Our vicarious experience of the ongoing genocide in Gaza is enabled by the proliferation of a complex of technologies—the cell phone, internet, social media. We are getting an unprecedented understanding of the experience of a genocide as it is happening, through the eyes of its victims. But at the same time, it provides the perpetrators of the genocide with a real-time window on the effects its atrocities are having on the minds and bodies of their victims. We are seeing a genocide through the eyes of its victims, but at the same time, through them, through the eyes of its perpetrators. Palestinians have waged a constant battle to remain connected, despite Israel’s attempts to impose an internet/media blackout of the atrocities. But Israel’s role in the provision and development of these technologies has always been driven by the motivation of surveillance. To the extent that Israel makes calculated decisions to permit Palestinians access, it does so for that reason. Given the searing immediacy of the images and sounds coming from Gaza, Israel appears to have decided that Holocaust Memory as it has previously existed has served its usefulness. The world will not be the same after this. The state has entered an endgame, but on a battlefield it may not be fully equipped to contest.
2024/01/23