They don’t seem that traumatized when they are literally filming their own war crimes and posting them on Instagram for all the fascist clicks.
The only way I could rationalize the OG Nazis…trying to get into their head and how they managed to do the things they did…was that they were straight up brainwashed.
It sounded crazy when I was younger. Like, something out of a comic book instead of a history book.
But as I watch and try to critically understand how the modern propaganda machine works, I can’t help but wonder if maybe I was right.
Posted this in another thread, gonna post it here, too.
“Looking another human being in the eye, making an independent decision to kill him, and watching as he dies due to your action combine to form one of the most basic, important, primal, and potentially traumatic occurrences of war.”
It’s an unpopular take, but I recommend everyone read the book “On Killing” by Dave Grossman. It’s obvious that what Israel is doing is very much a genocide, but I stand firm in my opinion that their boots-on-the-ground infantryman are also victims of the Israeli political machine.
but I stand firm in my opinion that their boots-on-the-ground infantryman are also victims of the Israeli political machine.
Sure, but couldn’t the same be said for many of the literal guards at Auschwitz? A lot of those people were just kids who were drafted and were simply following orders. Even many of those who were there willingly only did such things after being subject to years of ruthless Nazi propaganda.
At some point, regardless of what circumstances led you to that moment, you become responsible for your own actions. There is no set of circumstances that can make murdering innocent civilians justified. And if you do that anyway, you bear full moral culpability, regardless of what may have happened in your life before that point.
We literally hashed this out during the Nuremberg trials. It doesn’t matter what propaganda you were subject to. It doesn’t matter how you were raised. It doesn’t matter if you were “just following orders.” It doesn’t even matter if you yourself would face execution for refusing to kill innocent civilians. It is never OK to kill innocent civilians, to perform genocide, or commit ethnic cleansing. If you do that, you deserve to hang for it. Full stop. No excuses.
The Nuremberg Trials are a great example of how you don’t hang if you provide enough value to the military-industrial complex, and a terrible example of full stop no excuses. Seems ill suited to be a foundation for a moral philosophy.
It absolutely could, and should. I’m not saying that the crimes should be forgiven, but it is not a purely black and white area. It is very grey. To ignore the fact that they were ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, just because it’s uncomfortable to think about, would be a disservice towards efforts to prevent things like this in the future. People are complex.
They have a choice. They could either kill innocent people or sit in a jail cell. Picking the first one makes you a sociopath.
I guarantee he would face a lot less trauma in jail, especially since he is a trained soldier.
Stop making excuses, “complexity” doesn’t justify genocide. Do you also think that our soldiers who slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis are just victims? Do you think the surviving family members would agree with that sentiment? That their families murderer is a victim?
It’s all the same shit. They are copying us creating more terrorists for the future wars
And if the glass house you call your home exists in the united states, then your taxes financed filling the soldiers heads with the propaganda, financed sending them out on the field, made sure they had rations and ammo, and paid to put their finger on that trigger. What’s your culpability, compadre? You know when you point your finger at someone, you’ve got three more aimed straight at yourself, right?
It’s not a justification for genocide, it’s a call for empathy. Give what I wrote another read with that in mind.
As for your questions… I think our soldiers are victims. I was there, so I think I’ve got at least a somewhat informed perspective on things. It’s not something you can prepare for. In my experience, forgiveness and understanding come with time, but it will never be the majority.
Dave Grossman is full of shit. This is independent to the potential trauma from killing people (there’s a wide range of reactions to that experience). Dave Grossman is full of shit.
Humans are not made to kill other humans. And those who fight the wars of the mighty, are those who are among the ones who suffer the most.
War is really stupid. And it’s astonishing how we continue to be such a stupid species. Given how far we’ve come, one would think that we’ve finally realized how much humanity could achieve if we were working together instead of killing each other.
By the way:
It’s obvious that what Israel is doing is very much a genocide
The international court of justice has not ruled on this yet, but continues to observe and investigate whether such genocide allegations could apply.
