Has Israel Lost its Right to Exist?
A series of recent revelations about Zionism and Israel have led me to question what I previously took for granted.
I saw my first “Zionism = Nazism” placard when I was in college in the 1970’s. I thought at the time that such a sentiment was utterly ridiculous given what had happened to the Jews in WWII.
I was wrong.
What is in this article
This article lists 10 revelations that I have had regarding Israel as I dug into the history and the present day events taking place in Israel-Palestine.
For those who may want to skip to the various sections of this long-form article, here is a list of the chapters / revelations:
Revelation Nr. 3: Palestine and Palestinians have a long history
Revelation Nr. 7: Israeli cruelty did not start on October 7
Revelation Nr. 1: Zionism IS equal to Nazism
Zionists were actually “Nazi curious”. They were big admirers of Mussolini’s Fascist Italy and sought actively to form an alliance with Hitler’s Nazi Germany.
Ron Unz recounts from a New York Times article from 35 years ago:
Apparently, during the late 1930s, [Yitzhak] Shamir and his small Zionist faction had become great admirers of the Italian Fascists and German Nazis, and after World War II broke out, they had made repeated attempts to contact Mussolini and the German leadership in 1940 and 1941, hoping to enlist in the Axis Powers as their Palestine affiliate, and undertake a campaign of attacks and espionage against the local British forces, then share in the political booty after Hitler’s inevitable triumph.
A deal with the devil
In fact, the Zionist affection for Nazi Germany has been documented in Israeli publications such as Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post. The “Axis outreach” program conducted by militant Zionist groups such as the Lehi, or Stern Gang (as the British called them), who saw the British as the number one enemy of Zionism and actively sought to team up with the Nazis “based on a common anti-British agenda”.
According to the article in Haaretz:
Ya’akov Meridor, who was the Irgun commander from 1941 to 1943 and later a Knesset member and Likud minister, had told him: “We ourselves tried — we started. We lost our connection with Germany. We don’t see anything wrong with a relationship with the Axis. If it will bring us independence, we’re ready to make a deal with the devil himself.”
Zionist collaboration with the Nazis
Indeed, Zionists were willing to work with the Nazis as lomng as they were able to pursue the Zionist agenda.
These accusations are confirmed by the ‘Eichmann Confessions’, published in Life magazine, 28 November and 5 December, 1960 :
“By shipping the Jews off in a lightning operation, I wanted to set an example for future campaigns elsewhere… In obedience to Himmler’s directive I now concentrated on negotiations with the Jewish political officials in Budapest… Among them Dr. Rudolph Kastner, authorized representative of the Zionist movement. This Dr. Kastner was a young man about my age, an ice-cold lawyer and a fanatical Zionist. He agreed to help keep the Jews from resisting deportation — and even keep order in the collection camps — if I would close my eyes and let a few hundred or a few thousand young Jews emigrate illegally to Palestine. It was a good bargain. For keeping order in the camps, the price… was not too high for me.”
The Zionists fought the British
In fact, all during the 1940’s, Zionist militants conducted a bloody campaign against the British, who wanted to throttle the flow of Jewish refugees to Palestine. They blew up the King David Hotel, bombed the British Embassy in Rome as well as the British Army HQ in Vienna, killing dozens of UK diplomats and civilians in each case. In addition, the Stern Gang and Irgun (another militant Zionist group) kidnapped and assassinated dozens of British military personnel and policemen.
Dozens of Palestinian Arabs, who were allied with the British, also died in these attacks.
The original “terrorists”
The Zionists even assassinated Lord Moyne, British Secretary for State for the Colonies and Minister Resident in the Middle East, ostensibly because he was “an advocate of compromise between Arabs and Jews in Palestine”.
The Stern Gang also assassinated Count Folke Bernadotte for the same reason. The United Nations had appointed Bernadotte as Peace Mediator to settle the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine. But instead of establishing individual states for the Arabs and Jews, Bernadotte proposed that Arabs and Jews form a “union” consisting of a small Jewish entity and an enlarged Transjordan. The idea of co-existing with the Arabs was anathema to the Zionists, so four Lehi assassins attacked Bernadotte’s convoy in Jerusalem, riddling his body with bullets from a German Schmeisser machine pistol.
Ironically, the bloody Zionist campaign against the British in Palestine was the first time that the word “terrorism” was used in its modern sense. The British coined the phrase “Jewish terrorists” in the 1940’s to describe the Zionist groups who were conducting an international campaign of bombings and assassinations against them. According to this article, the Lehi even proudly described themselves as “terrorists”.
I had no idea that the Zionists were so pro-Nazi and anti-British. Unz relates other interesting facets of the Times article:
Among other things, there were long excerpts from the official letters sent to Mussolini ferociously denouncing the “decadent” democratic systems of Britain and France that he was opposing, and assuring Il Duce that such ridiculous political notions would have no future place in the totalitarian Jewish client state they hoped to establish under his auspices in Palestine.
Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party, formerly known as Herut, is a direct descendant of the radical Zionist Irgun and Lehi organisations. In fact, when Likud Leader (and future Prime Minister) Menachem Begin visited the USA in 1948, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt and other prominent Jewish Americans wrote a letter to The New York Times condemning Begin’s party as ”closely akin to the Nazi and Fascist parties”.
Since winning their first elections in 1977, Likud has transformed Israel from a socialist Labor-dominated government to a radical far right regime ruled by fascist and Nazi principles of ethnic superiority and messianic genocide.
Wow. If Albert Einstein said these Israelis were Nazis, I thought, there must be something to this whole “Zionism = Nazism” meme.
Zionism is also expansionist
Like the Nazis, the Zionists believe that they are destined - and entitled - to rule over all manner of “Untermenschen” in the lands that surround them. Just as the Nazis dreamed of “Grossdeutschland” or “Greater Germany”, so too do the Zionists dream of “Eretz-Israel” or “Greater Israel”.
