Israel, Palestine, And The Unbearable Pain Of Facing The Truth

Of all the low-down, no-good, double-crossing punks in movie history, Cypher from The Matrix is my favourite.

For anyone who hasn't seen this smorgasbord of emo and sci-fi, The Matrix is set in a dystopian future where machines have taken over the world and turned humans into living, breathing battery packs. To keep us under control, they plug our minds into a simulation called The Matrix, where we quietly lead our trench-coat-wearing lives

Well, not all of us.

Cypher, along with the rest of the Resistance, sees through the lies the machines use to control him, he breaks free from the dream world that enslaves humanity, but unfortunately, this dumps him in the “real” world where a nuclear apocalypse has blotted out the sun, where he spends his days running from a tireless, near-indestructible enemy, and where there’s nothing to eat but the same goddamn goop every day.

After nine years of war, when the machines offer to return him to the safe, comforting lie of the Matrix, Cypher can no longer bear the truth.

If it weren't for the whole "betraying what's left of the human race" thing, I might even feel bad for him.

Of course, we don't need to rely on late-90s fiction to understand this dilemma. History is littered with people who choose comforting lies over inconvenient truths.

The good citizens of Hitler's Germany could have refused to euthanise hundreds of thousands of disabled people and gas millions of Jews, but that would have meant taking responsibility for their economic suffering and abandoning their unearned sense of national superiority!

Much easier to swallow the Nazi propaganda that claimed Jewish people were a “racial tuberculosis” in “German lungs.”

Sure, the God-fearing Christians of the antebellum South could have admitted that slavery was a sinful, inhumane betrayal of their founding principles, but that would have meant giving up their Sunday afternoon lynchings and their unearned sense of racial superiority!

Much easier to believe people like Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, when he said, “[slavery] is in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator.”

And ten months after Hamas’ savage attack on October 7th, Israel’s supporters could acknowledge that the slaughter in Gaza has gone far beyond any notion of justice or proportionality or self-defence, that indiscriminately bombing innocent Palestinians was never going to defeat Hamas or free the hostages or do anything except perhaps start WWIII.

But that would mean recognising the racist, genocidal extremism that has infested the Israeli government and abandoning their unearned sense of moral superiority!