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Israel’s Brutality Is Increasing—and So Is Its Denialism
(www.thenation.com)
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this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2024
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Those aren't people. Thinking of them as people is going to make stopping the genocide harder than it has to be, and will cost human lives.
No, they are people. Ignorant, hateful, and actively supporting a genocide, but people nonetheless. My comment was explicitly calling out and criticizing the impulse to dehumanize the "enemy", real or imagined. Thinking of Zionist Israelis or Nazis as less than human not only perpetuates the mindset that allows these groups to carry out genocide, but at the same time denies how easy it is for average people to fall into such traps.
It leads to thought processes similar to "If you have to be less than human to support a genocide, then obviously what I support can't be genocide because I am definitely a human."
And I'm definitely not one of those "oh, we just have to talk to these hateful ignorant perpetuators of genocide because they simply don't understand why they're wrong". I'm of the opinion that violence is absolutely necessary to uphold equality if the situation has been left to get as bad as it has. I'm mostly just railing against the idea that people who support genocide are somehow less human because of that hatred.
They will not stop until they're killed, they'll say it themselves if you ask them.
Theres nothing else to them but the killing, and things that support the killing-I looked in my own conversations with them, and asking some refugees-not palestinian refugees, but queer kids they threw away like trash, because of course they fucking do that, if there was anything worth keeping, anything they missed from 'home', and it was always only the ancient stuff and the Palestinian stuff. Even I miss things about the places I'm from.
And every fucking one of them knows. They're so obsessively about the genocide. Its like once the topic comes up, there's nothing else to them. Because there's not.
They leave no other out, and I think all the things that make 'genocide' bad don't apply here. Destroying a culture-either you think they're Jewish, like they claim, and Jewish culture in the entire rest of the world keeps on ticking, or youve talked to one and know they're disgusting goblin monsters who have no culture. Nothing is lost. killing innocents- but there are no innocents. Every one of them over the age of like 14 is guilty, and irredeemable. just killing shit tons of stuff, usually people. Sometimes not-buffalo for example but this is going to happen anyway, and they're not going to stop killing, so youre not choosing that killing happens; youre doing the trolley problem. And I'm of the opinion that oppressor lives are worth less than shit-at least shit makes good fertilizer. there's no point except this time there would be. There are people who need saving. People who have been discarded by the world too many fucking times, and I think letting them keep getting thrown away because we're too precious about their oppressors is fucking monstrous.
Except it gets worse. Because cultural genocide is, by lemkin's original definition if not the UN convention; still genocide; taking away the things that enable their culture to exist and reproduce itself would be committing a genocide, but genocide is their entire culture (watch what happens when they're finished with Palestine), so even completely peacefully stopping the genocide, lets say proving we're in a simulation, doing a breakout attack, getting root, and disabling PvP flags for the whole middle east, would be a genocide of the kapostanis. I genuinely cannot imagine how they would handle it. Mass suicide? Raiding africa for slaves? It would certainly not be fun to watch.
Given that I don't know we're in a simulation, I have no idea how to do a breakout attack on the ten year old computer I'm sitting in front if, and that anything you do to stop the genocide of the Palestinians would completely destroy 'Israeli' culture, I'm happy to just see them all dead. They chose to be this. And they're kind of literally Nazis. If grandpa and video ganes taught me one lesson: killing Nazis is always good, and if history has taught me one lesson, its that we always let too many of them live after, and they fuck everything up for decades.
If any of them don't want to be genocided, they could just leave, or if you think they're still human, stop actively committing genocide at any point. But they don't do that. They get offended if you tell them they could.
Yeah, I agree with everything you just said, but make no mistake, the monsters committing genocide are still human beings. Denying that blurs the line of the purpose of violence done against them and makes it difficult to understand that we must constantly be vigilant against rhetoric and propaganda that advocates for genocide as it is scarily easy for people to fall into patterns of thinking that can justify genocide.
It is irresponsible to say that, because they are actively committing genocide against a population, they are no longer human beings and that is why they deserve violence. It's an unnecessary extra step that opens the door for the very same genocidal thinking. They are people who have engaged in genocide with no signs of slowing down or stopping, and for that one reason alone, deserve violence until their threat is quashed. That is enough for me; I see no reason or benefit to dehumanize them to justify righteous violence.
I think being biologically human is not morally important to me. You could clone my own muscle tissue(assuming you find any) and I would have no objection to trying it on a bun. Nor to you making a fleshlight and fucking it; you do you.
These things... There's nothing to them but violence. And that's important to remember; they can't be negotiated with, because there's nothing else they want, nothing else they are. They want to kill rape mutilate and ruin, and they won't stop til they're dead. This isnt me being a bigot; they'll tell you that them fucking selves! They're really fucking consistent about it! There is no diplomatic option, and no surrender they offer could be trusted, if they're even still capable of surrender.
Even if you could prove we live in a simulation, perform a breakout attack, and disable PvP flags for the middle east, a mavical perfect solution that instantly stops the bloodshed with no threats or coercion; you would still be comitting genocide on the kapostanis, in the same way exterminating the buffalo was a genocide of the plains tribes of north america. More so, maybe. Their entire culture, and its modes of cultural reproduction (killing and raping and generally thinking of new ways to be awful towards Palestinians, importing settlers to stolen land, etc) would be destroyed. A people would he undone. Until they just decided to fucking do slave raids into Africa or whatever shit. And if they're so Fucking vile that they do paradox soft tolerance on stopping a Fucking genocide, I don't think preserving their lives merits much thought.
