Reply #10: They were clearly breaking the rules and are in trouble - but yes, in some ways it's NOT an anomaly [View All]

[LeftishBrit]

This is what happens in war. People learn to regard the enemy as non-human; as all-bad and deserving of violence. In Robert Graves' autobiography, "Goodbye to All That" he tells of his experiences as a British soldier in WW1 (where he was seriously wounded and lucky to survive). The military instructors taught the soldiers 'that they must HATE the Germans and KILL as many of them as possible'. They were shown ways of physically attacking all parts of the body of model 'Germans'; egged on to ever-icreasing violence; reprimanded if not violent enough. Soldiers and civilians alike referred to the Germans as 'Huns' and told all sorts of true and false atrocity stories about them.

If you regard your enemy as pure evil, an alien different from yourself, it's easier to kill and harm without the guilt that all non-psychopaths usually feel for murdering or seriously injuring other *humans*.

Add to this that those who fight in wars are young adults, those who even in peacetime are the most likely age group to be caught up in gang violence and the like, and the potential for evil becomes clear.

Israel is 'on the continuum' because it's at war - just like Hamas - and just like Iraq and the USA and UK. Just like Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland until recently. Just like all humans at war. The evil isn't Israel, or Palestine, or Iraq, or the USA, or the UK. The evil is war.