{"id":246543,"date":"2023-10-23T12:00:36","date_gmt":"2023-10-23T11:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=246543"},"modified":"2023-10-20T06:46:26","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T05:46:26","slug":"israel-and-the-weaponization-of-empathy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/10\/israel-and-the-weaponization-of-empathy\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel and the Weaponization of Empathy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Selective empathy is not empathetic at all.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

15 Oct 2023<\/em> – On October 9, two days into the current Israel-Hamas war<\/a> \u2013 in which the Israeli army appears intent on semi-obliterating the Gaza Strip \u2013 the website of the New York-based magazine Women\u2019s Health published some guidelines on \u201cHow To Cope With The Trauma Of Violent Images And Videos Of Hamas\u2019 Attack on Israel\u201d.<\/p>\n

It is unsurprising, of course, that the potential for trauma has been detected solely as a reaction to Hamas\u2019s surprise attack on Israel and not to, say, the past 75 years of Israeli violence and ethnic cleansing of Palestine \u2013 the cumulative depraved barbarity of which is what prompted Hamas\u2019s actions in the first place.<\/p>\n

After all, Israel\u2019s carefully crafted monopoly on victimisation and the attendant dehumanisation of Palestinians means that footage of the ongoing Israeli terrorisation of Gaza<\/a> has never compelled US media outlets to prescribe \u201csteps to protect your mental health\u201d.<\/p>\n

And yet the Women\u2019s Health intervention constitutes a novel sort of twist on the victimisation theme, in which even the vicarious trauma that is allegedly intermittently experienced by US audiences trumps the unmitigated trauma suffered by the people upon whom Israel wages perpetual war.<\/p>\n

The article quotes a clinical psychologist in New York on why it can be so upsetting to encounter violent images in one\u2019s social media feed: \u201cWe\u2019re empathetic people. We can picture ourselves in someone else\u2019s shoes.\u201d<\/p>\n

But selective empathy is not empathetic at all. This is particularly the case when \u201cempathy\u201d for Israel happens to be so politically expedient in terms of justifying obscene quantities of US military aid to that country and the slaughter of folks whose existence complicates the US-Israeli vision of the world.<\/p>\n

In the United States, my estranged homeland, the very emotion of empathy has been under sustained assault by a politico-economic system<\/a> that thrives on alienation and the eradication of communal bonds. When empathy can be weaponised, however, leaders from across what passes as a political spectrum in the US come out in droves to \u201cstand with Israel\u201d.<\/p>\n

To be sure, the Israeli monopoly on victimisation defies logic and reality \u2013 and casting the state of Israel in the role of pre-eminent victim is a bit like granting the status of victimhood to an assault rifle.<\/p>\n

Recall that the foundational episode of the whole \u201cIsraeli-Palestinian conflict\u201d consisted of Israel\u2019s violent self-invention on Palestinian land<\/a> in 1948, which entailed the destruction of some 530 Palestinian villages, the killing of 15,000 Palestinians, and the expulsion of three-quarters of a million more.<\/p>\n

And the bloody pattern has only continued since, with Palestinians consistently dying in disproportionate numbers even while being cast as the aggressors and victimisers. Take Operation Protective Edge in 2014, when the Israeli army killed 2,251 people in the Gaza Strip in 50 days, including 299 women and 551 children. Six Israeli civilians were killed and 67 soldiers.<\/p>\n

In Operation Pillar of Defence in November 2012, the Israeli army killed 167 Palestinians while suffering six fatalities in return. In Operation Cast Lead<\/a>, which Israel launched in Gaza at the end of 2008, more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed, primarily civilians. Among them were 400 children. Three Israeli civilians were also killed along with 10 soldiers.<\/p>\n

After the 2012 Israeli assault on Gaza, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy took to the pages of the Haaretz newspaper to remind readers that, \u201csince the first Qassam rocket fell on Israel in April 2001, 59 Israelis have been killed \u2013 and 4,717 Palestinians\u201d. Noting that this proportion was \u201chorrifying\u201d, Levy ventured that \u201cit ought to disturb every Israeli\u201d.<\/p>\n

Of course, \u201cought\u201d is still the operative word. But to be \u201cdisturbed\u201d by the horrifying context in which Palestinians have now existed for more than seven and a half decades would require empathy \u2013 which would in turn require an acknowledgement of Palestinian humanity, rather than the propagation of a pernicious US-backed narrative affirming the infinitely superior value of Israeli over Palestinian life.<\/p>\n

Also highly disturbing is that, while this narrative dehumanises Palestinians to the point of effectively denying them the right to emotional and psychological suffering, Israel plays up its emotional casualties as a means of garnering additional empathy.<\/p>\n

Following Operation Cast Lead, for example, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs broadcast<\/a> a total of 770 Israeli casualties, of which no fewer than 584 were victims of \u201cshock and anxiety syndrome\u201d.<\/p>\n

Similarly, following the 34-day Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006 that killed some 1,200 people in that country, the Israeli Health Ministry reported that out of the 4,262 Israeli civilians who had been \u201ctreated in hospitals for injuries\u201d a full 2,773 were suffering from \u201cshock and anxiety\u201d.<\/p>\n

While the Israeli state\u2019s obsession with air raid sirens and apocalyptic discourse is no doubt useful in helping to generate general anxiety, a tally of \u201cshock and anxiety\u201d victims in the Gaza Strip would presumably produce a number in the vicinity of 2.3 million, the current population of the Palestinian enclave.<\/p>\n

As former Oxfam spokesman Karl Schembri once mused: \u201cHow can you talk about post-traumatic stress interventions in Gaza when people are still in a constant state of trauma?\u201d<\/p>\n

Constant anguish has been ensured by all manner of external stimuli, including the asphyxiating Israeli siege of Gaza, regular Israeli massacres, the pulverisation of apartment buildings and neighbourhoods, and the use of drones and sonic booms<\/a> to obliterate any potential for even a moment of peace.<\/p>\n

Now, as the Israeli army goes about carpet-bombing Gaza and a horrifying amount of blood remains to be spilled, \u201cempathy\u201d remains firmly entrenched in Israel\u2019s arsenal \u2013 and it is a deadly weapon indeed.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/i>Belen Fernandez is a contributing editor at <\/i>Jacobin Magazine and has written for the<\/i> New York Times, London Review of Books, Current Affairs, and<\/i> Middle East Eye, among numerous other publications. She is the author of<\/i> Checkpoint Zipolite: Quarantine in a Small Place (OR Books, 2021),<\/i> Exile: Rejecting America and Finding the World (OR Books, 2019),<\/i> Martyrs Never Die: Travels through South Lebanon (Warscapes, 2016), and<\/i> The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work (Verso, 2011).<\/i><\/p>\n

Go to Original – aljazeera.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

15 Oct 2023 – Selective empathy is not empathetic at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":246544,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[1854,744,87,715,85,965],"class_list":["post-246543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-empathy","tag-gaza","tag-massacre","tag-palestine-israel","tag-war-crimes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":246545,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246543\/revisions\/246545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}