'Nothing is true, all is permitted': thus I persuaded myself. I plunged into the coldest waters, with head and heart. - Fredrich Nietzsche
I’ve been opening this titled article for the last few months and not had the courage, the spirit to write anything in it. So finally today, just said to myself “gavte la nata”, pull out the cork. Write. Forget all the organization, thinking it through. So here it goes.
I’ve witnessed on all sides of the ring, these days of constant war, the valuing of one life over another kind of life. I’ve witnessed farcical exchanges by learned men, women and commentors about the ration and number of hostages per side, about the casualty rates, about how many women and children have been killed …. and I see through their well-intentioned arguments and lies.
All individual life is equal. No matter the age. No matter the political affiliation. No matter the gender or even their stark guilt. Those who partake in operating the scales of life, in judgement are totally wrong, evil and thus, only executioners.
The commandment is as Hillel the Elder professed, - “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.” We must learn to value all life. Yet, all sides make these moral, god-posturing judgements.
Love they enemy. Reject tribalism. Bloodletting, bloodlust. Hate. Vengefulness.
I’ve witnessed men, like Elon Musk, like the Israeli defense minister make calls for the killing, the wholesale annihilation of large groups of people. Hell, I even just turned on the TV and Joe Rogan said of a man, an “alleged child molester” that he should be killed a hundred times over. No. The proper “way” of life is to nurture life not take it. There is a light in all of us - we must find and move in that light. Even in the worst of cases.
I feel like I’m living in a crazed world, an upside-down world without values. A warrior culture - one where “a better world” has no meaning.
So few understand the “iron fist” of Israel (a term that came out of their policies of the 80s) that makes explicit a dehumanizing ethos in the actions of their government and army. For any Israeli killed, 100s of “the other” must die. This policy (born too of the early days of the Haganah Zionist terrorist gangs then legitimized by Moshe Dayan in government), grew and grew into its present “dahiya” doctrine - Dahiya being the Hezbollah neighborhood in Beirut that Israel bombed to death, every single block leveled. And we see where this doctrine got us …
It’s a policy that eschews the value of human life. It is state terrorism. Total destruction and retribution. Even your own - no matter. It is right out of the Nazi playbook. I traveled weekly through the town of Lidice in the Czech Republic and know well how Nazi retribution worked. One of our own, then, hundreds of yours - women, children, everyone, everything leveled to the ground. The “Iron Fist” policy of Israel was taken straight from the Reich.
“We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases. This isn’t a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized.” - IDF commander Gadi Eisenkot, 2008
We see the end game of dahiya doctrine currently in Gaza, but it is also present in the quiet form of collective punishment going on for decades in Israel and the occupied territories. Dehumanization. One Israel hurt, 100s of others must go to prison. One child throws a stone, dozens more will be beaten and spend years in prisons. Ultimately dahiya isn’t about genocide, but breaking the will of the people you want to control, enslave, subdue. And that is what is marching on and still operational in Gaza. We will witness more of it shortly. But it never works, and never will …
Definitively, this form of crushing state violence is terrorism. You can’t call it anything else. Terrorism is indiscriminate killing for the sake of, yes, you guessed it “terror” and to put fear into a population. Please watch this journalist describe why the bombing in Gaza is so evil, as carried out by AI generation of targets and moral decisions about the worth, value of lives.
The only solution is that Israel and all parties high and low be forced to legal and political (and ethical) norms where ALL life is valued, not ranked. Human rights, one beating heart, one set of involitile rights. No less, no more. And this isn’t the case and until this becomes reality - the death and destruction will go on.
One a final note - I want to leave any reader without a doubt as to the crimes Israel has been commiting against life, the sacredness of life. The IDF knows everything about all residents, all buildings in Gaza. Down to little details like how many stoves they contain or what types of windows are installed. It controls a mass assassination factory. And it is with this data that it decides which buildings to bring down. This includes using AI and specific targeting (killing/bombing) of those Gazans that are well-educated and of high status.
It isn’t and never was about Hamas. It is a policy of dahily - terror, death. It is about subjugation of a population, beating like one would a dog so it will fear you. But we all know that dogs will eventually bite back - it’s not the way towards life, the light, peace, justice …
We must learn to tear out, expunge the hate in our own hearts. Or we have no chance of a better world. As one ancient, anonymous poet wrote, “Pity for those who can only love their own.”
“But the foolish children will have to learn some day that, rebels though they be and riotous from nature, they are too weak to maintain the spirit of mutiny for any length of time.”― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Grand Inquisitor
Esoteric Erotica
I study
your pendulous breasts,
two suns buoyant
pointing to fertile orb below.
I enter
through vallied loins,
both phallus and heart
magnetized by sensual expectancy.
I leave
through tangled limbs
quiet in relief,
washed by the breath of life.
I study
your twisted reclining mass
wondering if,
Joseph Mengele would see the same.
Bergen-Belsen, Lower Saxony, Germany. July 03, 1994.
Iron-Fistedness