Cheerleaders for Genocide
When the "Civilised" Believe Slaughter Is an Extension of the Enlightenment Project
Whenever I post about the horrors the Israeli military commits daily against innocent Palestinians, angry people on X, especially those proudly boasting a yellow ribbon in their bios, respond with “Hamas should release the hostages!” Is their stomach for the carnage in Gaza due to wilful ignorance or the bloodthirstiness of sociopaths? Is it a childlike faith in Israel as the benevolent, strong father figure protecting Western civilisation, and the military as “the most moral army in the world”? Or is there some other explanation, such as the fallenness of “man” and the existence of evil? No doubt, when we look back on this grotesque moral stain on the West in years to come, earnest people will make statements about lessons learned and declare “Never again!” just as they did in 1948.
Yesterday, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the National Security Minister, a far-right settler and war hawk, responded to potential negotiations to end the war in Gaza and reach a deal with Hamas to release the remaining 50 hostages it holds. He has already left the government once in protest over a ceasefire deal that involved the return of hostages in exchange for Palestinians taken hostage in Israel’s prisons. He said: “The hostages must be freed by force, by cutting humanitarian aid off completely” and “[U]nder no circumstances may we allow any goal, no matter how important, to replace the supreme goal of the war: the complete defeat of Hamas, so that we can never have another October 7.”
Although Ben-Gvir prefaced his remarks by stating that Israel’s decision-makers should learn from past errors, Linda Dayan, a Haaretz journalist, remarks that he seems not to have internalised any of them himself. Israel can either bring the hostages home through a deal with Hamas that would also free Palestinian hostages, or via complex military missions that endanger the lives of both hostages and soldiers. Ben-Gvir advocates the second option. However, neither strategy is currently being implemented, and only one, the former, has proven sufficiently effective.
Thousands of Israeli citizens, especially the desperate and traumatised families, demand a hostage deal, with many taking to the streets to protest the government’s failure to negotiate. Meanwhile, in the UK, the “brave” yellow-ribboned brigade, men and women alike, seems more drawn to the latter approach, despite its ineffectiveness and bloodshed.
What is interesting is the shift toward the far right among these cheerleaders for war who, in earlier days, identified politically as being on the left. Whatever their religious-like faith—whether it be Zionism, an increasingly degraded feminism, or a simplified, reductionist version of philosophy that blinds the philosophically uneducated into thinking slaughter is an extension of the Enlightenment project—they are collectively desensitised not only to human suffering but also to the breakdown of international law.
In these dark times, when the seemingly civilised applaud genocide, it’s hard to find something worth a good laugh. The BBC’s recent faux pas bucked the trend. When broadcasting the Glastonbury music festival, it was so determined that the audience would not hear the punk-rock band Kneecap, it aired Bob Vylan instead. Oh, the glorious irony. Thousands ended up cheering together not only “Free, free Palestine!” but also “Death, death to the IDF!”
In Parliament yesterday, Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, denounced Bob Vylan as “antisemitic” and she promised an inquiry into whether any criminal offence had been committed. She claimed, “Chanting ‘Death to the IDF!’ is equivalent to calling for the death of every single Israeli Jew.” Nandy, who has accepted funding from the Israel lobby, refused to condemn Israel’s violations of international law, and proudly calls herself a Zionist, did not mention that Israeli politicians such as Ben-Gvir and the finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, also a religious fundamentalist settler, as well as Prime Minister Netanyahu, have not only called for the death of Hamas but of all Palestinians as a group—but they have carried it out. In contrast, Bob Vylan did not call for the death of Jews, Arabs, or any other ethnic group.
The UK mainstream media has closed ranks to tell us that “Death to the IDF!” is violent hate speech. Concurrently, British feminists, instead of mourning the loss of life of Palestinian women and children and holding those responsible to account, have been repeating ad hominem comments that Kneecap, is “a shower of privileged mouthy shit-stirring clueless fucking pricks.” Meanwhile, the Israeli military simply continued to kill Palestinians. Over the three days of the Glastonbury festival, it killed dozens of Palestinian civilians. On the day of Nandy’s speech, it had bombarded Gaza since dawn with airstrikes and artillery, killing 80 people. At least four schools that shelter hundreds of families were bombed, in addition to homes and other civilian areas.
One of the worst attacks came when Israeli warplanes bombed al-Baqa, a seafront cafe, reportedly killing more than 30 people. Among those killed was filmmaker and photojournalist Ismail Abu Hatab. Another victim was Frans (Aamna) Al-Salmi, a talented visual artist who, in a haunting twist, had shared her final drawing ten days previously on Instagram, which depicts a scene eerily similar to her death: bloodied bodies wrapped in cloth, moments after an airstrike.
Eleven people were shot while returning from an “aid distribution hub” (the highly controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation) and ten others at a UN aid warehouse. Despite Israel’s denial in the face of empirical evidence, the military has killed nearly 500 Palestinians in these “aid massacres” in the last month.
The apocalyptic bombing of Gaza has removed any chance of rescuing the Israeli hostages. Despite Ben-Gvir’s claim that withholding humanitarian aid would force Hamas to surrender, this tactic has been unsuccessful in achieving anything other than the starvation of Palestinian civilians and the further degradation of Israel’s image worldwide.
No doubt, the warmongers who hold the faith in Israel will continue to be exercised in the coming days, not by an army that murders the innocent with impunity, but rather by Bob Vylan. As the band’s frontman, Bobby—real name Pascal Robinson-Foster—points out, the British government’s inaction is the problem, not the band’s statement on Israeli’s genocide of Palestinians:
They would have you believe that this punk band is the number one threat to world peace. The more the government talks about Bob Vylan, the less time they spend answering for their criminal inaction. We are being targeted for speaking up. We are not the first. We will not be the last. And if you care for the sanctity of human life and freedom of speech, we urge you to speak up too.
The Israeli Ambassador to the UN recently claimed: “We are the most moral country in the world, and we are the guardians of civilisation.” In contrast, a UN member of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Territories, Chris Sidoti, says: “The death of this institution is actually a moderate demand […] The Israeli army is one of the most CRIMINAL armies in the world.”
Israel’s narrative of itself as an exemplary but beleaguered liberal democracy is now slipping out of hegemonic control. Kneecap and Bob Vylan have become influential contributors to this dismantling. The cat is out of the bag and will not be returned. The general public is increasingly aware of Israel’s crimes. Even the timid among us are refusing the injunction of Friends of Israel that human empathy for the Palestinians is Jew-hatred. Finally, the young are being politicised. They demand: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”
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