However, I am not a fan of anyone who practises or participates in wars and so easily tolerates the deaths of innocents.
There’s literally video of a child getting cut down, then when help comes for the child they blow them up with a bomb. That’s some psychopath shit.
Lmao are you really trying to act like it’s not a genocide because some bureaucratic board has been bullied into being quiet about it?
but I stand firm in my opinion that their boots-on-the-ground infantryman are also victims of the Israeli political machine.
Caramel Marks, I mean Karl Marx, would probably agree with you.
and if he had refused to do as commanded would he have been shot himself?
If the army starts shooting its own soldiers, it’s not going to exist for very long. You can read very obscure stories about occasional killings during the Vietnam War, but those are almost always things that happened in the jungle when nobody would ever find out.
If they try that kinda thing in Israel today, it’s not going to be a secret, and all of the other infantry and their family are going to wonder who is next, which in turn would massively reduce support for the Israeli military.
there was a story of an iraq war soldier killed by his own squad a couple years ago. thats what put the thought in my head
No he would sit in a jail cell. As a trained soldier no one would fuck with him
Essentially a perfectly risk-free environment. But he chose murder instead
“cop needs therapy after shooting unarmed child”
“So, there is no such thing as citizens,” he said, referring to the ability of Hamas fighters to blend with civilians. “This is terrorism.”
Fuck the IDF
Well when he said “this is terrorism” he was correct. Just that it’s the IDF terrorizing innocent people.
Sympathy for the devil
I hope these IDF soldiers wake up. You can’t kill people without killing part of yourself.
I’m seeing so many parallels to our false wars in the Middle East. The vast majority of US soldiers who died did so by suicide.
Also netanyahu trying to create more generations of terrorism so he can have forever wars that keep him in absolute control. That’s literally what we did, he is copying us play by play. Or perhaps we have a hand in what is happening as well… At least our intelligence agencies that is
The violence in that region predates both Iraq wars. Israel has no need to copy the U.S. here. It’s important to remember that the situation is multiple generations of on-again-off-again violence, except now the scale is way up on the killings.
Yeah, I suppose it was traumatic, bombing food relief convoys and hospitals. You could have avoided a lot of that PTSD by refusing to follow illegal orders.
Also, get farked, CNN.
My interpretation of this is that some mid-level staffers at CNN pushed the story knowing exactly what was in it. Their bosses wouldn’t let them do obvious things, so they got a little subtle.
Didn’t the US use to invade countries for much, much less of a reason than that? Sheesh.
These days I’m finding myself agreeing with the Iranian government more and more often because of Israel’s crap. I don’t like agreeing with the Iranian government.
No, human rights and that stuff hasn’t been the actual reason for any invasions for a long time. It might have been used as an excuse, but it’s generally really about power and/or economics.
Read about what actually happened in places like Guatemala, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Nicaragua, and Panama. Think about what the actual reasons are for opposing communism, especially considering the timeline of what was known when recruiting Nazis for the opposition to (former ally) USSR, invading Korea, and invading Vietnam.
If you only want to dive into one of those, just look up Guatemala and Edward Bernays (a massive piece of shit).
I find myself asking “How did I fall for this? How did this seem normal my whole life until now?”
We didn’t hear the whole story during the Holocaust. Now we’re getting live videos and firsthand accounts of steam rolling crowds.
What the fuck is wrong with a person to be OK with this at all.
We didn’t hear the whole story during the Holocaust.
come again?
“We didn’t hear the whole story during the Holocaust.” (emphasis mine).
It seems meant in the sense of back then people weren’t hearing about what was going on in near real time, and only afterwards was the full dimensions of the horror discovered.
Mind you, I don’t think we are hearing the whole story of this Holocaust in near real time either: it’s not for nothing that Israel has blown up the Hospitals (were the dead were counted), has murdered over 1000 journalists and is blocking them and aid organisations from entering Gaza - all of which stops people outside from discovering the full scope of what the Israelis are doing in Gaza.
