When I was 5, almost 6 we lived in Manhattan and down the block and across the street there was Central Park, no entrance, but you could climb over the wall and walk down to the pond. I was with a friend, and we watched as a boy of about 16 murder three little boys. They were in a canoe and each had to jump from the boat to the shore and if they fell into the water he killed them by holding their heads under water until they didn't move anymore. The first two went silently to death, but the last one pleaded and begged, but he too was held under the water and drowned. His white shirt became his sail and it floated him away. I don't know whether they caught this killer, a teenager. When I think of him now I know he was soulless, and that is what Israel has become, and we are becoming. It's really the only way I can understand the horror in pictures I see everyday, and I feel that most strongly when they go into hospitals and kill the most vulnerable devoid of any sense of humanity.
I don't think horrors of this degree can an any way be held by a mind without essentially breaking something within it, and our view of the world, to some degree. Forever changed.
I am so sorry that you had to witness that, Fran.
And the many thousands in the world who have seen and are now experiencing something like it.
When I got your e-mail I was working on the computer restoring pictures. I'm deep into Ancestry as well. The thought occurred to me after reading your response that maybe the reason my hobby is such an obsession is because I'm resurrecting the dead, which I am, and some, or a whole lot comes from that experience. I go to Aljazeera each day and of course the dead children, the dead women and men are disturbing, very disturbing, but the most horrible thing of all is the absence of feeling Israel has for those they slaughter. It's really beyond my comprehension and it is very similar to what I felt as a child watching the death of those three little boys, by a boy who didn't seem human. Something really missing in him. You could really feel that. Soulless is a word that comes to mind and I don't mean that in a religious sense. In a way he felt dead.
Fran, what you say here: "maybe the reason my hobby is such an obsession is because I'm resurrecting the dead, which I am, and some, or a whole lot comes from that experience", rings absolutely true to me. I have seen a similar process. And I think particular with age, there is what seems a need (at least for some of us) to look back on this world, and the world that we knew, to honor and to in a certain sense process what lessons we were given (for lack of a better way of putting it).
And it can extend to events and people to which we have no connection. I had something like several years ago, in relation to the Shoah. At the time, I wouldn't have imagined what is happening now in Gaza. It is always beyond comprehension, how this can become normal, now and in history, this degree of inhumanity. With individuals, it is somewhat easier to rationalize, "well, there is something missing in them", but that fails when an entire society does it. And this dehumanization has happened throughout history.
That will always remain beyond understanding to me.
Particularly relevant is Dr. Marya's call out of JAMA as providing moral cover for Israel’s obliteration of health care facilities in Gaza. Recall that the journal also provided that same moral cover for the COVID lies of the FDA and CDC and serves as a major Pharma mouthpiece, given its ad-driven model. Just another exemplar of how corrupt is the disease-care industry, including its collaborating acolytes, its academic partners.
It is difficult to witness the horror of Gaza go continually on, the sheer evil, gone unopposed, and largely unquestioned. Particularly to see the complicity and abetting by institutions such as universities and the British Journal of Medicine, the silencing and attacks upon those few within those ranks, such as Dr. Marya, by the entities that are theoretically (and in their own view) the holders of truth, of compassion."the medical institutions we are a part of, which have an obligation, professionally and morally, to uphold all life, are actually abetting genocide, abetting and enabling genocide".
It is easy to see the self-interested intent of figures such as Scott Wiener, and perhaps even academicians lacking courage, choosing some rationalization rather than living a principle.
But how are we to understand the more encompassing phenomenon of the failure of the wider part of society to see the obvious horror of what is being perpetuated on the people of Gaza?
I think that it is the examination of this question that perhaps need to be considered.
Again, easier to comprehend in considering the case of of Zionists, whose ideology itself is predicated on de-humanization and the denial of the right of existence to Palestinian Arabs. (Though perhaps allowing second class citizenship to Arab Jews.) And to a certain extent, the collective trauma of the Jews, something akin to a societal version of the abused child becoming the child abuser.
But the phenomenon of entire populations, such as the U.S. to allow this, to not even SEE it as it is - the obvious, inarguable reality - how can we understand this?
Because it is this flaw in us collectively, is what allows it, and the endless recurrences throughout history, that is seemingly bound to what we are.
Racism is only a starting point, religion only a starting point, economic power and tribalism only a part of it, but they all grow out of it, they are the manifestations, they are the ideologies upon which actions are justified, but the impulse lies somewhere else.
Thank you for this so important and timely interview with Dr. Rupa Marya about the role of the “the genocide enablement apparatus of Israel.” I have been troubled for months over the silence of the AMA as hospital after hospital has been destroyed and medical personnel murdered, known by volunteer doctors who have gone to Gaza and returned.
Thank you, Dr. Marya, for your courage, strength and devotion to healing and to the Palestinians and for organizing and writing about the unspeakably painful atrocities being enacted. Such hard work you are doing. The silencing, isolation and "moral injury" you describe is traumatic.
From another heartbroken Substack:
"The Doctor", a poem for Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya by Palestine Will Be Free:
Every genocide in human history until now has been done in relative secrecy, or has taken place slowly using starvation and disease. Rapid, violent exterminations of entire populations have never been extensively reported or documented in real time, and the wider world has never had access to detailed information about a genocide in progress. Reporting from the killing fields during a genocide has always been extremely limited, and only after the fact does it become widely known. Another difference with this genocide is that in the modern era, post-1945, no state or non-state group committing a genocide has ever continually and openly advertised its intent. These two factors mean that the world is in uncharted territory. The entire world apart from Yemen and Lebanon is complicit. And we’re not talking about a few weeks—it’s been 15 months. The United Nations and international law has been exposed as the most monstrous, grotesque black joke. Every single institution in the world has been tainted. If a genocide can be done openly and with impunity over more than a year, nothing is off limits. Humanity as a whole has entered an unprecedented state of barbarism. Unless the world joins together soon to dismantle the genocidal entity—the US government and its vassals—complete annihilation of human life is not far off.
It began by criminalising any display of compassion, solidarity, sympathy or even pain in response to the terrible punishment of Gaza. Such views are considered treasonous. Israelis expressing compassion or humanity on social media have been monitored and summoned for police investigation. Some have been fired from their jobs.
