When I read the news this morning, the first thing I did was open twitter for the first time in 2 weeks and retweet a bunch of tweets celebrating the Iranian attack on Tel Aviv. It felt cathartic and deserved, like they were finally getting what had been a long time coming and like the genocide might finally stop. And while the Iranian missile attack hasn't even done a fraction of the unimaginable destruction the Zionist entity has inflicted on any of its neighbors, there's still something gnawing at the back of my mind: "Don't ever become like them."
Israel has shown us some of the absolute worst that humanity is capable of. The cruelty and sadism even normal Israeli civilians have displayed towards the Palestinians has been appalling and shocking. But I don't want to believe that the majority of people in Israel are ontologically evil, irredeemable psychopaths, I want to believe that they are normal people at their core. The inhumane hatred they feel for the Palestinian people isn't some unique phenomenon exclusive to Jewish settlers or Republican congressmen, but something any of us could experience for another group of people under the wrong circumstances.
And while it's nowhere near that level, I can't deny that what I'm feeling right now and what I've been feeling for the past 20 months is hate. I hate Israel, I hate everything it has done and continues to do, I hate its fascist leadership, I hate how my own country's government makes me feel like I'm going insane by unconditionally supporting these rabid nazis, and I won't lie, I have developed a certain hatred for Israel's population as well. A part of me would love to see videos of Israelis being thrown out of their stolen homes and suffer even half of what they made the people of Palestine suffer. A part of me wants to see Tel Aviv razed to the ground just like the Gaza strip was.
But I don't want to be like that. Right now the damage done to Israel is negligible, but should it experience serious devastation, I do hope we can remember our humanity. Let it never get to the point where we take our families on a hill and watch other families get massacred for entertainment. Let it never get to the point where we cheer for some IDF general to get murked alongside 7 members of his family. I want to still be able to feel empathy (though not necessarily forgiveness) for people who have lost everything, even if 6 months ago they were supporting ethnic cleansing.
I don't wanna chastise anyone for joking about Tel Aviv getting nuked or for telling Israelis going "oh noo bomb shelterinos" on TikTok to pound sand. It's one thing to say that while Israel is still the dominant force and receiving unconditional support from the West. But when the point comes where the Zionist entity has been defeated (inshallah it will be soon), I hope we can restrain ourselves from indulging in cruelty and sadism. Nobody, not even Benjamin Netanyahu or Itamar Ben-Gvir, deserves having to pick up a family member's remains and stuff them in a plastic bag. Even the most despicable Zionist you can think of deserves better than what the Palestinians are going through.
Sorry for the ramble, this has been going through my mind all day. Also main I guess.
I feel this a lot too. While I do enjoy and cheer for bombs falling on the fascist regime, there's still the part of me that understands how sickening it is to cheer for violence. Even if that violence is completely called for and is a tiny percentage of the violence the Israelis have inflicted upon others, the bombs weren't even targeted towards civilians and kids, while Israel is literally shooting starved people waiting for food.
There's a part of Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend by Losurdo that is quite relevant with this. In the process of debunking the deportations and concentration capms that the Soviets did to the Nazis, Losurdo describes the general sentiment the world had against Germans after their defeat. Westerners really went way over the top and wanted to do everything the Nazis did against them, even to their children. Soviets on the other hand were usually much more moderate. While in Czech and Polish concentration camps Germans were left to starve literally, Soviets still saw them as people. The Nazis that were guilty for war crimes would be tried and sentenced while the workers and peasant would be re-educated and reintegrated to society. This goes to show how much an ideology that's rooted in equality and doesn't believe in racial theories affects people in contrast with capitalism.
I hope that when Israel finally gets defeated, we will have the constraint to leave the monstrosities in the past and reintegrate most of the Israelis back to a healthy society without race supremacy and Zionism. People like Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir deserve no compassion though. Straight to the wall, the most compassion you can show these monsters is to give them a quick death, something that no Palestinian has had the privilege of.
Nobody's asking you to feel empathy right now for a fascist warmonger who's spouting genocide propaganda while hiding in a bunker in Greece.
But I would still feel a certain amount of empathy if I found Netanyahu in the rubble of his home, weeping over the charred corpse of his wife. It's less about what he deserves in this case, but about being capable of feeling empathy with anyone, and I mean literally anyone, when they're at their lowest and most powerless. Because that is what is so shocking about the Israelis right now, that despite being in a position of complete power and their "enemies" being starved and killed without a shred of dignity, they seemingly feel nothing but sadistic glee.
Yeah, I understand that and would feel bad as well. I really can't bring myself to understand how those Israeli troops doing all that feel zero empathy. I sometimes feel bad killing a mosquito when it's not really necessary, because who gave me the right to take its life for my own comfort? But these people really look at other humans in camps, crying for help, kids looking like living skeletons, and they still put up their rifles and pull the trigger. You would expect that there's some natural instinctive barrier to apathy, if not through ideology then through evolutionary reflexes, to at least feel something when faced with other humans suffering at your expense.
I think group dynamics and dehumanization can turn anyone into a monster. It's the only explanation I have for many horrors that have happened and still happen in the world.