Sometimes we must explicitly state what ought to be utterly obvious. Or would we rather make what is disgusting normal? Rather make every street corner a shooting gallery, every handheld device a bomb, every bomb a cemetery, every step someone’s last? Do we want to make fear the new normal? Paranoia wisdom? Do we want to ceasefire or to spread fire?

Netanyahu: You have crawled past statist elitism, past nationalistic immorality, past ignominious war making infamy, all the way to fascistic bottom feeding decrepitude. You are disgusting. And you want to drag us all after you, don’t you? 

But what of those in the Israeli Defense Force? What of Israelis living life and life only throughout Israel? What of Israel’s supporters living life and life only around the world? 

How should we who are nauseated by what has been and is being done to Palestinians and by what is now spreading rather than ceasing, regard Netanyahu, regard the IDF, regard Israelis in Israel who support genocide, and regard Israel’s supporters around the world who ignore, alibi, arm, and abet genocide?

Can we be horrified, outraged, and enraged but also regard the ignorers, supporters, perpetrators, and planners of the genocide hurled at Gaza’s schools, hospitals, homes, and streets without ourselves hurling dehumanizing epithets? Without ourselves becoming dehumanizers?

It is getting difficult. It really is. We don’t want to think of fellow humans much less of neighbors or relatives as planners, perpetrators, abettors, or even just ignorers of genocide. We don’t want to hate fellow humans. But can we hate the acts yet somehow recognize that those involved are like us? Can we hate the acts but not dehumanize the perpetrators? 

Could Israelis’ have hated the October 7 acts yet have understood the circumstances and feelings that led to those acts? Could Israelis have not dehumanized the perpetrators much less dehumanized all Palestinians? Could Israelis have not called Palestinians vermin, not incentivized genocide against Palestinians? Could the Israelis have avoided reducing themselves to genocide perpetrators?

For that matter, can we hate repressive and even murderous policing and not call the cops pigs? Can we hate racist, misogynist Trump but not dehumanize Trump’s supporters? Can we arouse in ourselves appropriate energy to battle fascist trends but not let fascist feelings infect our own behavior? 

Can we work to end the horrors in Gaza and prevent their spread? Can we see that against everything holy, everything moral, everything worthy, Israel seems literally hell bent upon mayhem and destruction until nothing remains of Palestinians—and perhaps of Israel as well? Can we also not become what we rightly reject? Isn’t that part of our task regarding ending genocide and Trumpism too?

It’s not easy to express outrage and deliver militance but not dehumanize. Some are trying. We all should try. Shouldn’t we?

---