This form of McCarthyism has mainly harmed Palestinian citizens of Israel, but sympathetic Jews, too, have evoked a harsh response from authorities. In essence, compassion has been outlawed. It cannot be expressed towards Palestinians - not even dead, wounded, hungry, disabled or orphaned babies. All are rightfully being subjected to the punishments Israel inflicts.
He also states "Losing its collective humanity vis-a-vis the Palestinian people may prove irremediable for Israel. That the country will reclaim it after this war is exceedingly doubtful."
I was just wondering if this isn't being used to simply implement more authoritarian control over it's citizenry and the excuse used is anti-Semitism. I
Authoritarianism is creeping into Europe under the guise of cracking down on pro-Palestinian activism.
Could someone like a lawyer explain if the 1st Amendment of freedom of speech has been nullified? I do not understand if the 1st Amendment still protects freedom of speech and is still in effect , how can anyone be fired for what they say?
The first amendment doesn't exist anymore. In the U.S. the constitutional bill of rights is now at the whim of the oligarchs and their paid for politicians. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press and the freedom of peaceful protest are now gone. Unless you want to talk about flowers and protest a tulip garden.
Good point. The Bill of Rights only prohibits government from limiting free speech. So as private entities, corporations can--and do. It's a wonderful irony how they're legally considered "people" with rights.
Be blessed Dr. Rupa Marya for her courage to face the consequences of her denouncement of the Palestine holocaust. With her actions she has secured a place in the pantheon of the heroes.
In my opinion, Zionism has perverted the true moral teachings of Christianity and Judaism and has trampled the natural laws of decency in humankind. Let's remember that rabi Jesus of Nazareth preached during his ministry peace and love and that he was the product of his Jewish culture.
The following excerpt is from Israeli historian ILAN PAPPÉ lecture "Myths of Israel" Socialism 2024, Chicago, IL 31 Aug 2024 downloaded from Alternativeradio.org :
"There is no doubt that there were Jews in the late 19th century who decided to redefine Judaism as nationalism. That's an historical fact. But that doesn't mean that this is something that most of the Jews at the time accepted. In fact, not. It was a minority position, and it was transformed into a powerful movement, not because a lot of Jews were recruited behind the idea that Judaism is not a religion, but a nationalism. They were recruited actually by two groups, I would say, who were selective anti-Semites, and I'll explain what I mean by that.One group, which is still very important today in sustaining Zionist mythologies, are the Christian fundamentalists, a very important stream in evangelical Christianity that long before any Jew thought about Zionism, were already the early Zionists dating back to the 17th and 18th century. Why do I call them selective anti-Semites? Because they developed a dogma that I think some of you are familiar with, the restorationist dogma, which believes that the return of the Jews, so to speak, to the Holy Land, namely to Palestine, would precipitate the second coming of the Messiah, the resurrection of the dead,and the beginning of a thousand years of Christ's rule on the globe. Why was it selectively anti-Semitic? Because, in a way, what motivated the less pious members of this movement, what really attracted them to the idea, was that was a way, if you want, an elegant way, of getting rid of the Jews and getting back the only Jew they really wanted, Jesus Christ. It's a double bill for a fanatic Christian fundamentalist. Couldn't be better. And they were very, very active on both sides of the Atlantic in pushing Jewish intellectuals to stand behind the idea that not only Judaism is nationalism, but it had to be fulfilled in Palestine. Even the founding father of Zionism, Theodore Herzl was not entirely sure that Palestine was the only possible destination for modernizing the Jews as a nation instead of a faith. He was willing to consider Uganda, for instance, when the British offered that. Some of his colleagues were even touring places here in the United States and in South America and Azerbaijan, looking for places where maybe Zionism could be fulfilled. Another myth that, of course, is immediately connected with this and is very relevant to our day, is to equate Zionism with Judaism and therefore equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. And I think many of you were accused in your time of being anti-Semites because you declared yourself to be anti-Zionist, or if you are Jews yourself of being a self-hating Jew... There are a lot of Jews who are not Zionists, and quite a lot of non-Jews who are Zionists, which shows you that this is an ideology that is beyond one religion or the other."
Thank you, Bill. This is a very appropriate article with the weigh that brings the knowledge and prestige of a great historiographer who by being Israeli has access to the archives of that nation to conduct his research. For the benefit of the ones who have no time to see it completely I am transcribing the following part:
"Al Jazeera: But within Israel, young people also have access to the documentation of the genocide on social media, on platforms like TikTok. But many still disregard Palestinian suffering.
Pappe: They didn’t get the same education as young Jews in America. They got an education from a very indoctrinated country. And that’s the key. They were produced, if you want, engineered by the Israeli education system.I wrote an article in 1999 warning that, looking at the Israeli curricula, the next graduates of this system would be racist fanatics, extreme and dangerous to themselves and to others. Unfortunately, I was absolutely right. This is the product of a very indoctrinated society from the cradle to the grave. You need to re-educate these people. You can’t just show them things and hope that this would move them."
I'm to go back and look into some of the Ilan Pappe interviews that Chris did.
I roughly know that Judaism is more like a braided river than a stone aqueduct (differing rebbes, different lineages of thoughts, argumentation of doctrine) but THIS is an important part of that history, critically relevant to what is occurring, that I wasn't at all aware of.
Good idea. The history of Zionism and Israel like all ideologies and nationalities has been always obscured by a bunch of myths. To clear them the best thing to do is to read the Israel's history by its illustrious professors like Ilan Pappe's "Ten myths about Israel" and Shlomo Sand's "The Invention of the Land of Israel: From Holy Land to Homeland" and "The Invention of the Jewish People" I purchased them at Kindle and have been a mine of truths that I was unaware of.
Thanks to this substack, I was made aware of the work of Norman Finkelstein and Rashid Kahaledi on the aspects relevant to Palestine.
I hadn't known about these. Pappe's "Ten myths about Israel" and Shlomo Sand's "The Invention of the Jewish People" in particular look like something I should read.
