Although it is not a military secret, not many people, it seems, were exposed to the photos circulating on social media this week of Arab children and teenagers who lost their lives in airstrikes in Gaza. The images are unbearable: the sooty faces of children, the unnatural flexibility typical of the small body of a dead person, and the screams of family members all around. These scenes of horror could melt even a cynical or radical right-wing heart.
The Israeli army is responsible for the deaths of these children, even if it is not guilty. The ones who killed the children playing on the beach sands in Gaza are us, the Israelis. With our smart bombs. That is a fact. Is there also criminal guilt on the part of the IDF? In this regard, we can certainly accept the military arguments that the Gazans are using their children as 'human shields', and that Hamas is asking residents not to respond to the Israeli army's calls to evacuate their homes. Even if these are blanket statements that do not take into account the multitude of variables, there is logic in them.
However, alongside these statements, the objective reality described cannot be ignored. The picture of the dead children, of the blood and the distorted faces was painted by us. This is the empirical truth, and it is stronger than even the most rational arguments.
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So how do we deal with the difficult images? How do we create psychological defense mechanisms that will help us overcome the fact that we caused the deaths of innocent children? We create a double pattern of guilt on the one hand, and self-preference on the other, what is called in social-psychological language 'social identity theory.' The in-group, meaning the Israeli group, is moral, decent, and full of beauty, compassion, and care, while the Arabs are uncultured, primitive individualists, cruel people who don't care about their children. In fact, they are to blame for the deaths of their children in general. They wanted them to crumble in their hands.
Thus, Prime Minister Netanyahu is a strategic genius, a military phenomenon, and a wonderful tactician, while Hamas is a clique of cowards, lacking vision and brains. Gideon Levy is a traitor to Israel, evil, and a mortal, and Bennett is brave, a man, capable of crushing Gaza in one day without fearing anything. Tzipi Livni is a weak, money-grubbing, and sycophantic figure, and Lieberman, in his quiet voice, knows very well how to treat Arabs. A childish psychological dichotomy at its best.
Did you see how she entered the Zhalka?
And on top of this immature division, the pictures of Zahalka being expelled from the Knesset's internal conference by MK Miri Regev appear, and they bring a smile of satisfaction to all of us. Everyone is crowding in front of the news sites to see how the older man forcefully leaves the plenary session while shouting that children are dying in Gaza, against the backdrop of Regev's cries that he is a terrorist. Clips.
In general, statements like 'a good Arab is a dead Arab', or 'they are all traitors' have become a linguistic ritual, and all of them emphasize again and again the difference 'between us and them'. 'That's how Arabs are.' Has anyone thought that perhaps Arabs also feel pain when they see the corpses of their children? Is it possible that behind the shouting, the cynicism, and the 'masculinity' there is also compassion and not just politics?
During the war, the Arabs lost not only their compassion, but also their humanity. An attack on the Hamas police chief releases a sigh of relief, and shouts of "sigh" and "convert to Islam" for the heroic pilots. But hardly anyone mentions that with the destruction of their home, two children also died: a boy and a girl aged six and seven. After all, "we are at war" and "there is nothing to be done.".
The fact that just a week ago, a group of crazed ultra-Orthodox Jews murdered an innocent Arab boy, and the ultra-Orthodox public, as well as the Israeli public, was quick to slur its words, has almost completely disappeared from the public consciousness. Is the fate of the dozens of children in Gaza any different from that of Muhammad Abu Khdeir? Does anyone honestly think that the Arabs want their children to die from Israeli bombs?
A wise man told me this week: "It's either us or them. Their children or our children. Choose." Only I'm unable to choose. I also refuse to play the disgusting children's game: 'If you or your mother have to be killed, who do you choose? Well, you have 10 seconds. Decide.' I choose not to decide. I feel sorry for the suffering of the residents of the south, but I have a hard time stopping thinking about the father whose four-year-old son died in his arms, his face covered in blood and his hand missing somewhere in the rubble, even if his name is Anwar.
