Some people are responding to the headline of my latest article on the film NAZA with: "There's no evil lurking in me. It's just those Israeli soldiers." There are two things that make any of us capable of committing evil acts: 1. Finding ourselves in circumstances that, we are persuaded, call for evil. 2. Lacking the capacity for deep self-reflection. Those of us who have never found ourselves in the first situation have never really been tested on whether we have that second capacity. If you're absolutely certain that you could never do what those Israeli soldiers did in Gaza, then you have either done a lot of self-reflection or none at all. We have faced one test already: whether we protested the Gaza genocide with all our might or stayed quiet. But that test is the lowest bar there is. Would we still keep our humanity if we were persuaded the stakes were personally much higher for us and our loved ones, as many Israelis were persuaded in relation to Gaza. NAZA works, at least for western audiences, because on one level it makes us identify with the Israeli soldiers – they look and sound like our own children – while on another it shows the utter depravity of what they are rationalising to themselves and to us. It pulls us in and repulses us at the same time. It causes huge cognitive dissonance in western audiences – the reason most people walk out in stunned silence. That may lead to the kind of deeper self-reflection needed before western publics refuse to allow their leaders to collude in genocide. But it may also lead some, those less able to self-reflect, to entrench in their connivance with evil. We can't blame NAZA for that. The film offers us a chance to open our eyes. But each of us must decide whether we are willing to see or remain blind. If you want to read beyond the headline, you can find a link to my article in the reply post below ⬇️

A majority of the 635 children held in Israeli prisons in 2025 were put in solitary confinement, usually for between one and two weeks – some up to eight times. 92 per cent of those children had not been sentenced. A third had not even been charged with an offence. The world's highest court says Israel is an apartheid state. Its decades-long occupation is illegal.

Declassified finds evidence suggesting a British man, Jonathan Burman, likely participated in war crimes in Gaza. Why has Scotland Yard's war crimes unit failed to investigate Burman – or the 2,000 other Britons who've served in Gaza? Watch here: youtube.com/watch?v=Fzj3_gbs…