"Like watching Auschwitz on TikTok"

This is the new normal until a sufficient percentage of humanity stands up & says, ‘No, we will not accept this new normal.’ So that’s why we will keep talking as long as there is breath in our lungs.

Gabor Maté is a Hungarian-Canadian physician, author, speaker, expert on trauma and addiction, and a Jewish survivor of the Nazi Holocaust. Maté recently participated in a conversation with French activist, author, and film producer Frank Barat, during which the two discussed the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Palestine and its countless implications. Below are some selected excerpts from Maté’s remarks during that conversation:

“Well, first of all, it’s like we’re watching Auschwitz on TikTok. Had there been YouTube and Instagram and TikTok around Auschwitz, this is what we would have seen: People burning alive. And it is beyond horrendous, beyond comprehension… When people like this are empowered and encouraged and allowed and supported in perpetrating their horrors, they get more crazy, more cruel, more remorseless, more relentless, more ruthless. That’s what happened to the Nazis. The Nazis did not start off with gas chambers. But, then they started killing their mentally ill people in gas vans, then they started shooting Jews in Eastern Europe, and then they ended up with the gas chambers of Auschwitz. So, it’s a progression of madness and cruelty that’s almost inevitable on the part of the perpetrator—and especially when it is encouraged by all the imperial powers…

Shaaban Al-Dalou (19 years old) was burned alive by Israel.

You can make three assumptions about why the United States supports Israel. One of them is: The American Empire loves the Jews. Well, good luck with that one. Empires don’t love anybody. And there’s no reason to think they love the Jews. So, that’s nonsense. Secondly: The Jews control the United States. Well, it may sometimes look like it when it comes to foreign policy, but it’s not true. The ruling corporations and economic mega-giants who really control American politics are not Jewish. Now, there is a powerful Jewish lobby that contributes to it, but it’s not in charge. There used to be a powerful China lobby until the United States decided to recognize China, and then the China lobby evaporated. So, the American Empire does not love the Jews or anybody. And the Jews do not control the United States. That leaves the third reason: It is in the interest of the American Empire to support Israel—which it is. Joe Biden said if we didn’t already have Israel, we’d have to create it. They consider it an unsinkable aircraft carrier, a little military bulldog that can dominate and intimidate the Arab Middle East. And it has worked really well [for the American Empire] that way. But there are two problems. One is: Empires change. If you want to know what happens to the clients of the American Empire when the American Empire decides not to participate anymore, then look at what happened to the generals in Vietnam. Or look what happens to any number of Latin American petty little dictators. So, it may not be forever that America declares its interests are aligned with Israel. But there is an even more powerful point: Empires don’t last forever. The Roman Empire lasted a thousand years or more. The British Empire lasted a few hundred years. The American Empire—which came into its most powerful position at the end of the second World War, and, after the fall of the Soviet Union, seemed like it was not a permanently dominant entity in the world—is already in decline. It has not won a war for a long time. It has caused a lot of damage, but it had to get the Hell out of Iraq; it had to get the Hell out of Afghanistan; it was defeated in Vietnam; and, economically, it’s losing its power to China [and] to India. So, it is waning. This empire will not last forever. Hannah Arendt, the great Jewish philosopher, said in 1942 that it is a mistake on the part of the Zionists to tie their interests to the interests of foreign powers far away while alienating the local population. Well, it wasn’t a mistake, but it’s the only way they could have done it. But that’s what they have done. What’s going to happen to this little country when the American Empire, for whatever reason, is no longer there to buttress it up, to fill it with weapons, to flood it with wealth, to support it diplomatically? So, Zionism is going to be seen as a blip in Jewish history. There are the zealots who in 70 AD led the revolt against the Romans, and civil war amongst the Jews ended up in total disaster. Zionism will be seen, in my view, as that kind of disaster in human history, and it will be seen that way by Jews. It might take 100 years, 200 years—I don’t know. But it will be seen like that.

In 2004, before Hamas became the ruling party in Gaza, there was a psychiatric report on the post-traumatic state of Palestinian children, and 95% of them showed post-traumatic symptoms of one kind or another. By the way, in 2004, those kids who were children—Guess who were the young people who streamed into Israel on October 7: Those traumatized kids, full of despair and rage. Nobody ever talks about that. And that was before the current horrors. At this point, I have to tell you, I am not confident that Gaza will even survive as an entity. I’m not confident that the Israelis won’t succeed in somehow forcing them into an even smaller enclave, a smaller concentration camp. Israel at this point seems to have the upper hand militarily. I have terrible forebodings about what’s going to happen to the Palestinians. But we will see. They also have tremendous resilience, tremendous courage. I have visited Gaza. I have been to the occupied territories. I know how much heart they have. I have some faith in them, but history is very cruel sometimes. I don’t know how it’s going to go.

We live in a post-colonial world where very few powers and economic entities control most of the world, and the inequality is just getting worse and worse so that the top few wealthiest people in the world control more wealth than the bottom half of humanity. That system has to be maintained. And one of the reasons I think the West supports Israel so vociferously is because it’s a lesson to the rest of the world: You better not challenge us. If you want to know what’s going to happen to you, this is what’s going to happen to you. So, it already has become the new normal. There was an article in The New York Times this morning about the Israelis using Palestinians as human shields. There was an article in Le Monde this morning about how the Bedouin have been ethnically cleansed from the Negev Desert and from the West Bank. These things are reported, but nobody does anything about them. So, this is the new normal until a sufficient percentage of humanity stands up and says, ‘No, we will not accept this new normal.’ So, that’s why we will keep talking as long as there is breath in our lungs. Perhaps we are contributing to something in the long term, and at least, perhaps in the present, we are saying to Palestinians, ‘There’s not much we can do to help you, practically, but at least we see you, and you are not alone.’ And I think that is important.”

---

---

The West Virginia Holler