By David Pan · Monday, February 12, 2024 
As much as war has become automated and mechanized, the subjective experience of the horror of war remains central to its meaning today. Russia, through its intentional bombing of civilians, and Hamas, with its massacres, have both sought to manipulate personal experience by terrorizing their enemies to achieve their war aims. Such tactics have also become the basis of their rule, in which they use fear to intimidate domestic political opponents to maintain their power. While they seek to create fear, the response of Ukrainians and Israelis alike has been to respond to subjective horror with the courage to maintain resistance while also affirming their values. War continues to be grounded in the way in which the participants’ most personal experiences can create a unified political will.
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By David Pan · Tuesday, October 31, 2023  As Israel begins its attack on Hamas, it will be important to remember the underlying sources of war that will ultimately be the target of Israel’s efforts. Most leftists in the United States and Europe attempt to blame Israel for the continuation of hostilities. But the variety of enmity that fuels the war comes primarily from the Palestinian side. Hamas’s attack on Israel demonstrates that it sees Israel and Israelis as what Carl Schmitt called an “absolute enemy,” against which there can be no compromise and against which the primary strategy is eradication. There clearly can be no peace as long as this attitude prevails. It is also clear that Israel does not share this kind of enemy thinking. In fact, it has worked over the decades to integrate Palestinians into its society and economy. Arabs and Palestinians continue to live and work within Israel, in stark contrast to the plight of Israelis who remain in Gaza primarily as hostages. If the war cannot end until each side stops treating the other side as an absolute enemy, then Israelis have shown their willingness to live alongside Palestinians—while Palestinian leaders have demonstrated the opposite.
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