In order to commit
The heinous crimes
Their genocidal nation requires of them,
Soldiers must first submit
To a type of radical surgery
That removes
All the neural networks within them
That would cause them to feel
Compassion and empathy,
To feel shame and self-loathing,
To feel horror and disgust,
Radical surgery that empties them
Of humanity.
In order for settlers
To violently evict
Those whose families
Have lived in their homes
For generations,
To uproot and burn the orchards
That have sustained families
For centuries,
To raze villages
And remove them from maps,
First those settlers must be hollowed out,
Purged of all human decency,
Drained of the ability
To act unselfishly..
In order to enact genocide,
First a nation must
Murder its inner life
And bury its corpse,
Must purge all remnants,
However infinitesimal,
Of any sense that all others
Have value,
That all others deserve to live.
And in the depths
Of its demonic darkness
The nation must convince itself
That it is the light of the world.
And when a genocidal nation
Has vomited out its guts
So completely,
When its innards are thoroughly scoured
And utterly void,
There is nothing
It will not do.