We need to understand human nature to see how crimes against humanity on a large scale can be perpetrated by the increase in the power of the state.
Israel’s abominable actions in Palestine, and the Western political elite’s appalling lack of action and even tacit support of the Zionists, inevitably must lead to reflections on human nature and the power of the state.
The Elite Indifference Towards Genocide
There actually should be no debate: what is on-going in Gaza is obviously a genocide, as per the official definition of the UN’s Genocide Convention (1948), which refers to acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group as such. These acts include killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction.
“A resolution passed by the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) states that Israel's conduct meets the legal definition as laid out in the UN convention on genocide.”
Analysts and journalists need not wait for any definite ICC or the ICJ ruling on this matter, which may never come because of the immense political pressure to which these institutions are subjected. Journalists may make their own assessment and let the court of public opinion decide. And public opinion is largely condemning Israel, even in the strongest bastions of Zionism - the UK and the US.
This highlights yet another area of the ever-widening rift between the ruling elites and the majorities in Western so-called “liberal democracies”. The ruling minority always have motives and interests that differ fundamentally with the rest of society. It is the ruling elite’s constant endeavor to align as far as possible the people’s interests with its own interests – not vice versa-, and it is often successful at that through its many sophisticated means of molding minds. That has certainly been true with respect to image of Israel in the West.
The Sufferings Beyond our Horizon
Yet, successful Zionist propaganda is simply not enough. Even though mass demonstrations and protest actions do take place around the world against Israel, everyday life goes on for most people, understandably so. A strong political reaction from the majority cannot be expected, even from all those who are graphically exposed to such suffering.
It has taken three years to slowly get to the current overwhelmingly negative view of Israel in the West. Even before Oct 7th 2023, there have been plenty of reasons over the last decades to criticize Israel and publicly reject the Zionist narrative. The Palestinians have been oppressed for decades, yet this has not caused much more than a ripple among the majority in the West and elsewhere.
These observations require a quick dive into human nature. Many who protest against Zionist state terrorism, or other injustices, usually think of politics in terms of people rather than systems. Implicitly, for them a more peaceful world requires a (forced) change to human nature. They embrace what Thomas Sowell called the “unconstrained vision” of mankind in A Conflict of Visions (1987); they tend to see human beings as fundamentally empathic, altruistic and good, if only the political and social conditions were right.
This is similar to the Marxist idea that a new political system could create a homo novo or homo sovieticus. Freed from bourgeois alienation, superstitions, prejudices, scruples, and ideological waste, the expectation was that this new person would become selflessly dedicated to the common good.
However, this view hardly corresponds to reality, as the Soviet experiment itself proved. Human nature cannot be changed by political systems. Sowell’s “constrained” vision is closer to the truth; it is a view of human nature as generally unchanging, even when conditions change.
Ego naturally always comes first in human beings, though this instinct can be socially tempered by chivalry or principles. Human beings have a natural lack of sensitivity, for their own good, in particular to the “suffering beyond our horizon”, to paraphrase a beautiful and profound sentence from George Santayana:
“We dislike to trample on a flower, because its form makes a kind of blossoming in our own fancy which we call beauty; but we laugh at pangs we endured in childhood and feel no tremor at the incalculable sufferings of all mankind beyond our horizon, because no imitable image is involved to start a contrite thrill in our own bosom.”
The Destructive Growth of State Power
This reality of human nature is an important reason why political power often does such harm as it grows. When some have the guns, abuse of authority comes very easily, as the Stanford Prison Experience shockingly showed.
Hannah Arendt's "Banality of Evil" also comes to mind; the example of the dutiful and indifferent concentration camp guard, just executing orders without questioning his superiors or the morality of his actions. Obedience to authority is another human trait that is consistent with Sowell’s constrained vision, and illustrated by the famous Milgram experiment of the 1960s.
SS officer Adolf Eichmann was a “normal” man, an efficient bureaucrat; this fact may have been an anti-climax during his 1961 trial in Israel. So was Arthur "Bomber" Harris, who during WWII when went to sleep every night in his home in London after having ordered strategic bombings on German cities full of civilians.
If these and many other similar persons, who showed no bent towards fanaticism or sadism, could calmy give orders that they knew would cause civilian death and destruction for very little military gain (if any), then obviously deranged persons will not hesitate to take much more drastic action against other humans. Like the trigger-happy General Curtis LeMay, who ordered the firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945, igniting a firestorm that destroyed much of the city’s industry and killed up to 100,000 people.
In this light, it is therefore not surprising that crazed messianic Zionists today have no difficulty ordering and executing the mass starvation and the assassinations of innocent Palestinians in Gaza. Like other states that have grown too powerful for their own good, the state of Israel is performing its particular "raison d'état". In the case of Israel it is based, as Alon Mizrahi said, on a sick fear of normalcy and the attempt to prove its uniqueness and exclusiveness to the world. This is also the expression of Zionism's end game, the attempt at Greater Israel in the sense of the Nazi “Lebensraum”, through the destruction or expulsion of all Palestinians.
A Necessary Reduction of State Power
State organizations sometimes successfully give such orders and execute them, because the right processes are in place, historically and socially, in states that are powerful enough to enable them. A more peaceful world therefore requires a change to political systems, not a change to human nature.
Considering the constrained view of human nature, the only way to stop such hideous actions as those of Israel today and others the future, is to reduce state power. Only well-funded modern state actors can engage in systematically organized crimes on entire populations, such as genocide and massive bombings of civilian populations. The size and power of states must therefore be checked and reversed, through the pressure of public opinion and potentially by other means. This is true for Israel, but also for many others.
No comments:
Post a Comment