We are hearing enough to know its a Genocide, but the full dimension of the thing (possibly with it, in scope and in methods used, already being or well on its way to be a new Holocaust - I mean, just look at how this piece from CNN unwittingly reveals how they’re sistematically using buldozers to turn the appartment buildings they blew up into in situ mass graves for the victims, dead or even still alive) will only be discovered later if at all.
Just a bit of history, in WWII the Allies didn’t know for certain that the Holocaust had occurred. Remember that it was the 1940s, information could travel quickly but only so much. It wasn’t as easy for them back then to pickup the metaphorical ‘signal’ of the Holocaust happening to the ‘noise’ the rest of the war was making. So while there were rumors of mass executions of Jewish people as early as the summer of 1941, it’s often said that the Allies didn’t know about the Holocaust until winter 1945. Now when the Allies went from ignorant, to suspicious, to all but certain but with doubts and finally to certain without a doubt has been debated for decades and will probably be debated until the sun expands and swallows the earth whole. There was definitely a lot of hateful rhetoric being spouted about Jewish people in the 1930s that maybe should have been stopped before it nearly took over Europe, but looking back at history we have the advantage of hindsight.
Nobody of the normal populace knew. Do you really think the jews would get on those trains without putting up a real fight? Bringing their belongings, jewellery in suitcases to Dachau, Auschwitz?
Does that sound like actions of someone who knew what was going to happen?
Yes, a lot of people knew what was going on. A lot of people, more people, didn’t know shit. The problem was not that. The problem was that they didn’t care.
You might well be right but I find it troublesome at best.
I mean, the gestapo simply couldn’t have rounded up that many Jewish people without huge help from the local population, as the area they had to cover with such small numbers made that impossible.
People knew that no one came back from the camps people were sent to or were even heard of again.
People did put up real fights where they could. The problem was the collective punishment the nazis used really curtailed much of this. Also, people don’t ever think they’re going to die. We understand it in an abstract way but, in turn, the concept is too abstract for us to fully realise.
Personally, I lean towards it being a far more uncomfortable truth. Although, i understand why others might not.
I’m hoping they mean that we were using slower forms of communication without immediate evidence and we still stepped in to help…
But I’d rather them say that.
Aceticon and InputZero both did a good job elaborating.
Mis/under -education (propaganda), lies through omission. Once the realization occurs, it’s a choice to live in denial and ignore it.
Some have labelled Israel as a rogue nation, but their actions are explicitly and implicitly condoned through other nation’s support and silence.
I don’t think that’s really the case though? I’m pretty sure most nations condemned Israel except for USA, but USA blocked all attempts from anyone to do anything. And when USA says that commiting genocide with their weapons is on the table, I doubt any country wishes to find out what would happen should any concrete action against Israel be taken. It’s a big part of the reason why everyone calls USA complicit in genocide of Palestinians.
I have no reason to believe Germany’s government condemns Israel’s actions right now, and the way they always point out its right to defend itself, I suspect they actively condone them…
Yeah well Germany does seem a bit anxious for some reason when someone mentions Israel and genocide in one sentence, but if anyone in the world should have any reasons to be unreasonably pro-Israel, that would be them. And even then, their performative support pales in comparison to USA. IDF literally murdered USA citizens and USA congratulated them for that. That takes real dedication to the cause!
Just to be clear, everyday US citizens do not condone this shit.
Many US citizens do, though. Some Americans are happy to see Muslims die, and other Americans are happy to see Muslims and Jews kill each other.
We don’t know the exact numbers, but Trump is running on a platform of overt racism, so a rough estimate might be in the tens of millions.
Well in Idaho, just about everyone I know who lives there supports Israel. And in Texas there are a bunch of people criticizing Kamala and our state’s Democratic candidate for Senator for being radically pro-Hamas.
