Thomas Wictor

Very few things really anger me. One human failing for which I feel a lot of hostility is denial. I’ve noticed that deniers often think of themselves as superior to others, which is grotesque, since they’re living in a fantasy world. When someone uses their delusions as evidence that they have the upper hand, it can be infuriating.

I don’t speak either Hebrew or Arabic, but I knew what this video was about.

The Palestinian kid was throwing rocks at the soldiers, he got caught, and then he then started squawking like a chicken and wailing for the camera. None of the Palestinians show even the slightest fear of the Israeli soldiers, and in the end the kid is released. This is right after the so-called genocide and indiscriminate violence of Operation Protective Edge.

According to the comments section of the video, the kid says his neck hurts; another kid says the soldiers jumped up and down on it. On the kid’s neck.

Sure. You can clearly see the boot marks.

The Palestinian women are saying over and over, “He’s just a child. He’s just a child. He’s just a child. He’s just a child.” It’s that bizarre repetition disorder that you see on the TV show Cops all the time.

“I didn’t do nothin’! I didn’t do nothin’! I didn’t do nothin’! I didn’t do nothin’! I didn’t do nothin’! I didn’t do nothin’! I didn’t do nothin’! I didn’t do nothin’! I didn’t do nothin’! I didn’t do nothin’! I didn’t do nothin’! I didn’t do nothin’! I didn’t do nothin’!”

This image explains everything.

Palestinian culture and cameras. A marriage made in hell.

This little girl will never recover from the horrors she witnessed that day. Look at that tortured face!

This next child is so paralyzed with terror that he calmly tries to pry the soldier’s hand off his friend-cousin-uncle-brother-nephew’s wrist.

Or how about this traumatized kid, who’ll need decades of psychotherapy.

The young man in the black leather vest tells the soldiers that the rock-throwing kid is crazy: “mashugana.”

To his credit, he’s trying to diffuse the situation.

This screen grab is a perfect tableau of life for everybody there.

An Israeli soldier on the phone to his superiors, trying to wade through the neck-deep swamp of regulations and restrictions; a young Palestinian man honestly attempting to solve the problem but getting distracted by the fact that he’s been filmed; the impaired embryo terrorist, sobbing and lying, outraged that his actions have consequences; and the obese, putty-colored baby-making machines, repeating slogans over and over, forever.

None of this is functional. The soldiers have red berets, meaning they’re members of the Paratroopers Brigade. They’re special-operations capable; they could lay waste to all of the Palestinian territories in an afternoon if they wanted. But they don’t.

This video reminded me of the murders of Vadim Nurzhitz and Yosef Avrahami, two Israeli reservists who accidentally entered Ramallah on October 12, 2000. They were arrested by Palestinian policemen, taken to a police station, and then killed by a crowd of about 1000. The Palestinian police joined in. Nurzhitz and Avrahami were beaten, stabbed, and disemboweled. Their eyes were gouged out, and their heads were crushed.

I’ve seen the photos of the men after they were murdered, so it infuriates me to read how these killings shook “the Israeli left-wing’s faith in the peace process.”

No it didn’t. The faith in the nonexistent peace process continued unabated. Israeli novelist Amos Oz is typical of the utterly incoherent stance so many Israelis take in regard to defending themselves.

When the Palestinians murdered Vadim Nurzhitz and Yosef Avrahami, Oz said this.

Without any doubt, I blame the Palestinian leadership. They clearly did not want to sign an agreement at Camp David. Maybe Arafat prefers to be Che Guevara than Fidel Castro. If he becomes the president of Palestine, he’ll be the leader of a rough, Third World country and have to deal with sewage in Hebron, drugs in Gaza, and the corruption in his own government.

Fidel Castro murdered thousands. He’s even worse than Che Guevara.

Oz supported the 2006 Lebanon war until Israel expanded operations in order to actually accomplish something. He supported Operation Cast Lead (December 27, 2023 to January 18, 2024) until he was swayed by Pallywood images and lying media reports about the “heavy civilian toll.” At the beginning of Operation Protective Edge, he said this.

I only support limited military response and not unlimited military response, as I did in 2006 and as I did later on in the previous fighting in Gaza.

Where do you draw the line?

Destroy the tunnels wherever they come from, and try to hit strictly Hamas targets and no other targets.

There seems to be a problem here. The tunnels are an elaborate system and difficult to find. The entries are hidden in public and private buildings, so you would have to do house-to-house searches - which implies a civilian toll. The same applies to destroying rocket launchers in civilian areas…

Well, I am afraid that there can be no way in the world to avoid civilian casualties among the Palestinians as long as the neighbor puts his child on the lap while shooting into your nursery.

I can’t follow his reasoning. He says the Palestinians are so depraved that they use children as human shields. But then he says that Israel must lift the blockade on Gaza, accept a two-state solution with the West Bank, demolish the settlements, and split Jerusalem. Peace will break out, the Gazans will overthrow Hamas, and everyone will live happily ever after.

He’s dreaming. In his world there’s no prior history, no patterns of behavior, no acting in bad faith, no evil, and no Palestinian cultural deficits.

Amos Oz’s denial will result in more horrific deaths, like those of Vadim Nurzhitz and Yosef Avrahami.

Denial is acceptable only when you’re the sole person who suffers. But deniers always make others suffer. Denial is about waking up every morning with amnesia and presenting a facade, usually so that strangers will admire you.

Is that worth peoples’ lives?