Below is a map of the Land of Israel that God “promised” to the Jews according to the Bible. As you can see, “Greater Israel” includes all or part of modern Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey and Lebanon:
Moreover, the Israelis take their biblical land grant SERIOUSLY:
For comparison purposes, below is a map of the planned “Grossdeutschland” or Greater German Reich:
Revelation Nr. 2: Zionism is NOT Judaism
The “Founding Fathers” of the State of Israel had more than just a penchant for violence and totalitarianism in common with their Nazi role models: they, like their fascist confreres, were also non-religious.
As Shlomo Sand writes in Haaretz:
Zionism as a national movement that rebelled against historical Judaism was mainly atheistic. Most of its leaders and activists ceased believing in redemption through the coming of the Messiah, the long-standing essence of Jewish belief, and took their fate into their own hands. The power of the human subject replaced the power of the omnipotent God.
Indeed, Theodor Herzl, the widely accepted “founder” of Zionism, was an avowed atheist, as was David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, as well as Golda Meir, Moshe Dyan and other early leaders of Israel.
Many Jews actively oppose the State of Israel
Orthodox Jews (Haredi) always opposed Zionism, due to the secular nature of the movement, and its “giving up” on waiting for the Messiah. Judaism teaches that the Messiah will come to lead the Jews back to Israel. Haredim believe that the Zionists are going against God by arrogating to themselves the mission of the Messiah in creating a secular ethno-nationalist state in Israel.
The orthodox Jews who had been living in Palestine were “alarmed” by the arrival of the secular Zionists, according to Wikipedia:
Within Palestine itself, the local Ashkenazi Haredi community of the Old Yishuv was opposed to Zionism. As Zionist settlement was underway during the 19th and 20th centuries, they were alarmed by the influx of predominantly non-religious Jews who wished to establish a secular state in the Holy Land and threatened the peaceful relations the Orthodox community had enjoyed with their Arab neighbors until this point.
Indeed, many conservative Jews today support the Palestinian cause and actively oppose the Zionist Israeli state.
Learning about the secular, atheistic origins of Zionism, and seeing the various religious Jewish sects actively opposing the Israeli state, made me realise that Zionism is NOT Judaism, Israel does NOT represent all Jews, and most of all, anti-Zionism is NOT anti-Semitism.
Revelation Nr. 3: Palestine and Palestinians have a long history
Growing up as I did in the USA, I was force-fed a lot of pro-Zionist propaganda, or what the Israelis call hasbara.
As former Israel Prime Minister Shimon Peres once said, “The country [Palestine] was mostly an empty desert, with only a few islands of Arab settlement; and Israel’s [cultivated] land today was indeed redeemed from swamp and wilderness.”
“A land without a people for a people without a land”
I remember as a child hearing the familiar refrain: “A land without a people for a people without a land”.
This slogan led us in the West to believe that no one was living in Palestine; that the place was deserted, and it was easy for the Jews to “peacefully” move in and settle in the “wilderness” that was Palestine.
The wilderness motif was further enforced when we were told over and over again that the brave, resourceful, hard-working Israelis “made the desert bloom”.
More hogwash. The Palestinian people had been cultivating that land for millennia.
“No such thing as a Palestinian”
Golda Meir, the seventh Prime Minister of Israel, was the first to assert that “There was no such thing as Palestinians” before the Zionist Israelis showed up. According to Wikipedia, Meir coined this narrative in an interview with The Sunday Times on June 15, 1969. In an interview the following year, she repeated her claim:
“There was no such thing in this area as Jews, and Arabs, and Palestinians. There were Jews and Arabs“.
Meir also stated that she herself was a Palestinian. “I am a Palestinian”, she told Thames TV. “From 1921 to 1948, I carried a Palestinian passport”.
Moreover, the great irony that seems to have been lost on Meir is that, prior to 1948, there was no Israeli state and there were no Israelis.
Meir’s dismissal of the Palestinian people was reiterated in March of this year by the far-right Likudnik and Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a self-proclaimed Jewish supremacist who favours genocide of the Palestinians in order to re-establish Greater Israel (Eretz-Israel).
Smotrich, speaking at an event in March, maintained that the notion of a Palestinian people was artificial:
“There is no such thing as a Palestinian nation. There is no Palestinian history. There is no Palestinian language,” he said…The lectern was adorned with what appeared to be an image showing the map of Israel that included the occupied West Bank, Gaza and Jordan.
Zionists are constantly trying to convince us that the Palestinians don’t really exist as a people. Palestinian jurist Henry Cattan explains the larger narrative promulgated by Zionists in his book, The Palestine Question:
Zionist apologists have reached a new stage in deceit by suggesting that not only the Palestinians did not exist in Palestine, but that Palestine was essentially ‘uninhabited’ by Arabs before the Zionist movement began towards the end of the nineteenth century, and that the Arabs came in large numbers after that, from nearby countries, drawn by the economic benefits of Jewish settlements.
Contrary to the Zionist narrative, Palestinians have a long and rich history, which included living in peace with their Jewish and Christian neighbours. I say there was no Palestinian identity is simply a lie, a supporting narrative that is part of the overall Zionist campaign of genocide toward the Palestinian people.
In fact, Wikipedia shows that Palestine was mentioned in ancient Egyptian texts from the 12th century BCE, and the region was specifically called Palestine in the Histories of Herodotus in 5th century BCE.
Today, there are 14.3 million Palestinians in the world, of which 5.3 million live in the Occupied Territories of Gaza and the West Bank. The rest have been scattered to various countries as a result of the Nakba and other Zionist pogroms.
Revelation Nr. 4: Israel is a “Settler Colonial” state
Until recently, I was not aware of the whole “settler colonialism” debate as it pertained to Israel.
Wikipedia defines settler colonialism as follows:
Settler colonialism occurs when colonisers invade and occupy territory to permanently replace the existing society with the society of the colonisers
Wikipedia also confirms that Israel is a settler colonial state:
“…scholars who have used a settler-colonial analysis of Israel/Palestine include Edward Said, Rashid Khalidi, Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, Fayez Sayegh, Maxime Rodinson, George Jabbour, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Baha Abu-Laban, Jamil Hilal, and Rosemary Sayigh.
