Monday, March 11, 2024

The selfie of hate and dehumanization

  I swear never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. -.Elie Wiesel 

                                                                                   Sources: Rebellion - Image: Israeli female soldiers take the hate selfie with the ruins of Gaza in the background. Tweet about this on TwitterShare on FacebookEmail this to someone 

 By Renán Vega Cantor: “Killing or injuring Palestinians should be as easy as ordering a pizza. It was the logic of the app developed in 2020 by the Israeli Army that allowed a commander on the ground to send, through an electronic device, the data of a target to the troops who would then quickly neutralize that Palestinian. Oren Matzliach, the colonel who was working on the project, told the Israel Defense website that the attack would be 'like ordering a book on Amazon or a pizza from a pizzeria using your smartphone.' This kind of dehumanization is the inevitable result of an indefinite occupation. It is also an export good. -Antony Loewenstein, The Palestinian Laboratory. How Israel exports the technology of the occupation to the world.

  1.-

The genocide that Israel perpetrates with impunity in Gaza is accompanied or, rather, is the product of an aberrant degree of hatred and dehumanization, shared by the majority of the inhabitants of Israel. In this regard, there are thousands of visual testimonies in which the occupiers and colonialists boast, with extreme doses of sadism, of the pain and suffering of the Palestinians and shamelessly delight in the destruction caused by the bombs dropped against the Palestinian territory. Just one example is enough. Israel's Minister of Social Equality (sic) and Women's Affairs, May Golam, said in Parliament on February 23: “I am personally proud of the ruins of Gaza and that every baby, even 80 years from now, counts their grandchildren what the Jews did.” Days before, in a television program, he justified the Gaza genocide by saying that “I wanted to see corpses” and, despite the fact that “some fragile souls are explaining that the majority of Gaza residents are uninvolved civilians, so they cannot we must hurt them. Nothing of that. We have to destroy them to the core”[1].

 Imagen que contiene persona, foto, mujer, sostener

Descripción generada automáticamente

  Image containing person, photo, woman, hold Description automatically generated 

 2.-

  Not only is it the dehumanization of Palestinians, there are those in Israel who proclaim that they do not exist. Indeed, the Minister of Settlements and National Missions of Israel, Orit Strook, stated on February 22: “Every civilized person in the world knows that this land is ours, it is for the Israeli people and only for us. Every educated person in the world knows that we were displaced from it (the land of Palestine), and we learned over the years in the diaspora and our enemies and those who hate us also knew that we would return. "There will never be a Palestinian state in the land of Israel." This colonialist, who lives in an illegal settlement in the West Bank, pointed out that a Palestinian state would be an "existential threat" to Israel and the "peace and order of the entire world." And that is why, "The vast majority of the people of Israel oppose the establishment of the Palestinian State"[2]. This denial is old among Zionist circles, since Golda Meir maintained that Palestinians did not exist. And with that they revive the European colonialist denialism that always assured that the territories were empty, no one lived there, and the “whites” had the right to civilize them through brutal incorporation into their domains.

 3.-

 The images of the genocide number in the thousands, they are the ones that show the magnitude of the crime against humanity underway. But there are also images of genocidaires, which represents a change in the history of wars, because, although before criminals could flaunt their crimes (showing, for example, as was done in the United States the number of ears or scalps cut off from indigenous peoples), this could not be carried out in such a massive and direct way and, much less so that it could be transmitted immediately and disseminated instantly through virtual networks. Now, genocidaires have no problem killing, torturing, massacring in daylight and that is why they circulate images of their crimes, which reveals their moral decadence and their level of dehumanization. It has become normal to see Israeli soldiers, men and women alike, mocking the Palestinians, dancing on their ruins, rejoicing at the destruction of their schools and universities, abusing and torturing them without any remorse. These images, videos and photographs are proof of the cruelty with which the Zionist occupiers humiliate the Palestinians and graphic and imperishable evidence of the colonialist and capitalist barbarity in the 21st century that, of course, challenges all suffering humanity. . 

