Edward Said made a mistake. During the first intifada (1987-1993), the Palestinian American intellectual concluded that, paradoxically, the occupation of Palestinian territories, which began in 1967, launched the seeds of reconciliation. The experience compulsorily shared by the two peoples would heal the wounds of previous conflicts, providing a future of peaceful coexistence under an equality status. In fact, however, the long occupation irrigated, on both sides, the plant of revenge, the most permissive of mental structures.
Genocide. The attacks of, on October 7, 2023, a miniature genocide, expressed the intentions formulated by the letter of foundation of the terrorist organization. The fair warfare the following was converted to an ethnic cleaning war against the Palestinian people, described by a UN survey committee as a genocidal campaign. Revenge, twice.
Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, former Israeli government chiefs, employed the expressions “war crimes”, “massacres” and “ethnic cleansing” to denounce barbarism committed in the name of the Jewish state. The two, however, retreated before the word “genocide”. There is a reason for this.
Raphael Lemkin, Polish Jew, outlined the concept in 1941, investigating secular persecution to Jews. Then, in 1948, in the light of Auschwitz’s horror, he was the intellectual author of the convention against genocide (). For the political purpose of contesting the historical legitimacy of the Jewish state, anti-Semitic propaganda accuses Israel of genocide since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, trying to draw a sign of equivalence with Nazi Germany. The ongoing horror in the Gaza range gives substance to the ignominious accusation.
There was no shortage of indignant Palestinians in the face of the killing committed by Hamas on October 7th. On the other hand, popular demonstrations of joy in Palestinian territories were left and, above all, mass protests against the terrorist organization were not recorded. Rejoicing and silence offered Israeli extremist leaders alibi to qualify Gaza as a “wicked city”, dehumanizing the Palestinians and lighting the bonfire of a boundless war.
Inevitable parallel: Israeli society has accepted the script of revenge. The demonstrations for a ceasefire concentrate indignation in the government’s disregard for the luck of hostages, not in the catastrophe inflicted to the population of Gaza. Popular support for peace in two states has reduced a narrow minority. The people of Israel gives up on light, resigning themselves to the condition of “super-space”, invocation used by Netanyahu to conduct ethnic cleansing amid international isolation.
Nikolai Gogol’s “Dead Souls”, published in 1842, is a portrait of Tsarist Russia. The title oscillates in the balance of an ambiguity, referring to both the dead servants listed by landowners and the petty and rot of the small Russian nobility.
Half a century of occupation dried the souls of Israelis and Palestinians. The drive of revenge, exploited by extremists on both sides, deteriorates the two societies inside. Exhausted displaced march in ruins scenarios; Broadcast hostages are displayed as war trophies. In the Holy Land, it sends death, physical or spiritual.
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