“We are the victims now with our tanks and artillery pounding the bodies of those who oppose our wildest dreams
We decimate and maim a people who stand in the way of our glorious vision
Their cries of despair and agony deafened by our own righteous movement
For we are God’s special victims”

Howard Cohen writes an ode to the State of Israel in the light of the massacres of the Palestinian people.

Howard Cohen returns to the unrecognized Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran where he meets more members of his student’s, Noor Abu al-Qia’an, family, and finds a cousin who was nearly lynched by a mob of Israelis, “Noor’s expression grew animated with tension and excitement as he related the story, as if he himself was reliving it. His cousin was working in a supermarket in Tel Aviv and had stepped outside into the street to smoke a cigarette. A young man came up to him and demanded aggressively that he show his ID. The Bedouin youth was indignant at this unwarranted intrusion into his life and replied that he was not a police officer and had no right to demand from him anything. ‘Show me proof that you are a police officer otherwise just leave me alone,’ said the youth proudly. The man refused to show any ID and also refused to accept that the Bedouin Arab could defend his rights according to the law like any other citizen and set upon him brutally. His friends who were nearby came to the scene and joined in the lynching. Noor’s cousin was beaten to a pulp and hospitalized as result. ‘I think I remember hearing about this on the news at the time,’ I said. Noor nodded, confirming that the event indeed reached the mainstream news outlets. ‘A campaign was set up for him and he received 80,000 shekels which was paid into his account.'”

Howard Cohen relates the story of one of his students at an engineering college in the Negev struggling to keep up with his studies after Israeli police killed his father, demolished his home: “He had used the word killed, it was me who had used the word murder, but the words were irrelevant at this moment. He wasn’t interested in making a political statement to me, he was making an existential one. That was clear enough. ‘You see it’s so difficult for me,’ he went on, wiping away the tears that had welled up at the corner of his eyes and which threatened to stream down his face. ‘Everything was under the rubble. I even had a workbook for the class but that too was under the rubble together with my ID card and all our other belongings. They didn’t give us any time to leave. They bulldozed the house with all of our possessions in it. I’m trying to return to my studies. It’s important for me to continue, in spite of everything. But it’s so difficult for me. My head just isn’t there. And it’s going to be difficult for me to attend all the classes and prepare for the presentation.'”

The night of the Tel Aviv killings culminated with a fearful Palestinian seeking refuge in a Jewish home. Till he was revealed as “a terrorist.” In an instant a person was dehumanized. And in the same way the occupation defines Palestinians as subspecies without rights.

I live inside a nation (Israel) embedded and indoctrinated with a sense of victimisation whilst inflicting the most unjust suffering, the most cruel and senseless oppression, on another people. I live in a nation embroiled in a self-righteous defensiveness without any ethical conscience, without any wish or ability to scrutinise the sickness of its own psyche.