Official public statements by a
government’s officials obviously trade on rhetoric—manipulation by wording
being a part of statecraft—but when the rhetoric is so self-serving and
divorced from facts on the ground (i.e., empirically), wording can be
indicative of the underlying mentality, which is real. I submit that the
statements of Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu and Israeli foreign-ministry
spokesman Oren Marmorstein in May, 2025 amid the Israeli military offensive in
Gaza reveal the surprising extent that hatred can warp human perception and
cognition without the warping itself being grasped by the very people in its
grip.
The full essay is at "Underneath the Rhetoric."
