I appreciate all calls to end the horrific genocide we are watching in Gaza, but some of the logic people formulate is extremely troubling.
For example, a ‘senior Israel-Palestine analyst’ on Twitter (who’s skirted around Zionism in the past) posted this:
“You don’t need to be a military expert to know that killing thousands of people with nowhere to go will leave entire generations scarred, will harden hearts and will breed more hate and violence.”
What a twisted, racist rationale for stopping a genocide. Any genocide.
It reminds me of an oft-used talking point during the War on Terror, which killed millions, that droning people of color will only create more terrorists. Well-meaning liberals recycled this argument with endless fervor as a reason to end drone strikes.
This is a racist argument.
The reason for not committing genocide is not that “they will hate us more for killing them,” but rather the fact that genocide is morally repugnant and inhumane. Genocide is mass murder, it’s the destruction of an ethnic, racial or religious group of people. It causes “serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicts on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.” This is why genocide is considered the “crime of crimes” under international law.
Why are brown and black bodies only viewed as either recipients or perpetrators of violence? Meaning that they can either be droned/genocided or they will drone/genocide themselves if subjected to “heart-hardening” suffering.
I find this unimaginative racist framing to be a narcissistic projection of the West’s own criminal tendencies onto the other.
End the genocide in Gaza because it is immoral, criminal, and vicious. It is the murder of families and communities. It is violently deranged and anti-life, and it also turns the perpetrator into a grotesque caricature of what it means to be human.