I Oppose Israel’s Atrocities In Gaza Because I’m Not A Psychopath

Caitlin Johnstone
4 min readMay 6, 2024

--

Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

I don’t oppose the butchery in Gaza because I love Hamas or hate Jews or love Islam or hate America.

I don’t oppose the butchery in Gaza because I’m a lefty or a commie or an anarchist or an anti-imperialist.

I oppose the butchery in Gaza because I’m not a fucking psychopath.

Opposing Israel’s butchery in Gaza is so obvious, so common sense, such a bare-minimum, fundamental-level, Being Human 101 position that if it isn’t immediately self-evident to you after learning the basic facts, your problem is much, much deeper than whatever ideology or bias or prejudice you might happen to have. There’s something wrong with you as a person.

If you support Israel’s butchery in Gaza, you’ve got much bigger problems than merely not having the correct ist or ism belief system. You’re just all fucked up inside. Your conditioning has made you into a generally shitty human being. You have deep and immensely consequential flaws in your character, and you won’t mature as a person until you heal and transcend them.

Opposing Israel’s atrocities in Gaza doesn’t make you a good person, it just makes you a normal person — and supporting Israel’s atrocities in Gaza makes you a bad person. Nobody gets any points for opposing an active genocide; that’s just the basic, bare-minimum requirement for a normal human being with a functioning empathy center in their brain. If you can’t meet that basic, bare-minimum standard, you deserve to be viewed with suspicion and disdain, and anyone in your personal life who cares about truth, morality and humanity should seriously reassess their relationship with you.

One reason the empire is losing young people is because the imperial status quo has given them no investment in it. They’ll never own property. They can’t support a family or retire. They’ve been given no reason not to want to rock the political boat. So they’re rocking it.

The only vested interest young people have left is an interest in breathable air and a livable planet, and the possibility of a future that isn’t intolerably dystopian. All of which are diametrically opposed to the interests and trajectory of the status quo politics of the western empire.

So they’re going for it. They’re beginning to see that there’s no reason for them not to plunge headlong into a push for real change, in direct opposition to the mainstream politics of our time. Like Bob Dylan said, when you got nothing you got nothing to lose.

One of the many things that’s beautiful about this particular protest movement is that these young people aren’t protesting a war that they could get drafted in or could harm their personal interests in any way. They’re opposing something cruel and evil solely out of compassion.

One Palestinian life is worth more than every college campus window in the world.

If you’re wondering why you’re suddenly seeing the word “radicalizing” a lot in mainstream politics and media, it’s because that’s the big scary boogieman the empire plans on using to justify stomping out the burgeoning antiwar movement it created with its atrocities in Gaza.

Israeli police raided Al Jazeera’s office after the Israeli cabinet voted to shut down the broadcasts of the Qatari media outlet on Sunday. The west is protecting freedom and democracy by stomping out its own freedom and democracy to assist the genocidal atrocities of a nation that is also stomping out freedom and democracy.

Trump supporters are such foam-brained bootlickers that they’re now united in shitting on protests against a genocidal mass atrocity that’s being pushed by neocons, the Biden administration, and every other warmongering establishment swamp monster they claim to oppose.

Trump supporters: fighting the Deep State by siding with every intelligence agency, weapons contractor, mainstream media outlet and professional war whore in America.

Republicans pretend to fiercely oppose Biden, but when it comes to issues that really matter like the president encouraging violent police crackdowns against people protesting his actions they’re in furious agreement, even saying he didn’t go far enough. They’re on the same side.

_____________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Featured image via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 DEED)

--

--