Moreover, as Wikipedia mentions, many of the fathers of Zionism themselves described their project as colonialism, such as Vladimir Jabotinsky who said “Zionism is a colonisation adventure”.
Yet, despite all evidence to the contrary, Zionist Israelis insist that there never was “a nation called Palestine”, and therefore there could be no Palestinians, and no “existing society” to replace.
The eradication of indigenous identity is something that happens in every settler colonial project, whether it was in Palestine or in America.
Indeed, I myself have made the argument (in this article) that the United States and Israel have “shared values” that are based in settler colonialism. They both insist that they, as “civilised” people, have simply conquered a “wilderness” that was sparsely inhabited by “savages” who were not proper “stewards” of the land.
Settlers are ascendant
The settler colonial spirit is most robustly embodied in the modern-day Israeli settlers who are setting up towns, farms and so-called “outposts” on Palestinian land in the West Bank.
These settlers are the most violently Zionist, and represent the most ardent supporters of the biblical arguments for Eretz-Israel. They are not interested in a Palestinian state. They believe that God gave them the land that the Palestinians are now only “temporarily” occupying, and they feel completely justified in taking the land, the houses, the property of the Palestinian “interlopers”.
The illegal settlements in the West Bank have surged in recent years. There are now almost 500,000 settlers in over 200 settlements. Violence against Palestinians in the supposedly “safe” West Bank has also surged.
These settlers are far right extremists — and they are armed. Itamar Ben Gvir, the Israeli minister responsible for security and police, is himself a settler, and he has decided to distribute assault rifles to the settler population in the West Bank.
As a result, hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Zionist settlers since October 7 alone.
Hamas sums it up correctly
In 2017, Hamas issued a new charter document consisting of 42 separate articles, one of which addresses the settler colonial nature of what they call “the Zionist project”:
17. Hamas rejects the persecution of any human being or the undermining of his or her rights on nationalist, religious or sectarian grounds. Hamas is of the view that the Jewish problem, anti-Semitism and the persecution of the Jews are phenomena fundamentally linked to European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims or to their heritage. The Zionist movement, which was able with the help of Western powers to occupy Palestine, is the most dangerous form of settlement occupation which has already disappeared from much of the world and must disappear from Palestine.
Recognition of the State of Palestine
Perhaps the most stark testimony to the fact that Israel is a settler colonial enterprise took place when it came time to officially recognise the State of Palestine.
The map below shows those states that recognise Palestine (dark green) and those who refuse (gray). As you can see, the nations that recognise Palestine are almost all themselves former victims of settler colonialism; the ones who refuse to recognise Palestine are themselves settler colonialist societies.
In fact, as Hamas noted, settler colonialism has “disappeared from much of the world”, and it is no surprise that those countries in which settler colonialism was defeated were the ones who voted to recognise the Palestinian State.
Revelation Nr. 5: Israelis are killing Christians
Under the British Mandate, about 11% of Palestinians were Christians. But “the vast majority” of these Christians fled or were expelled by Zionist militias from the Jewish-controlled areas of Mandatory Palestine during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, according to Wikipedia.
Christians in Palestine and Israel are under constant attack
The Christians currently living in Israel-Palestine are of many nationalities, including Arab, Armenian, Greek, Italian and many others. The various denominations include Latin Catholics, Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Greek Orthodox, Coptics and others.
Under Netanyahu’s Likudnik regime, Christians are constantly under attack in Israel-Palestine, especially from Zionist settlers, while Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has refused to condemn the attacks.
Right wing Israeli settlers are attacking Christian tourists and pilgrims to the Holy Land, beating them up, even spitting on them while they walked along the Via Dolorosa during the Via Crucis procession. This would be a hate crime if it happened in any other country, but Security Minister Ben Gvir, who is in charge of crime and policing, dismissed the incidents as “not a crime”, but rather “an old Jewish tradition” and warned those who criticise the practice to “stop slandering Israel”.
The Palestinian Authority’s Supreme Presidential Committee for Follow-up of Church Affairs in Palestine has criticised Ben Gvir, saying the minister’s remarks
“are not just passing words, but rather a real threat to the lives of Christians… which will have dangerous and unexpected consequences, as racist and extremist practices have become openly practiced against everyone who is not a Jew.”
Indeed, the Israeli government, while paying lip service to “religious freedom”, is doing little to suppress the anti-Christian violence that is ravaging the country.
Christians in Gaza are targeted for extermination
The genocide that Israel is committing in Gaza is also targeting Christians. The Palestinian Christian population in Gaza is made up of Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants — all of whom are now targeted for death by Israel.
On October 19, Israel bombed the Church of Saint Porphyrius, the Gaza Strip’s oldest, killing at least 18 people. The Catholic Holy Family Church and the Gaza Baptist Church have also been attacked.
On December 16, a Christian woman and her daughter who had taken refuge in the Holy Family Catholic church in Gaza City were shot dead by an Israeli sniper. The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said the two women were “shot in cold blood” while Pope Francis condemned the murder during his weekly Sunday homily.
It should be noted that the Catholic church was targeted by Israel even after the US Congress had sent Israel the location of the Church and its Convent with a plea to spare this important heritage site from destruction. Israel ignored the American request.
This is the essence of Zionist Nazism: as the Master Race, as “God’s Chosen People”, the Zionists must cleanse the land of “everyone who is not a Jew”.
Indeed, across all of Israel-Palestine, anti-Christian attacks have surged since October 7, even though Christians are not members of Hamas.
The false Israeli narrative about Christians in Gaza
Israel has gone to great lengths to completely ignore the Christians in Palestine, and even greater lengths to promulgate a false narrative that maintains that “there are no churches in Gaza” and “no Christians in Gaza”. In fact, Israelis falsely claim that Hamas “drove out” all the Christians in Gaza.
This false narrative is an integral part of Israel’s overall hasbara framing of the conflict in Israel-Palestine as a religious one, namely that the Palestinians are all Muslim Arabs who are hell-bent on killing Jews. This framing dovetails with Israel’s other narrative, namely that the current conflict did not start in 1948 with the Nakba, but rather is an ancient conflict that “has been going on for thousands of years”.
