In explaining the Israeli compulsion to
pulverize (the Zionist element at least), whether into submission or
into smithereens, the Palestinian people of Gaza, a moot point, one can
combine Marx and Freud by way of explanation, as did Herbert Marcuse in
Eros and Civilization, on a related problem: the instinctual realm of
profound layers of darkness, in which consciousness of evil on the
oppressors’ part must be obliterated (for Marcuse, the repression of
Thanatos as it continues to do its ugly work), in Israel’s case, its
destruction of the Palestinian memory (memory as historical awareness,
legitimation of group-existence, including pride and sense of place,
claims to survival and growth) through mounting the disproportionate use
of force, a species of overkill, metaphorically, the Israeli
military-psychological bulldozer.
Rather than the massive machinery for crushing homes, which in any case
continues, it is intended to crush the human spirit—as already seen in
the widespread devastation, rubble everywhere—now addressing the very
IDENTITY of a whole people, physical genocide, as impersonally tabulated
in the grim statistics of body counts, but in addition, mental
genocide, the attack on a people’s self-knowledge, culture, achievements
in letters, the arts, political thought.
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