 4.-

  The Palestinians, all of them, including their children and women, either do not exist or have been reduced to the status of animals, worse than the domestic ones, who must be eliminated, extirpated from the face of the earth, as the genocidaire in chief proclaims. , the Führer of Nazi-Zionism Benjamin Netanyahu, with the full acceptance of the United States, the European Union and a large part of the corrupt dominant leaders of the Arab countries. In this context, thousands of genocidal practices are accumulated by the inhabitants of Israel, starting with the military. Among them is a rather “humanitarian” selfie. It was made by a group of female soldiers from Israel, whose macabre backdrop is the ruins left by the bombings and cannon fire for which those same women are responsible. The soldiers pose smiling with the decorated ruins that adorn the photo. While the soldiers were taking selfies, they were, in turn, photographed by Tsafrir Abayov. The photo was immediately sent to social networks by Emilio Morenatti, head of photography at the Associated Press News Agency, who only managed to say: “This photo…” and further down he added that in the ruins of Gaza a group of Israeli female soldiers took a selfie. 

 

 Israeli female soldiers take the selfie of hate with the ruins of Gaza in the background  

5 This infamous selfie is an expression of cruelty, because in the midst of the destruction and death produced by the Israeli military, there is no feeling of empathy or compassion with those who suffer, but rather a sadistic joy on the part of those who generate suffering and pain. The female soldiers pose as if they were models being photographed before the parade on a catwalk, only this time the catwalk is one of death and desolation, it is Gaza that is outraged, bombed, martyred. It is a pornographic selfie, because it exalts death and destruction and those who took it, and then sent it to their friends on their cell phones, exult themselves in the Dantesque spectacle that is in the background. These women, without experiencing the slightest sign of shame, rejoice at the destruction of Gaza's infrastructure, which is clearly visible, and they also rejoice at what is not perceived in the photo, which is hidden a few meters away and covered through the rubble: corpses of children, women, elderly, young people... 

 It is a graphic document of genocidal barbarism that characterizes the majority of the inhabitants of Israel, its rulers and its armed forces. The genocide in Gaza shows where the moral rot of Israel and the “International Community” of criminals is reaching. It indicates that we have reached the limit of a process of decivilization, in which it is not about hiding, or even disguising hatred and dehumanization, but rather smiling at the death and murders caused by the same things that appear in the selfie. . What is clear is that events like this selfie demonstrate that hatred eliminates what could remain of humanity in the Israelites. There are no images of those who have been murdered, persecuted and expelled from their homes as if they had never existed and in their place are the murderers with bright selfies to distribute among friends. They limit themselves to saying “I like it” and adding something like this: “what an original photo you have taken, you must be happy, because your strong personality shows everything you are capable of.” “I would like to be in your place and enjoy and enjoy the glorious destruction and pain we cause, which makes us proud.”

 

 You might think that what we say is exaggerated. Unfortunately, in reality it is little compared to what is happening, in terms of hatred and dehumanization by the Zionists, in historical Palestine. Thousands of scenes confirm it. Among them are those in which soldiers appear in front of a camera in which they say in front of a door, as if it were a great joke, "why is there no education in Gaza", before showing that only that door and a university remain. piece of wall In another video, an Israeli soldier appears allegedly dipping some bullets in lard, and where this announcement can be read: "Exterminating the cockroaches, the rats of Hamas. He shares this beauty »[3].

 

  Explosion of a school in Gaza and celebration of the Israeli soldiers who demolish it  

6.-

 The commented selfie and the videos spread by Israeli troops are part of what can be called digital militarism, which promotes the patriotic mobilization of Israelis with racist and, apparently, comic messages, in which Palestinians are animals or beings. subhumans who can be killed and tortured, as if something great and worthy of being applauded and spread by antisocial networks were being done. They are, at the same time, a sample of the colonialist and genocidal mentality, with the traits that characterize the sociopaths and psychopaths that Israel is full of[4].  

