More than a year since Israel launched its war on Gaza in response to the October 7 attack, we speak with the award-winning author, journalist and activist Naomi Klein, who says a “trauma industry” has emerged to keep Israeli society permanently in crisis in order to justify the country’s expansionist wars and human rights abuses.
And I want to be very clear: People have a right to grieve their loved ones. This is not about families gathering in grief. This is not about the right to remember and honor. It’s about state-orchestrated and -manipulated trauma. It’s a memorialization from above — right? — not from below, for a very specific end.
And in a state of trauma, you don’t really think. It’s pure emotion. It’s pure reaction. You can’t be analytical. You’re not going to be empathetic towards others. It’s about monsterizing the other and fusing your identity with the people in those houses, at the Nova music festival, in the tunnels. It’s very deliberate. It’s extremely manipulative. And it’s how you turn off any compassion or empathy or sense of ethics or morals.
I mean, personally, I don’t think — I think there’s sometimes this idea that you can tell people not to grieve, because — you know, to sort of balance the scales. I don’t think grief is a very obedient emotion, from my experience. It’s highly disobedient and unruly. And I think it is dangerous, actually, to tell people that they can’t have the emotions that they’re having.