I am utterly broken by what I’ve seen

A group of unarmed men, walking peacefully amongst the rubble of their once neighbourhood are suddenly turned into dust by an explosion. The blast came from a bomb dropped by an Israeli drone, seemingly for no other reason than for some bored Israeli soldiers passing the time. The footage of this unimaginable crime made all too real was retrieved from another IDF drone captured by the resistance.

After the group of men are annihilated, their bodies lying strewn across the sandy ground in broken bits, the camera pans up. To another man, alone this time, holding what seems to be a ragged flag, maybe a Palestinian one. Possibly the shredded remains of what was once his home and world. He’s limping along the devastated terrain between the vast expanse of rubble and destruction. Another explosion, he turns to dust.

Then the camera pans further up.. Another unarmed man comes into view, crawling along the ground this time, scrambling for some resemblance of safety. There is none. Another explosion. Another body evaporated into dust.

Somewhere, behind a screen, a rabid gaggle of Israeli soldiers are giggling and cheering gleefully. Congratulating each other for their handiwork in destroying more “Terrorists” as they did, on camera, celebrating the killing of unarmed elderly deaf man. His name was Atta Ibrahim, aged 73. His crime was to try to surrender to the mercy of an IDF solider, who proudly shot him to death. Congratulated by his partners in crime moments after, “All respect” one of them says to him, shaking his hand.

Sadistically congratulating each other as they surely did when they shot and killed 51 year old grandmother Hala Khreis, as she walked across the road, holding her grandsons hand in one of hers and waving a white flag in the other.

Or when they shot 5 year old Faisal al Khaldi’s pregnant mother in front of him “My mother was pregnant. They shot her in the stomach.” He recounts to the camera in one of Gaza’s ravaged and destroyed hospitals. More dead “terrorists” for the gleeful murderers of the IOF to giggle over. A murderous past time they enjoy so much, they see it fit to put it on T shirts.

The late, great Archbishop Desmond Tutu once extolled the dangers of the vicious racism and hatred of apartheid in South Africa, not just upon black south africans, but also upon the whites. He warned that treating another human being with such evil hatred and vile spite does more than enact the worst kind of injustice upon innocent civillians. It also dismantles the humanity of the person doing the hating.

That sort of evil-hate erodes and destroys the soul of the one with the gun much more so than the innocent civilian on the other end. In fostering the apartheid mind virus within a culture, the evil seeps in and infects all who ascribe to that society.

In dehumanising Palestinians, the soul of Israeli society has been systematically dismantled. They have dehumanised the natives of the Holy Land, or “The Arabs” as they like to call them, to such a degree that they themselves have become less than human. With a recent Poll finding that over 80% of Israeli’s approve of the IDF’s behaviour in the war against the Palestinians.

And even before the war, the acclaimed journalist and rare voice of reason in Israeli society Gideon Levy has stated , “If you scratch the surface with Israelis, even middle class ones, you will learn they genuinely believe the Palestinians are animals.”

Before October the 7th, this animalistic virus that has infested within the Israeli settler colony was vociferously covered-up and suppressed in the western media by Israel’s many powerful allies. Scepticism about the true nature of the situation on the ground in Palestine was fostered within the halls of power and western legacy media. Allowing Israel to enact it’s vicious campaign of hatred against the Palestinians behind a sophisticated smokescreen of “Western liberal Values”.

Anyone who dared to pierce through this miasma of Hasbara was immediately tarnish as an “Anti-semite”. A tactic that worked well for decades, but which has now come spectacularly crumbling down.

Now we can see the true face of the zionist project. A project that has nothing to do with Judaism or even Islam, and everything to do with that old, haggard, evil force of racist settler colonialism. Weaponising hatred against the natives, the great “other”, who’s only crime was to be born with the inalienable right to self-determination on land that racists wanted for themselves. A weapon of hate that systematically turns the colonists themselves into animalistic fanatics, who are then set loose upon the peaceful natives. Clearing the way for the corporations and companies to come in after the murdering is done, dividing the spoils between them.

Except this time is different. This time we have eyes on the ground. Now we can see who the real animals are. And even if the Israeli settlers who bomb and shoot and persecute and giggle fanatically are too consumed by their racist mind virus to realise it, the world has already made it’s mind up. Even if the war against the Palestinians ends today. We will never forget who the real monsters are. Because they have revealed themselves to us in their carnival of fanatic madness.