No Empathy for Others: What Republicans, the Israeli Leadership and Christofascists Have in Common

GRAPHIC PHOTO; I apologize for the horror of this photo, but we need to open our eyes to what Israel is doing.  By Mahmood Bassam/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images.

With brutality running amok in Ukraine and Gaza to name a few "hot spots" of war and Republicans and Christofascists preaching the antithesis of the Gospel message (which both factions claim to honor), one has to wonder how men (and women) can be so cruel to others.  Particularly when religion is a consistent undercurrent behind the war and mayhem and general treatment of those who are different as refuse.  To me, it comes down to a common lack of empathy for others.  If someone looks different, holds a different faith, or is of a different sexual orientation, suddenly they are worthy of being murdered, stripped of their legal rights and subjected to an almost less than human status.  Here in America, we see the Republicans (think Paul Ryan) and the GOP's Christofascist base waging a constant war on the poor, gays and most recently undocumented children and youth from Central America.  Even more horrifically, in Gaza we see Israel we see the Israeli army killing hundreds of Palestinians - many children - while claiming to act in self defense even though the death toll is roughly one Israeli for every 10 Palestinians.  Personally, I am disgusted with the godly folk, their political whores and Israel.  I'm almost to the point of ending all US aid to Israel.  A piece by Noam Sheizaf looks at the horrors unfolding in Gaza:

In The Fog of War, Errol Morris’ excellent documentary, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara speaks about a certain inability to understand the enemy – one that stems from a lack of empathy.

In the film, McNamara, a brilliant systems analyst, who is today associated more than anything with the Vietnam War, says that part of President Kennedy’s successful management of the Cuban Missile Crisis was his administration’s ability to put itself in the shoes of the Soviets and understand their point of view. “In the case of Vietnam,” he says, “we didn’t know them well enough to empathize.” As a result, each side had a completely different understanding of what the war was about.

This understanding came to McNamara only in 1991, when he visited Vietnam and met with the country’s foreign minister. McNamara asked the foreign minister whether he thought it was possible to reach the same results of the war (independence and uniting the south with the north) without the heavy losses.
“You were fighting to enslave us,” yelled the foreign minister at McNamara, who in turn replied that that is an absurd notion. The two nearly came to blows. But as time passed McNamara understood. “We saw Vietnam as an element of the Cold War,” he says, whereas what the foreign minister was trying to tell him was that for the Vietnamese it was a war of independence. Communism was not the heart of the matter for the Vietnamese. They were willing to make the worst sacrifices because they were fighting for their freedom – not for Marx or Brezhnev.

I’ve exchanged emails with people in Gaza in the past few days. These are people who don’t care much for Hamas in their everyday lives, whether due to its fundamentalist ideology, political oppression or other aspects of its rule. But they do support Hamas in its war against Israel; for them, fighting the siege is their war of independence. Or at least one part of it.

Israelis, both left and right, are wrong to assume that Hamas is a dictatorship fighting Israel against its people’s will. Hamas is indeed a dictatorship, and there are many Palestinians who would gladly see it fall, but not at this moment in time. Right now I have no doubt that most Palestinians support the attacks on IDF soldiers entering Gaza; they support kidnapping as means to release their prisoners (whom they see as prisoners of war) and the unpleasant fact is that most of them, I believe, support firing rockets at Israel.

 For the Palestinians, the choice is between occupation by proxy in the West Bank and a war in Gaza. Both offer no hope, and neither are forms of freedom. The Israeli promise — that an end to armed struggle will bring freedom — is not trustworthy, as the experiences of past years has shown. It simply never happens. The quiet years in the West Bank have not brought the Palestinians any closer to an independent state, while the truce in between wars in Gaza has not brought about a relief from the siege. One can debate the reasons for why this happened, but one cannot debate reality.

Israelis are convinced they are fighting a terror organization driven by a fundamentalist Islamic ideology. Palestinians are convinced Israelis are looking to enslave them, and that as soon as the war is over the siege will be reinforced. Since this is exactly what Israel intends to do, as our government has repeatedly stated, they have no reason to stop fighting.

With every dead Palestinian child Israel is creating more and more ardent enemies.   Moreover, as the murder of children continues, more and more citizens in other nations will come to believe that it is the Israelis, not the Palestinians who are the real terrorists.  I am not anti-Semitic or anti-Israel, but I do have to wonder when the Hell someone in Israel will wake up and realize they are destroying support for Israel.  Come out of the fog of war and realize how others are viewing the conflict.  I'd also add that just because a child is Palestinian, it does not make the less a child or less human.  One would think Israeli would have learned something from the anti-Jewish nightmare of Nazi Germany.  Apparently not.

P.S. I have children of my own and now grandchildren as well.  Anyone responsible for harming any of them would find me to be a life long enemy out for very brutal revenge.  I suspect Palestinians feel precisely the same way.