 Israel apologists are psychopaths, notes from the edge of the narrative matrix. I refuse to conflate the Jewish religion with the criminal activity of a government and its military, and I think it's dangerous that people insist that I should. Israel apologists are such psychopaths. In the last few days, I've seen two separate articles attacking the idea that there are innocent people in Gaza. One from the Times of Israel titled, Innocent People in Gaza Don't Be Naive, and another from Town Hall titled, There Are No Innocent Palestinians. Just as disturbing as seeing the endless stream of dead babies and children's bodies blown apart by military explosives on my feed is having to read so many of my fellow humans defending these horrors in the most sociopathic ways imaginable. One of the most brain-dead responses I get from Israel apologists all the time is, just tell Hamas to surrender and this whole war ends. Like, that's a thing. Like, Hamas are hanging on my every word and they'll be like, hang on you guys, one more white Westerner just said we should surrender. Let's wrap it up, fellas. Like, even if you accept the pants-on-head moronic notion that these horrors are 100% the fault of Hamas and 0% the false of Israel and everything it's done since October 7th and prior to October 7th, and even if you ignore international law which says Palestinians have a right to defend themselves against hostile occupiers, while Israel has no right to launch an attack to defend itself against people it is occupying, this argument still makes no sense. Hamas, unlike Israel, has no political responsiveness to the demands of the West. They have no reason to listen to anything we say. Westerners putting political pressure on our own governments to stop facilitating this nightmare absolutely does have an effect and we're seeing more and more signs that both Israel and its Western allies are getting very nervous about the mounting international pressure from the public. Pretending the same is true of Hamas, who has no motive whatsoever to heed Western governments and their electorates, is just evading reality to advance an agenda. And Israel apologists know this. They're just throwing up every distraction and red herring they can think of to try and drag opposition to Israel's mass atrocities, of course. Tell Hamas to surrender just means stop criticizing Israel's actions. Look over there, not over here. Shut up. Be silent. Go away. The problem is not the words and phrases people use when protesting a genocidal massacre of civilians. The problem is the genocidal massacre of civilians. If children are being slaughtered by the thousands in a horrific massacre and someone tries to make the conversation about what words and phrases you're allowed to use when opposing that massacre, the correct thing to do is to tell that person to shut the fuck up. US Empire managers always act like telling Israel to end this mass atrocity would be an intercession on Israel's sovereignty, as though that would be the US intervening in foreign affairs. In reality, the US doesn't need to intervene in Israeli affairs to end the bloodshed. All it has to do is stop intervening by backing the slaughter. Israelis are completely open about the fact that this onslaught would be impossible without US weapons and other support. The US could at any time simply stop intervening by backing Israeli crimes against humanity, and Israel would be forced to stop. They reverse reality by misrepresenting non-interventionism as interventionism and the end of an intervention as an intervention. In the same way they reverse the role of victim and victimizer, aggressor and defender, genocide perpetrators and genocide targets, etc. This lets them wash their hands of the atrocity by pretending they're just respecting Israel's sovereignty when in reality they're just as responsible for the atrocity as Israel. It's like holding someone down and punching them in the face and telling onlookers, I'm sorry I can't intervene in the sovereign affairs of my fist. The call isn't for the US to start intervening between Israel and Gaza. The call is for it to stop.