Russia in Global Affairs

(To a killer)

“If you had contemplated the victim’s face and thought,

you would have remembered your mother in the gas chamber.

You would have been freed from the wisdom of the gun and changed your mind:

this is not how identity is restored!”

Mahmoud Darwish, Under Siege. 2002

The complex dynamics of power, authority, violence, and morality have become central to understanding contemporary conflicts, especially the current Gaza War which began after Hamas launched a land, sea, and air assault on Israel on 7 October 2023.^[1]

Hannah Arendt (1969) argued that while violence can dismantle existing power structures, it cannot create genuine authority or legitimacy. “Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it.”

The international community’s immediate response to the 7 October 2023 terrorist attack was primarily the expression of sympathy for the victims and the abducted Israelis, and the condemnation of Hamas’s terrorist acts. Yet Israel took it for public legitimacy of its operations in Gaza. Furthermore, the West’s almost concerted declaration of Israel’s right to self-defense was taken by Netanyahu as the green light to waging war on Gaza with impunity. Subsequently, Israel commenced a military campaign in the Gaza Strip, staking on the prevalence in military strength and intending to destroy Hamas at any cost.

Drawing on Frantz Fanon’s insight, violence is both a tool of colonial domination and a means of liberation, which reflects the deep-rooted struggle for identity and agency. The 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas shows how violence used by perpetrators can be justified as a response to oppression and colonization, confirming Fanon’s perspective that “the colonized subject is a persecuted man who is forever dreaming of becoming the persecutor” (Fanon, 1963).  

However, the repercussions of violence spiraled beyond control, severely impacting the Palestinian civilians’ lives in Gaza and the West Bank, destroying all hope of creating a Palestinian state, and further undermining regional stability. For two years, violence has escalated relentlessly, making any sustainable solutions unlikely in the foreseeable future, while creating fertile ground for the rise of new radical ideologies in the Middle East.

The Loss of Humanity

In their work The Genocidal Mentality: Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear Threat, Erik Marcussen and Robert Jay Lifton compare Nazi and nuclear mindsets and argue that there are common mechanisms that create ‘genocidal mentality.’ Being at first merely ‘potential,’ this kind of mindset evolves into ‘actual’ in the process of ‘psychological preparation of society,’ which is being constantly convinced of an existential threat from the hostile environment.

This process involves the creation of an ‘enemy’ by demonizing the Others, denying their rights, and enacting discriminatory laws against them.

Ultimately, this fosters a form of dissociation and dehumanization in society, and essentially leads to the ‘psychological killing’ of the Others.^[2] By extending the authors’ analysis to the situation in Gaza, we can identify useful commonalities and better understand what is actually taking place there.

Importantly, such transformation of mentality cannot be activated unless some event triggers the deep trauma and leads to the explosion of violence. In the case of Israel, this was the 7 October 2023 terrorist attack. It marked a point where Israel crossed the threshold towards committing acts of genocide against the Others. For the Netanyahu right-wing government, the Israelis traumatized by the perceived existential threat from the Palestinians, compounded by the historical trauma of the Holocaust injustices, had to respond to Hamas’s attacks with genocide in Gaza.

Once the psychological barriers were overcome, the perception threshold of catastrophe was crossed and the activation mechanism was triggered, violence became highly tangible. Notably, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated: “We are fighting against animals,” while Netanyahu described Gaza as a “city of evil” and promised to destroy it. Such statements denying Palestinians human nature have caused the Israeli public’s detachment from the harsh reality in Gaza, where, according to reports from international organizations, more than 60,000 civilians have been killed and those who survived are suffering from severe famine.

Thus, we are witnessing  a vicious circle of brutality and violence, which dehumanizes the oppressor and the oppressed^[3] alike. Alienation and the loss of empathy transform human life into a distorted version of human existence, perpetuate violence, and hinder efforts towards reconciliation, peaceful solutions, and coexistence. “We will not have compassion if we believe the person fully deserves the suffering. There may be a measure of blame, but then in our compassion we typically register the thought that the suffering exceeds the measure of the fault” (Nussbaum, 2003).

