Fair warning, the following excerpt is a little strong. But, in the context of the world right now, I find myself agreeing with the sentiment of it. The inexcusable, the unspeakable, is being normalised and post-rationalised. And in the case of Israel’s “Greater Israel” project, dissent has become non-negotiable antisemitism.

One caveat I would add, however, is that (however unlikely) even the shittiest dogshit can wake up to itself. Dogshit can be fertiliser. Dogshit can change¹. And if we do not take that into account, a nontrivial gob of it will be stuck under our own shoe.

I cannot take seriously the idea that some ethnicities or religious groups are inherently prone to nefarious behavior; it goes against everything I’ve learned about the human condition over the course of my strange adventures on this planet. I absolutely do believe, however, that there are political ideologies whose adherents are universally dogshit people.

If you’ve been watching the incineration of the Gaza Strip and thinking it’s good, or thinking it’s complicated, or thinking it’s an unfortunate development that can be blamed on a few bad apples in the Israeli government but doesn’t reflect Israel’s nature as a whole, then you’re a piece of shit. You’re a horrible human being. It really is that simple.

If you can look at Israel starting all these wars, bombing the fuck out of Iran and Lebanon and Palestine, passing laws to execute Palestinians exclusively while sparing Jews from the same sentencing for the same crimes, and still fail to recognize that the Israel experiment must be aborted, then you have not developed a functioning conscience. You have wasted your time on this planet. You have not managed to mature into a morally healthy human in all these years you’ve been alive.

There are Zionists who are vegetarian, who are nice to their pets, who give money to charity — but there are no Zionists who are actually good people. John Wayne Gacy did charity clown shows for hospitalized children, but he was still a serial killer and a very bad man. His abusiveness eclipsed any other kindness he may have performed, and became his defining characteristic as an individual.

Being a supporter of the Israel project is exactly the same. It doesn’t matter what else you do with your life if you stand on the side of a man-made murder machine which is fueled by the blood of the innocent. You’re just plain awful.

– Caitlin Johnstone (full post here)

1. And to be perfectly clear. Sometimes dogshit is just dogshit. ↩︎