In the modern context, I have a lot of trouble recognizing the humanity of people who say a five-year-old child is guilty for having elected Hamas. A five-year-old child probably doesn’t know there’s such a thing as Hamas and definitely was not granted a vote. The Israeli public, on the whole, has supported Israeli military violence in Gaza. If they were thinking with any rationality, they would be thinking, those five-year-old survivors, the ones who are not dead but who lost family members, who lost limbs, whose entire neighborhoods were completely destroyed, turned to rubble — what are they going to think in 10 or 15 years about the Israelis?

I’m tempted to think this is by design. What experts have said is that Netanyahu has encouraged Hamas because having a Hamas that behaves badly is extremely useful to staying in power and mobilizing the country against Hamas. It gives them an excuse to avoid recognizing any legitimate claims to self-determination on the part of the Palestinians.

I feel like there’s another phase in the evolution of atrocity now, where opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza is no longer framed as demonstrating universalist morality in spite of the fact that Israel is an “ally” — like the way some people might have opposed the atomic bombings even though they were dropped by “us” — but rather a reframing of Israel, and perhaps other states, as pariahs.

Gaza Genocide not War.