THE DARK HUMOR OF GIDEON’S CHARIOTS

Public life in Israel is now quite literally in a genocidal grip.

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In a recent interview, Peter Sloterdijk kindly praised me for introducing dark humor into philosophy. I think he was right, with the proviso that I don’t consider this my personal idiosyncrasy: we live in an age when only dark humor enables us to adequately grasp the madness of our social reality.

Let’s take the latest example. On May 5, 2025, the well-known war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu said that the population of Gaza would be displaced to the south after his security cabinet approved an expanded military operation in the enclave, a plan that a minister described as an effort to “conquer” the territory. The security cabinet’s vote came hours after the military announced it would mobilise up to 70,000 reservists, strengthening the IDF’s capacity to operate in the besieged Palestinian territory. The population of Gaza will be displaced to a small area in the south of Gaza - in short, to a de facto concentration camp - “to protect them,” Netanyahu said of the “intensified operation.”¹

This report cannot help but evoke black humor. Netanyahu’s announcement sounds as if there had been some kind of peace there until now, before Israel decided to attack a territory that is now unlivable, with starvation due to an ever-dwindling food supply, hospitals in ruins, most buildings destroyed, and no water or electricity, all due to constant shelling and bombardment by… Israel itself. So Israel wants to protect Palestinian lives, but from whom? From Israel itself: you first totally destroy a territory, and then you attack it. The name of the operation says it all: “Gideon’s Chariots.” Gideon led the Jews in their struggle to annihilate their opponents, the Midianites, who were connected to the Amalekites. Today, we simply replace chariots with tanks. The IDF is here following the trend, widely present in Israeli politics, of justifying criminal military violence with direct references to the Bible: Palestinians are identified as contemporary Amalekites, which means that, in the same way Jehovah ordered the ancient Jews to kill all Amalekites, children and women included, Israel now has the right and duty to do the same with Palestinians.