Are we still talking about the banality of evil? When that overworked phrase was first used by philosopher Hannah Arendt, it described the blank persona of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Now, in NAZA, anonymised members of Israeli intelligence discuss their remote execution of the assault on Gaza. The comparison to Hitler’s Germany, while understandably controversial, is made by a subject themselves. If they are banal, it is a modern, oddly familiar kind. These are articulate, middle-class millennials. They say they are leftwing and non-racist. Put differently, they could be Guardian readers.
And yes, one remarks, they have been conducting a genocide.
