Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
I used to think it was wrong for Israel to be killing tens of thousands of Gazans with airstrikes and starving hundreds of thousands with siege warfare, but then Israel apologists informed me that some Palestinians did mean things to Israelis in the past, so now I support it.
What Israel is doing in Gaza would only be unethical if everyone in Gaza were a perfect little cherub who’d never committed any violence or done anything wrong ever. I could see getting upset if the IDF was raining military explosives upon a giant concentration camp full of squishy marshmallow-like beings made of pure love and conceived without original sin who do nothing but coo and sing lullabies all day, but in reality the concentration camp is populated by beings who are not nearly that perfect.
I hear people calling this a genocide, but that’s ridiculous. What’s been explained to me is that the assault on Gaza is completely different from all the genocidal massacres you’ve read about in history, because the Israelis believe what they are doing is right. See, this time the ones who are carrying out the mass-scale extermination programs and ethnic cleansing plans have reasons for doing so.
As we all know, in a proper genocide the perpetrators have no reasons for carrying out their mass extermination programs and ethnic cleansing plans; they do it solely because they are evil and like doing evil things. In a proper genocide the perpetrators historically spend most of their time cackling like cartoon supervillains and talking about how delightfully evil their genocidal actions are.
This isn’t like that at all. You see, the Israelis sincerely feel that the population they are eliminating is very bad, and they believe removing that population will make the land a much better and safer place to live. They see the Palestinians as a major problem, and, unlike a proper genocide, they are simply trying to find a solution to that problem which will be permanent and final.
So when you see Israel apologists defending Israel’s actions in Gaza, please try to keep in mind that they’re just helpfully explaining that the Israeli government has reasons and motives for doing what it’s doing, and that it believes what it is doing is correct. If this were a proper genocide, that wouldn’t be the case.
You’ve seen what genocide looks like. It looks like Nazis rounding up Jews and killing them. Are the Israelis wearing swastikas? Are the Palestinians Jewish? No? Okay then. That proves this cannot possibly be a genocide, because if it was, it would look exactly the same as a previous historical instance of genocide in every conceivable way. It’s not even the early 1940s right now, it’s a completely different time period. Like, duh.
So relax. Everything is fine. This isn’t a genocide, and if it is, we can read about it in our history books later on and be sure to get it right next time.
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What we have learned is that European settler genocide is not genocide at all. This genocide is a reminder to all who had forgotten that it’s just business as usual.
Caitlin, you are simply brilliant. Bless you for such intellectual clarity. 🕊️🇵🇸