In the midst of the nightmare that has gripped Israel and Gaza since 7 October the term "innocent" has unavoidably percolated throughout global media. There are innocent Israeli civilians, innocent children of Gaza, innocent foreign nationals, innocent Palestinians; all caught in the vise of 21st Century techno-barbaric horror.
So who actually is innocent?
It's clear who isn't. The subhuman monsters and criminal mass murderers of Hamas, nauseatingly and continually labelled "fighters" or "militants" in the conventional media. They, who have not only pointlessly slaughtered their Jewish neighbors, but who have continuously wrought endless destruction on the Palestinians they were supposedly "governing" have offered rockets, bombs, guns and unavoidable deadly retaliation in place of the food, resources and planning their people so desperately need.
Are the pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Harvard and Columbia innocent? The first question there should be where were they before 7 October? Their loud appearance immediately afterward has no political meaning as it only shows support for criminal atrocities. They’ve responded to an act of abject barbarism as if it were a political statement or a legitimate war. It is neither. It was simple criminal slaughter on a scale not seen for decades. Was working for the legitimate concerns of the Gazan Palestinians perhaps not as exciting as mass murder? Anyone unthinking enough to identify as "pro-Hamas" should reflect on what a Hamas “government” has continually failed to do; keep peace, improve the lives of Gazan civilians and run the territory responsibly. Instead, they’ve offered murder, obscene atrocities, and a dramatic worsening of the lives of all Gazans by provoking devastating retaliations. Hamas is the greatest enemy of Gazan Palestinians in history and should be identified as such.
The parents and families of the mass murderers, aren't they innocent? These civilians who raised this generation of evil butchers who laugh while decapitating children and helpless elderly after making them plead for their lives in the vain hope of some form of humanity. What did these parents and families do to the playful little boys of the year 2000 to turn them into the barbaric animals of 2023 who now lie with their brains spattered on the sand? They who have raised sons who smile while committing unspeakable cruelty against fellow humans. How innocent are they who raised and nurtured this generation of human obscenities?
And those innocent Gazans who kept away from Hamas politics? How different are they now from the German civilians of 1945 who claimed "we did not know" or just found it easier to go with the flow, no matter how profoundly evil the flow had become. Israel has asked all innocent Gazan civilians to evacuate, and many are now doing so, but that fact remains, the time to evacuate was the minute the realization dawned that your “government” was in the hands of terrorists who would do nothing for your family and standard of living besides worsening or destroying both. Was it possible for families who came to this realization early in the Hamas seizure of power to do this? It's an interesting question.
And the citizens of Israel, how innocent are they? At worst, many have supported a shortsighted Trump-aping regime, long on bombast, aggressive ultranationalist posturing and provocative internal policies, and tragically short on basic security and preparedness. At best, some have vociferously and continuously opposed those policies, aware of the flames of resentment and radicalization they were fanning. But, wherever they fell in that spectrum, they and their October guests worldwide have paid a very heavy price for it.
And the government of Israel; can it possibly be innocent, in view of its failed policies, programs and opportunities for its Palestinian civilians? Has it pursued equal rights for Palestinians, or shown much interest in the currently trendy US obsession with "inclusion and diversity"? In context, how much inclusion and diversity can a government show when a sizeable percentage of the diversity being included is committed to blowing itself up so long as it can kill a few Jews? Operation “Swords of Iron” has already flattened much of Gaza city and civilian casualties have been ghastly, leveling a charge of indiscriminate mass-murder on Israel, but again in context, how much concern was there for the citizens of carpet-bombed Dresden in 1945, and how much advance warning were they given by the Allies? Modern war, once engaged, spares no one.
Where does innocence start, and more to the point, where does lack of it come from? What creates the mindsets that lead to the utterly depressing ugliness that has so characterized humanity in the 21st as well as so many earlier centuries?
In the past, personal experience and live interactions played a major role in shaping mindsets. Today the internet and social media dominate; both unregulated and unassailable conduits for the instantaneous and global dissemination of hatred, ignorance and propaganda. Targeted minds are overwhelmingly inundated by whatever electronic media source they tune into. A hospital has been bombed and destroyed in Gaza City. No matter that Israel categorically denies its involvement, or that killing its own people to achieve its aims is something Hamas and other Jihadist outfits do regularly, photos and videos of broken bodies and horrified, maimed children will circulate with the label: “Israel did this”.
Innocence is only as deep as the brain that processes the information it receives. Now with AI making the verisimilitude of that information even less questionable, the battle for innocence vs. evil is one that must be fought and won on an entirely new cyber-battlefield. What has Israel done to effectively counter the Jihadist tsunami of electronic hatred and misinformation? What mass-psychologists have the decent and advanced nations of the world employed to enforce reality in this new war of mind control? Until there are answers to these crucial questions the delimiter of good vs evil and innocence vs guilt will exist only in the minds of those fed on poison or nourishment.
