Yesnwar, the now former head of Hamas, was certainly a bloodthirsty terrorist, the mastermind of the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel and the principal-but also the perpetrator-of many other murders. At his death Netanyahu of course rejoiced yesterday, but so did a little bit of everyone in the Western world, primarily U.S. President Biden. Still, the death of a man, even a terrible man, almost live, is always disturbing.
The images of the drone filming him wounded slumped in some sort of chair and throwing a useless stick at that invasive eye moments before the fatal bombing are powerful. The impending end of life, whoever’s life it is, always arouses a kind of pity. At least in me, who I believe shares with others certain categories – Kant would call them transcendental, Freud of the unconscious, Jung of the ‘collective unconscious, St. Augustine of the soul, for English anthropologists mind structures; in short, that quid that makes us human beings.
Mine is not a political or even a justice reflection, local or international. Nor is it the usual moral reflection on the technologies of visor representation that now make us see everything live, the perennial pornography of the current, according to some. The death of a man, , just for so many reasons, always remains, however, when one perceives it in the moments of passing, a great mystery: the greatest existential mystery there is.
The article Even the right death is a death comes from TheNewyorker.