The selfie expresses individualism, vanity and egoism. When it comes to doing it, what has happened is not of interest, but rather who was there at the scene of the crime, something that is trivialized, as if it were something unimportant, because it is not the others that are of interest but the narcissistic self. To Israel's soldiers, if they are never concerned about the Palestinians - considered as cockroaches or rats to be crushed - what will they care if they are dead, crushed by the ruins of the buildings. That cannot spoil the “beauty” of the selfie in which they appear smiling, as if they had come from a party and were not the protagonists of a genocide against an unarmed people. 

 In selfies, external reality practically disappears, this is a simple pretext, since what is interesting is the subject that appears in the foreground. In the case mentioned, the destroyed Gaza is a minor fact for those who take the selfie, except that it gains prominence to presume that a photo was taken that was never intended and whose instant audience breaks records among the genocidaires of Israel, by visually expressing their own feelings. of hatred, of racism, of alleged superiority and, above all, their desire to participate directly in the crimes, if they have not already done so.  

Such thresholds of barbarism have been reached that photos, videos and selfies are taken with the purpose of boasting on social networks of being a co-participant, live and direct, in a genocide. Not even the Nazis did something of this style and in such a cynical way, because they always hid the genocide they were carrying out during the Second World War and even tried to erase the traces that would give them away, although they were not able to do so fully. .

  If the American Psychiatric Association of the United States has classified excessive selfie-taking as a mental disorder, to that disorder let us add the genocidal derangement of the soldiers and society of Israel who, in addition, believe themselves to be bearers of a civilizing mission. the European one and think that the crimes they commit are the product of an alleged moral superiority that, in addition, should grant them universal recognition. In that they are not completely wrong, because the genocide underway shows the moral conscience of a large part of humanity how far the visceral and criminal hatred of the colonialists of Israel reaches, in their intention to exterminate every last Palestinian and erase their history and culture.

Thursday, January 4, 2024

The four horsemen of the capitalist-imperialist apocalypse

                                                                Paul Street: Ecocide, pandemicide, potentially terminal nuclear war and fascism  

Followers of my writings will have noticed, I hope, that I repeatedly argue that capitalism produces four mutually reinforcing and multiplying apocalyptic horsemen: ecocide, pandemicide, potentially terminal nuclear war, and fascism.

Capitalism at its dark roots 

 I want to delve into this formulation here, explaining how capitalism generates each of these apocalyptic threats and how the "four horsemen" reinforce and, in fact, multiply each other. 

 Let's start with the first dark horseman, ecocide. Here I am referring only to climate change, being fully aware that capitalism produces numerous "ecological cracks" in addition to global warming (and closely related to it). 

 The underlying economic basis of capitalism requires constant and carcinogenic growth, thus putting the habitable ecology at serious risk. In the age of fossil fuels, in which capitalism is deeply and indeed terminally inverted, this requirement is turning the planet into a gigantic Greenhouse Gas Chamber. The combination of constant growth and fossil fuels has created an epic climate catastrophe that is putting humanity and countless other species under thermal siege. 

 Capitalism is a global, disordered and amoral economic and state system, lacking any real capacity to reorient and sustainably detoxify human relationships with the natural environment. An increasingly poisoned world, dominated by capitalist imperialists and fragmented into dozens and dozens of competing nation states, is not rational. It is anarchic, competitive and exterminating, so fundamentally sociopathological that it sees the ecological destruction it generates as a source of new opportunities for profit: new shipping routes available in regions previously covered by ice, for example. The long-term common good is perpetually outweighed by the short-term profits of the dominant investor class under the reign of capital. And that class has invested too much in fossil fuels (both directly and indirectly) to allow governments under bourgeois control (whatever their democratic pretensions) to keep those resources in the ground before the extraction and burning of coal, oil and gas push the planet beyond the irreversible tipping points of uncontrolled warming.

What does capitalism have to do with pandemicide? Quite. The relentless expansion of the system, without which the profit system cannot survive, destroys vast swaths of natural habitat, bringing humans into ever closer contact with species carrying deadly zoonotic viruses from which humanity was previously isolated. . The capitalogenic climate catastrophe is causing species migrations that further break down previous epidemiological barriers. And contemporary globalized capitalism causes six million people to fly around the world on airplanes daily, ensuring the rapid and widespread transmission of new diseases to which many lack immunity. 