Israel is attacking Christianity EVERYWHERE
The attacks on Christian heritage are not just limited to Gaza, however. On December 23, Israel bombed a 600-year old Christian monastery in Lebanon. The monastery suffered significant damage as a result of the bombing.
Zionists strive to build support among the Christian West by claiming that Muslim “terrorists” are the common enemy. But in reality, for the Israelis, every non-Jew — including Christians — is on their extermination list.
Zionists frame the conflict as being between “Jews and Arabs”, but in reality, Israel is conducting a racist, Nazi-like campaign of extermination of all “non-Jewish” elements in Palestine, regardless of ethnicity or religion.
Revelation Nr. 6: Israel is NOT a “democracy”
I grew up hearing a constant refrain when it came to Israel: namely that Israel is our ally because they are “the only democracy in the Middle East”. This was a universally accepted shibboleth. And yet Israel, by virtue of its own laws and its own demographic complexion, is anything BUT a real “democracy”.
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Democracy Index for 2019, which ranked 167 countries by five democratic criteria, listed Israel as a “flawed democracy”. But even that description is far, far too forgiving — indeed downright misleading.
As Ben White wrote in The Independent:
Consider the following. Millions of Palestinians are subjected to a military regime which, for 52 years, has facilitated the establishment of illegal settlements. Settlers are Israeli citizens, and vote. The Palestinians they live among — whose land the settlers inhabit and colonise — are not.
But even the non-Jews who live in Israel proper are treated as second class citizens. Many do not realise that 1 in 4 Israeli citizens (26.5%) are “non-Jews”, e.g., Arab Muslims, Christians, etc.
Yet, as Ben White points out in his article, the 2018 Jewish Nation-State law defines Israel as “the national home of the Jewish people”, and asserts that “the right to exercise national self-determination in the state of Israel is unique to the Jewish people”.
But the legislation simply enshrined what was the de facto discrimination that h ad existed since the very foundation of the state of Israel. In fact, even mainstream Israeli news outlets like Haaretz acknowledge openly that Arab Israelis are “second class citizens”, and that the Nation-State law only “makes discrimination in Israel constitutional”.
Indeed, Fady Khoury, attorney for Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, quipped: “We don’t have to keep looking for policies that resemble Jim Crow,” adding that:
“The law itself does not mention the word democracy even once”.
Nadim N. Rouhana, a professor at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, wrote in Foreign Policy back in 2010:
“The United States should not be fooled by Israel’s claim that it can be both Jewish and democratic”.
Even general public opinion about Israel in recent years has changed, to where most people — as well as international NGOs such as Human Rights Watch (HRW)— regard Israel as “an apartheid state”.
Indeed, the 2021 report by HRW found that, in the wake of the 2018 Nation-State Law, a “threshold was crossed”, and “Israeli authorities are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution” when it came to its non-Jewish population.
Their conclusion was based not just on the domination of Jewish Israelis over their Arab citizens, but also on the “grave abuses committed against Palestinians living in the occupied territory”.
Israel’s alliance with Apartheid South Africa — “birds of a feather”
The state of Israel was created in 1948, the same year that the National Party won elections in South Africa and began instituting its racist apartheid regime.
During the 1960s. the two racist countries formed a political and military alliance. This alliance between the two nations was a natural one, as the South African government’s yearbook described the two countries having one thing in common above all else: “They are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples.”
The relationship and cooperation between the two countries became even deeper after Israel occupied the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, and the Syrian Golan Heights in the June 1967 War and needed to manage their own large population of disenfranchised “brown people”.
An Israel-South African “hasbara” alliance
It should not be surprising that Israel, in violation of UN resolutions and international laws, forged and maintained a strong “security alliance” with Apartheid South Africa.
In 1975, Israel and South Africa formed a “Joint Secretariate for Political and Psychological Warfare”, which included “propaganda and psychological warfare”. It was part of a $100 million South African propaganda campaign to rehabilitate the country’s image internationally. According to a report from NBC News:
“Under terms of the agreement, championed by Peres, then Defense Minister, and Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister, Israel would help South Africa burnish its international reputation. South Africa would supply the money, with each country appointing a secretary to look after its interests.
Not surprisingly, Israel has denied such an alliance ever existed — despite all the evidence.
Bibi says the quiet part out loud
I have friends that still maintain that Israel is “technically” a democracy. Even the Economist’s Global Democracy Index says that Israel is a “flawed” democracy, but still a democracy.
But, as Anshel Pfeffer noted in Haaretz:
Essentially, Israel is the world’s only high-functioning illiberal democracy. Or as legislator Ahmad Tibi puts it, “democratic for Jews and Jewish for Arabs.”
But Bibi has taken off the gloves; there is no longer even an attempt to deny that Israel is an Apartheid state. He recently declared that not all Israeli citizens are equal:
Israel is “the nation state not of all its citizens, but only of the Jewish people” — Benjamin Netanyahu
Revelation Nr. 7: Israeli cruelty did not start on October 7
People across the world are aghast at what Israel is doing in Gaza. The sheer scale of the slaughter is mind-boggling. The deliberate targeting of schools, hospitals and other civilian structures amounts to a war crime. The fact that 70% of the victims are women and children makes the tragedy even more criminal, and even more incomprehensible.
Many believe that this cold-hearted murder of Palestinians is the result of a mass psychosis, a societal trauma that Israel suffered on October 7, 2023, that the whole country is “going crazy” with blind revenge after the horrific attack by Hamas. But unfortunately, what is happening in Gaza ia anything but new.
“Mowing the grass”
The current campaign of destruction that Israel is conducting in Gaza has been named Operation Iron Swords by the IDF. But there have been many other such “operations”.
In order to maintain their reign of terror over the Palestinians, Israel finds it necessary to launch deadly military campaigns against Gaza every two years or so. This practice has come to be called “mowing the grass” — a term coined by two Israeli researchers to describe what Wikipedia calls “a patient military strategy of attrition with limited goals: to diminish their opponents’ capacity to harm Israel, and to accomplish temporary deterrence”.
