From wars with over a third of its neighbors to the Gaza genocide and an escalating campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, Israel has become the epitome of the modern-day violence-obsessed state.
That’s no accident, according to Haaretz journalist Dr. Ariel Handel.
👉 The “cognitive dissonance” among soldiers who are supposed to be conflicted between a “moral, humane, nonviolent” sense of self and barbaric behavior toward occupied populations is gone, subsumed by “the rise of the ethno-nationalist component of Israeli society,” where “the social conscience no longer judges itself by universal criteria,” but “loyalty to the Jewish collective,” embodied by the state.
🔊 “In such a situation, violence is transformed in the army from being viewed with ambivalence –indispensable but also something to be renounced and to be ashamed of – to something that is not only a tool or a goal in military activity, but an organic aspect of a soldier’s identity,” with the old “shooting and crying” attitude replaced by unbridled “joyfulness.”
This applies not only to the security services, but other parts of society, like the so-called Hilltop Youth settlers -who derive happiness from escaping “archaic conventions and rules of morality” and engaging in violent crimes “with a smile on their face,” posting about them on social media.
💬 In these communities, “invitations to carry out pogroms are circulated on colorful, cheerful posters that look more like flyers for an open-air rave than calls to violence.”
Israel is “in the midst of a ‘revolution of joy’, Handel says. “It’s a happiness that doesn’t exist despite the violence, and not even by ignoring its existence, but precisely thanks to it and as an integral part of it.”
🗣 “In his novel 1984, George Orwell refers to the corruption of language by the slogan ‘War is peace’. Today such things don’t even move us. War is not something to be hidden, but something to be celebrated. War is happiness, and as we know, it’s a great mitzvah [religious duty, ed.] to be happy.”
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