Will Israelis One Day Say of Their Country's Atrocities in Gaza, 'I Was Always Against It'? : Shared by Fouad Kronfol

A good read. She is one of the more enlightened writers and intellectuals who criticize the government regularly.
Fouad

Will Israelis One Day Say of Their Country’s Atrocities in Gaza, “I Was Always Against It”?

By Amira Hass – Haaretz
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Summary
Veteran Israeli journalist Amira Hass reflects on whether future generations of Israelis will one day confront their nation’s actions in Gaza with the same remorse that Germans expressed after the Holocaust. She imagines a time when the magnitude of the atrocities—over 20,000 Palestinian children killed and 44,000 wounded—can no longer be dismissed or justified by the events of October 7.

Hass envisions a future when Israeli parents, soldiers, and judges will be questioned by their children and grandchildren about their roles in a “war of annihilation”: pilots asked why they bombed civilian neighborhoods, soldiers asked about executing unarmed people, and prison guards asked about torturing detainees. She argues that Israeli cruelty has become systematized and normalized, defended as patriotism, and reinforced by a media that suppresses context and numbs conscience.

While acknowledging that cruelty is learned, not innate, Hass insists that the violence toward Palestinians stems from a long-standing political and cultural conditioning—rooted in fear, supremacy, and dispossession—that predates 1948. Yet she closes on a slender note of hope: that “the optimists” who believe Israelis can someday rediscover their humanity may yet be right.

Quotes

• “People aren’t born cruel; they become so.”

• “The cruelty of Palestinians toward Israelis is widely covered, while our cruelty, that of Israeli society, is getting ever more sophisticated to protect our spoils.”

• “At some point, the optimists say, Israelis will stop saying, ‘They deserved it, because of October 7.’”

• “The daughters of decorated pilots will ask whether they dropped a proportionate bomb that killed a hundred civilians for one mid-level Hamas commander.”

• “The optimists believe that there is a road back. How lucky they are, the optimists.”

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