written in response to
Haaretz, Aug 5, 2025: Large Majority of Israeli Jews Untroubled by Reports of Famine in Gaza, Poll Finds
A vast majority of Israeli Jews – 79 percent – say they are "not so troubled" or "not troubled at all" by the reports of famine and suffering among the Palestinian population in Gaza, according to a poll released Tuesday
And in memory of the philosopher and political thinker Hannah Arendt, author of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
word after word
squeezed out of the PM's mouth
in broad daylight
this daily "banality"
of dying, of death in Gaza
Note: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil is a 1963 book by the philosopher and political thinker Hannah Arendt. Arendt, a Jew who fled Germany during Adolf Hitler's rise to power, reported on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the major organizers of the Holocaust, for The New Yorker. A revised and enlarged edition was published in 1964.
Arendt's subtitle famously introduced the phrase "the banality of evil." In part the phrase refers to Eichmann's deportment at the trial as the man displayed neither guilt for his actions nor hatred for those trying him, claiming he bore no responsibility because he was simply "doing his job." ("He did his 'duty'...; he not only obeyed 'orders,' he also obeyed the 'law.'")...
For more about this then controversial, now classic book, see
this fine essay, "Reflecting on Hannah Arendt and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil"
Abstract:
In this essay, we offer a modern legal reading of Hannah Arendt’s classic book, Eichmann in Jerusalem. First we provide a brief account of how Arendt came to write Eichmann in Jerusalem and explain her central arguments and observations. We then consider the contemporary relevance of Arendt’s work to us as legal academics engaged with a variety of problems arising from our times. We consider Arendt’s writing of Eichmann in Jerusalem as a study in intellectual courage and academic integrity, as an important example of accessible political theory, as challenging the academic to engage in participatory action, and as informing our thinking about judgement when we engage in criminal law reform. Finally, we consider the role of Arendt’s moral judgement for those within government today and how it defends and informs judgement of the modern bureaucrat at a time of heightened government secrecy.
And when evaluated in the context of Israel's genocidal war in Gaza, the first daily televised genocide, my Ls 3-5 intend to transform the Arendtian concept of the "banality of evil as just doing one's job and obeying the law "behind the barbed wire/inside the camp into "the one, not a serious injustice but a normalized, everyday banality in broad daylight that loses its power to shock and inspire action or thought."
The intolerable is no longer a serious injustice, but the permanent state of a daily banality. Man is not himself a world other than the one in which he experiences the intolerable andvfeels himself trapped.
Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, pp. 169-70
"Gilles Deleuze's statement suggests that, in modern life, extreme "intolerable" events no longer stand out as exceptional injustices, but rather have become a normalized, everyday banality, losing their power to shock and inspire action or thought. This normalization implies a kind of societal exhaustion or desensitization, where suffering becomes so pervasive that it is accepted as a constant state, making even serious injustices seem mundane. "
August 7:
Israeli Security Cabinet Approves Netanyahu's Gaza Takeover Plan, Ignoring IDF Warnings
The security cabinet also approved Netanyahu's plan for the IDF to take full control of Gaza City. Sources say that the evacuation of Gaza City residents to alternative areas is expected to be completed by October 7, and only afterward is the military takeover expected to begin.
And
August, 7, Opinion: Israeli Leftists Say They Lost Compassion for Palestinians. But Did It Ever Exist?
The refusal to see Palestinians as human beings isn't a side effect of October 7. This phenomenon predates the latest war, the operations in Gaza, the terror attacks and the rockets. It's a fundamental element of Israel's national consciousness.
Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, CCXIV: "starvation death"
another day
another refugee tent
another baby
skin loose on her bones
starving to death with open eyes
