A “villa in the jungle” is how Israeli war crimes suspect Ehud Barak once described the Jews-only state of Israel.

The description conjures a picture of culture, civilization and harmony amid a sea of barbarism. It is a picture that is the exact opposite of the world’s only surviving apartheid state.

The real picture is one of a colony of narcissists who believe that they are theÜbermenschen, superior beings who are a cut above the rest of humanity. The real picture is one of sadists who take pleasure at the pain and suffering of their fellow humans.

As the Palestinian civilian toll of Israel’s latest onslaught on the Gaza Strip exceeds 400 dead and 3,000 wounded, Israelis have turned the hilltops bordering the Strip into an open-air cinema where they gather to rejoice as their air force and artillery murders their fellow human being a few hundred metres away.

 

A close-up of what the Israelis are enjoying from the Sderot hillside: firefighters try to extinguish a fire after an Israeli strike on a building in Gaza

If ever there was a picture of barbarians and psychopaths, this is it, as you can see from this article by Harriet Sherwood in the Guardian newspaper. Here are some extracts.

As the sun begins to sink over the Mediterranean, groups of Israelis gather each evening on hilltops close to the Gaza border to cheer, whoop and whistle as bombs rain down on people in a hellish warzone a few miles away.

Old sofas, garden chairs, battered car seats and upturned crates provide seating for the spectators. On one hilltop, a swing has been attached to the branches of a pine tree, allowing its occupant to sway gently in the breeze. Some bring bottles of beer or soft drinks and snacks.

On Saturday [19 July], a group of men huddle around a shisha pipe. Nearly all hold up smartphones to record the explosions or to pose grinning, perhaps with thumbs up, for selfies against a backdrop of black smoke.

Despite reports that millions of Israelis are living in terror of Hamas rockets, they don’t deter these hilltop war watchers whose proximity to Gaza puts them within range of the most rudimentary missiles. Some bring their children.

In the border town of Sderot, which has been struck by countless missiles from the Gaza Strip in recent years, one family gathers on a top-floor balcony, draped with an Israeli flag and banner of the army’s legendary Golani Brigade. A house with a war view may even command a premium price these days…

The thud of shellfire, flash of an explosion and pall of smoke are greeted with exclamations of approval. “What a beauty,” says one appreciative spectator…

On a nearby hilltop, an ugly scene develops as a group of Israeli men threaten a photographer, accusing him of being a “leftist”. We are warned against asking for interviews, as another cheer goes up.

This is the country on which the United States and its satellite states in the West have spent countless taxpayer money and on whose behalf they have bankrupted themselves on pointless wars.

This is the country that has made the US, Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Australia and others the most hated on earth and turned them into targets of terrorism.

An investments well worth it?

Judge for yourselves.