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podcast friday
Today's featured episode is from Bad Hasbara. "Scar Tours With Noy Katsman" is an interview with a student and activist whose brother, Hayim, was murdered in Hamas' Oct. 7 attack. It probably goes without saying why I think this is important to listen to. For all the rhetoric about returning the hostages, obviously the current tactic of genociding the entire Gaza Strip is not working well to that end. But of course, it's not about the hostages, nor about people like Hayim, who would not have wanted 30,000 people and counting murdered in his name. Noy is clear-eyed and admirable in turning their own very personal and visceral tragedy into a cogent call for peace and justice.
I should add, if you haven't heard of scar tours, it's nothing new. When I was in my early 20s, there was a "suicide bus" that some of my extended family were involved in transporting to Canada—basically the bombed-out wreckage of a bus that a suicide bomber had attacked, and you could go in and see how horrific the damage was and imagine the dead bodies and so on. I thought this was ghoulish at the time*, just as I see now tours of a kibbutz where massacres took place on Oct. 7 advertised to teachers to visit on March Break (yes, really) are not only about dispossession of the living, but desecrations of the dead.
Anyway, everyone should hear what Noy has to say.
* See also: Why my mother and I are not invited to family events anymore.
I should add, if you haven't heard of scar tours, it's nothing new. When I was in my early 20s, there was a "suicide bus" that some of my extended family were involved in transporting to Canada—basically the bombed-out wreckage of a bus that a suicide bomber had attacked, and you could go in and see how horrific the damage was and imagine the dead bodies and so on. I thought this was ghoulish at the time*, just as I see now tours of a kibbutz where massacres took place on Oct. 7 advertised to teachers to visit on March Break (yes, really) are not only about dispossession of the living, but desecrations of the dead.
Anyway, everyone should hear what Noy has to say.
* See also: Why my mother and I are not invited to family events anymore.
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Well, apparently they learned to scale up the "car wreck from a drunk driver" to horrific proportions.
I'm of two minds, but as someone who lives far from dumb fuckery (I mean, there's a less than zero chance we'll import it), I can see how showing how horrific a suicide bomb on a bus might be. I assume a lot of people don't think things through.
I see now tours of a kibbutz where massacres took place on Oct. 7 advertised to teachers to visit on March Break (yes, really)
I mean, part of me thought going to Dachau was too soon. And that was in 2001.
I guess... I'll keep my roiling thoughts to myself on this for a bit.
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ETA: That and none of the victims of Dachau actually lived on the ground of the concentration camp and are displaced from their homes so the government can make a ghoulish tourist attraction.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/19/do-not-use-our-death-to-bring-death-plea-to-israel-from-peace-activists-grieving-families
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My first reaction was like yours, but also wow, a whole bombed out bus, that's a lot of effort. On second thought, it feels like it's part of the same project of inflicting trauma as propaganda... Though that kind of conflicts with their "Israel is the only place where Jews are safe" narrative? :P Of course it's the supplementary message they're pushing, "we're got to finish the job from '48 to get that safety".
I was listening to an episode of Breaking Points and they were mentioning that John Kirby had mentioned, after meeting them, that negotiations with the Saudis for a rapprochement deal had some hope left in them, and the Saudis issued a follow-up press release to say "absolu-fucking-ly not".
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I think many people don’t want atrocity but will accept it if they believe their own security/safety is at stake. From that perspective I understand the decision to turn the kibbutz into a scar tour; the more intensely you can indoctrinate the youth that it’s us vs them, the stronger support you’ll have for your long-term death regime.
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I wonder if the chaotic mass-Hannibal Israel engaged in in response to the Hamas attack will also be narrated...
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I actually love him on BtB (he won me over with the Jar Jar Binks soundboard on the Mengele episodes) and since I often check out the podcasts of guests I like, I was a wee bit disappointed that he only did TV rewatch shows. So it's awesome that he's doing a thing I'm actually interested in.
They spend a lot of time talking about that conflicting narrative and the way that the insecurity it breeds means that Jews are never supposed to feel safe, in our own countries or in Israel. And are therefore always dependent on the most vile possible state to "protect" us.
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I listened to Daniel Maté episode today and at some point it reminded me of the sense of victimhood that was driving the separatist movement in Québec, how our history was taught. There isn't as much of an infrastructure of indoctrination and retraumatization as with Jewish institutions obviously, in part because the meagre attempts at cultural genocide went nowhere for us, but there was some resonance and it's weirdly rearing its head again in uglier ways than ever before, for some weird reason. (We won assholes, we run our own province now!)
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I mean it's reciprocal. If it wasn't for that TV show, a lot less people who know who Margaret Atwood is in Québec. No one knows who Farley Mowat or Alice Munro are. My BIL is slotted in foreign lit.
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