What happens to a nation that dehumanises another nation, how does that society come to terms with its brutal treatment of other human beings. how does it justify its savagery? What is happening to the people of Israel as they get behind their government's inhumane treatment of the Palestinian people?
“Tomorrow there’s no teaching in Gaza, they don’t have any
children left,” chanted supporters of the attacks on Gaza, waving Israeli
flags.
Of course, none of this is unique to Israel. War and occupation have always brought out humanity’s inner bestiality — from Auschwitz to Abu Ghraib, from Hiroshima to Vietnam. (And no, observing that simple historical fact is not the same as equating Israel’s actions in Gaza to the Nazi Holocaust.) The same fundamental human bestiality has been an undeniable feature of all massacres and all colonial regimes. Not too long ago, great thinkers like Paulo Freire, Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon observed with great lucidity how the European colonizer, by brutalizing the colonized, ended up brutalizing himself. Running a colonial regime, they noted, requires not just the dehumanization of the oppressed, but — much more importantly — the thorough dehumanization of the oppressor. Human affects like empathy must be actively repressed to keep the colonial order intact; not only to justify the brutality ideologically, but simply to cope with one’s own atrocities emotionally.Read the full article HERE:
