Consideration of this psychology takes us through various stages of incomprehension.
The first is in trying to find headroom for the sheer industrial scale of the killing and destruction we’re witnessing. Daily massacres, a people bombed and terrorised, wanton destruction of homes and civil infrastructure; schools packed with refugees, all obliterated; people in tents, burned alive; lacerated children, their body pieces being literally scraped off the streets and put into plastic bags; thousands more children orphaned, facing years of suffering and trauma.
Foreign doctors, not mercifully amongst those killed, managing to return from Gaza report the most horrific levels of death and suffering they have ever witnessed in any conflict zone, including vast numbers of child amputees and the systematic killing of children from sniper bullets direct to the head.
The horrors witnessed in Gaza are now being reported back by the same heroic medics in Lebanon.
How, one wonders, could this wicked regime take their already monstrous acts to such a point of extended evil?
The second thought stage involves trying to fathom how even avowed backers of the perpetrators could openly defend a regime committing such glaringly genocidal acts. Aren’t they, as human beings, at least able to see the immense trail of human calamity staring them in the face?
But it’s the third thought level that in many ways seems the most perplexing: how those avid supporters of Israel’s brazen genocide can, in turn, be so openly supported by so many seemingly ‘progressive’ figures.
Let’s take two examples of the latter type here in Scotland - though it wouldn’t be hard to pick out many more such cases from the ranks of our 'liberal-minded' commentariat.
While the genocide has been unfolding in Gaza, Herald journalist Kevin McKenna has been actively supporting Glasgow Friends of Israel (GFI). For the purposes of our little exercise here, GFI are the very embodiment of that genocide support group described in level two.
Lamentably, McKenna falls squarely into the third; the coterie of those 'left-liberal' types all too ready to indulge such groups. And with this complicit support comes a malign denigration of those voices standing against Israel and its genocide-supporting friends.
In one snapshot piece about Glasgow 'keeping the heid' amid fears of an upsurge in far-right threats, McKenna refers in disparaging tones to the weekly Palestinian protests standing up against mass genocidal slaughter in Gaza:
"At the top of Buchanan Street around 1pm the usual throng of pro-Palestine supporters were chanting about rivers and seas and condemning Israel for its “ethnic supremacism”. This was about as heated as it got."
Duly maligned, he then proceeds down the street to 'check in' on GFI, depicted here as some 'plucky little peace stall' sat in the middle of two hostile Palestinian ones - analogous, no doubt for McKenna, to 'plucky little Israel' surrounded by hostile Arab states.
McKenna continues:
"In the middle of Buchanan Street, the Friends of Israel, had pitched their stall, proclaiming peace upon all in the Middle East and reminding people of the 116 or so Israeli hostages still held captive by Hamas. Sammi and Vicci, who’ve been organising the stall for several years, have encountered occasional bursts of unpleasantness since the Gaza conflict started, but when I checked in on them yesterday it was all calm as they handed out home-made gingerbread to passers-by. Their little tented redoubt is now flanked on either side by Palestinian activists but they’ve all found a way to co-exist."
All very cosy. Glasgow, still as seeming 'one', in 'managed conflict'. Such is the distorted lens through which McKenna views the presence of his 'peace-stall' friends at GFI.
What McKenna refuses to see or speak about here is the genocidal slaughter this little 'gingerbread-sharing' entity is defending; or, to invoke the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the genocidal killing and destruction such 'peace-loving' organisations are enabling. This is the genocide that people like McKenna are helping to normalise by openly endorsing such groups; a chain of complicity in serving to deny and mitigate Israel’s calculated killing of an entire people.
Here and in a subsequent article, McKenna sets out his own deceptive stall in seeking to conflate legitimate criticism of genocidal Israel and its GFI backers with the usual concocted claims of antisemitism. Again, it’s the "fury" of Palestinian voices being contrasted with GFI's 'hushed voice of peace':
"Three days after the vigil for Glasgow’s Jewish community the Concert Hall steps are hosting a rally for Palestine. They might as well have taken place on different planets. The grief and solace of 300 souls on Wednesday night has been replaced by the sound and fury of 3,000 on Saturday afternoon."
This is a shameless slur by McKenna on people of conscience standing up against mass murder, ethnic cleansing and an historic oppression that, contrary to the spurious version told in homely chat to McKenna by Stein, started long before 7 October 2023.
McKenna also takes Stein and GFI at their untrusted word in claiming there’s been regular attacks on their stall, and that any hostility to them is motivated by antisemitism rather than specific criticism of Israel and those who support it.
He also peddles this outright fabrication, with no serious corroboration:
This is just dishonest insinuation and deflection. The increasing criticisms people are making in this city, as elsewhere, are against Israel, not against Jews. McKenna's claim here is akin to GFI's own street deceit, with its banners blaming Hamas for all of the Palestinians' plight."The centre of Glasgow has become a no-go area for Jewish people as thousands of people expressing hatred for Israel have become a routine occurrence. These marches of themselves may not reach the anti-Semitism threshold but Jews feel that they create a hostile environment where it didn’t previously exist."
One such entry finds them revelling in cruel, vindictive celebration at the undue punishment of those moral-minded people seeking to stop the arms companies from sending munitions to conduct the slaughter in Gaza.
In yet another, they're gloating over the mass deaths and casualties from the pager explosions in Lebanon.
Again, no surprise from a grouping that cynically depicted all those unarmed civilians mown down by Israeli snipers during Gaza’s Great March of Return as "Pallywood" actors.
One wonders if McKenna and others who idealise this group know even a fraction of its virulent output.
Nor, for all its posturing as a 'voice for peace and negotiation', is it remotely hesitant in lauding Netanyahu, currently awaiting a war crimes arrest warrant being issued by the International Criminal Court.
On the day in New York that Netanyahu, like a mafia don, ordered Nasrallah's murder, GFI applauded his speech, while rows of delegates walked out in disgust.
And if he can’t accept those elementary findings, what hope of him siding with the ICJ ruling that Israel's conduct in Gaza is a "plausible" case of genocide; or the further ICJ ruling that every part of Israel's presence across the Occupied Palestinian Territories is "unlawful", a finding overwhelmingly approved by the UN General Assembly (with a few predictable rejections and abstentions).
Or maybe McKenna and Stein between them have some greater sum of knowledge than almost the entire body of UN/international human rights opinion and the world’s highest court of law.
McKenna has also written a deceptive article attacking those who opposed a GFI-organised 'vigil' to commemorate 7 October. He writes:
"Since last October, I’ve been told by several of them that they no longer feel safe living in Glasgow and have taken to removing anything that marks them out as Jews. There is a bitter irony in all of this. For Glasgow was one of the few cities during and after the Second World War which opened its arms unquestioningly to Jewish refugees fleeing the terrors of the Third Reich. Many of those who were at Kelvingrove are directly descended from the Holocaust generation. Even so, they were entitled to feel safe gathering to mark the first anniversary of the Hamas slaughter. Surely on this day of all days they could expect to be left in peace to mourn their dead and to say prayers for the safe delivery from captivity of the remaining hostages. This was a sacred occasion for a community still in pain at what happened last October 7. They still struggle to understand why in the decent Scotland they love, the events of October 7 have been all too often erased from political and civic discourse."
McKenna is quite wrong here in presenting this as a 'gathering of Jews', or a 'vigil by the Jewish community.' Rather, as explicitly advertised, this was an assembly of Zionist organisations advocating for Israel - notably GFI and the Embassy of Israel - all intent on defending the regime and the genocide it's conducting.
McKenna has actually indulged in a piece of pernicious antisemitism here in trying to say that these Israel-supporting Zionist bodies speak for all Jewish people, and that those who oppose them are 'attacking Jews' or 'the Jewish community'. Blind to the factual realities of international law and all those international bodies calling for states and organisations not to enable the genocide, McKenna, in his own Christian Zionist clothes, is doing precisely that.
Palestinian groups, in turn, not only have a civic right but a moral duty to oppose those carrying out that genocide and those openly supporting it.
As for McKenna's claim that "among all of the states in the Middle East, Israel’s values are most closely aligned with Scotland’s", the only words that come immediately to mind are 'shark' and 'jumped'.
He's on the wrong logical, legal and moral side of history, and will be duly remembered for such complicity.
*****
Like McKenna, Herald and independent writer Iain Macwhirter fits the same level 3 model of the 'liberal-enlightened' 'PEFP': progressive except for Palestine.
Here we have Macwhirter not only savaging the SNP/Scottish Government for 'getting involved' in an issue that 'shouldn’t concern them' - actually, they haven't been involved nearly enough - but berating anyone who thinks what Israel is doing constitutes a genocide. For Macwhirter:
"Genocide means the deliberate, systematic elimination of an entire race. The term was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer, in 1944 and first used by prosecutors at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders. Their Final Solution was an exercise in ‘racial purification’ conducted with brutal efficiency following the Wannsee Conference of Nazi leaders in 1942. It involved the identification, transportation and extermination of six million Jews on the basis of their perceived race. That is genocide."
Except that it isn't. Macwhirter hasn't even bothered to update himself on what actually does, these days, constitute a genocide. So here for his and others' benefit is how the UN Genocide Convention actually defines genocide, and the obligation on state parties not to enable it:
"According to the Convention, genocide is a crime that can take place both in time of war as well as in time of peace. The definition contained in Article II of the Convention describes genocide as a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part. It does not include political groups or so called “cultural genocide”. This definition was the result of a negotiating process and reflects the compromise reached among United Nations Member States while drafting the Convention in 1948. Importantly, the Convention establishes a duty on State Parties to take measures to prevent and to punish the crime of genocide, including by enacting relevant legislation and punishing perpetrators, “whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals” (Article IV)." (Italics added.)
Again, is Macwhirter engaging in wilful duplicity or basic ignorance here in failing to consult the Genocide Convention? Is he unable even to acknowledge the ICJ ruling that Israel’s actions are a "plausible" case of genocide? Which is why the Court ordered a set of "provisional measures" for Israel to abide by:
"The Court concludes on the basis of the above considerations that the conditions required by its Statute for it to indicate provisional measures are met. It is therefore necessary, pending its final decision, for the Court to indicate certain measures in order to protect the rights claimed by South Africa that the Court has found to be plausible."
Is this enough for Macwhirter? Seemingly not, for on he goes, undeterred, with his straw-man arguments:
"It would be extraordinary for the United Nations or anyone else to accuse Jews, who have been the greatest victims of genocide in the last century, to be guilty of perpetrating it. Israel is not seeking the elimination of the Palestinians as a race, or if it is, it’s going a very odd way about it. The Israeli Defence Force invariably gives warnings to civilians to remove themselves from areas targeted for bombing or terrorist seizures. Nor has it blocked aid to deny sustenance. These warnings may be insufficient and the humanitarian aid too meagre, but this does not measure up to a Final Solution in Gaza, even if you take as true the Hamas claim that 40,000 have died there. If Israel wanted to eliminate the Palestinians in Gaza they could do so tomorrow, as John Mason pointed out in his own defence.
Israel is not constructing gas ovens for the systematic elimination of the Palestinian race."
Firstly, the UN is not "accusing Jews" of anything. That, in itself, would be antisemitic in collectively labelling all Jewish people. Rather, as should be obvious even to Macwhirter, the accusation of genocide is against the state of Israel. It's a claim brought to the ICJ by South Africa, a state that knows a thing or two about such matters, and has been backed in its case by multiple other states across the world, similarly persuaded of Israel's guilt. Moreover, why should the UN exempt any state or group from accusations of genocide, whatever the history? (Note: John Mason has now been expelled by the SNP for his own gross comments in "flippantly dismissing the deaths of more than 40,000 Palestinians".)
Secondly, Macwhirter has uttered the most shameless lie here in asking his readers to believe that Israel's blanket slaughter in Gaza has involved the remotest concern for protecting human life. As multiple images have shown, this is a genocidal attack on an entire population, continually bombed and displaced without exception, a veritable killing machine exhibiting not the slightest regard for human existence.
A United Nations investigation has now concluded that Israel's targeting of Gaza’s health facilities constitutes "war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities." Specifically:
"Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel said in a new report today."
To claim, contrary to such UN reports, and every aid body on the ground, that Israel has not denied aid to this apocalyptic Strip - as an entire population faces mass starvation and disease from Israel's calculated blocking of every food supply and essential service - is a heinous affront to the truth.
Nor, contrary to Macwhirter's claims, and to invoke the Convention, does it take the presence of gas ovens to constitute a genocide. How monstrous, in false memory of those sacrificed in that horror, to make such an assertion.
Like McKenna and Israel's GFI genocide support group, Macwhirter is part of the same chain of complicity in denying that a genocide is going on. Again, he apparently knows better than the ICJ, senior UN figures, and every major human rights organisation on the planet.
Whatever ultimately transpires for Gaza, we can say one thing with complete certainty. This is the most recorded and openly-viewed genocide in history. And whatever the political and media contortions in mis-framing and disguising it, there is now an abundance of information and images showing the incontrovertible truth of Israel's genocidal conduct and ongoing intent. No one can ever say they didn’t know it was happening.
******
A few last words about loss and tragedy, suffering and grief, anniversaries and remembrance.
Few amongst us will not have had some kind of personal experience of such. Life is also about suffering, passing and grieving.
But in that all too human endeavour to cope and remember - and, where possible, to help avert more death and suffering - we do better when we are more able to see and fully understand the how and the why of such loss.
If you went to a doctor with a concerning ailment, they would, if ethically observant, want to hear not just about your symptoms, but to understand the core causes.
And so it is with the how and why of what happened a year ago. We can only get to the actual root of a problem, the cause and effect, by locating its 'pathology', in this case how an oppressor regime has subjected an entire body of people to 76-plus years of cruel, abusive and genocidal treatment.
Identification of that malignancy also leads us to ask why the regime has been allowed to get away with all that violence for so many years, requiring more probing questions about the psychiatric state of the entity carrying out that violence and those deliberately arming and supporting it.
Again, we must ask, how could anyone support such a depraved entity? How could any 'progressive' figure, in turn, choose to defend those who support it?
And of the genocide, it will be asked: what did you do to stop it?
This invites moral questions for our times about the system of neoliberal-militarism we live under, with all its savagery, indoctrination and normalisation of war, leaving so many seemingly inured and resigned to the horrors around us.
Despite all the mass support for Palestine, notably from the global south, how, we might ask, has the heart of so many people been so hollowed out that they display indifference to, or denial of, an actual genocide?
Is it any wonder that so many in Gaza and across Palestine itself now feel driven to the point of mental collapse over their enduring suffering, the regime's relentless impunity, and the apparent absence of care for their plight? Yet, what remarkable fortitude they still show in exercising their rightful resistance.
As we move with heavy heart into watching another year of this catastrophe, we must maintain our own efforts to stay mentally healthy and focused on the scale of the task ahead. With much more slaughter to come, it's important to remain of strong and positive mind in our desire to work for justice, peace and liberation for Palestine, with due understanding of the past helping to bring forward that hopeful day to come.
*****
Further reading/viewing
Al-Jazeera:
Asa Winstanley:
How Israel killed hundreds of its own people on 7 October
Jonathan Cook:
The BBC is weaponising its Lebanon reporting to help disguise Israel’s crimes
You can’t arm a genocidal state into moderation. So why does the West keep trying?
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