Operation Summer Rains was launched in 2006 after Hamas captured an IDF corporal named Gilad Shalit. The operation resulted in over 400 Palestinians dead and over 1000 wounded. Even then, however, the United Nations Human Rights Council was sounding the alarm about Israel’s behaviour:
“Gaza had been tightly controlled before the capture of Corporal Shalit. Artillery fire, sonic booms and targeted assassinations, frequently also resulting in the death of innocent civilians, were evidence of Israel’s control of Gaza airspace. In addition, Israel had bombarded Gaza indiscriminately from the sea and external borders had been frequently closed, with disastrous consequences for the supply of food and medicine”.
While many now regard Israel’s recent cutting of power, food and medicine to Gaza as genocidal, such an action is, alas, standard operating procedure for Israel. The 2006 UNHRC report continued:
“In the past week the situation had worsened, with water, food and medicine shortages, power cuts following the destruction of the only power plant in the Gaza Strip, heavy artillery fire, the disruption of transport by the destruction of roads and bridges, and the closing of external borders to people and supplies”.
Operation Autumn Clouds was also launched in 2006. This operation killed almost 100 Palestinians and wounded almost 300. This was followed by Operation Hot Winter in March, 2008, which inflicted a similar number of casualties.
Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009 was the first large-scale operation against Gaza. According to Amnesty International, some 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including some 300 children, and hundreds of other unarmed civilians, including more than 115 women and some 85 men aged over 50 during the 22-day Operation.
Operation Returning Echo and Operation Pillar of Defense were both launched in 2012, resulting in hundreds of Palestinians killed and over 1000 wounded.
Operation Protective Edge in 2014 was another large scale Israeli attack on Gaza, and one that resembles — albeit on a much smaller scale — the current operation. The 2014 campaign resulted in over 2,200 Palestinians killed, of which at least 65% were civilians (according to the UN). Like the current operation, important civilian structures and landmarks were targeted for destruction. The casualty numbers were shocking (at the time) and prompted many NGOs and others to wonder whether Israel was deliberately targeting civilians.
Operation Black Belt was conducted over a 48 hour period in 2019 nd resulted in around 150 Palestinian casualties.
The Great March of Return
The 2019 attack on Gaza took place about one year after The Great March of Return. The mass demonstrations on Israel’s border with the Strip began on Land Day, in March 2018, and continued on a weekly basis until January, 2020.
According to Haaretz:
These ongoing confrontations, in protest of Israel’s siege of Gaza, exacted the lives of 215 demonstrators, while 7,996 were wounded by live ammunition, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The Great March was a 100% peaceful protest, yet Israel used the event to exact punishment from the protesters. IDF snipers set up on the fence line and started shooting kneecaps. As one sniper told Haaretz:
“From the point of view of hits, I have the most. In my battalion they would say: ‘Look, here comes the killer.’ When I came back from the field, they would ask, ‘Well, how many today?’ You have to understand that before we showed up, knees were the hardest thing to rack up. There was a story about one sniper who had 11 knees all told, and people thought no one could outdo him. And then I brought in seven-eight knees in one day. Within a few hours, I almost broke his record.”
This cruel practice was designed to ensure that thousands of Palestinians would be handicapped for life. Years later, victims are still suffer4ing, according to a UN report.
Daily atrocities
Atrocities are committed by the Israeli occupation Forces against the Palestinian people on a daily basis.
In 2005, The Guardian reported:
An Israeli army officer who fired the entire magazine of his automatic rifle into a 13-year-old Palestinian girl and then said he would have done the same even if she had been three years old was acquitted on all charges by a military court…
Since October 7, the world has been treated to a wave of scandalous social media posts by Israelis calling for the destruction of Palestinian civilians — even the killing of babies.
But this is nothing new. Israeli soldiers have been posting highly violent, racist material on social media for years. In 2013, an Israeli soldier sparked outrage by posting a photograph appearing to show the back of a Palestinian boy’s head in the crosshairs of his sniper rifle on a social networking site.
Killing babies
Israeli police and the IDF are infamous for their brutal targeting of children and even babies.
A UN report from October 2023 explains:
Israeli occupation forces kill, maim, orphan and detain hundreds of children in the occupied Palestinian territory every year…
From 2008 until 6 October 2023, 1,434 Palestinian children were reportedly killed, with an additional 32,175 sustaining injuries, primarily at the hands of Israeli occupation forces. Of these, 1,025 children were killed in Gaza alone, since the unlawful blockade began in 2007…Between 2019 and 2022, 1,679 Palestinian children and 15 Israeli children sustained lasting physical injuries, leaving many permanently disabled. An average of 500–700 Palestinian children are reported to be detained by Israeli occupation forces each year, with an estimated 13,000 mostly arbitrarily detained, interrogated, tried in military courts and imprisoned since 2000.
Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur, described the effect of the Israeli policies towards children:
“Generations of Palestinian children, whether in the besieged Gaza Strip, the West Bank enclaves or annexed east Jerusalem, have seen their lives reduced to the bare minimum and, far too often, cut short as expendable,” Albanese said. “This is profoundly “unchilding”: it takes away the lightness of childhood and robs children of their future,” she said.
The behaviour of the Israeli security forces seems inhuman, but their attitude towards Palestinian children can be easily explained through the Zionist worldview: the Palestinians — indeed every non-Jew — is inferior, “subhuman” and, in the case of the Palestinians, must be eradicated from the Land of Israel.
Now, if your mission is to eradicate an infestation of vermin, you don’t spare the babies, because they will only grow up to be adult vermin.
So, to an IDF soldier or an Israeli policeman, the age of the Palestinian is irrelevant: they are all “terrorists” (or future terrorists) and all enemies of Israel, and so the policy of ”unchilding” Palestinian youths is just one part of the overall Israeli policy of genocide.
