1/ The massacre at the Al-Taba'een school is a crime and a horror. It is genocide. Leaving civilians no choice but to take refuge at a school and then bombing it is a crime even if Yahya Sinwar was hiding in the building. How does such dehumanization come into being? --->
2/ It begins with the reinforcing notions of "security" and "supremacy". In Israeli Jewish eyes, the most basic and necessary reason for the establishment of Israel is "security" - making sure that Jews could no longer be killed at will. This is Israel's raison d'etre. --->
3/ Supremacy is hardwired into this core. "Security" as an organizing concept provides an immediate hierarchy: if you want to kill us, you're bad and deserve wickedness in return. If you'd like us to live, you're good. "We" are the benchmark for goodness and badness. --->
4/ We began this in 1948 when we drove hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their land and put those that remained under martial law. "Our" security was tantamount. "They" were the enemy. They needed to know their place - none at all or beneath us. --->
5/ We exponentially expanded our ability to "maintain" our security and guarantee our supremacy in 1967, when we began constructing the apparatus of the occupation. Now we could also engage in dividing and ruling by adding another layer of repression. --->
6/ Palestinians in the occupied territories lived under the military occupation regime. They were monitored constantly, their movements constrained, their freedom denied and their very lives and deaths at the utter discretion of Israeli military and intelligence. --->
7/ Palestinian citizens of Israel were constantly reminded of how "good" their lives were in comparison with their occupied brethren. They were expected to be grateful and graciously accept their institutionally-enforced inferiority as a result. --->
8/ This is what we've been doing since there was an "us" here. In the name of "security" we have been establishing supremacy. We would be secure when "they" knew and accepted that their place was out of our sight. They were here at our indulgence. The whole thing was ours. --->
9/ Then came October 7th and we were shaken to our core. We no longer had the illusion of "security". The apparatus we had spent decades building disintegrated in a few hours. Our glorious military was trounced by a militia we had funded for years. They beat us. --->
10/ We could no longer think of ourselves as supreme. We had no sense of self without supremacy. But we could still make it work! We would switch to solipsism. If we couldn't make the Palestinians assume their proper place we would simply declare ourselves alone in the world. -->
11/ No one but us is real, least of all the Palestinians. They are phantoms. We destroy them halfheartedly. In resposnse to this morning's massacre the IDF said we precisely targeted Hamas commanders and that casualty numbers released by Hamas are exagerrated. --->
12/ That is dehumanization at the most extreme scale. It is a rejection of reality, of the realness of human beings. It is a subversion of human ethics and morality ("Hamas are responsible"). This is how we got here. We are alone.
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