Recognizing horror in real time – it’s not always easy to do

We have new Israeli military attacks on Syria, a significant part of whose territory Israel illegally occupies. This is another act of war, of course. Israel uses the Druze minority in Syria as an excuse, claiming they are protecting the Druze. (1)

From Deutsche Welle:

Here are a couple of recent stories on the catastrophic situation created by Israel’s current war in Gaza.

Amir Rotem writes about the lasting dilemma of Western supporters of liberal democracy in processing the horror and criminality of the Netanyahu government’s policies in the context of an argument made by Omar El Akkad, an Egyptian-Canadian writer who has published a book titled One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (2025). El Akkad focuses on how Western sympathies for anticolonial movements tend to be retrospective rather than current:

For El Akkad, one of the hallmarks of Western liberalism is “an assumption, in hindsight, of virtuous resistance as the only polite expectation of people on the receiving end of colonialism. While the terrible thing is happening — while the land is still being stolen and the natives still being killed — any form of opposition is [seen as] terroristic and must be crushed for the sake of civilization. But decades, centuries later, when enough of the land has been stolen and enough of the natives killed, it is safe enough to venerate resistance in hindsight.”

The book was written in the United States, before Trump’s victory, as the Biden administration lied, whitewashed Israel’s war crimes, and flooded it with weapons to enable Gaza’s continued destruction. Again and again, El Akkad expresses his disgust with the recurring demand to choose between something that is clearly terrible, and something that is only marginally less so. The implicit threat: if you refuse to align yourself with the lesser evil, then the burden for what comes next falls on you — not on those unwilling to offer anything more ethical, evolved, or hopeful.

“When the world’s wealthiest nations decide, on the flimsiest pretext, to cut funding to the one agency that stands between thousands of civilians and slow, hideous death by starvation, it is a prudent anti-terrorism measure,” he writes. “But when voters decide they cannot in good conscience participate in the reelection of anyone who allows this starvation to happen, they are branded rubes at best, if not potential enablers of a fascist takeover of Western democracy.” [my emphasis] (2)

The other story is about pro-Hamas radicalization of Palestinian inmates in Israeli prisons, based on an interview with An Israeli Palestinian citizen, Abu Quidar, who became a Hamas activist in prison. (3)

How does a person with no criminal record, who had never been involved in anything like this, end up planning a terrorist attack?

Abu Quidar: "You understand that your state is against you – against you. You're an Israeli citizen, not a terrorist in Gaza, but the state harasses you for years, denies you basic living conditions, and then goes and demolishes your house, too.

"I walked around, constantly surprised that people here thought the state was in our favor, that we [Palestinian citizens of Israel] would soon be equal citizens. Since getting out of jail I've noticed people don't think like that anymore. Arabs, Jews – in the years that I was in prison, I think a lot of people have come to understand the state is against them."

He claims to have become disillusioned with Hamas in the meantime.

Notes:

(1) Israel attacks military headquarters in the Syrian capital Damascus. DW News YouTube channel 07/16/2025. <https://youtu.be/vEs8KnY9UHA?si=WeQ26G6eOzNoO7SC> (Accessed: 2025-16-07).

(2) Rotem, Amir (2025): The Western liberal’s moral collapse in Gaza. +972 Magazine 07/07/2025. <https://www.972mag.com/omar-el-akkad-gaza-genocide-book-review/> (Accessed: 2025-12-07).

(3) Shimoni, Ran (2025): The Extraordinary Story of an Israeli Inmate Who Climbed Hamas' Ranks in Prison. Haaretz 07/11/2025. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-07-11/ty-article-magazine/.premium/the-extraordinary-story-of-an-israeli-inmate-who-climbed-hamas-ranks-in-prison/00000197-e52a-d1ad-ab97-e5ef6cac0000?gift=c84568b64ac248a5bf47cbf23f4436b6> (Accessed: 2025-12-07).