Long protracted conflicts with atrocities will lead to real Hate (a lot of what is called hate today, is really more emotional anger, and/or resentment than true hate, and sometimes I feel that the word has lost some meaning the way it is used today). That hate leads to dehumanisation and cruel revenge, as well as atrocities. It’s a vicious cycle.
The vulgarity in this case is abominable, but not really worse than picking random people up from the street because you have a quota to fulfill, interrogating them with torture, before later sending them into a newly dug pit covered with car tires and shooting them; before setting the corpses on fire to mask the crime (incident from Syria 2013, where prisoners were also routinely raped and in larger scale).
Many people in the West still live in the delusion that Israel is akin to a “normal” European country, except in a very terrible neighborhood where brute force is necessary. It’s not. Certainly no longer. Aspect of Israel is still culturally linked to more peaceful societies, but an extreme type of nationalism has taken hold and the country is very, very radicalised and particularly this is true after October 7th. Race hierarchical thinking (old “real” racism) is very prevalent in Israel and politicians and generals in the highest positions contribute to the dehumanisation climate with statements that sounds pretty much like the statements of the worst antisemites regarding Jews.
In that climate, in a climate where Gaza = Hamas and where Hamas is seen to personify evil itself, or Satan if you will; such cruelty to Hamas prisoners is not that hard to comprehend for me. I already knew the Israeli right wing is extremely vulgar, so the vulgarity of the acts also hardly surprise me.
That having been said, I understand why the bestiality of this is particularly shocking, but really people, it is not worse this than to get raped by a baton or a steel pipe (which also happens to Palestinians btw), since you get internal injuries from that as well as the humiliation, unlike in this case, where it is all about the humiliation of being sullied by a dog.
It’s all disgusting. Extreme hate can unfortunately lead to this.
Side note and maybe an unnecessary one, but I am aware that I sometimes come across as a bit cold in this thread, maybe analytical, when I speak of such issues, but I am not cold or blind. But I see so much human horror that my very language has become a psychological defence mechanism to protect my mind from pain and pollution. I have self-awareness, I know that is happening. I need some emotional distance, seek objectiveness, compartmentalise, analytical distance, or I could never be able to deal with the material I see from for instance the Russo-Ukrainian war, because I have always been an emotional man with a fiery heart and mental health is a thing (I’ve struggled with a serious depression in the past).
And honestly, this particular conflict is emotionally difficult for me, because I have given up. I wrote that here years ago. I used to be on an Israeli-Palestinian peace forum for years, I’ve literally studied the conflict in a course in college, I have read so much. But I have no hope. This is probably the one conflict in the world, where I have no hope. It is unsolvable in the short and medium term, so I have given up and have sort of abandoned it emotionally in favour of other causes; because both sides are literally awful and it’s all steadily just getting worse (Russo-Ukrainian war is delightfully Black and White compared to this absolute sewer of a conflict).
My only hope for this particular conflict is that Americans post Trump, as well as Germans with Holocaust guilt syndrom (yeah, I seldom talk about Germans, but in Europe, no one is as blind as they are, though I understand the reason and while extremely unfortunate; blame them less and think some of the criticism is unfair) maybe in 10-20 years, stop reflexively defending the indefensible, which is what gives Israel room for maneuver politically and hinders self-reflection (when someone defends you to the hilt and tells you loudly that everything you do is awesome, you might believe it, and certainly few will change as much as when criticism is more unified; which again goes both ways btw; since much of the Muslim world sees nothing wrong with Hamas and Islamic Jihad ). Then there is the geopolitical angle making everything harder to solve, as well as fact that the weaker party having iron-clad maximalist positions that are nowhere near geopolitically realistic.
