It’s easier to blame brutes and sadists for extreme violence. But as we see in the documentary, modern genocides are fueled by people who are uncomfortably recognizable

Opinion 

Israel

How do human beings rationalize genocide? NAZA provides a chilling look

Omer Bartov (the dean’s professor of holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University and the author, most recently, of Israel: What Went Wrong?)

 

Fri 9 Oct 2026

 

"The term NAZA distances the operatives even further from what the term stands for, which is itself a mere euphemism"  

 

Werner Best, a senior SS official and jurist who helped organize the Nazi death squads that murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews, is also known for his statement: “We must destroy the enemy without hating him.” He belonged to a younger generation of Nazi technocrats, who despised the foul-mouthed, beer-bellied, brown-shirted “old fighters” of the Nazi party in the 1920s, and believed in organizing genocide neatly and dispassionately. After the fall of the regime, Best escaped justice for the rest of his long life, dying peacefully in Germany in 1989. His chilling statement came to my mind while I was watching the film NAZA.

I grew up in Tel Aviv and have visited there often in recent years. That is why the interviews with 24 Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers, which make up this documentary, felt strangely familiar. The conversations are conducted at night on rooftops, and the camera scans the cityscape, lingering on apartment windows as their inhabitants watch TV and make dinner. The landscape was intimately recognizable, and I felt a natural affinity with those people living their lives. I also recognized the way the interviewees talked – their speech patterns and choice of words. They reminded me of my son, who served more than a decade ago in the intelligence unit many of them might have belonged to.

But the dispassionate, technical and calm tone of the 24 men and women, as they describe in great detail the killing of people in Gaza, who are just as human as those in the surrounding buildings, brought back other associations – with men like Best and his ilk. It is the disjuncture between the familiar and intimate, on the one hand, and the coldly efficient and murderous, on the other, that makes this film unforgettable and an important statement about the world we currently inhabit.

When modern societies engage in extreme violence, they rely on two types of people: those who beat, torture and kill at close quarters, and those who plan, organize and order the killing at a safe distance from the actual gore of it all. Many people prefer to believe the brutes and the sadists are responsible, largely because they are not like “us”. But modern genocide is the product of those who belong to the second category: the technocrats, bureaucrats and cold planners of extermination, who don’t get their hands dirty.

This is by no means unique to Germany or Israel. It was also the case in the Cambodian genocide, in Rwanda, in the genocide of the Armenians, in the destruction of the Herero – there were always those who provided plans, orders, legitimizations, bureacratic apparatuses and technical means, and those who cracked skulls, wielded machetes and fired bullets point blank. The latter exist in any society. But a genocide cannot occur without the former.

NAZA is the Hebrew acronym for nezek agavi, or collateral damage. As is the nature of acronyms, the term NAZA distances the operatives even further from what the term stands for, which is itself a mere euphemism. One does not ask how many human beings the operator may condemn to death by targeting a suspected enemy; one does not even ask... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/global/commentisfree/2026/oct/09/naza-mass-killing-gaza-israel 

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"I learned about the Holocaust even in rural Oklahoma. I read the Diary of Anne Frank when I was 10 years old. My mom watched Holocaust documentaries with me. We talked about it in high school -- to always, always, always look around and make sure we weren't BEING Nazis in some way...." Pamela Olson, author of Fast Times in Palestine

 

Pamela Olson  https://pamolson.org/

https://www.facebook.com/pamolson4/posts/pfbid02B46Qg3dgY9LaoGTjqRnfC9HDtioQYTizhiXqdEqXtuhEc8fmyH4tqo2qHYSuTg6al

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Pamela Olson

Seoprtsdona51301l0l74f7m11lua08t37falmi1fhua1i5ca93076t5988g  ·

A sponsored post on my feed asked people to share their experience of learning about the Holocaust as kids, and if they feared they might have to hide from Nazis one day.

 

I commented:

 

I learned about the Holocaust even in rural Oklahoma. I read the Diary of Anne Frank when I was 10 years old. My mom watched Holocaust documentaries with me. We talked about it in high school -- to always, always, always look around and make sure we weren't BEING Nazis in some way.

 

I felt like the US was being Nazi-like when we sanctioned Iraq and starved all those children. I felt like the US was being Nazi-like when we invaded Iraq and murdered hundreds of thousands based on a lie. (I would later learn that was just the tip of the iceberg.) So I went to the Middle East to meet Arabs and Muslims for myself -- to see if they were really the demons our news media made them out to be.

 

I traveled solo from Cairo to Istanbul in 2003, when I was 23 years old. It took about three months, and it was one of the most magical stretches of my life. "Beautiful and friendly" doesn't begin to describe it.

 

I did skip Iraq (too dangerous), and I planned to skip Israel / Palestine. But in the Sinai, I met an Israeli man who invited me to Israel, and in Jordan I met a British guy who invited me to visit the West Bank. I took it as a sign.

 

And I'm so glad I did. I was totally enchanted by the Holy Land and ended up living there for two years. I wrote a book about it that anyone can read for free here:

 

Get a Free PDF of the book here

(Also available as Kindle, Audible, paperback)

Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt's 1948 letter to the New York Times: They saw the creation of a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine at the expense of its indigenous Muslim and Christian population as a profound injustice and moral catastrophe. Einstein and the other signatories explicitly compared Begin’s Herut (Freedom Party), born from the Irgun, to Nazis and Fascists, warning that their ideology of racial superiority and violent ethnic nationalism posed a grave danger to the moral and political future of the new state.

https://x.com/mazzenilsson/status/2058596779835469875/photo/1

    

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https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948/page/n2/mode/1up 

Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt's letter to the New York Times: December 2, 1948 

Signed by Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Sidney Hook, Rabbi Jessurun Cardozo, Irma Lindheim, and 22 other Jewish scholars, writers, and public figures. (Published December 4, 1948, in The New York Times.)