Revelation Nr. 8: “Every accusation is a confession”
Israeli authorities have launched a veritable tsunami of hasbara disinformation aimed at Hamas, with a cavalcade of various Israeli officials claiming that Hamas committed the most unspeakable acts, such as beheading babies, putting babies in ovens, cutting off women’s breasts and playing with them, and using rape as a weapon of war.
Killing children and babies is, for Israel, an important part of keeping the Palestinians terrified and demoralised. They know the impact of a child’s murder, they rely on this shock and disgust as an integral part of their Apartheid policy towards Palestinians.
That is why, in the wake of October 7, 2023, the Israeli hasbara machine immediately issued wild stories about “Hamas barbarity”, claiming that the Palestinian soldiers had beheaded babies, thrown babies into ovens, burned babies alive, and so on.
Indeed, according to the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv University:
120 operations rooms and dozens of databases dealing with public diplomacy (hasbara) were set up immediately after the October 7 massacre.
In addition, the INSS reveals:
Unlike in previous rounds of fighting with Hamas, it appears that in the Swords of Iron [Gaza] war, thousands of Israeli citizens have joined “professional” network influencers in the global struggle over the narrative. In addition, dozens if not hundreds of civilian “war rooms” have been set up to stream public diplomacy explanatory material, and work groups focusing on technology and the cognitive campaign were formed, designed to make hasbara — Hebrew for public diplomacy — more effective.
It should be noted that, according to the Tel Aviv University lexicon, “public diplomacy explanatory material” means propaganda. These disinformation narratives are designed to disguise or distract from real human rights abuses perpetrated by Israel in Gaza.
All of these claims have, over time, been debunked. It seems that Israeli disinformation has been flooding the news and social media in order to generate outrage against Hamas and sympathy for Israel.
“Baking a baby in an oven”
One of the most shocking accusations made by Israel against Hamas was that they “baked a baby in an oven”. It seems like such an outlandish thing to say. I mean, where did they get the idea to make this claim?
As it happens, the “baby in an oven” meme comes from what the Irgun and Lehi did at Deir Yassin, a Palestinian village, during the Zionist paramilitaries’ “War of Independence”. There the Zionists murdered over 100 people, mostly women, children and the elderly.
One of the more gory details that emerged from the investigation into the massacre was how the Zionists made a Palestinian baker throw his own son in the oven. When it comes to Israel, “every accusation is a confession”, and no matter how extreme and outlandishly cruel and brutal the accusation, it comes from Israel’s own guilt.
Gaza is one big war crime scene
Dehumanisation, torture and brutality by Zionists against Palestinians is nothing new, but in the current conflict the Israelis have ratcheted up the barbarity to whole new levels.
Yuval Abraham, writing for the Israeli news outlet +972, wrote about the mistreatment of Palestinians in northern Gaza:
According to these testimonies, Israeli soldiers subjected Palestinian detainees to electric shocks, burned their skin with lighters, spat in their mouths, and deprived them of sleep, food, and access to bathrooms until they defecated on themselves. Many were tied to a fence for hours, handcuffed, and blindfolded for most of the day. Some testified to having been beaten all over their bodies and having cigarettes extinguished on their necks or backs. Several people are known to have died as a result of being held in these conditions.
A culture of rape and sexual violence
One of the most viral claims by Israel — and Netanyahu personally — is the narrative that Hamas “weaponised rape” and used “sexual violence” against innocent Israeli women during the course of October 7.
The truth, of course, is that it is ISRAEL that uses rape as a tool for interrogation, to forcibly recruit Palestinian informants through blackmail, and as a general weapon of war and a tool of the occupation.
Rape hasbara
After two months of the Gaza genocide, Israel realised that, despite thge power of their they were losing the information war on social media and in public debate. The world was becoming increasingly outraged at the murder of children, the destruction of hospitals, the flattening of apartment buildings, schools and other civilian structures. Israel had to do something to reclaim the moral high ground.
Israel then fired up its vaunted hasbara “digital diplomacy” machine and set about portraying Hamas not as fearsome resistance fighters, but as vicious criminal rapists and murderers.
The massive campaign was launched by pantsuit feminists like Hillary Clinton and Sheryl Sandberg, and Israel even organised a special session at the UN, where the Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan presented their hasbara evidence:
“Families were burned alive, children executed in front of their parents and parents executed in front of their children…But the crimes didn’t end there: Hamas used rape and sexual violence as weapons of war”.
The New York Times published a long form story about Hamas raping, parroting the Israeli narrative. The story was roundly debunked, however, due to a complete lack of evidence, and contradictory testimony by family members of the alleged victims.
Rape as officially sanctioned IDF policy?
In fact, the Chief Rabbi of the Israeli Defense Forces, Colonel Eyal Karim, is literally on record saying that rape is permitted in times of war.
“One of the most important and decisive values in war is maintaining the fighting capacity of the army.…in war the barriers of modesty and kashrut are “breached”…even though associating with a heathen is a very serious thing, it was allowed in the war out of consideration for the difficulties of the fighters. And since the success of the whole in the war is before our eyes, the Torah allowed the individual to satisfy the evil urge under the conditions it allowed, for the sake of the success of the whole.
So, according to the chief “spiritual advisor” of the IDF, rape is permissible in times of war in order to “maintain the fighting capacity of the army” — as long as the victim of the rape was a “heathen”, or non-Jew.
Blowback
The problem, of course, is that once rape is sanctioned under any conditions, it starts to happen under all conditions.
No wonder, then, that Karim is also against women in the armed forces. Given his views on rape, he probably knew that a co-ed military that believes rape is OK could lead to unintended consequences:
Revelation Nr. 9: It’s not your daddy’s Israel
I was an enthusiastic supporter of Bernie Sanders, and contributed all I could to his Presidential campaigns both in 2016 and 2020. One of the things I loved about Bernie was that he was an unabashed “democratic socialist”, and he did a lot to “de-toxify” the word socialism in the American body politic.
Bernie mentioned often that he had spent time in Israel, working on a kibbutz in the 1960's. A kibbutz is a type of socialist commune, and many articles appeared during 2016 claiming that it was on that kibbutz that Bernie “learned about socialism”. For this, he was widely criticised by the American Right.
