Good morning, dear reader,
At the end of this week there will be an anniversary that you wish didn’t exist. Because it is an anniversary of shame. It was six months and at the same time what felt like an eternity on Sunday Hamas terrorists slaughtered 1,200 people in southern Israel. Rapes, slit throats, murdered babies, tortured hostages: the perpetrators hardly left anything out of the list of possible atrocities. Since then, the Israeli counterattack has been raging, which was initially justified as a defensive action to prevent future atrocities, but has now gone far beyond the limits of legitimacy.
The scale of the killing is by no means unique in history. Nobody has to explain this to us Germans, because we still hold the lonely record when it comes to attempting to systematically extinguish human life. One of the depressing aspects of the slaughter first in Israel and now in the Gaza Strip is the fact that the merciless behavior is downright merciless to us as humans typical of the genre seems to be. There are recurring Muster. Can they be overcome?
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Division, insurmountable divides, polarization: These terms could also be used to describe some societies or the behavior of many contemporaries on “social media”, not just the conflict in the Near East. There, however, we experience the mechanisms that can be observed in a more harmless form in many places, in their most deadly variant. We have to watch how small radicalized groups, which by no means represent the whole of Israeli or the whole of Palestinian society, fertilize each other in their hatred. Gunmen Israeli settlers attack Palestinians, drive them from their land, spread fear and terror in the West Bank – and at the same time deliver Palestinian extremists the supposed justification for the next terrorist attack. Knife stabbers shouting Islamist slogans attack Israelis at bus stops or drive cars into crowds. Subsequently, right-wing extremist members of the Israeli cabinet feel called upon to secrete their racist poison into microphones and, in turn, incite Israelis to unrestrained violence.
The madness knows no limits. That Hamas is joining the Annihilation of Israel has prescribed, should have been since the massacre on 7. October 2023 have also become clear to the last person. And on the other side? An Israeli minister from the radical settler movement suggested in November that To wipe out Gaza with a nuclear bomb. The man is still in office.
The extremists benefit from each other. They point to their counterpart in the enemy, point out their abhorrent brutality – and are happy about growing support for their own inhumane positions. This Symbiosis has fueled the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians for decades. Hardened opposing positions create a deplorably stable situation. It’s hard to get away from it.
Why is that? Why do the propagandists of hate keep gaining momentum? Because people stand together when things get rough and dangerous. Mutual assistance and solidarity: These are nice words, but they can be toxic. Nations, ethnic groups and religious groups come together in the face of an external threat – and in this formation attack others. Collectively, we bipeds behave like them Stone Age horde in front of the cave, who gang up on the guys over in front of the other cave. This pattern can be observed everywhere and at all times in human history. It seems to be hard-wired into our brains.
Israelis against Palestinians, Arab Muslims and Christians against Jews: The dispute is almost always viewed from this perspective. You no longer notice how absurd this division is. It would actually be more obvious to speak of two other camps: perpetrators and those affected. The latter pay with their lives, suffer hunger and live in fear. The majority of society – not only in the occupied territories and the Gaza Strip, but also in Israel – is suffering from the war and the ongoing violence. Only a small group benefits from it.
Extremists make political capital out of killing. Hamas commanders can pose as resistance fighters. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu uses the permanent state of emergency to cling to power. Most others are victims in various ways. If an Israeli is in the wrong place at the wrong time, he or she must die. There are no real places left in Gaza anyway; the scenery there resembles the apocalypse. Babies die in agony from starvation. “Humanitarian catastrophe” is a trivializing term for that Horror, that is taking place there and for which the Israeli cabinet bears full responsibility: Perpetrator in a suit.
If you had a magic wand and could use a magical formula to bring those affected together against the perpetrators, then the war would be over tomorrow. Unfortunately, nation and religious affiliation – the poisonous boxes into which people habitually classify themselves in conflicts – are not so easy to overcome. After all, the differences are obvious: the guy there speaks Arabic, another wears a yarmulke. Some live over here, others over there. This can be easily distinguished. Enemy images work when you can clearly see them.
Those who profit from violence, on the other hand, are fully integrated into society. They blend into the crowd when you look over the fence from the other side. Hamas and the administration in the Gaza Strip: They were two sides of the same coin until the Israeli offensive reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble. In Israel, on the other hand, the warmonger Netanyahu and his right-wing extremist ministers have been democratically legitimized through elections. No wonder, then, that between Israelis and Palestinians Solidarity between average people does not happen – even though they both pay the price for the careers of the perpetrators.
Is there no way out of the impasse? Yes, but it requires a serious step: the disempowerment of the radicals on both sides. Under normal circumstances you would have to use a magic wand to do this. Yet, paradoxically as a result of the extreme violence, one may be happening Chance on. Hamas has been hit hard, at least for a while. At the same time, something is moving in Israel: protests against Netanyahu are increasing. International pressure on his government is greater than ever before. A Change of power in Israel is not a foregone conclusion, but it is no longer a utopia either.
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