of civilization. This is also how you estrange a people and a struggle. Conilialist cinema, that’s what this is.

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In his uniform: some words in honor of Aaron Bushnell

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Aaron Bushnell’s act was a highly political one, as he said in his own words. There are some lessons we can learn from him, and from his act, to be better political fighters for good. Here are some basic ones:

  1. Aaron made a point of wearing his uniform. He was telling us: I am doing this as an American soldier. In doing so, he brought more honor to American uniforms than we have seen in decades. Aaron put actual meaning, a love for humanity, into an American symbol in an era where all symbols have become vacant of meaning, cold, cynical, and violent.I hope that every soldier in every military looks at his act and uses it to undo at least some of the benumbing effect of their national propaganda. I especially hope so for members of the American military. Aaron was your brother. One of yours. You need to love and understand him.

  2. Aaron was from San Antonio, which is not a small town by any measure but is nevertheless not Manhattan. American boys just like him have been joining the American military since forever, and they usually come from smaller towns and cities, from migrant communities, and from black neighborhoods. They are not the children of Holywood producers and Pulitzer Prize winners, they are the children of farmers and teachers, bus drivers and corner shop owners, workers, builders, mechanics; America’s working class. Generation after generation, American elites make a mockery of their naivety and innocent belief in what America stands for, and send them to kill and die in imperial wars from which they return broken, suicidal, drug addicts, homeless, and traumatized for life. Those cavalier elites, in their columns and “think tanks”, play their stupid, inhumane war games, showing the same contempt for the lives of American soldiers as they do for the foreigners they send them to hunt and destroy. Beautiful American kids like Aaaron Bushnell pay the price for this. But for the column writing and donor class it is nothing. They never pay for anything. They just go on to the next campaign. America’s deformed class system is present nowhere as it does in its wars. We should keep this too in mind when lucrative donor-owner bodies push for war with Iran when no child of their own is going to pay with their life for it.

  3. Do not dignify those who speak ill of Aaron with an answer. Never get dragged into their twisted, amoral pseudo-reasoning (which is just a sadist’s playtime). Never defend. Always attack. All we need to be saying right now is: you are so dedicated to insane mass murder of innocents that American patriots have started to kill themselves not to partake in it.

  4. To Aaron’s detractors we should be saying: You will mock Aaron, we will elevate his memory and character. You will make light of Gaza’s suffering, we will remember it forever. You will remain blind to its humanity, we will see it as a symbol for the ages. But you and only you will have to live with what you have become in the name of lust, sorry, indifference, for innocent blood. You will live to regret your own stupidity and heartlessness, and we will be there to rub your face in it.

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Ahron Bushnell’s unbearable shame

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A man feeling such overpowering shame that it becomes too much, and he needs to fight it back with whatever means necessary, to not let it eat him alive; a man suffocated and crushed under the unbearable weight of a broken conscience and broken dreams, looking at a horrible death as the less painful experience; a man who simply cannot not go on living when his government and his people murder thousands of children with absolute indifference.

Such a man made the ultimate sacrifice yesterday, to give his country, which he must have loved dearly, one last warning, as it, too, was setting fire to its very existence.

“I will no longer be complicit in genocide“, his final message, was, and forever will be, his legacy.

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In honor and eternal memory of Aaron Bushnell, US Air Force serviceman who took his own life, by fire, outside the Israeli embassy in DC yesterday, in protest of the Gaza genocide

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The lie of ‘we’re doing it to prevent another october 7th’

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Something needs to be said about the obvious lie that is Israel’s premise, or formal reason for this genocidal campaign, that is “making sure that October 7th does not happen again”.

On a simple military level, if Israel wanted to make sure October 7th does not happen again, it could place 10,000, 20,000, or 30,000 soldiers on its border with the Gaza Strip, and make that kind of attack happening again impossible.

In that case, Israel could take Hamas leaders to an international court and charge them with war crimes. It could alson lead in good faith with the international community and the Arab world to initiate a deep reform in the way the Gaza strip is governed.

Had Israel chosen to do that, it would also have to, without question, be willing to discuss Palestinian independence and statehood; but this, too, should have been addressed humanly, and justly, generations ago. And it is inevitable.

If Israel had chosen to use October 7th as a means to push for reform in Palestinians resistance and governance, it would definitely have a case that may not be fully justified in the eyes of devout Palestinian freedom fighters, but it would make enough sense to gain traction with many people in Palestine, in the Middle East and internationally.

But Israel chose instead a path of vindictiveness and annihilation; to drown blood in much more blood, misery in a hundredfold misery. Choosing this path, Israel lost the last of the hearts and minds that were still even partially open to hear it.

It displays cruelty beyond measure. It makes any discussion on the supposed barbarism of Hamas a joke. If killing innocent people, children especially, is an obscene crime, which it is, then it is an obscene crime in all circumstances, and not just when convenient for US allies, who now will never shake off the image of heartless, moral-free colonizers.

And if Israel had chosen a more humane, pragmatic, wise, way of making sure October 7th never happens again, by now all of its abductees would have been home with their families, and Israeli society, too, would have started healing, instead of losing more young men and risking an utterly devastating regional war.

And it would not be this hated globally, and not charged with genocide, and in no need to use a humongous lobby to censor and silence critics, and destroy its image further.

This was never about “making sure October 7th never happens again”. This was, and is, about wounded egos and a pathetic and destructive show of dominance – especially despicable where defenseless, occupied civilians are concerned, and where children and babies die in their thousands. Israel’s choice does not make it safer or better in any way. It is a stupid, sadistic, and infantile approach to life, based on perceived grandeur, not on actual care for anyone, Arab or Jew, Palestinian or Israeli.


And one last thought: if you love someone, you don’t entangle their image in perpetuity in genocide. This Israeli regime must be hating Jews as well, for doing that.