As a CNN article about Bernie explained,
The kibbutz was a cornerstone of Israeli society in the decades before and after the nation was founded in 1948. They were a way for Jewish immigrants from all over the world to work together, growing crops and building a sense of community. Members, known as kibbutzniks, looked after the land, shared property and distributed profits equally.
The kibbutz where Bernie worked was Sha’ar HaAmakim. Founded in 1935 by Romanian and Yugoslavian Jewish immigrants, Shaar HaAmakim was part of Hashomer Hatzair, a secular socialist youth movement. The kibbutz was affiliated with Mapam, a political party to the left of Labor.
The kibbutz was, for me emblematic of Israel. It reflected the secular, socialist nature of the Zionist cause, the Marxist-influenced communal nature of the society, made up of hippie peaceniks who were reluctant warriors and just wanted to be left alone to grow their fruit and olives.
The death of the kibbutz
But that was then, this is now. As the CNN article explains: “The role and influence of the kibbutz has greatly diminished in modern Israel”. In 1977, the Likud Party, a far right political movement and the direct spiritual and philosophical descendant of the violent Zionist terror groups, Irgun and Lehi, took power in Tel Aviv. This “Nazi and Fascist” party, against which Einstein had warned us in 1948, has ruled Israel practically without pause for almost half a century, and has transformed Israel from a peace-seeking socialist state to a warlike, expansionist, racist ethno-nationalist empire that attacks its neighbors unprovoked and with arrogant impunity.
The secular, socialist orientation of Israel has given way to the extreme religious dogma and a messianic belief that Eretz-Israel must be retaken and the temple re-established “with the sword”, as Lehi’s Avraham Stern wrote.
CNN notes this change only in passing:
“The last group of overseas volunteers left Shaar Ha’amakim about a decade ago, the result of a changing business model and the overall decline of the kibbutz in Israeli society”.
The “decline of the kibbutz” signals for me the transformation of Israel from a secular, Western European-style, socialist society foregrounding equality and universality among peoples to the theocratic fascist state of today, with a bifurcated world view, dividing the world between Jew and non-Jew, between God’s chosen people and “heathens” worthy of slaughter.
Mind you, Israeli Zionism was always a settler colonial enterprise, always prone to violence and nationalism, but at least under the secular Labor governments, the more radical, racist elements of Israeli society were kept at bay.
Now, the lunatics have taken over the asylum.
Revelation Nr. 10: Israel is committing Genocide
The word “genocide” has a very specific legal meaning, as set forth in the United Nations’ Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The definition contained in Article II of the Convention describes genocide as a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.
According to the UN, the Genocide Convention “was the first human rights treaty to be adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations and signified the international community’s commitment to ‘never again’ after the atrocities committed during the Second World War”.
It is no mere coincidence that the Convention on Genocide was passed by the UN in 1948, the same year that the Zionist settlers proclaimed the State of Israel.
Which makes the present situation all the more tragically, disastrously ironic.
Israel is officially charged with genocide
There can be no doubt that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
The obvious nature of the genocide led to South Africa lodging a formal application with the International Court of Justice in December to institute proceedings against Israel for the commission of genocide on the people of Gaza.
The meticulously documented and sourced application is 84 pages long and provides a detailed, in-depth description of the history and the tragedies suffered by the Gazan people under Israeli occupation.
Regarding the current state of affairs in Gaza, the application recites a depressing litany of destruction:
“…at least 21,110 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed and over 55,243 other Palestinians have been wounded, many severely. 56 The death toll includes over 7,729 children,57 not including the 4,700 women and children still missing, and presumed dead under the rubble.58 Entire multi-generational families have been wiped out completely. Over 355,000 homes equivalent to more than 60 per cent of Gaza’s housing stock in Gaza has been damaged or destroyed.
1.9 million Palestinians — approximately 85 per cent of the total population — have been internally displaced. Many fled the north of the territory to the south, having been ordered to do so by Israel, only to be bombed again in the south, and told to flee once again further south or the south west, where they are reduced to living in makeshift tents in camps with no water, sanitation or other facilities.
Israel has bombed, shelled and besieged Gaza’s hospitals, with only 13 out of 36 hospitals partially functional, and no fully functioning hospital left in North Gaza. Gaza’s healthcare system has all but collapsed, with reports of operations, including amputations and caesarean sections, taking place without anaesthetic.
A significant proportion of the wounded and sick are unable to access any or adequate care. Contagious and epidemic diseases are rife amongst the displaced Palestinian population, with experts warning of the risk of meningitis, cholera and other outbreaks.
The entire population in Gaza is at imminent risk of famine, whereas the proportion of households affected by acute food insecurity is the largest ever recorded according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (‘IPC’).66Experts warn that silent, slow deaths caused by hunger and thirst risk surpassing those violent deaths already caused by Israeli bombs and missiles”.
In fact, the application notes, the colour of Gaza as seen from space has changed due to the level of destruction.
It should be noted that surgery without anaesthesia is not new in Gaza. Israel has consistently banned anaesthesia from entering Gaza, and continues to remove the anaesthetics from the paltry few aid shipments that are currently allowed into the enclave.
Proving intent: saying the quiet part out loud
Genocide experts say that the most difficult part about bringing a charge of genocide is proving that the perpetrators actually has the intent to commit genocide, and that all the deaths were not just a by-product of armed conflict.
The South African application to the ICJ addresses this requirement with fully nine pages of documented statements by Israeli officials stating, openly and unequivocally, that their goal is to perpetrate a genocide according to the UN’s definition.
For example, they cite Bibi Netanyahu’s exhortation to the IDF, referencing the Biblical figure of Amalek:
The relevant biblical passage reads as follows: “Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses”.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog was also referenced:
“It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware not involved. It’s absolutely not true. … and we will fight until we break their backbone”.
One of the most damning citations is from Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who declared that Israel was “imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly”.