 A potentially terminal war? Of course. Mao Zedong was right to call capitalism “capitalism-imperialism.” The world teeters ever closer to a terminal nuclear war, contributing (along with global warming) to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' Doomsday Clock being closer to midnight than it has ever been, in a way which should not be surprising at all. Capitalism is a system of competition, rivalry and conflict not only between individual capitals, but also between capitalist-imperialist states, for control and access to markets, raw materials, labor supplies, technologies, etc. ., and with it by the exploitation and oppression of the vast global periphery, the so-called developing world, formerly known (during the Cold War) as the "Third World." Under capitalism, there is no way for a nation state to remain forever the only great power, the role to which the US aspired (and achieved to some extent temporarily and partially) after World War II. The main capitalist-imperialist states facing each other in today's increasingly "multipolar" world system - the US, Russia and China - are armed to the teeth with (increasingly lethal) nuclear weapons, first developed during the second of the two massive inter-imperialist world wars of the last century (and used twice by the US in 1945, largely as a warning to the first State that tried to break out of the world capitalist system and challenge it: the Soviet Union). With the capitalist-imperialist US threatening the other two great nuclear powers in their immediate regional spheres of influence (Eastern Europe and the far eastern Pacific), the chances of a catastrophic war are greater now than during the Cold War. Trigger zones include Ukraine, Taiwan and, of course, the Middle East, where Israel's escalating Gaza crucifixion (following the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack) and the current US campaign against Iran have the potential to trigger a much broader conflict.  

And then there is fascism, usefully defined by the US group Refuse Fascism (RF) as “a qualitative change in the way society is governed”. Once in power,” RF states, “the defining feature of fascism is the essential elimination of the rule of law and democratic and civil rights.” Fascism fosters and is based on xenophobic nationalism, racism, misogyny, and the aggressive reinstitution of oppressive “traditional values.” The truth is overturned and fascist mobs and threats of violence are unleashed to build their movement and consolidate power.  

What does it have to do with capitalism-imperialism? All. By virtue of its inherent tendency toward the upward concentration of wealth and power, capitalism regularly makes its “democratic” and “equality before the law” claims transparent, while the underlying anarchy of capital regularly generates crises and catastrophes that require the intervention of big governments. It is a lethal combination that encourages authoritarian "solutions" promoted by charismatic strongmen who find significant mass support for their claim that only they can fix things with the backing of a party and mass base willing to discard the parliamentary, civil and legal niceties and the previously normative moral qualms.

Capitalism simultaneously creates mass politics, delegitimizes (exposing as inauthentic) democracy and the rule of law, demonizes socialist and communist movements, and sustains and exploits the long-standing oppressive and divisive forces of racism, sexism, nativism. , fundamentalism, imperialism and nationalism. It heartlessly diminishes human life, making billions of people disposable in a way that contributes to feeding a sadistic dehumanization. 

 At the same time, the democratic, humanist, "tolerant" and "rule of law" pretensions of capitalism are always considered expendable by a considerable part of the ruling capitalist class. Many powerful capitalists are willing to work with and through a political superstructure that dispenses with bourgeois democracy and opts instead for the Iron Heel: capitalism-imperialism with the boot on the necks of the masses. 

 It is a toxic hodgepodge that generates fascist potential and a reality like white on rice.

  Multiplication, not addition 

 Now let's see how these four horsemen - I will keep the gender intact to reflect the deep connection of capitalism with patriarchy - do more than just stand side by side and add to each other, as in addition, but reinforce and expand each other, as in multiplication. It is not ecocide plus potentially nuclear war plus pandemicide plus fascism. It is ecocide multiplied by potentially nuclear war multiplied by pandemicide multiplied by fascism. 

