Just Close Your Eyes and It'll Go Away

by Rab Clark

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For almost 6 months we have been witnessing horrors on our televisions, phones, laptops, 24/7. And it feels as if it will never end.

But for some people it isn't happening, and it has never happened.

Huh?

What?

How can that be possible?

Please consider the tweet below - we have just added some paragraph breaks to ease reading.

We can't comment on the accuracy of the contents but we're taking it at face value and re-presenting it for our (largely) Scottish audience in the hope that it makes a clear point about what can happen when a government decides to control how the population is allowed to think.
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Alon Mizrahi | without equality there's no freedom

@alon_mizrahi

As an Israeli in this dark disgusting inhuman time, there are many things I see and hear and can tell you about and are worthy of research and serious consideration, but there is one part of it that is so uncanny, so disheartening, so extraordinary, that I can hardly describe it, and you won't get it. Because it's so hard to believe, or conceptualize.

I'm referring to the total and complete lack of public debate in Israel about any of this.

Try to get this to your head: for Israelis, the genocide is not happening. The war is not real. Even the low-intensity conflict with Hizbullah up north is not real.

How can I explain something that doesn't exist? But it doesn't.

Can you believe it?

No one argues about any of this, and no one weighs the pros and cons of any single part of it.

It is not talked about. Israel has captives in Gaza, but no one knows why, or as part of what. It is not talked about. It is forbidden to talk about this, or about starvation, of the scale of death and destruction in Gaza.

Moreover: it is forbidden to talk about Palestinians in general, so they are never mentioned, and haven't been mentioned in 20 years at least in Israeli media. So if you try to talk to Israelis about Palestinians, they will not know what you're referring to. They will think you only say it because you hate them.

Could you believe it, that the most crucial element of a society's situation can be disappeared from its conversation, its consciousness and its politics. But for Israelis, Palestine and Palestinians don't exist, I'm telling you.

If they ever do exist, it is in the moment before being shot to death by a soldier or police officer - and then they die, and vanish once more.

There is no genocide, no Gaza, no Palestine, no occupation, no starvation, no dead children, no pregnant women in unimaginable distress.

None of it exists. It is all, 100% of it, ancient antisemitism's new clothes.  

You cannot truly comprehend it. It is too much to believe, I know it. I live it and can't believe it. But it's true.

Israel's management of consciousness has become so expert, its propaganda skills, so profound and total, internalized so fully, that Israelis have no idea - no idea at all - where, when, and how they exist. Absolutely zero idea.    

And it is this component of Israel that will stay with me, and I will marvel at, and continue to always think about, and grapple with. This is the truly incredible part of it.

If you told me this, or if I read it in a book, I would not believe the extent to which thought control is possible. But now I do.

6:49 AM · Mar 25, 2024

439.4K Views

(1) Alon Mizrahi | without equality there's no freedom on X: "As an Israeli in this dark disgusting inhuman time, there are many things I see and hear and can tell you about and are worthy of research and serious consideration, but there is one part of it that is so uncanny, so disheartening, so extraordinary, that I can hardly describe it,…" / X (twitter.com)