-edit: And re-reading your first comment, "It was a minority position, and it was transformed into a powerful movement, not because a lot of Jews were recruited behind the idea that Judaism is not a religion, but a nationalism"
It brought to mind my limited knowledge of the way that Benzion Netenyahu was first regarded, and the that his similarly extremist, marginal views became dominant. Probably part of the picture described in the books.
Sadly parallel to what has happened here in the U.S., our equivalent shift to ideological, nationalistic extremism.
Bill, long ago I borrowed from the library "The Bible's Buried Secrets" NOVA's science documentary which I liked so much for its revelations that I purchased a DVD. If you have not watch it, I would recommend it because it shows that according to recent archelogy discoveries the Israelites were Canaanites. Canaan consisted of well-fortified city-states, each with its own king, that in turn served Egypt and its pharaoh. These city-states contained elite upper-class Canaanites as well as lower-class commoners, serfs, and slaves. Archeological evidence suggests that, rather than conquering the Promised Land from outside territories as a separate people (as described in the book of Joshua), the Israelites were actually disenfranchised Canaanites who joined in a revolt to overthrow the elites. Out of these people who overthrew the ruling class, a culture of Israelites emerged which worshiped the Canaanite god EI (Elohim) who presided over a divine consul of other gods including his wife the goddess of fertility Asherah and others like Baal, Anat and Astarte. Later when the Israelites wanted a separate identity they created the myths of Abraham coming from Ur, the exodus, Moses and Joshua.
As you said, Julio, "like all ideologies and nationalities has been always obscured by a bunch of myths".
Or as I think of it: humans have the capacity to subvert any belief system, and corrupt virtually any institution to gain advantage or justify actions.
What is most remarkable is when one remains relatively uncorrupted.
Opposing the owning class has never been safe. I.W.W. organizers in the Pac NW were hung; one was also castrated. Labor activist Eugene V. Debs was sent to prison by the U.S. government for opposing WWI as about capitalism and empire. (It was.) Quaker and 7th Day Adventists were also imprisoned because their pacifism was considered a threat to the state. In 1985, the family home of the African American and green collective MOVE was firebombed by Philadelphia police. In a grisly reminder of how Native American remains have been treated, the bones of two of the children who died in the fire were used by Penn and Princeton as abstract study subjects.
The difference now is high tech. New! Improved! Far removed from any acknowledgement of common humanity as if it were no more than a video game. More efficient, more deadly, more likely to destroy all life. The ice cold technocrat neocon perpetrators think in either/ors--powerful or irrelevant, conqueror or conquered, top elite few or bottom loser many. Those they use are propagandized. Good or evil. Us or them. Supporters of freedom or supporters of terrorism. So if "we" are good, the supporters of freedom, "they" must be evil terrorists. And anyone who says anything favorable about "them" is taking the side of evil and cannot be tolerated.
Cui bono? Plutocrats, oligarchs, and war profiteers.
"Good or evil. Us or them.", THIS is, I think, the salient point.
And always in that schema, the implicit correlation: We are the Good, They are the evil.
(And I apologize in advance, I will try to keep my reply from being too pedantic, I often fall into that.)
It seems that humans are above all social beings. with characteristics sometimes only marginally distinct from others, yet when combined with a certain capacity for abstract thought, result in the ability to intellectually create systems of language, culture, and technology of great complexity.
And yet with a greater capacity for abstraction comes a greater capacity for delusion, to be convinced of the veracity of the complex collective belief systems and ontologies that we collectively create, and that shape our thoughts and perceptions. All of which is done in a way that we are blind to, it is automatic, it is seemingly our nature.
And bound up in that same primacy of social nature is ALWAYS that imperative of Us or Them. It is combined with a tendency toward violence, and moreover, a character of group violence common to a few other species.
To be "normal", to be normalized in a group, a culture, is to be blind to the very ways in which our group distorts. We see within the bounds of our cultural sphere, (like an audience in the Sphere located in the Hell Realm of Las Vegas).
And at all levels of human collective (and individual) life, Us and Them runs throughout, manifesting it's distortion everywhere.
If you carry the question inside, and weigh it beside what you observe for a day, you can Us and Them thriving everywhere, in differences of race, religion, language, class, sports teams affiliations, choices in dress, gender, recreation.
And like all other abstractions, people accept it face value - people just experience it as the world.
...........
Tangentially, I was just thinking: I ought to re-read the book War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, to think of this question in the light of that book. It was such a long time ago that I first read it.
And, worth seeking out is an essay by Will Baker from 1985, "Izum In Rinkydinkaragua".
No, it isn't "ALWAYS." It has to do with the structures of the human brain. Look up Dr. Iain McGilchrist, who has written and spoken on the subject in great detail. His magnum opus is //The Matter with Things (Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World.)//
Since the Enlightenment, the left hemisphere of the brain has been dominant in western culture. It processes sequentially by means of abstractions; it must have certainty and control. Obviously the either/or (good/evil) of religious fanatics, but also the fact/fantasy, true/false of scientific empiricism and philosophical rationalism.
In contrast, the right hemisphere processes via gestalts, symbols, metaphors. The realm of the arts, mysticism, multiplicities, connection, and meaning. Where in addition to yes and no, the universe contains a maybe. Which isn't just the claim of dreamy artists and shamans--it's what quantum physicists have been saying for 100 years now. The Eastern world and Indigenous peoples have retained the right brain first, then left when needed. Therefore not all, always, everywhere. To think that is to see through a western lens.
The right is aware of the left, but the reverse is not so. This explains much about why we're stuck where we are. McGilchrist also points out that we cannot solve problems by using the same processes that got us into them.
I was thinking in a terms of a behavioral description of human tendencies, from history, and from the world now, observations of patterns rather than in terms of brain function.
I think the aspect of the brain is an interesting and necessary consideration, but which leads to whole sets of questions that lie outside of the purview of what I had in mind in terms of my comment.
(And outside of what is reasonably, objectively known: e.g. Does consciousness arise from brain activity? Is there a God? I know what I feel in answer to these questions, but I can't answer these questions in a meaningful way.)
And I don't think that any of these things are mutually exclusive, cold rationality versus artistic intuition, there is always a mixture. (If you want to consider the brain, the left and right are always both working.)
