I’m told – though this could be apocryphal – that more Indians were killed in all those Cowboys and Indians movies and TV shows than the number of Indians there ever were in the Wild West. The number of kills claimed by the U.S. army was greater than the number of Vietcong there ever were in Vietnam. And the number of Hamas fighters killed by the IDF is about the same as the number of dead Palestinians in Gaza minus the women and children. So, it seems, you’re Vietcong or Hamas just in case you happen to be male.

This kind of ‘biased counting’ has its parallel in the reports of atrocities committed by the enemy. After their invasion in 1991 it was reported that Iraqi soldiers were unplugging and stealing the incubators from Kuwaiti premie wards. A complete fabrication, of course, not revealed on page 3 until several months later. But by then the lie had done what it was designed to do.

Something similar, apparently, has happened vis a vis October 7th. Once it’s been reported that babies have been decapitated, or burned alive, or torn from wombs, it would be churlish to ask for names. And so the claim stands. Which is not to say none of this happened. Just that it probably didn’t.

Do those who think the massacre in Gaza is justified need the decapitation of Jewish babies? It’s hard to say. But certainly those doing the killing do. Otherwise they wouldn’t be flogging these stories. This is not to say one shouldn’t be making this kind of shit up. What’s happening in Gaza, just like what happened in Babi Yar, requires a level of dehumanising the Other which may otherwise be unavailable. So sometimes, I guess, ya just gotta do what ya gotta do.

Categories: Everything You Wanted to Know About What's Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask, Social and Political Philosophy

Tags: Babi Yar, decapitation, Gaza, Hamas, IDF, October 7th