I snipped the following citation from the article <a href="https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/when-the-banality-of-evil-becomes-normalized-it-grows-unchecked/" source="ZNetwork" author="Francesca Albanese">“When The Banality Of Evil Becomes Normalized, It Grows Unchecked.”</a> about a month ago. <bq>[...] the situation in the West Bank is not fundamentally different from what is happening to the Palestinian people as a whole. <b>In Gaza, the attack has been genocidal in its intensity, but the same logic of destruction is being applied in the West Bank</b> — though in a way that garners less attention, with fewer visible explosions. Palestinian communities are being forcibly displaced, their homes demolished, their hospitals destroyed, their farmlands burned. <b>What worries me most is whether the world will recognize this genocide for what it is</b> — the ability to see Israel’s violence as a systematic attack on the Palestinian people as a whole, across the entire occupied territory. Because that is exactly what it is.</bq> <img attachment="gazan_wasteland.webp" align="right" caption="Gazan Wasteland">Recently, there have been murmurs of dissent from more fronts than usual. What did it take? It took Israel pushing the starvation so far that there are alarmed reports that 14,000 babies and children will likely starve to death in the next 48 hours. What did they all think was going to happen without food? Without drinking water? They could have listened to their allies in Israel who explicitly and often said that the intent is to starve them until they leave. Or die. Either way. But there were complaints. U.S. Senators were saying that they could no longer claim the moral high ground if Israel made the genocide this obvious. Apparently, things were just fine a few days ago, but now the balance is off. So israel threw a few crumbs over the fence. And the world will be satisfied that <i>something is being done.</i> And the weapons will flow. This is, of course, madness. It is the height of cynicism. Almost anyone you can talk to in the west is largely and at best mildly embarrassed to hear Palestine mentioned in otherwise polite conversation. These days, people only get stirred up if the press is stirring them up. If the press uses that power to keep them from getting stirred up, then they'll remain calm for a long time, anesthetized by propaganda. Also, let's be honest: most people know on which side their bread is buttered. When they weigh their pensions funds' performance or their employment against the lives of a bunch of people clinging to tattered tents in a desert wasteland---who aren't even really <i>people</i>, right? They're animals, savages, criminals, <i>terrorists</i>---then personal interest wins out nearly every single time. The west will pretend to care when it's too late to save anyone. That is all that is happening now.