Ingeborg 's Reviews > They Would Never Hurt a Fly: War Criminals on Trial in The Hague

A simple and straightforward text about what makes people commit horrible war crimes. Could anyone, in the right circumstances, become a criminal? What I like most of all is the author's argument about "preparing" ordinary people for hating another nation, The Other. The reasons for hating (people of other nationalities, other race, religion etc.) don't have to be rational, they just have to be convincing enough, and are mostly based on old myths! This is the horrible truth. There should be more books like this one, they should be widely read (even maybe in high-school?), so that people get a sense of what it means to loose track of reality, to start hating other people because of something completely irrational. Not just hating them - but also raping, torturing and killing them for the reasons one cannot explain... If we could explain to ourselves this is all irrational and irrelevant, and what matters are other people's lives and their freedom, maybe people wouldn't do such horrible things to other people? Is this too optimistic? These are really questions to think about!