So here we have the Israeli Minister of National Security blatantly declaring “yes, we treat prisoners barbarically by design, and to solve prison overcrowding, we'll start mass executions.”
He's essentially shouting on social media, "We're turning our concentration camps into death camps, and we're damn proud of it."
The level of impunity is mind-blowing, and 100% thanks to American backing (together with some other Western states playing along).
The world needs to face reality: a terrifying ideology is slowly setting down on the West. Actions and ideology are always tied at the hip - you can't have one without the other. If you're doing something or supporting someone doing something, you need some rationalization to back it up.
And sadly I think it’s just getting started. until now we - in the West - had been told that everything about such actions was anathema to everything we stood for. And even though we very often - even routinely - acted in barbaric ways it was always hidden, unassumed and denied in order to keep ideology intact. This time is different, there’s nothing hidden, unassumed and denied about it: the Israelis are proudly revendicating their actions, as this tweet by Ben Gvir illustrates. Yet we still support them. Which invariably means that our ideology needs to evolve to rationalize this, and we’re seeing signs of this everywhere in the West: a disinhibition of a discourse that justifies this. Worse still, a discourse that virulently opposes condemning this, as it’s “antisemitic” to do so.
Here's the real danger: once this discourse becomes normal, even mainstream, it opens the floodgates. And you find yourself with a West that's lost its mind even far more than it already has, drunk on a deadly ideology that allows it to commit the worst atrocities with pride and confidence. It's not like we haven't been down this road before - this barbarism is in our DNA, whether we like it or not.
Which is why it's so important to call this stuff out, loudly and constantly. We can't let this become the new normal, we can’t become the worst version of ourselves. We can’t let the future become even darker than our past.
Israel does not have the right to “approve” land seizure because it is illegal under international law.
“Israel stealing more Palestinian land,” that’s your headline.
The assault on Rafah is another utterly despicable war crime.
As bombs rain down on a trapped and terrified population, we implore our government to find an ounce of humanity and end its complicity in this senseless massacre.
Wake up. This is not war. This is genocide.