 Ecocide and pandemicide. Climate change is contributing to increased risk of pandemics by forcing human and animal migrations out of overheated and thermally insecure regions, thereby increasing the chances of transmission of zoonotic viruses between species. At the same time, the negative impact of climate change on agricultural productivity incentivizes the expansion of land fencing and cultivation, further eroding the barriers between humans and pathogens carried by other species (Here I suppose a smart critic could argue that the potential mass death and economic depression resulting from pandemics could help reduce carbon emissions!)

Echocide and war (potentially nuclear): The capitalist climatic crisis harms global capitalist profitability (reducing agricultural productivity and thus raising the cost of food, other materials and labor, for example) so that interimperial competence intensifies by markets and materials, sharpening conflicts between capitalist states so that they encourage drifts and bands towards global war. The armies and their wars are huge consumers of fossil fuels and carbon emitters. (Of course, a global thermonuclear war could resolve the climatic crisis with the nuclear winter. World War I would also end the threats of fascism and pandemicide).  

Ecocide and fascism: in their important book White Skin, Black Fuel: On The Danger of Fossil Fascism, Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Group have established numerous connections between them. Synergies that reinforce each other include: 

 - The strong attachment of the extreme right to fossil fuels as great heritage and national/racial "source", source of national greatness. 

 - The revival of racist anti -immigration Nativism within the white nations rich by the massive migrations of non -white of poor nations where climate change is making life more miserable than ever.

  - The anti-intellectual opposition of fascism to truth and science, which encourages climate denialism on the extreme right. 

 - right -wing antisocialism, which undermines positive government action in favor of environmental sanity. 

 - The right -wing narrative that climatic concerns are a cover of the effort of non -white poor nations for "stealing" the richness and power of rich white nations. 

 - The "eco -fascist" statement that immigration is the real basis of environmental deterioration in rich nations 

 - The indifference of the right in the face of climate change, cruelly based on the idea that it only harms poor nations and the non -white periphery of the world system. 

 - The negative impact of mitigation efforts of climate change in the economic situation of important sectors and regions, which gives rise to right -wing parties to sell echocid policies against climate change as economic "populism."  

- The role of climate change in the production of mass social dislocations and crises that provide fertile land for right recruitment. 

 Pandemicide and fascism. The fear of the other carriers of germs and the strangers feeds the xenophobic nativism and nationalism, key pieces of the fascist mixture. Government measures to control the transmission of the virus feed the paranoid feelings of the "anti -government" right. The economic decline and social dislocation resulting from pandemics create massive discontent and traumas that the extreme right exploits, describing (for example) pandemics and efforts related to public health to curb their propagation as parts of a "global" conspiracy. Pandemics isolate masses from people from normal social contact, making them less prone to mutual concern and solidarity and more vulnerable to online hatred. The extreme right invents stories about the origin of pandemics to feed massive paranoia and racism (for example, "the Chinese virus", "Chinese deception"). Fascism promotes potentially genocidal dehumanization and racial, political, cultural, sexual and additional demonization of others, encouraging their followers to celebrate the real or imaginary role of pandemics in the elimination of parts of humanity they hate. At the same time, fascism is encouraged by a Virulent Darwinian social faith in the "survival of the strongest", a mentality that welcomes the death of "the weak" and opposes a positive public public health policy for the common benefit. 

 Pandemcidio and War. The negative impact of a pandemic on profitability can produce a strangulation of world benefits that foster a greater probability of war between capitalist-imperialist states. The wars themselves create a massive devastation that increases the susceptibility of human beings to diseases of all kinds, including new zoonotic pests. 

 Fascism and war: The militarized and violent nationalism that capitalist-imperial interstate rivalry and war generates and intensifies fuels the fascist-authoritarian threat within nations. The fascist ethos and fascist movements of the past and present are largely based on nationalist militarism and current and former military personnel. Like war and militarism, fascism defends the rule of force and men above the rule of law and electoral and parliamentary politics. Like fascism, war and militarism are based on the dehumanization and demonization of Others designated as enemies, necessary to justify the elimination of rivals and enemies. Both fascism and militarism promote the notion of survival of the fittest, identifying strength with the ability and willingness to employ mass violence. (Clausewitz said that "war is politics by other means." Fascism is, among other things, the penetration of politics by the mentality and violent practices of war/militarism.) In turn, war often produces massive social dislocations, hardships and defeats (and triumphs) that fascist politicians and propagandists exploit. 

