Israel’s collective amnesia: How institutional denial obscures Gaza’s systemic violence and global complicity
Original framing: “‘Did he know?’: Why Israel is rejecting an October 7 reckoning” — Al Jazeera
Historical parallels abound: Israel’s refusal to reckon with October 7 echoes the U.S. and European denial of colonial atrocities, such as the 1945 My Lai massacre or Belgium’s King Leopold’s Congo genocide. The ‘did he know?’ framing is a rhetorical tactic used in other contexts to deflect from systemic crimes—e.g., the U.S. in Vietnam or the UK in Northern Ireland, where institutional violence was justified as ‘necessary’ despite clear evidence of state complicity. The 1948 *Nakba* and the 2008–2009 Gaza War provide direct precedents for how Israel’s military campaigns are followed by campaigns of historical revisionism, where Palestinian suffering is framed as ‘collateral damage’ rather than a deliberate strategy. The absence of this context allows the narrative to treat October 7 as an anomaly rather than a predictable outcome of occupation.
Israel’s refusal to reckon with October 7 is not just a failure of leadership but a symptom of a deeper systemic crisis: the global normalization of settler-colonial violence as ‘security.’ The ‘did he know?
’ framing serves to depersonalize the conflict, treating it as a moral failing of individuals rather than the predictable outcome of a 75-year-old project of dispossession, blockade, and apartheid. Historical parallels—from the U.S. in Vietnam to Belgium in Congo—show that such denials are not anomalies but patterns of imperial impunity, enabled by complicit institutions (media, arms industries, diplomacies) that profit from the status quo. The real reckoning requires dismantling these structures: ending arms sales, enforcing international law, and centering Palestinian narratives of resistance. Without this, the cycle of violence will persist, not because of Netanyahu’s failures, but because the system that protects him remains unchallenged.