Israel’s militarism - Obama must curb Gaza atrocities

As our bloody history shows, and as its legacy never allows us forget, our capacity to inflict atrocity after atrocity on each other is almost boundless.

As relatively recent European history shows, this inhumanity can reach satanic levels when whole societies dedicate themselves to the destruction of another.

When this evil is fuelled by either blind nationalism or religious fundamentalism, perfectly ordinary, kind people, loving fathers and brothers, can become savage, callous ogres. The spiral of atrocity generates it own integrity; division and hatred all but become genetic. Radicalism prevails and the possibility of moderation and compromise — tolerance and decency — becomes ever more remote. In this country, that life-squandering cycle lasted seven centuries. In Europe, it led to the Second World War and, among many acts of genocide, the Holocaust. Today, it is active in Gaza and many other places around the world.