 ***  

And, of course, the political pathology that is fascism is a brutal enforcer of apocalyptic capitalism-imperialism - an enforcer that works, among other things, to crush open public support and movements for climate sanity, public health (including prevention and responsible response to pandemics), peace, social justice and intellectual freedom.... for reform, not to mention the real requirement: revolutionary socialism. (American fascist leader Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear that he intends, as the 47th president of the United States, to deploy the military to repress "the radical left," a label under which he absurdly includes capitalist Democrats.) militant imperialists. Any opposition to their “drill, baby drill agenda,” to their promised military invasion of Mexico, to their escalating militarization of the border, to their war on women’s reproductive freedoms, to their promised mass roundup of immigrants. , etc., will most likely face considerable state and extra-state violence and repression). 

 Of course, it is true that capitalism-imperialism is clearly showing itself ready, willing and able to poison and generally ruin life on Earth by generating the first three apocalyptic horsemen (ecocide, pandemicide and potentially nuclear world war) without the full consolidation of the latter (fascism). But once in power, fascism threatens to crush all social-civil-political-ideological space of popular opposition to ecocidal and imperialist pandemo-capitalism and its allied systems of oppression and exploitation, including, of course, racism and sexism. Fascism must be resisted, rejected and defeated in itself, albeit as part of a deeper movement to get rid of the toxic root system - the capitalist mode of production and its political and ideological superstructure - that gives rise to fascism in the first place. .

  counterpunch.org. Translation: Antoni Soy Casals for Sinpermiso

Thursday, November 9, 2023

What they consider dangerous to raise awareness among the people: war, class oppression, power, consumerism or poverty they hide... THEY HIDE.

Government of Canada Motto: IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF CHILDREN

 Image they consider dangerous to raise awareness among the people: war, class oppression, power, consumerism or poverty they hide... THEY HIDE.

 May be an image of text that says 'FAMILIES OF CANADA... HAND OVERYOUR CHILDREN NOW OR WE WILL BE FORCED το TAKE THEM FROM YOU! POLICE RELEASE THE BEAST! children's Atd gociety'                                           RELEASE THE BEASTS!                                     Day after day, photos and videos captured by international media show us the massacres that Israel commits against Palestinian children. One may wonder why the local mainstream press in Canada is part of the cover-up of child trafficking for profit, genocide and crimes against humanity. The same horror that occurs in Palestine is happening in this country with children and young people who belong to disadvantaged families. Regimes on duty: How many hundreds of thousands of children and young people cry out for justice from their graves?

Mom, dad, why do so many children die in Palestine? 

Image they consider dangerous to raise awareness among the people: war, class oppression, power, consumerism or poverty they hide... THEY HIDE.

  

by Silvia Merelo Soriano: This Halloween has been, perhaps, the most terrifying of all. In the year 2023, the Gaza Strip has become the scene of one of the deadliest conflicts in more than a decade. After the confrontation that began on October 7 between Israel and Hamas, more than 10,000 people have died according to data from the Gaza Ministry of Health, of which at least 4,100 were children. UNRWA warns that, on average, one child is killed and two injured every 10 minutes during war.

  Thousands of Palestinian children have witnessed their neighborhoods being devastated. They have lost their home, their schools and hospitals, and what is most devastating, many of their family members, teachers and friends. Likewise, the incessant attacks have caused the violation of such basic rights as access to food, water, medicine and fuel, as well as security, education and protection of children. 

 The current humanitarian crisis, whose origins actually date back 75 years, continues to have a severe impact on the psychosocial well-being of minors and their families. Nightmares by day… and by night

  Faced with this scenario of siege and constant offensives, there is no doubt about the deep fear and feeling of helplessness experienced by Palestinian children, who have had to live through extremely traumatic situations. Living under the incessant threat of invasion, overflying planes and the sound of bombing keeps them in a constant state of hyperalertness and chronic fear, seriously harming their emotional well-being and development. 