Leaving aside the question of origins, there are certain patterns of human collective behavior that is evident throughout history and the present. And I think that an innate tendency of human societies to "us and them" behavior is pretty much universal. It is not the only thing at work in terms of shaping our collective perceptions, thoughts and emotions, there are others always at work, such as tendencies to cooperate. Again it is always a mix. But us and them exerts a terribly large part.
Traditional societies were fraught with war. What is tribalism other than us and them? The Aztecs, I'm sure, thought in terms of symbols, gestalts, metaphors. The Aztecs had shamans. And the Aztecs were also Hell on the surrounding tribes. I consider this an example of us and them.
I think all societies do it, and groups within societies do it.
I don't know of an exception, but there might be one.
All it takes is a distinction that sets one in self-definition against another, Almost any difference will fulfill the function.
I will check out Dr. McGilchrist's work. It looks like something along the same line of inquiry as Julian Jaynes (just given an initial look).
I personally think that questions of consciousness are unanswered and in fact unanswerable at this point, but I'm always interested in considerations of the varieties of delusion. Our greatest gift.
FYI, McGilchrist says Jaynes got it backwards. McGilchrist does of course interpret what he has found, but his claims are based on mounds of solidly documented empirical data. 182 pp of small font references at the end of the 2nd vol. (I have the books by both.)
What got him to do this was the impossibility of breaking down and analyzing precisely why a work is great. He suspected (probably intuitively) it might have to do with brain functions. So he went back to school, becoming an MD, a psychiatrist specializing in neuroscience. Therefore himself an example of how to use R & L sides effectively.
I vehemently dislike behaviorist approaches because I detest B F Skinner. (Yes, I realize 'behavioral' isn't the same, but still...) Since Einstein's relativity, there is no objective point of view. Per Heisenberg, no certainty, either. "Objectivity" turned out to be an older white male Euro filter taken as normative, then used to judge all else by their self-referential standards.
As for using the term "tribal," no better way to raise my hackles. It's currently a Euro and Euro descent intellectual fad. Historically, "tribal," and therefore uncivilized, was applied to sub-Saharan Africa, peoples of the Americas, and indigenous Australians. Whereas Western Euros (and descendants) were "ethnic" and civilized. Lesser Others are tribal; acting like them is uncivilized. Apply western judgemental objectivity, and whose cultures have been the most violent, destructive, exploitive, and authoritarian? And have taken pride in their deadly efficiency? Western Euro architects of hell on Earth need to take responsibility for what they've done and come up with a term appropriate for their own particular brand of horror.
War everywhere, every when, all against all is a bleakly Hobbesian assertion used to justify vicious econ competition. I can give contrary examples from Native America. Indigenous peoples are well aware nature is predominantly cooperative--symbiotic. Also take a look at the very oldest known settlements like Gobekli Tepe and Boncuklu Tarla in Turkey. More than 11,000 years ago and no fortifications.
Rafi, I wasn't implying anything about the assumed "superiority" of Western culture. I think that all cultures get some things right, and some things wrong. I see none as "superior" in a broad sense. Each has virtues and failings. In fact, for several years one of the directions of my reading interests has been the horrific history, in particular, of the last four hundred years of European aggression predicated on the self-interested assumption of its superiority. From the "age of conquest" through colonialism, the age of the "Great World Expositions" and Human Zoos, it is an amazing horror show of vicious human capabilities. And as you, say, all justified in the name of "Civilization". And still used this year in terms of Gaza.
I used the term "tribal" because it is that which is now most commonly used in this context as a descriptor of a certain kind of social, emotional group feeling, self-identification in a broad sense. It has connotations that I don't like, but again, it was I see most commonly applied in that social context, particularly the parlance of current popular culture to get the sense across.
I hope that there might be hope for mankind, if there is something which might be applied from the insights of Dr. McGilchrist.
I do think that there is always a mixture, that there have been instances of an incredibly wide range of possibilities of human society and behavior, both internally and in relation to others. And I do think that Western Culture has blindly aggressive characteristics that are among the worst, and which might in fact destroy us. I don't think that it's vaunted "reason" is at all what is claimed, and which is used to justify its history and actions. The examples of the hypocrisy are pretty close to endless. And new examples are provided every day. (Although, in fairness, for some adherents, the better aspects have been sincerely held positive aspirations. True of all ideologies, I think. For most of history, people have known only their own dominant ideology.)
But I can also only honestly feel (and therefor, subsequent to that feeling) think, that violence, the tendency to see in terms of us versus them is a force that seems to prevail across all ages and cultures, amid the admixture and interplay of what we are.
That has been my experience, and what I see when I read history and what I see now in the world. And though I wish that I saw something else, that is what I do perceive, rightly or wrongly, and that is what shapes my thinking.
But I do intend to read Dr. McGilchrist, it looks compelling.
Again, I hope that I am wrong about us versus them.
I remember reading, years ago, about the genocide, the torture, in Guatemala, that the worst of the torturers were the doctors. Not the ordinary soldiers, poor boys who were drafted. The doctors, educated men who were there by choice.
Brava, Brava, Brava! More and more like you in the days to come, we should be so lucky. But if we are, then maybe this species has a chance to survive.
Israel is engaged in dehumanizing it's own people in regard to the carnage they are implementing in Gaza, as well as having a say in other countries as well. Cut off a people's capacity for empathy and you have a soulless society. I was glad to see Ireland step out from the crowd and be able to identify with the Palestinians based on their own history.
The Zionists will continue to do this, unless and until stopped. Moral arguments are wasted on sociopaths.
Reward and punishment is the only language that they understand.
When I was 5, almost 6 we lived in Manhattan and down the block and across the street there was Central Park, no entrance, but you could climb over the wall and walk down to the pond. I was with a friend, and we watched as a boy of about 16 murder three little boys. They were in a canoe and each had to jump from the boat to the shore and if they fell into the water he killed them by holding their heads under water until they didn't move anymore. The first two went silently to death, but the last one pleaded and begged, but he too was held under the water and drowned. His white shirt became his sail and it floated him away. I don't know whether they caught this killer, a teenager. When I think of him now I know he was soulless, and that is what Israel has become, and we are becoming. It's really the only way I can understand the horror in pictures I see everyday, and I feel that most strongly when they go into hospitals and kill the most vulnerable devoid of any sense of humanity.
