• WE GOOD EUROPEANS – We scholars, we activists, we guardians of the categorical imperative! And yet, even though we have shown our good will to both the analog and the digital world, we feel a bad taste in our mouth. “Europe has failed to act upon its values”, say the commentators. Even Kant cannot cure our hangover when he assures us that a good will shines like a jewel, regardless of what it accomplishes. The phenomenal world is not very kind to air-castles. If anything, it’s a huge laboratory with mad chemistry. Where one man’s inertia amounts to the creation of another man’s state, where one man chooses to carry the emotional weight of the world and another finds redemption in throwing it off. If we feel that we have let “The World” down and have fallen short of our own standards, the Israeli will beg to differ. And he will remind us: “You no longer disappoint”.

• DANTESQUE – The military experts all agree, as they stand amazed before this wonder of the postmodern world. Hamas’ tunnel system is an unrivalled accomplishment in the history of warfare. The Vietcong’s dugouts in the 1960s? Amateurism! How did Gaza, a tiny strip of land, become a mole on the face of the earth, a freckled skin covering over 500 kilometers of electrified and air-conditioned tunnels with some 60,000 entry shafts for arteries? The world’s biggest bomb-shelter system… destined for warriors, not for ordinary civilians. An astonishing achievement, rivalled only by that other engineering feat in the wider geographical region: the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. With the resources that went into Gaza’s tunnel network, one could easily erect more than 20 of these skyscrapers. Building blocks for heaven or for hell, the outcome looks like Dante’s Divina Commedia. With one notable difference. The wealthy have their head in the clouds, whereas the believers can be found underneath the earth’s crust. This is the 21st century, not the early 14th century.

• OBLIVION – The more one moves to the left of the political spectrum, the louder the voices. Rarely have socialists felt so attracted to the sites of the ‘Holy Land’. The overwhelming imagery of destruction blurs their vision and clouds their reasoning… they ignore one of their key principles: the relation between the superstructure and its base. They don’t know what happens beneath the surface. Are they bad Marxists? They are forgiven. Let’s not forget that Palestine is the cradle of two monotheisms. There’s a lot of opium fumes hanging over this land. The strong scent of these blossoms can intoxicate anyone… or bury anything.

• POLYMORPHISM – In the late 19th century, Jewish refugees in the Palestine region were seen as potential agents of the tsar. During the interwar period, they were forged into bayonets of the British empire. In 1948, they were deemed to be godless communists, after which they became colonizers, little Satan, heirs to Apartheid and descendants of Nazism before finally turning into murderous settler-colonials. There’s no limit to the antagonistic roles that Jews are capable of performing. But who writes the script, this text containing so many words ending with ‘ism’ or ‘cide’? The keepers of virtue, of course! Those who want to measure their heroism by the size of their villain. They want a big dragon to slay. After all, micro-aggressions aren’t much of an opponent.

• INSATIABLE – For the antisemite, the Jew is too fluid. For the Anti-Zionist, he is too rigid.

• WORDPLAY – Genocide. The dreaded G-word, the most sensitive spot on our moral compass. We want to carefully weigh this word and deliberate before using it because mentioning it too often might exhaust its aura. And yet there are those conceptual spendthrifts who would like to make it circulate as much as possible. When some words keep blocking their path like sacred objects, they will not hesitate to use their language skills and coin new terms of which they assure us: “We do not use these words lightly!” So they say that the IDF was committing ‘genocidal violence’ in Gaza. While the jury is still out on the noun, the adjective is summoned as a witness.

• THE GENITIVE – Thus spoke the genocide scholar: “It is definitely a genocide.” He will not await the judgment of an international court, eager as he is to plant his flag on Gazan soil. He is quite confident because he knows that few people will read the “Gaza genocide” as a genitive. And even so, most will interpret “the genocide of Gazans” as an objective genitive, namely as the mass-murder of Gazan civilians. Few will come up with a different reading and their voices don’t tend to carry far in cyberspace. These ‘free spirits’ know that in order to wage war, it takes two to tango. And so they will distinguish a subjective genitive. If one wishes to insist that a genocide has taken place, then one should learn to carefully unearth this second genitive. One will have to ask the most genealogical and perspectival of questions: whose genocide? Can you fathom the genitive, dear reader?