The Illusion of power

Through violence, the Netanyahu government is not only destroying Gaza and Palestinians’ right to a state but is also isolating Israel regionally and internationally. It is noteworthy that his policy triggered over 10,000 antisemitic incidents of public protest in the U.S. in 2024 (a 200% increase from the previous year), and a strong international criticism. His government’s preference for violence over diplomacy indicates the impotence of his policy. As Hannah Arendt (1969) rightly wrote, “rule by sheer violence comes into play where power is being lost; to substitute violence for power can bring victory, but the price is very high; for it is not only paid by the vanquished, it is also paid by the victor in terms of his own power.”

Despite the use of advanced weapons in its war on Gaza, Israel has failed to achieve its declared objectives. This proves that when violence surpasses the ends, it renders war irrational.

“The technical development of the implements of violence has now reached the point where no political goal could conceivably correspond to their destructive potential or justify their actual use in armed conflict” (Arendt, 1970).

However, even if Netanyahu has not yet achieved declared objectives, he seems to have achieved the concealed objective of becoming the regional hegemon in the “new” Middle East: “Half the Houthi leadership in Yemen—gone. Yahya Sinwar in Gaza—gone. Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon—gone. The Assad regime in Syria—gone. Those Militias in Iraq? Well, they’re still deterred. And their leaders, if they attack Israel, will also be gone. And for Iran’s top military commanders and its top nuclear scientists… Well, they’re gone, too.”

For a regional war, increasing deterrence is believed to be the best guarantee of peace. However, the Israels’ current war on Gaza has gone beyond the goal of deterrence.

This supports Erik Marcussen and Robert Jay Lifton’s argument that in a genocidal system the true goals are concealed through ideology, secrecy, and deception. Some consider that the Netanyahu government bears huge responsibility for the 7 October attacks; others, like Adam Raz, claim that Netanyahu has for years bolstered Hamas by encouraging the transfer of Qatari funds into Gaza to prop up Hamas and thereby weaken the Palestinian Authority. His efforts thus facilitated Hamas’s military buildup, undermined the reconciliation efforts, and impaired the two-state solution.

The Illusion of Peace

At the historic Two-State Solution Summit convened on 23 September this year, ahead of the opening of the 80th UN General Assembly, several Western leaders formally recognized a Palestinian state. While symbolically significant, this step may be exploited by Israel to justify continued actions on the ground. Indeed, the move does little to bolster the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority but instead strengthens Israel’s determination to eliminate what is left of its perceived threats in Gaza and even in the West Bank. At the same time the U.S. has proposed a 21-point plan to end the Gaza war. Although the plan has been supported by some regional and U.S. officials, the key issues—Hamas’s disarmament and the establishment of a Palestinian state—remain and will definitely face opposition from Hamas and Israel, respectively. In his address to the UN General Assembly, Netanyahu made it clear: “We won’t let the world shove a terror state down our throat.”

Amidst all these contradictions, the unprecedented pro-Palestinian global support, the (delayed) recognition of Palestine statehood by Western nations, the famine in Gaza, and the severely affected families on both Israeli and Palestinian sides there is much fuss but no progress on the ground. While the situation continues to deteriorate, a hopeless question arises: Are there any Palestinians and Israelis left who genuinely desire peace?

Drawing on Homi Bhabha’s concept of hybridity,^[4] can we still expect a future where national interests are re-defined through coexistence and supported by solidarity—while also working to eliminate extremism on both sides? Or is there no more ground left for optimism?

If civilians on both sides reflect profoundly, they will realize that violence, domination, and political polarization have deprived them of humanity and plunged them into brutal, inhuman thinking and action—the “war of all against all,” as Thomas Hobbes described it. Clearly, this is not a road to prosperity; instead, it is a way to mutual destruction.

The Israelis and Palestinians alike, intimidated by the fear of each Other, are effectively deprived by their authorities of the freedom of thought. The Netanyahu far-right government and extremist Hamas and Jihad have plunged both peoples in the bog of mental and emotional exhaustion. Seeking to ensure the continuity of their power they unearth people’s deepest evils and make profit on them. As Hannah Arendt (1963) shrewdly observed, “Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought—for as soon as thought tries to engage with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil.”