Certain actions are essentially unfathomable.
I don't think horrors of this degree can an any way be held by a mind without essentially breaking something within it, and our view of the world, to some degree. Forever changed.
I am so sorry that you had to witness that, Fran.
And the many thousands in the world who have seen and are now experiencing something like it.
When I got your e-mail I was working on the computer restoring pictures. I'm deep into Ancestry as well. The thought occurred to me after reading your response that maybe the reason my hobby is such an obsession is because I'm resurrecting the dead, which I am, and some, or a whole lot comes from that experience. I go to Aljazeera each day and of course the dead children, the dead women and men are disturbing, very disturbing, but the most horrible thing of all is the absence of feeling Israel has for those they slaughter. It's really beyond my comprehension and it is very similar to what I felt as a child watching the death of those three little boys, by a boy who didn't seem human. Something really missing in him. You could really feel that. Soulless is a word that comes to mind and I don't mean that in a religious sense. In a way he felt dead.
Fran, what you say here: "maybe the reason my hobby is such an obsession is because I'm resurrecting the dead, which I am, and some, or a whole lot comes from that experience", rings absolutely true to me. I have seen a similar process. And I think particular with age, there is what seems a need (at least for some of us) to look back on this world, and the world that we knew, to honor and to in a certain sense process what lessons we were given (for lack of a better way of putting it).
And it can extend to events and people to which we have no connection. I had something like several years ago, in relation to the Shoah. At the time, I wouldn't have imagined what is happening now in Gaza. It is always beyond comprehension, how this can become normal, now and in history, this degree of inhumanity. With individuals, it is somewhat easier to rationalize, "well, there is something missing in them", but that fails when an entire society does it. And this dehumanization has happened throughout history.
That will always remain beyond understanding to me.
Particularly relevant is Dr. Marya's call out of JAMA as providing moral cover for Israel’s obliteration of health care facilities in Gaza. Recall that the journal also provided that same moral cover for the COVID lies of the FDA and CDC and serves as a major Pharma mouthpiece, given its ad-driven model. Just another exemplar of how corrupt is the disease-care industry, including its collaborating acolytes, its academic partners.
It is difficult to witness the horror of Gaza go continually on, the sheer evil, gone unopposed, and largely unquestioned. Particularly to see the complicity and abetting by institutions such as universities and the British Journal of Medicine, the silencing and attacks upon those few within those ranks, such as Dr. Marya, by the entities that are theoretically (and in their own view) the holders of truth, of compassion."the medical institutions we are a part of, which have an obligation, professionally and morally, to uphold all life, are actually abetting genocide, abetting and enabling genocide".
It is easy to see the self-interested intent of figures such as Scott Wiener, and perhaps even academicians lacking courage, choosing some rationalization rather than living a principle.
But how are we to understand the more encompassing phenomenon of the failure of the wider part of society to see the obvious horror of what is being perpetuated on the people of Gaza?
I think that it is the examination of this question that perhaps need to be considered.
Again, easier to comprehend in considering the case of of Zionists, whose ideology itself is predicated on de-humanization and the denial of the right of existence to Palestinian Arabs. (Though perhaps allowing second class citizenship to Arab Jews.) And to a certain extent, the collective trauma of the Jews, something akin to a societal version of the abused child becoming the child abuser.
But the phenomenon of entire populations, such as the U.S. to allow this, to not even SEE it as it is - the obvious, inarguable reality - how can we understand this?
Because it is this flaw in us collectively, is what allows it, and the endless recurrences throughout history, that is seemingly bound to what we are.
Racism is only a starting point, religion only a starting point, economic power and tribalism only a part of it, but they all grow out of it, they are the manifestations, they are the ideologies upon which actions are justified, but the impulse lies somewhere else.
Thank you for this so important and timely interview with Dr. Rupa Marya about the role of the “the genocide enablement apparatus of Israel.” I have been troubled for months over the silence of the AMA as hospital after hospital has been destroyed and medical personnel murdered, known by volunteer doctors who have gone to Gaza and returned.
Thank you, Dr. Marya, for your courage, strength and devotion to healing and to the Palestinians and for organizing and writing about the unspeakably painful atrocities being enacted. Such hard work you are doing. The silencing, isolation and "moral injury" you describe is traumatic.
From another heartbroken Substack:
"The Doctor", a poem for Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya by Palestine Will Be Free:
https://palestinewillbefree.substack.com/p/the-doctor
Every genocide in human history until now has been done in relative secrecy, or has taken place slowly using starvation and disease. Rapid, violent exterminations of entire populations have never been extensively reported or documented in real time, and the wider world has never had access to detailed information about a genocide in progress. Reporting from the killing fields during a genocide has always been extremely limited, and only after the fact does it become widely known. Another difference with this genocide is that in the modern era, post-1945, no state or non-state group committing a genocide has ever continually and openly advertised its intent. These two factors mean that the world is in uncharted territory. The entire world apart from Yemen and Lebanon is complicit. And we’re not talking about a few weeks—it’s been 15 months. The United Nations and international law has been exposed as the most monstrous, grotesque black joke. Every single institution in the world has been tainted. If a genocide can be done openly and with impunity over more than a year, nothing is off limits. Humanity as a whole has entered an unprecedented state of barbarism. Unless the world joins together soon to dismantle the genocidal entity—the US government and its vassals—complete annihilation of human life is not far off.
I just found this article written by Giddeon Levy, something to back up my perception of things
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-war-israel-lost-humanity-celebrate-power-kill
Gideon writes,
It began by criminalising any display of compassion, solidarity, sympathy or even pain in response to the terrible punishment of Gaza. Such views are considered treasonous. Israelis expressing compassion or humanity on social media have been monitored and summoned for police investigation. Some have been fired from their jobs.
This form of McCarthyism has mainly harmed Palestinian citizens of Israel, but sympathetic Jews, too, have evoked a harsh response from authorities. In essence, compassion has been outlawed. It cannot be expressed towards Palestinians - not even dead, wounded, hungry, disabled or orphaned babies. All are rightfully being subjected to the punishments Israel inflicts.