• THE WANDERER – The settler colonial theorist, a truly bizarre creature. Conceived in North America and Australia, a bastard child of bad conscience and bad faith. A dyspeptic historian who seeks to colonize intellects on other continents. His Majesty’s academics view with favor his establishment in Palestine.

• THE ASCETIC – Members of Hamas are pious men. Nietzsche would affirm that the ascetic ideal means much to them. And he would add: without it, “the animal man has no meaning”. Without a purpose for his existence, without a meaning behind his suffering, man would only circle in a tremendous void and lose his appetite for the world. But the followers of Hamas need not worry about this, for they have a goal to aim at. And so they do not repudiate suffering in itself because it is never senseless to them. One of Nietzsche’s most famous assertions rings through: “Man will wish Nothingness rather than not wish at all”. Or to be more precise: nothingness is part of Hamas’ equation, it is the antithesis that fuels its vision. These ascetics are familiar with dialectics.

• CAUSALITY – “October 7th did not just fall from the sky,” say the apologetic and they are right. The operation took years to plan. But that’s not what the activists want to hear. They like to boil everything down to a first cause, what Aristotle called the ‘Prime Mover’. One can already suspect where this is going. Most activists will indicate October 7th as the outcome of events that occurred in 1948, some may even be so bold as to point to a book published in 1896. But Aristotle also developed a far more elaborate theory of causality, known as the doctrine of the four causes. Can it shed a more interesting light on the events that led to the war? It would start with Gaza’s resources (material cause) being used by Hamas to build its vast tunnel network (formal cause). Where does October 7th fit in? Undoubtedly, it is the efficient cause, the trigger of change or in this case: war. The brutal assault and the taking of hostages guaranteed a military reaction. It would lure the IDF into Gaza and give Hamas what it desired most, its ‘final cause‘: a protracted conflict with high civilian casualties, sacrifices in a war of redemption with deep theological roots. Alas, we Westerners are no longer susceptible to a multifaceted notion of causality as part of a teleological worldview. Our sense of cause and consequence is dictated by Modernity and scientific reasoning. Therefore, our eyelids are closed to the signals that Hamas transmits.

• IRON GALAXY – “If the pen is mightier than the sword, then the concept is more powerful than the missile.” That’s probably what the settler colonial theorist thinks when he studies the text of the international Genocide Convention. He does not like what he reads. Terms like “dolus specialis” and “the intent to destroy” vex him. This theorist wants to disconnect genocide from intentionality and careful planning. He rather conceives of it as a structure, the logical outcome of a settler colonial process where the arrival of settlers implies the demise of an indigenous population (through assimilation at best, through extermination at worst). That’s why he is anxious to lay his cuckoo’s egg in the world of international law. He wants to empty some existing concepts and fill them with content of his own. Coining new meanings, transvaluating legal values, a Nietzschean metallurgy of language is what he wants! He yearns for a genocide convention in which the behavior of all actors involved is subject to universal laws of necessity. Cause and effect, action and reaction in pre-established harmony: the settler-colonial and his offspring cannot be but ‘murderous’, whereas the oppressed indigenous folk will fight back to the bitter end. To insist that the essence of a phenomenon is fully determined by its origin and remains fundamentally unaltered by any later development: it’s a bold claim. Any historian who takes this stance would have to lack historical sense. Or perhaps this line of thinking is in and by itself the outcome of a long historical process? In the 17th century, the scientific insights of Galilei, Kepler and Newton led to the mechanization of our universe. Since the 19th century, industrial revolutions have mechanized our world and fundamentally altered the rhythm of our daily life. Are we now ready to mechanize our morality as well? Could we establish its iron laws, drill for its emotional fuel and discover the superlative of utilitarianism with its mathematical calculations of pleasure and pain? Among scholars there is little room for Cartesian doubt.

• A TANTALIZING CHOICE – Whoever wants to free Palestine from the river to the sea cannot be satisfied with a two-state solution. Being stuck with a thesis and an antithesis is just bad dialectics. On the other hand, an endless dualism between an oppressor and the oppressed also has its charm. The aim here is to tip the balance of power and to reboot the whole process, like turning an hourglass. So what will it be: the dynamics of dialectics or the loops of inversion, that old Soviet formula?