"The genocide in Gaza is far from over- We live not in a post-Holocaust world of ‘Never Again’ but in the same world that led to the Holocaust, a world of ‘Again and Again’" Raz Segal in The Guardian

"The Gaza Nakba has not ended, because it did not begin in October 2023, but in the 1948 Nakba, when Israel emerged on the ruins of Palestine and Palestinians. This reality immediately clashed with the idea of Israel as a unique state, the state of survivors of the unique evil of the Nazis, which made it seem unimaginable that Israel could perpetrate any crime in international law, let alone genocide, the new crime that was formulated also in 1948."  Raz Segal is an associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University and the endowed professor in the study of modern genocide
 

‘Most people know that day is not night, and they refuse to say otherwise.’ Photograph: APAImages/Shutterstock

Fri 28 Nov 2025 06.00 EST

On 10 October, following two years of Israeli genocide that have turned Gaza into the new benchmark of total destruction, after Israel has killed and injured hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and inflicted on all the people in Gaza “severe bodily or mental harm,” to quote from the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the Trump administration imposed a ceasefire, giving rise to the idea that the Gaza war has ended.

The ceasefire, however, seems to be designed mostly to move forward with the business deals of the mega rich in the Middle East, and the fire has never ceased: the Israeli government has continued its assault, killing and injuring hundreds of Palestinians since 10 October, destroying thousands of homes and buildings, and blocking the entry of sufficient aid.

The genocidal rhetoric, furthermore, has not ended. Take, for instance... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/28/the-genocide-in-gaza-is-far-from-over

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Reschenthaler, Miller Introduce Legislation to Support American Citizens Fighting in Israel

 WASHINGTON, D.C. – Chief Deputy Whip Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA) and U.S. Representative Max Miller (R-OH) introduced H.R. 8445, which would extend the benefits of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA) and Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) to American citizens serving in the Israel Defense Forces.

“Over 20,000 American citizens are currently defending Israel from Hamas terrorists, risking their lives for the betterment of our ally,” said Reschenthaler. “This legislation will ensure we do everything possible to support these heroes who are standing with Israel, fighting for freedom, and combating terrorism in the Middle East.”

 

“As our closest ally in the Middle East continues to defend itself against terror, many brave Americans have decided to lend a hand,” said Miller. “I’m proud that this legislation extends important protections to those Americans who chose to risk their lives in the fight against terror.”

 

The SCRA provides members on active-duty status with financial management safeguards such as rental agreements, security deposits, evictions, installment contracts, credit card interest rates, mortgages, civil judicial proceedings, and income tax payments, among others.

 

The USERRA prohibits employment discrimination based on an individual’s prior service in the uniformed services, current service in the uniformed services, or intent to join the uniformed services. Read the full bill here. 

https://reschenthaler.house.gov/media/press-releases/reschenthaler-miller-introduce-legislation-to-support-american-citizens-fighting-in-israel 

Best illustration for this post is this:

2024 NAZI TACTICS- Israeli IDF soldier posts photo of himself burning books at Al Alqsa University library

"For the White House to allow pro-Israel “word police” to define what is & isn’t acceptable language is a dangerous abuse of power" James J Zogby ... & Annie's Notes about the real meanings of some very crucial words that are being badly misconstrued by Biden & the Zionist Word Police

 James J. Zogby

@jjz1600

So the president is now condemning the word “intifada” as hate speech. It literally means “shaking off,” as in removing the shackles of the past. For the White House to allow pro-Israel “word police” to define what is & isn’t acceptable language is a dangerous abuse of power

What the “word police” say can’t be said: apartheid, genocide, ethnic cleaning, settler colonialism, “from the River to the sea…”, & now intifada. The list keeps growing as a way to shield Israeli policies from criticism. & to equate this w/ antisemitism is so wrong.

 

 ~~~~~~

 Annie's Notes about the real meanings of some very crucial words that are being badly misconstrued by Biden & the Zionist Word Police

 

 

Dove of Peace w Key ASA copyright 2009

Intifada- shaking off

 

From the River to the Sea-  Freedom, equality & respect everywhere for everyone- empowering the rule of fair and just laws.

Apartheid- 1940s: from Afrikaans, literally ‘separateness’, from Dutch apart ‘separate’ + -heid (equivalent of -hood):  SEGREGATION

Ethnic Cleansing- the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically or religiously homogenous.

Settler Colonialism- Settler colonialism occurs when colonizers invade and occupy territory to permanently replace the existing society with the society of the colonizers

 Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people^[a] in whole or in part.  

In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly

Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide in his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, combining the Greek word γένος (genos, "race, people") with the Latin suffix -caedo ("act of killing"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide

 

Semite, name given in the 19th century to a member of any people who speak one of the Semitic languages, a family of languages spoken primarily in parts of western Asia and Africa. The term therefore came to include Arabs, Akkadians, Canaanites, Hebrews, some Ethiopians (including the Amhara and the Tigrayans), and Aramaean tribes.

 

Notice that indigenous Arab Palestinians, including Arab Christians, are being erased -ethnically cleansed- from historic Palestine while also being intentionally and persistently excluded from the definitions of antisemitism:

 

Antisemitism- hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people. The term anti-Semitism was coined in 1879 by the German agitator Wilhelm Marr to designate the anti-Jewish campaigns underway in central Europe at that time. Nazi anti-Semitism, which culminated in the Holocaust, had a racist dimension in that it targeted Jews because of their supposed biological characteristics—even those who had themselves converted to other religions or whose parents were converts. This variety of anti-Jewish racism dates only to the emergence of so-called “scientific racism” in the 19th century and is different in nature from earlier anti-Jewish prejudices.