He also states "Losing its collective humanity vis-a-vis the Palestinian people may prove irremediable for Israel. That the country will reclaim it after this war is exceedingly doubtful."
I was just wondering if this isn't being used to simply implement more authoritarian control over it's citizenry and the excuse used is anti-Semitism. I
Authoritarianism is creeping into Europe under the guise of cracking down on pro-Palestinian activism.
Josephine Solanki
Project officer at TNI
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/1/8/a-disturbing-pattern-of-repression-is-emerging-in-europe
Could someone like a lawyer explain if the 1st Amendment of freedom of speech has been nullified? I do not understand if the 1st Amendment still protects freedom of speech and is still in effect , how can anyone be fired for what they say?
The first amendment doesn't exist anymore. In the U.S. the constitutional bill of rights is now at the whim of the oligarchs and their paid for politicians. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press and the freedom of peaceful protest are now gone. Unless you want to talk about flowers and protest a tulip garden.
Because the First Amendment doesn't apply to private actors.
Good point. The Bill of Rights only prohibits government from limiting free speech. So as private entities, corporations can--and do. It's a wonderful irony how they're legally considered "people" with rights.
Please support Doctors Against Genocide at https://doctorsagainstgenocide.org
Be blessed Dr. Rupa Marya for her courage to face the consequences of her denouncement of the Palestine holocaust. With her actions she has secured a place in the pantheon of the heroes.
In my opinion, Zionism has perverted the true moral teachings of Christianity and Judaism and has trampled the natural laws of decency in humankind. Let's remember that rabi Jesus of Nazareth preached during his ministry peace and love and that he was the product of his Jewish culture.
The following excerpt is from Israeli historian ILAN PAPPÉ lecture "Myths of Israel" Socialism 2024, Chicago, IL 31 Aug 2024 downloaded from Alternativeradio.org :
"There is no doubt that there were Jews in the late 19th century who decided to redefine Judaism as nationalism. That's an historical fact. But that doesn't mean that this is something that most of the Jews at the time accepted. In fact, not. It was a minority position, and it was transformed into a powerful movement, not because a lot of Jews were recruited behind the idea that Judaism is not a religion, but a nationalism. They were recruited actually by two groups, I would say, who were selective anti-Semites, and I'll explain what I mean by that.One group, which is still very important today in sustaining Zionist mythologies, are the Christian fundamentalists, a very important stream in evangelical Christianity that long before any Jew thought about Zionism, were already the early Zionists dating back to the 17th and 18th century. Why do I call them selective anti-Semites? Because they developed a dogma that I think some of you are familiar with, the restorationist dogma, which believes that the return of the Jews, so to speak, to the Holy Land, namely to Palestine, would precipitate the second coming of the Messiah, the resurrection of the dead,and the beginning of a thousand years of Christ's rule on the globe. Why was it selectively anti-Semitic? Because, in a way, what motivated the less pious members of this movement, what really attracted them to the idea, was that was a way, if you want, an elegant way, of getting rid of the Jews and getting back the only Jew they really wanted, Jesus Christ. It's a double bill for a fanatic Christian fundamentalist. Couldn't be better. And they were very, very active on both sides of the Atlantic in pushing Jewish intellectuals to stand behind the idea that not only Judaism is nationalism, but it had to be fulfilled in Palestine. Even the founding father of Zionism, Theodore Herzl was not entirely sure that Palestine was the only possible destination for modernizing the Jews as a nation instead of a faith. He was willing to consider Uganda, for instance, when the British offered that. Some of his colleagues were even touring places here in the United States and in South America and Azerbaijan, looking for places where maybe Zionism could be fulfilled. Another myth that, of course, is immediately connected with this and is very relevant to our day, is to equate Zionism with Judaism and therefore equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. And I think many of you were accused in your time of being anti-Semites because you declared yourself to be anti-Zionist, or if you are Jews yourself of being a self-hating Jew... There are a lot of Jews who are not Zionists, and quite a lot of non-Jews who are Zionists, which shows you that this is an ideology that is beyond one religion or the other."
Julio, though you might have seen this already: Ilan Pappe in Copenhagen (in today's - as I write), Al Jazeera.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/14/israeli-historian-ilan-pappe-this-is-the-last-phase-of-zionism
Thank you, Bill. This is a very appropriate article with the weigh that brings the knowledge and prestige of a great historiographer who by being Israeli has access to the archives of that nation to conduct his research. For the benefit of the ones who have no time to see it completely I am transcribing the following part:
"Al Jazeera: But within Israel, young people also have access to the documentation of the genocide on social media, on platforms like TikTok. But many still disregard Palestinian suffering.
Pappe: They didn’t get the same education as young Jews in America. They got an education from a very indoctrinated country. And that’s the key. They were produced, if you want, engineered by the Israeli education system.I wrote an article in 1999 warning that, looking at the Israeli curricula, the next graduates of this system would be racist fanatics, extreme and dangerous to themselves and to others. Unfortunately, I was absolutely right. This is the product of a very indoctrinated society from the cradle to the grave. You need to re-educate these people. You can’t just show them things and hope that this would move them."
Thank you for this, Julio.
I'm to go back and look into some of the Ilan Pappe interviews that Chris did.
I roughly know that Judaism is more like a braided river than a stone aqueduct (differing rebbes, different lineages of thoughts, argumentation of doctrine) but THIS is an important part of that history, critically relevant to what is occurring, that I wasn't at all aware of.
Good idea. The history of Zionism and Israel like all ideologies and nationalities has been always obscured by a bunch of myths. To clear them the best thing to do is to read the Israel's history by its illustrious professors like Ilan Pappe's "Ten myths about Israel" and Shlomo Sand's "The Invention of the Land of Israel: From Holy Land to Homeland" and "The Invention of the Jewish People" I purchased them at Kindle and have been a mine of truths that I was unaware of.
Thank you, Julio.
Thanks to this substack, I was made aware of the work of Norman Finkelstein and Rashid Kahaledi on the aspects relevant to Palestine.
I hadn't known about these. Pappe's "Ten myths about Israel" and Shlomo Sand's "The Invention of the Jewish People" in particular look like something I should read.
