HANNAH Arendt spent every day at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the miner’s son and travelling salesman who was architect of the 'Final Solution'. Her observations on the cold, mundane nature of evil became a touchstone for a generation.
“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.”
Watching Israeli women screaming and blocking lorries of food attempting to deliver baby formula to starving and dying babies in Gaza was not yet another moment. It was the final confirmation that the Israeli state is lost. Far from the Promised Land, or the Chosen People, this state and its driven population have become evil incarnate. Sadistic in intent and purpose, the population has determined that Palestinians not only deserve to die, but must be murdered in the most depraved ways possible.
Of course there are Jews who protest ,and they are brave in the face of the Israeli State and population. And of course that distinction is always required. I spent years with a broken heart knowing that childhood friends were Israeli citizens. But all of Israel now is damned.
It is impossible to watch the coverage since October 2023 without turning away. From the deliberate carpet bombing of a people into the Middle Ages. From the deliberate destruction of all churches, hospitals, schools, and now refugee centres. From a wasteland where deliberate starvation and annihilation are easy; easy to lie shooting dead the desperate souls screaming and running for food with utter impunity.
The deliberate murder of nearly all journalists means we only have snapshots of the carnage.
There are many thousands more dead than the official totals. Just as in 1945 when Simon Wiesenthal began to count, when this Holocaust is over we will realise that not tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands have been deliberately murdered.
The threshold for international outrage has been destroyed too. Some of us are old enough to remember when Tony Blair found it unconscionable that Kosovans were evicted and displaced with a threat of ethnic cleansing by Serbia. The British army was deployed with NATO. Right now, there are fleets of naval vessels sitting in ports within spitting distance of the shores of Gaza. They could support the aid agencies in bringing protected aid to Palestinian people being deliberately starved. UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine, Francesca Albanese, has called for such a reasonable intervention, but this call has floated into the same ether as international human rights norms.
When Charles Trevelyan determined that the Irish people were to starve in Ireland, there was no international rules-based order. When Benjamin Netanyahu determined that Palestinian people were to be wiped from their own land he exposed the mockery that is the idea that we have one in 2025.
Israeli money in Washington determines who is elected and who is disregarded. Washington determines the international response to murder, sadism and depravity by nation states. And an inconvenient people is wiped from the planet, with their screams ignored, dismissed and criminalised.
Our consciences will never be clear. History will determine this as a turning point for humanity’s value.
And we will not be forgiven.
