nolongerinbetween

We all live in our own filter bubble curated by algorithms, resilient to any form of criticism that would shake our belief system. Some bubbles are admittedly less sealed and airtight than others, and some people are more open minded and willing to subject themselves to different beliefs than others, but overall, we are all shaped by this confirmation bias drive deeply embedded in our psychology and we all fall for the need to have our beliefs reinforced by other people. Solipsism meets tribalism in an attempt to save itself.

Every now and then something highly divisive surfaces the vast pool of ideas or events and makes people gather round and cluster together in antagonistic tribes. Slavery. Monarchy. Church Reform. Voting rights for women. White supremacy. Environmentalism. Gay rights. Gender equality. Jews. Guns control. Capitalism. Vietnam. Climate change. Trump. Freedom of speech. Abortion. Brexit. Systemic racism. Vaccines. Migration. And so on and so forth. Recently there’s another hot topic that polarizes our world into two factions who hate each other’s guts: Zionism and the creation of Israel as a colonial state in Palestine. One tribe cheers the creation of an ethnostate founded by definition on the exclusion and destruction of the native population. The other tribe decries the violence contained in such a colonial project. I belong to the later. While I think the concept of a safe haven state for Jews was legitimate, the founding principle as a colonial state was not. Every instance of injustice and hardship suffered by the Palestinians that took place after 1948, no matter how big or small (every dead Palestinian, maimed child, every forced eviction, deportation, harassment, house demolished, discrimination, bullying, abuse, illegal settlement, unlawful imprisonment etc) can be traced back to this notion of ethnocracy and colonialism, that is part of Israel’s founding narrative.

After the horrible event of October 7, I find myself, once again, tethered to a bubble where I watch in horror, day in, day out, unfolding in plain sight, one of the greatest crimes of our age, played out in real time and broadcast live on our TVs and phones. What happened on the 7th of October was brutal. Death of civilians as a political means is never justified. But what’s been happening since that day to the Palestinian civilians is not only thousands of times more brutal but the narrative that surrounds all the killings is surreal. The horrifying atrocities perpetrated by Israel are mirrored by a conspiracy of silence and deceit of the western governments and western media. The brazen lies, the gaslighting, the smearing, the shameless denials, the complicity etc turns everything you know on its head. It’s like witnessing a mass hypnosis, where half of the world is under a spell and lost any trace of humanity and reason. It’s like living in a Kafkaesque topsy-turvy reality, where lying through your teeth reigns and the rules of reality disappear. Truth, sense, logic are completely butchered in an attempt to exonerate Israel’s unimaginable war crimes. The impunity granted to Israel has created a monster that can no longer be contained. History repeats itself like in a grotesque farce. The dehumanized is now the dehumanizer. The only thing that is missing is the gas chambers. Everything else is right there. The dehumanization, the concentration camp, the deportation, the ethnic cleansing, the incarceration, the mass killing, the starvation, the genocidal intent to erase their cultural footprint (universities, schools, hospitals, churches, mosques), the white supremacy etc. Shaun is perfectly right in his video essay: suffering doesn’t make you a better person, it just makes you suffer.

Like I said, I live in a bubble where the supply of depictions of what’s been done to the Palestinian people seems to have no end. At times I ration the content or even turn my back on it for a while out of desperation. Nothing of this sort in the other bubble, the pro-Israel one, where the killings are cheered on with enthusiasm or justified with a shrug. There’s only so much one can take. The tribe I follow is beaten, in shock, emotionally drained, given in to despair, destitute of words. I notice, more and more often, in their voices and on their faces a sense of a collective trauma, born out of this strange condition where you are made to witness horrific crimes against a group of people without being able to put an end to it. And where, to make it even worse, everyone else seem to be part of a conspiracy supporting or denying what’s happening. It’s bound to induce depression, helplessness, despair and even madness. More than 15.000 children have been slaughtered in Gaza. Not 200, not 460, not 870, not 1400, not 3200, not 5600. More than 50.000 children have been wounded, maimed, disfigured, scarred for life and rendered orphaned. Not being able to prevent any of these horrors can take an immense personal toll on you. And being vilified for wanting the slaughter to stop is one of the most depressing and bizarre things one can experience in their life.