Israel: Has Impunity led to wanting to oppress?
JVL Introduction
Israel’s violence, dispossession, ethnic cleansing, discrimination, incarceration and even genocide with a remarkable level of impunity despite the many words, even of condemnation, that are critical of its actions. This writer ponders over whether Israel actually does want every Palestinian to leave or be killed or whether it needs them, whether too many Israelis are benefiting and even enjoying the act of dehumanisation of the other. The key issue is surely the victims.
It is a different and unattractive angle but given the level of support amongst Jewish Israelis for the actions in Gaza and even for expulsions from Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem and Israel, is it something that needs consideration and is this an outcome of decades of impunity?
LL
This article was originally published by Sidecar (NLR) on Fri 9 Jan 2026. Read the original here.
Politics of Impunity
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Ancient Greeks also coined the word ’empathy’ – the ability to put yourself in another’s place, to feel what they feel. Does Plato’s philosophy not have any place for empathy? And there is surely a word in Hebrew for the same quality? If not, why not? Is there not one writer or commentator, ancient or modern, who has questioned the absence of empathy in Greeks’ relationship to slaves, and Jews’ relationships to Palestinians?
I wonder whether you might like to rewrite your last sentence, Frances, to make it easier for casual readers to interpret it as you almost certainly meant them to do?
I speak as someone who has to be very careful about the words I use – and sometimes regrets the choices I made!