-edit: And re-reading your first comment, "It was a minority position, and it was transformed into a powerful movement, not because a lot of Jews were recruited behind the idea that Judaism is not a religion, but a nationalism"
It brought to mind my limited knowledge of the way that Benzion Netenyahu was first regarded, and the that his similarly extremist, marginal views became dominant. Probably part of the picture described in the books.
Sadly parallel to what has happened here in the U.S., our equivalent shift to ideological, nationalistic extremism.
Thanks again.
Bill, long ago I borrowed from the library "The Bible's Buried Secrets" NOVA's science documentary which I liked so much for its revelations that I purchased a DVD. If you have not watch it, I would recommend it because it shows that according to recent archelogy discoveries the Israelites were Canaanites. Canaan consisted of well-fortified city-states, each with its own king, that in turn served Egypt and its pharaoh. These city-states contained elite upper-class Canaanites as well as lower-class commoners, serfs, and slaves. Archeological evidence suggests that, rather than conquering the Promised Land from outside territories as a separate people (as described in the book of Joshua), the Israelites were actually disenfranchised Canaanites who joined in a revolt to overthrow the elites. Out of these people who overthrew the ruling class, a culture of Israelites emerged which worshiped the Canaanite god EI (Elohim) who presided over a divine consul of other gods including his wife the goddess of fertility Asherah and others like Baal, Anat and Astarte. Later when the Israelites wanted a separate identity they created the myths of Abraham coming from Ur, the exodus, Moses and Joshua.
As you said, Julio, "like all ideologies and nationalities has been always obscured by a bunch of myths".
Or as I think of it: humans have the capacity to subvert any belief system, and corrupt virtually any institution to gain advantage or justify actions.
What is most remarkable is when one remains relatively uncorrupted.
Opposing the owning class has never been safe. I.W.W. organizers in the Pac NW were hung; one was also castrated. Labor activist Eugene V. Debs was sent to prison by the U.S. government for opposing WWI as about capitalism and empire. (It was.) Quaker and 7th Day Adventists were also imprisoned because their pacifism was considered a threat to the state. In 1985, the family home of the African American and green collective MOVE was firebombed by Philadelphia police. In a grisly reminder of how Native American remains have been treated, the bones of two of the children who died in the fire were used by Penn and Princeton as abstract study subjects.
The difference now is high tech. New! Improved! Far removed from any acknowledgement of common humanity as if it were no more than a video game. More efficient, more deadly, more likely to destroy all life. The ice cold technocrat neocon perpetrators think in either/ors--powerful or irrelevant, conqueror or conquered, top elite few or bottom loser many. Those they use are propagandized. Good or evil. Us or them. Supporters of freedom or supporters of terrorism. So if "we" are good, the supporters of freedom, "they" must be evil terrorists. And anyone who says anything favorable about "them" is taking the side of evil and cannot be tolerated.
Cui bono? Plutocrats, oligarchs, and war profiteers.
Thank you.
"Good or evil. Us or them.", THIS is, I think, the salient point.
And always in that schema, the implicit correlation: We are the Good, They are the evil.
(And I apologize in advance, I will try to keep my reply from being too pedantic, I often fall into that.)
It seems that humans are above all social beings. with characteristics sometimes only marginally distinct from others, yet when combined with a certain capacity for abstract thought, result in the ability to intellectually create systems of language, culture, and technology of great complexity.
And yet with a greater capacity for abstraction comes a greater capacity for delusion, to be convinced of the veracity of the complex collective belief systems and ontologies that we collectively create, and that shape our thoughts and perceptions. All of which is done in a way that we are blind to, it is automatic, it is seemingly our nature.
And bound up in that same primacy of social nature is ALWAYS that imperative of Us or Them. It is combined with a tendency toward violence, and moreover, a character of group violence common to a few other species.
To be "normal", to be normalized in a group, a culture, is to be blind to the very ways in which our group distorts. We see within the bounds of our cultural sphere, (like an audience in the Sphere located in the Hell Realm of Las Vegas).
And at all levels of human collective (and individual) life, Us and Them runs throughout, manifesting it's distortion everywhere.
If you carry the question inside, and weigh it beside what you observe for a day, you can Us and Them thriving everywhere, in differences of race, religion, language, class, sports teams affiliations, choices in dress, gender, recreation.
And like all other abstractions, people accept it face value - people just experience it as the world.
...........
Tangentially, I was just thinking: I ought to re-read the book War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, to think of this question in the light of that book. It was such a long time ago that I first read it.
And, worth seeking out is an essay by Will Baker from 1985, "Izum In Rinkydinkaragua".
This link might work: https://wholeearth.info/p/whole-earth-review-may-1985?format=grid&index=17
No, it isn't "ALWAYS." It has to do with the structures of the human brain. Look up Dr. Iain McGilchrist, who has written and spoken on the subject in great detail. His magnum opus is //The Matter with Things (Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World.)//
Since the Enlightenment, the left hemisphere of the brain has been dominant in western culture. It processes sequentially by means of abstractions; it must have certainty and control. Obviously the either/or (good/evil) of religious fanatics, but also the fact/fantasy, true/false of scientific empiricism and philosophical rationalism.
In contrast, the right hemisphere processes via gestalts, symbols, metaphors. The realm of the arts, mysticism, multiplicities, connection, and meaning. Where in addition to yes and no, the universe contains a maybe. Which isn't just the claim of dreamy artists and shamans--it's what quantum physicists have been saying for 100 years now. The Eastern world and Indigenous peoples have retained the right brain first, then left when needed. Therefore not all, always, everywhere. To think that is to see through a western lens.
The right is aware of the left, but the reverse is not so. This explains much about why we're stuck where we are. McGilchrist also points out that we cannot solve problems by using the same processes that got us into them.
Thank you for replying, Rafi.
I was thinking in a terms of a behavioral description of human tendencies, from history, and from the world now, observations of patterns rather than in terms of brain function.
I think the aspect of the brain is an interesting and necessary consideration, but which leads to whole sets of questions that lie outside of the purview of what I had in mind in terms of my comment.
