Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]

Sometimes you see a headline like this and you just have to stop for a moment and reflect on how mindboggling it is that genocidality could become so popular in a society. The fact is of course that this is the character of every genocide in history: genocides only happen if most people in a society passively or actively accept them. But when oneself is so far removed from that cultural context that enables this most horrible of crimes to happen, it becomes difficult to even fathom how a society could end up in a situation where one could meet ten people in the dominant group and find that nine of them want the marginalized group — largely children no less! — reduced to bags of nondescript red mush. Even the tenth person is probably still incredibly racist and a tacit supporter of genocide, just not an active supporter of it.

It feels cliché to mention how Zionist settlers are themselves to a pretty large extent descended from the survivors of pogroms and one of the worst genocides in human history, because the apparent irony of that is just not what makes the genocidality of so-called “Jewish” “Israelis” so horrifying, revolting, and tragic. People are not their great-grandparents, and Zionists, although they use Jewish aesthetics, are still a product of the cultural climate of Anglo settlerism and German volkism more than they are a product of anything Jewish. The Zionist settlers are, in a word, “not Jews”.

No, this is a human matter, not an ethnoreligious one. It’s a matter of me expecting to be able to look a member of my own species in the eyes and see a soul capable of empathy; all human beings are after all cousins if you go back far enough, and I would gladly welcome anyone as my own family. So even if people’s actions hurt others, I like to believe that people are largely just misguided and could be set on a better path, that people simply mean well but don’t always know how to do well.

But Zionists, in the way they talk, in the way they act, in the lack of any brightness in their eyes, there is just… no humanity left. Whatever humanity the Zionist settlers had was “left at the door” like shoes and coats when they decided to become settlers, and they’ll put their shoes and coats back on when the wretched, moribund system they benefit from finally collapses on them, which will be soon, God willing. And perhaps then, and only then, to paraphrase my own favorite ex-Zionist, ĉiu vidos en sia proksimulo nur homon kaj fraton.everyone will see in their neighbor only a man and a brother.

Yes, the app Xiaohongshu, also known as Rednote. Although originally aimed at people in China, the app saw a brief flash of popularity in Seppoland/USA after TikTok was banned.