The Devil's Loop

Nothing is more surprising than the ferocious joy that the inhuman debauchery with which they kill other defenseless human beings gives these young people. As if killing under the invocation of God was a heroic act of sacred sadism. Such an exterminating feat would not be possible without a prior dehumanization of the victims, treated like vermin who only deserve to be eradicated as soon as possible from the face of the earth.

These are not the singular attitudes of a few terrorists selected for their evil instincts. As reflected in the apotheosis reception they received in Gaza on their return from their bloody expedition, they are typical of a totalitarian culture, built and spread from anti-Western ideas on the basis of the political Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood, the sect that seeks to recover the mythologized place of Islam in the world and cleanse of infidels the places where there were Muslims at some point in history. from al-Andalus to the whole of Palestine.

All this can be deduced from the disturbing images of the Hamas terrorist incursion, released by Israel in its campaign to justify the devastating military response to the deaths of 300 soldiers and 900 civilians, the kidnapping of 240 people, including a huge proportion of children, women and the elderly, the looting of 30 towns near the Strip and the storming of an undetermined number of Israeli military bases. "The narrative that emerges in Israel after Oct. 7 is that Hamas is equal to Gaza, equal to the Nazis and equal to all Palestinians," according to Haaretz columnist Roger Alpher.

The consequences of such an equation are terrible, even if they have barely been formulated. Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank must be treated with the same restraint with which the Allies treated German and Japanese civilians during World War II. That is, none. The current truce was due to international pressure and the strength of the families of the hostages, but the Government of Israel had little confidence in its usefulness. The same is true of peace and Palestinian statehood, which many in Israel regard as pitiful trophies to be offered to Hamas terrorism. The Israeli conscience is hardly weighed down by the siege of civilians, the tenfold death toll among Palestinians, or the destruction of Gaza as a whole. Hamas is the only one responsible, protected by the shield of a population that ultimately supports it or allows it to maintain and even expand its hegemony.

Anyone who disputes this Manichean view risks appearing in Israeli eyes as an accomplice to terrorism. The whole world is permeated in Israeli eyes with an eternal and hopeless anti-Semitism. Having all been victims at some point, they all seem to secretly aspire to the role of the executioner, thanks to the disturbing mimicry that transfers the denial of the other and the blindness to the sufferings of others from the one who makes the one who suffers suffer. There will be no peace for anyone in the Middle East if this devil's loop does not stop.

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