I hate that I have to specify sane.
Both major parties and most US citizens absolutely condone this shit.
Oh, took a poll did you?
Poor guy. Did he also have to murder the little baby terrorists and their sobbing, horrified terrorist moms and terrorist sisters too? Poor fella. I hope he can muster the strength to do the right thing.
Fuck Israel and fuck conservatives (including neoliberals) who gleefully support this genocide. The wrong people are being erased.
There’s no such thing as a “correct” people to erase.
When it comes to people committing genocide, I disagree.
Well, did he have a choice?
Everyone has a choice.
ah yes… “I was only following orders” - Otto Adolf Eichmann
He called the families he murdered terrorists. He’s lying about being “traumatized”.
Every word uttered by a conservative is deception or manipulation. The only terrorists in this story are the settlers committing genocide on the local residents.
This is basically Objectivism.
Wouldn’t it be cool if people who committed violent acts couldn’t actually be traumatized by those acts if they were unambiguously immoral. If people who did Evil were always consciously aware of it. If there was a moral order to the universe manifested in our bodies and in our works. One could then be sure that anyone who committed an act of evil and reported being traumatized by it was really lying.
He has a choice now. The choice to end his own pathetic life or burn in mental anguish for the rest of his life. I hope he chooses whichever path leaves him and his the most miserable.
Yeah you can go to prison
Ah yes, those hundreds of “terrorists” all nicely lined up in the road.
How the fuck do you run someone over with a bulldozer… no matter what i think of it’s not coming up good…
Austin Powers was a war criminal!
Riskiest click of the day. But I’m so glad I clicked it.
You win this thread.
That link stays blue
So, I hate to be this guy for Israel. But there are legal ways for this to have happened. I know the first picture in all of our heads is them running over prisoners. But it is a valid tactic to collapse your enemies trenches or building on top of them. The US has been doing that since at least Vietnam. Armored bulldozers are, of course, uniquely pretty good at this tactic. Although it is usually a tank with a bulldozer blade attached to the front.
Here is a video of the soldier in the bulldozer with his friend in gaza bragging they destroyed 5000 houses https://files.catbox.moe/sgmc5b.mp4
The friend already killed himself.
They’re gloating about it, absolute monsters.
Yeah that’s not a great visual. But the house was clearly already badly damaged and had explosives in it. This is standard for combat clean up. We can certainly talk about why 5,000 houses were damaged bad enough to need demolition though.
“Everything squirts out,” he added.
Zaken says he can no longer eat meat, as it reminds him of the gruesome scenes he witnessed from his bulldozer in Gaza
Yeah. This ain’t that.
That logic doesn’t follow. Did you think collapsing a trench means you don’t see anything?
Maybe just read the article from the many links in this thread about how they were being used to push bodies instead of talking out your ass.
A bit rude I realize but you would rather sound like you are from the middle and spout a fact that you know than just read and properly participate in the conversation. It’s not helpful and it’s infuriating at best.
I did read the article. Nothing in there screams war crimes for this guy specifically. Bodies do need to be cleared, badly damaged buildings have to come down, and it’s normal for a person to feel pride in their work.
Seeing dead bodies is a traumatic event all on its own. Soldiers in every war this century have reported that as a problem.
I’m not saying he’s innocent or that he definitely didn’t commit war crimes. I’m saying there is not evidence of it here.
Rachel Corrie was a civilian.
How can Isreal use TOTAL WAR while claiming HAMAS using hostages is bad ?
She was also a long time ago. Why not use the unarmed American they shot in the head recently?
I’m sure this guy operated his bulldozer with all of the due care and concern for innocent human life as the IDF bombing campaign that by their own reports have killed twice as many civilians as militants.
Yup, they get very little benefit of doubt at this point. I’m just pointing out that it’s not 100 percent straight to war crime from this description.
Except we already know that they were doing this.
I swear this is almost trying to parody the title of the article about the 19 year old who was burned alive