(And outside of what is reasonably, objectively known: e.g. Does consciousness arise from brain activity? Is there a God? I know what I feel in answer to these questions, but I can't answer these questions in a meaningful way.)
And I don't think that any of these things are mutually exclusive, cold rationality versus artistic intuition, there is always a mixture. (If you want to consider the brain, the left and right are always both working.)
Leaving aside the question of origins, there are certain patterns of human collective behavior that is evident throughout history and the present. And I think that an innate tendency of human societies to "us and them" behavior is pretty much universal. It is not the only thing at work in terms of shaping our collective perceptions, thoughts and emotions, there are others always at work, such as tendencies to cooperate. Again it is always a mix. But us and them exerts a terribly large part.
Traditional societies were fraught with war. What is tribalism other than us and them? The Aztecs, I'm sure, thought in terms of symbols, gestalts, metaphors. The Aztecs had shamans. And the Aztecs were also Hell on the surrounding tribes. I consider this an example of us and them.
I think all societies do it, and groups within societies do it.
I don't know of an exception, but there might be one.
All it takes is a distinction that sets one in self-definition against another, Almost any difference will fulfill the function.
I will check out Dr. McGilchrist's work. It looks like something along the same line of inquiry as Julian Jaynes (just given an initial look).
I personally think that questions of consciousness are unanswered and in fact unanswerable at this point, but I'm always interested in considerations of the varieties of delusion. Our greatest gift.
:0)
FYI, McGilchrist says Jaynes got it backwards. McGilchrist does of course interpret what he has found, but his claims are based on mounds of solidly documented empirical data. 182 pp of small font references at the end of the 2nd vol. (I have the books by both.)
What got him to do this was the impossibility of breaking down and analyzing precisely why a work is great. He suspected (probably intuitively) it might have to do with brain functions. So he went back to school, becoming an MD, a psychiatrist specializing in neuroscience. Therefore himself an example of how to use R & L sides effectively.
I vehemently dislike behaviorist approaches because I detest B F Skinner. (Yes, I realize 'behavioral' isn't the same, but still...) Since Einstein's relativity, there is no objective point of view. Per Heisenberg, no certainty, either. "Objectivity" turned out to be an older white male Euro filter taken as normative, then used to judge all else by their self-referential standards.
As for using the term "tribal," no better way to raise my hackles. It's currently a Euro and Euro descent intellectual fad. Historically, "tribal," and therefore uncivilized, was applied to sub-Saharan Africa, peoples of the Americas, and indigenous Australians. Whereas Western Euros (and descendants) were "ethnic" and civilized. Lesser Others are tribal; acting like them is uncivilized. Apply western judgemental objectivity, and whose cultures have been the most violent, destructive, exploitive, and authoritarian? And have taken pride in their deadly efficiency? Western Euro architects of hell on Earth need to take responsibility for what they've done and come up with a term appropriate for their own particular brand of horror.
War everywhere, every when, all against all is a bleakly Hobbesian assertion used to justify vicious econ competition. I can give contrary examples from Native America. Indigenous peoples are well aware nature is predominantly cooperative--symbiotic. Also take a look at the very oldest known settlements like Gobekli Tepe and Boncuklu Tarla in Turkey. More than 11,000 years ago and no fortifications.
Rafi, I wasn't implying anything about the assumed "superiority" of Western culture. I think that all cultures get some things right, and some things wrong. I see none as "superior" in a broad sense. Each has virtues and failings. In fact, for several years one of the directions of my reading interests has been the horrific history, in particular, of the last four hundred years of European aggression predicated on the self-interested assumption of its superiority. From the "age of conquest" through colonialism, the age of the "Great World Expositions" and Human Zoos, it is an amazing horror show of vicious human capabilities. And as you, say, all justified in the name of "Civilization". And still used this year in terms of Gaza.
I used the term "tribal" because it is that which is now most commonly used in this context as a descriptor of a certain kind of social, emotional group feeling, self-identification in a broad sense. It has connotations that I don't like, but again, it was I see most commonly applied in that social context, particularly the parlance of current popular culture to get the sense across.
I hope that there might be hope for mankind, if there is something which might be applied from the insights of Dr. McGilchrist.
I do think that there is always a mixture, that there have been instances of an incredibly wide range of possibilities of human society and behavior, both internally and in relation to others. And I do think that Western Culture has blindly aggressive characteristics that are among the worst, and which might in fact destroy us. I don't think that it's vaunted "reason" is at all what is claimed, and which is used to justify its history and actions. The examples of the hypocrisy are pretty close to endless. And new examples are provided every day. (Although, in fairness, for some adherents, the better aspects have been sincerely held positive aspirations. True of all ideologies, I think. For most of history, people have known only their own dominant ideology.)
But I can also only honestly feel (and therefor, subsequent to that feeling) think, that violence, the tendency to see in terms of us versus them is a force that seems to prevail across all ages and cultures, amid the admixture and interplay of what we are.
That has been my experience, and what I see when I read history and what I see now in the world. And though I wish that I saw something else, that is what I do perceive, rightly or wrongly, and that is what shapes my thinking.
But I do intend to read Dr. McGilchrist, it looks compelling.
Again, I hope that I am wrong about us versus them.
Thank you for caring about these things.
I wish you well.
Thank you for this report.
General Strikes for the common good. Rupa rocks!
I remember reading, years ago, about the genocide, the torture, in Guatemala, that the worst of the torturers were the doctors. Not the ordinary soldiers, poor boys who were drafted. The doctors, educated men who were there by choice.
Brava, Brava, Brava! More and more like you in the days to come, we should be so lucky. But if we are, then maybe this species has a chance to survive.
Israel is engaged in dehumanizing it's own people in regard to the carnage they are implementing in Gaza, as well as having a say in other countries as well. Cut off a people's capacity for empathy and you have a soulless society. I was glad to see Ireland step out from the crowd and be able to identify with the Palestinians based on their own history.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-war-israel-lost-humanity-celebrate-power-kill
Docs against genocide unit in one voice and scream for ending this psycopathic killing of Palestinians and the Arab surround.
This should be required listening for everyone whom doesn’t understand Donald Trumps Greenland issue. Explains every thing.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H68xPQPz-Oc