 Don't consume news, understand it. 

 In the same way, it is common for victims to repeatedly remember the atrocious scenes that occurred, even in the absence of a real threat, and for these memories to manifest themselves in the form of nightmares and night terrors.

  The psychological impact that minors are suffering in Gaza makes them vulnerable to developing post-traumatic stress disorders, anxiety problems and depression, without them being able to be adequately addressed. 

 Continuous exposure to violence, the destruction of residential areas and the disappearance of loved ones under the rubble causes deep pain and great physical and mental exhaustion, together with difficulties in concentration, apathy, somatic complaints, nervousness, irritability, anger. , frustration and crisis of faith.  

Managing grief for the loss of loved ones becomes especially complicated for the little ones, whose brain is not yet mature enough to process it.

  For this reason, organizations such as the UN UNRWA, UNICEF and Save the Children demand an end to the attacks and highlight the need to offer psychological care and protection to the children and youth population in Gaza and the West Bank. 

 Read more: Why are there wars? Are we a violent species by nature? 

 How to explain this conflict to children? 

 Video they consider dangerous to raise awareness among the people: war, class oppression, power, consumerism or poverty they hide... THEY HIDE.

It was an atrocity, but Canada - the supposed utopia - has NEVER publicly acknowledged the Canadian government's guilt or even its awareness of Duplessis' horror...    

                                               Childhood is a stage of psychosocial development in which children need a safe and emotionally stable environment in which they can grow, learn, play and build healthy social relationships. Unfortunately, when these rights are violated by war situations, there is a breakdown in trust and belief in the goodness of human beings, increasing hopelessness.

  Faced with these types of alarming events, it is common for many parents to face questions from their children about why so many children are being attacked in other regions of the world. Likewise, feelings of injustice, sadness and fear may arise that as adults we must help them manage properly. It is essential to address these emotions and concerns with understanding and naturalness, offering explanations adapted to their age.

Currently, there are multiple sources of information through which minors can learn the details of the conflict. Therefore, it is important that we are open to talking about the topic and resolving possible doubts. 

 First of all, we must normalize and validate their emotions and reassure them about possible fears, especially the little ones. In the early stages of childhood, geographical notions are not fully consolidated and children may think that the conflict is happening near them. This can cause intense fear and excessive attachment to their caregivers. A good strategy is to explain the conflict to them as a story, which includes both negative characters and characters with positive strengths and values, and through games or drawings.

In the case of older children, we must foster empathy towards the victims of war and take the opportunity to educate them in the peaceful resolution of conflicts. To do this, we can start by asking them what they know about the situation and what they think about it, allowing them to express themselves without judgment. 

 It is important to teach them to be critical of information obtained on social networks and other unreliable sources, clarifying possible hoaxes if necessary. Likewise, we must provide clear and concise information, but without the need to expose them excessively to images that are too explicit and shocking for them. 

 Reflection on their ethical and moral values is especially encouraged so that they understand the harmful consequences of violence and develop a more humanitarian conscience. 

 An opportunity to foster the ability to cooperate 

 

 The violence and armed conflicts in Gaza have significantly deteriorated the mental health of the victims, especially the youngest, who make up almost half of the population. It is vital to make visible, raise awareness and support the psychological recovery of those affected by providing access to quality health services, emotional and psychosocial support programs and adequate protection.

  Collective awareness and solidarity action also help. It is essential to raise awareness among both adults and minors about the current situation of oppression and genocide. We must encourage prosociality, that is, the ability to provide emotional support, help others, share and cooperate. Involving minors in humanitarian actions such as the defense of human rights, donating food and clothing is an excellent way to contribute to the cause and foster values such as altruism, respect, solidarity, equality, tolerance. and cooperation.  

This learning, in turn, will contribute to their immediate context, improving their relationships and preventing bullying and other interpersonal problems.