I think they need to be killed (are we in a simulation? Can you un-pvp an area?), and if we're going to be doing genocide (by stopping then from doing a genocide), i cabt think of any way to do it but killing them (fwiw, the head of MSF agrees). And I think you're making it harder for the angry 19 year olds who are going to have to pull the triggers. Those kids don't need more PTSD than they're already gonna get from this, y'know?
Plus by insisting they're human, youre leaving more room for their bad faith bullshit and appropriation of (all) Jewishness, which could get real people killed, and not just by delaying an end to their genocide. People are going to die because of this shit, Human people, all over the world, who are at worst wrong and kind of shitty about this, and at best doing their damdest to stop it, and in every case don't deserve to fucking die. You're increasing the potential for splash damage and innocent lives to be lost by calling kapostani's human.
I'd love if there were a solution other than violence. Violence fucking sucks. Fuck, aside from the human costb there are no green wars, you know? The climate does not need this shit, I really wish they could and would just Fucking Stop.
But talk to one. They'll tell you themselves; can't stop won't stop. So its harm reduction time. And I don't cry over spilled Nazi. Neither should you.
This is becoming frustrating. We are on the same page that violence is the only answer; I'm only insisting that we understand that the violence has to be done against our fellow humans. It is a tragedy, but one that must be enacted because, as you say, there is no negotiation to be had here.
Denying their humanity weakens the claim of righteousness and, moreso than enabling room for their bad faith bullshit, directly feeds into their bad faith claims of antisemitism as dehumanizing them removes genocide from the argument and all your left with is killing animals/barbarians/evil monsters. I don't know about you, but that argument is wholly unconvincing to me. You can certainly claim that because they've engaged in genocide, that's why they've lost their humanity, but again, it's an unnecessary mental step that gains us nothing and weakens the argument for deploying violence against them.
For the soldier / PTSD argument, I again disagree. Soldiers kill people. There should be no way around that fact. Dehumanization and making it easier for soldiers to mentally compartmentalize the taking of life is not a good thing and can easily be warped to make soldiers follow any order, regardless of the moral imperative. The soldiers can and should be made to understand that they are committing a traumatic amount of violence and death in order to stop an entire genocide. Violence is a tool and it must be wielded responsibly and with full understanding that the violence is both necessary and just.
Also chill with the faux philosophical ramblings of simulations and video game analogies. I don't care what you believe outside of this context, but this is a serious issue and talking about "disabl[ing] PvP flags for the middle east" belies that this is the real world (simulated or not) with real, serious consequences. It damages your entire argument and makes you come across like you don't see the actual human pain and suffering this massacre has caused.
There are times violence has to be done against fellow humans (right now against the Russian elite, for example; I really don't think fighting a fucking meat grinder war is necessary but States would rather kill millions of civilians and dumb kids than fix the problem directly and make themselves vulnerable).
I don't particularly care about being 'righteous' or glorious war or any of this crap. I want to stop people dying.
Ive laid out that I don't particularly care about biological humanity. Just the things you can do with it, and if you wall those off, as happens to basically all of them with fascism, all the reasons I care about people stop being relevant.
This applies to members of my own family, but none of the ones I could possibly reach are doing genocide, just some awful animal stuffing itself into a bottle and ranting on Facebook somewhere, which required a brief period of mourning and moving the fuck on. Hope they die before drinking their kids' inheritance, but its not worth the social disturbance of killing them.
But when youre comitting a genocide, youre already doing all the things that would be bad about killing a fascist, but at a much higher volume.
Theres ending a culture. That's a bad thing about genocide. But either they're Jewish (lol, I know, but for the sake of argument we can pretend) and that culture exists in thousands of cities all over the world, and only individuals (which fascists arent in any of the ways that make that precious) would be lost, OR they're just murder-ghouls whose existence is only atrocities, in which case it extra needs to happen, we are better off without.
The video game analogy was a thought experiment, the hypothetical "even if you had a magic switch to just make it so nobody could do violence or even so much as fuck woth each other, no matter how badly they wanted to, everyone is completely safe from each other" in shorthand people understand and explaining what that (in a fantasy world where that could happen) might look like, mostly to avoid 'what if's' because I'm rarely sure anyone's arguing in complete good faith, even in more generally sensible places. I know thisisnt a fucking game. If this were a fucking game I'd be good natured about it. Or at least only a little bit of an asshole.
I'm aware people are dying. I don't think we'd be talking about this if they weren't.
I think when you become a fascist, most of the death has already happened. Most of the death that matters at least. Again, I have personal experience coping with this. I think most people do by now. Theres a range where you can pull them back, but after a certain point they're just lost, and it only looks like the person you knew/loved.
Even a chicken has honest feelings, but fascists kind of don't. Theres no moral wrong in killing them, except scaring others and traumatizing yourself by killing something that looks human. Hence the dehumanization. Because they need to be killed; they won't stop any other way. I fucking hate them for that.
I see where youre coming from, and your arguments aren't completely invalid; I just think youre wrong in this specific case.
I also think we see the same problem, and the fact there's only two options left, one of them we both agree is completely unconscionable and not worth mentioning, the other we agree really fucking sucks.