• FROM BIRTH – One does the IDF too much credit by stating that its military actions create a breeding ground for hatred. School curricula, children’s tv and boot camps are also part of the deal. However, activists are not easily deterred. They will reply that the oppressed have no choice but to resist since they were simply born into a dire situation. But why stop there when invoking determinism? Wouldn’t it be even more coherent to say that Gazans aren’t born into their predicament, but that their predicament is born into them? In other words, Gazans would inherit anger and resistance as physical characteristics from their parent organism. Lamarckism can cement many a worldview.

• TRINITY – Anti-Judaism, antisemitism and… anti-Zionism, the third and final beast! It combines the strengths of its predecessors: it has inherited the boiling anger of antisemitism but like anti-Judaism it offers the possibility of converting to the “true belief”. It’s a brilliant mutation.

• TOPSY TURVY – Antisemitism and anti-Zionism are wild dogs barking in the cellar, deceitful prisoners that thirst for freedom. Once unleashed, their fine sense of smell will guide them towards suffering. They will find a cause that suits them and wear it like a mask. People will say their anger is justified. The pleasure of outrage, the proof of power.

• MASQUERADE – Frantz Fanon, the patron saint of the wretched of the earth, described colonialism as an oppressive mask that indigenous people were forced to wear. It alienated and dehumanized the colonized, leaving them nothing but the use of violence to end colonial dominion. Then, the downtrodden would live to see a new day. That was 70 years ago. Could Fanon ever have imagined that decolonial struggle itself would become a mask? And that organizations like Hamas would wear it for a Western audience? “Everything that is profound loves the mask”: one of Nietzsche’s insights seems to have been hijacked. And so we forget that there is far more to Hamas than meets our mediatized eye and its superficial interpretation.

• FANCIES – W.G. Sebald was struck by the lack of German literature on the bombings of German cities during World War II. He stated that only images maintain the power to confront us with the reality of war and destruction. Alas, if there is one medium that easily bends the knee to deceit and propaganda, it must be imagery… Not to mention the inflationary effect of all the photos and footage that nowadays flood our screens. No, there is no miracle solution to vanquish man’s will for deception when confronted with war. We have to quote David Hume: “Anyone who embraces a belief in miracles […] is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding”.

• GAYS FOR GAZA – “[…] If you gaze too long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you”.

• FLOTILLA – Why did the flagship in the fight against global warming head for Gaza? It’s a long way from saving the planet to supporting this tiny piece of land. Clearly, the scope of the ambitions has been downsized. Unless one were to posit that the outcome of the Gaza war will determine the fate of nature and mankind. Hardcore ecologists are triggered by the prospect of an apocalypse.

• PALÄSTINALIED – And the crusaders sang: “Nû alrêst lebe ich mir werde, sît mîn sündic ouge siht daz here lant und ouch die erde, der man sô vil êren giht”. Do we still glance upon a virtuous land with our sinful eyes or is it the other way around? Regardless, Palestine always smells like redemption for us Westerners. The promised land still looks very promising.

• OCCIDENTALISM – Man is the measurer of all things. His values depend on how much weight he attributes to them. But how does he determine that one thing outweighs another? Sometimes, a scale is recalibrated. It is often said that Western societies have come to cultivate victimhood. That is a half-truth. Victims are weighed against their perpetrators: victimhood depends on who commits the crime. Someone’s actions will be deemed criminal if we consider the perpetrator to be “one of us”. Our moral protectionism only allows us to recognize a victim if we are at the center of its universe. Yet another Copernican revolution! Anxious as we are to tame the wild beast in us, we strive to educate our barbarian impulses, we endo-colonizers. Can we finally write a sequel to Edward Saïd’s best-selling book?

• TIME IMMEMORIAL – Nowadays, holocaust memorials come in numbers but they sound like a choir: “Nevermore! Let this be a lesson to all of us, to mankind!” Over the past few years, this commandment has been overpowered by encounters of another kind. A different chant has grown increasingly louder in mainstream media, among academia, on campuses, near music festivals and in the streets, not to mention the digital world. Holocaust memorials don’t need a keen eye and sharp ears to be aware of what’s trending. But they may require a fine-tuned conscience and an acute sense of self-reflection to realize that there is also a lesson for them to be learned. A lesson in modesty.

Nukem 101 – A creature from the underground. One of the worst of a bad lot. Fast, hard to kill and able to either burry or resurrect the dead. A parasite living in the bowels of philosophers, but if they’re strong enough they won’t mind