Archeology of horror

Forced starvation and blockade of essentials such as fuel, medicine, and water, a poisoned environment caused by residue from US/Israeli weapons and the burning of plastics and other toxic materials for want of fuel, state-of-the-art weapons technology tested on a virtually defenseless population, later to be marketed in the international arms trade, the use of AI to compile target lists, drones broadcasting sounds of crying children that shoot people when they venture out to investigate, desperately hungry people slaughtered while lined up for food, thousands of children missing limbs, more thousands missing parents, cemeteries bulldozed, the ruination of universities, schools, libraries, museums, targeted assassinations of cultural leaders, teachers, doctors, nurses, medical personnel, patients, discoveries of mass graves, assassinations of UN workers and cutting of funds to UNRWA, the well-documented racism of the state and its soldiers, UN Security Council ceasefire resolutions continually vetoed by the benefactor nation, the unutterable psychological damage visited upon an entire population, the certain legacy of blood-hatred in generations to come, and so much more. The terrible events of October 7 have unleashed a retaliatory savagery on the part of Israel and its US enabler so disproportionate as to seem surreal, defying normal human understanding. The cabalistic utterance, “Gaza,” has pulled aside the curtain, revealing the true psychopathy.

In a post-literate world, the adage of a picture worth a thousand words has become one more victim of the saturation bombing of images to which its citizens – netizens – are subjected. The deluge and accessibility of visual information, especially of death and destruction, leaves us mute and numb. Words, the symbols of emotion, fail us. The ability of AI to manipulate content adds another sinister dimension. “Reality,” always a slippery concept, becomes even more elusive and contentious. There remain cases, however, by reason of sheer volume and variety of sources, as in the Gazan genocide, where the ceaseless inundation of images creates general agreement. The reality can hardly be doubted. In their volume, accessibility, and unspeakable horror, images from Gaza batter their way into the collective awareness. They will persist, indelibly, forever.

The word “unspeakable” takes on a certain flavor in the current context. The dictionary gives two meanings: one, something unutterably horrible; two (a), something that may not be spoken because of social pressure or convention, or (b), difficulty of enunciation, as in some foreign words or expressions. A majority of Western countries, most notably, Germany, have politically supported Israel’s “unspeakable” slaughter of Palestinians. Obviously, it is the well-deserved burden of guilt from its “unspeakable” Nazi history that accounts for (as well as money from military sales) the German government’s backing of the US/Zionist death machine. Admirably, thousands of German youths are demonstrating their support of Palestine, risking arrest and bodily harm in response not only to the US/Israeli genocide against Palestinians, but in confrontation with their own country’s bloodthirsty past.

Excerpted: ‘Unspeakable Archeology of Horror’.

Courtesy: Counterpunch.org