Day 92 of War

The interplay of good and evil in wars and how their boundaries blur is a topic of discussion with Elana Lakh, a psychotherapist and political activist born in Ukraine and raised in Israel. She lives in Tel Aviv, where she observes violence against Palestinians on a daily basis. At the same time, she says, the common view – strongly nurtured by the Jewish population as victims of World War II – that the country faces a constant existential threat dominates the discourse. Today, that threat would be caused by the Palestinians. For Israelis, the role of Israeli perpetrator would still not fit this view. Lakh transfers this to the blindness of Europe and the U.S., which would feel a superiority to cultures on the margins: But the good West and the bad others would not be a valid concept. So, the war in Ukraine would remind us of what we don’t like to hear and see: The West can kill, too. For the Israeli, the war in Ukraine, on European territory, is an opportunity to bring this to consciousness. Deepening the motif of the beast in war, Lakh draws a parallel with Israel: in public opinion, she says, Palestinians are portrayed as inhuman beings. This practice of seeing the opposing party in a war or conflict as monsters is a common practice of dehumanization, Lakh says. While Russian soldiers are derided as orcs by Ukrainians, Vladimir has called Ukraine a state of Nazis from which he must rid it. Calling someone a Nazi, he said, is the ultimate justification for doing whatever you want to that person. In this psychosocial and political discussion, Stefano Carpani and Elana Lakh talk about the Nazi narrative that serves Putin well and venture back into the history of Ukraine and Russia.