One of the worst things about stuff like this is that it’s essentially accurate. There’s a long and well-documented history of veterans suffering crippling trauma from slaughtering people.

Obviously, the people being tortured and killed are, by far, the most victimized in this scenario. Still, the people being raised on propaganda and compelled by law to murder peaceful people are also being used and harmed.

I understand that this propaganda piece isn’t mostly about that. It’s about using suffering to exploit people’s sense of empathy into promoting an otherwise unconscionable geopolitical agenda.

This isn’t exclusive to Israel either. It’s a long-standing tradition of organized violence that’s at least thousands of years old. I don’t know what else to say about this phenomenon except that most of us probably agree that it needs to stop, and that whatever group is doing the most killing is most in the wrong. I regret that I don’t have a good solution. Historically, anything less than violent rebellion doesn’t work. Sometimes even that fails.