Gallant went on:
“Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything. If it doesn’t take one day, it will take a week. It will take weeks or even months, we will reach all places.”He further announced that Israel was moving to “a full scale response” and that he had “removed every restriction” on Israeli forces.
There are many other examples. The far-right ministers in Bibi’s cabinet, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich were both cited for their clarion calls for ethnic cleansing — pronouncements that drew the ire even of the Biden Administration.
But it’s not just the leadership
In the face of this unprecedented cruelty and extremism, many in the West are becoming a new sort of Israeli apologist — one that claims it is all about Netanyahu. “Get rid of Bibi”, they reason, “and Israel will go back to normal”.
Unfortunately, that is not true. It is not just that the rise of the religious right and the militant settler mentality has captured the government of Israel — it has captured the entire society.
As the South African application notes:
Similar genocidal rhetoric is also commonplace in Israeli civil society, with genocidal messages being routinely broadcast — without censure or sanction — in Israeli media. The media reports call for Gaza to be “erased,” turned into a “slaughterhouse”, that “Hamas should not be eliminated” but rather “Gaza should be razed”, on the repeated claim that “there are no innocents…There is no population. There are 2.5 million terrorists”.
Former Knesset members have called for a level of destruction akin to that of Dresden and Hiroshima, asserting that it would be “immoral” for the Israeli army not to show themselves to be “vengeful and cruel”.
One Israeli mayor called for Gaza to be flattened, “left empty, just like Auschwitz. A museum. So the whole world will learn what the State of Israel can do.”
In an Israeli news interview, a former Israeli member of the Knesset called for all Palestinians in Gaza to be killed saying:
“I tell you, in Gaza without exception, they are all terrorists, sons of dogs. They must be exterminated, all of them killed. We will flatten Gaza, turn them to dust, and the army will cleanse the area. Then we will start building new areas, for us, above all, for our security.”
A poll was recently taken among Israelis to see what they thought of Netanyahu’s response to the October 7 attacks. The results are shocking.
Almost 2/3 of Israeli Jews (58%) said that the IDF was actually going TOO EASY on the Gazans, and that “more firepower should be used”.
Sadly, less than 2% (1.8%) felt that the IDF was using too much firepower in Gaza.
The poll also showed that 83% of Israeli Jews were opposed to a single state solution with equal rights for Palestinians.
Moreover, in a survey done by the Israeli Democracy Institute, 83% of Israeli Jews said they don't think the suffering of the civilian population in Gaza should be taken into consideration.
Israel’s openly admitted genocide is being committed in broad daylight and with the overwhelming support of the Israeli people. Such a crime should certainly be punished. But how?
Israel is a rogue state
Avi Shlaim, an IDF veteran, wrote in 2009, following Operation Cast Lead:
On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by “an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders”. I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel’s vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration’s complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.
I sympathise with Avi. I believe that there are even more “open questions” now that Israel has shown itself to be completely rogue, irresponsible, unbelievably cruel and homicidally racist on an institutional and societal level such as we have not seen since Nazi Germany.
Israel is “utterly unscrupulous”
Israel has long been a rogue state. I have come to realise that since its inception, Israel has simply refused to abide by what the Americans love to call “the rules based order”.
Illegal nuclear weapons program
Take, for example, Israel’s nuclear arsenal. It is an open secret that Israel has between 90 and 200 nuclear warheads. And yet they refuse to admit this publicly or officially. Moreover, Israel has steadfastly refused to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), despite its members — including the United States — calling upon it to do so. Israel also refuses to allow any inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), despite repeated calls by the UN to do so. Moreover, as part of Israel’s strategiuc alliance with Apartheid South Africa Israel helped the Pretoria regime to develop its own nuclear arsenal in the 1970's.
[Compare this to the way Iran is treated, despite its having actually signed the NPT.]
“Unprovoked” attacks and invasions of its neighbors
Hardly a month goes by without reports of Israel bombing one of its neighbors in the region, or assassinating scientists or leaders. Moreover, Israel has invaded and even occupied parts of Lebanon and Syria — each time with complete impunity. In fact, Israel continues to illegally occupy the Golan Heights, which is the sovereign territory of Syria.
[Compare this to the opprobrium heaped on Russia regarding Ukraine.]
Support for Islamic terrorism
Israel is propped up constantly by American politicians as a “bulwark” in the Middle East, an ally in a bad neighborhood, but Israel often works against the interests of the United States. Thius includes funding, supporting and aiding Islamic terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS. This is especially true in Syria, where Israel has been funding the worst Islamic extremists in a cynical campaign to destabilise the Assad government. In fact, over 500 jihadists have been treated at Israeli military medical facilities. In fact, when ISIS accidentally attacked some IDF soldiers in a firefight, the leadership of ISIS apologised officially to Israel.
Support for Jewish terrorism
The first terrorists of the modern era were the Zionist paramilitaries like Irgun and Lehi, whom the British started calling “terrorists” in the 1940’s as the Zionists mounted a bloody campaign of bombings and assassination aimed at the British Mandate occupying forces.
The forces of Jewish terrorism are once more in control of Israel, embodied in the Netanyahu government and its Jewish Power members such as Itamar Ben Gvir, who are open apostles of Meir Kahane, the anti-Arab American Jewish Rabbi who calling for the slaughter of Arabs put him and his followers in the Kach party on America’s list of terrorists. Thanks to violent, far-right radical racist political parties like Jewish Power and Religious Zionism, “Kahanism” in Israel today is “more popular than ever”, particularly among settlers. And it is this dedication to Jewish terrorism that is now driving Israeli policy.
In fact, Kahane’s extremist Kach party was on the US list of Foreign Terrorist Organisations (FTOs) until 2022, when the Netanyahu government incorporated these “terrorists” into its government.
Conclusion: Project Israel is a mistake
I have come to realise that the whole concept of Israel may be a mistake.
A basic contradiction at the core
As we know, the teachings of Judaism tell us that the Messiah will return and lead the Jews back to their homeland in Israel. The Zionists who founded the State of Israel, however, were atheists, secular socialists who did not believe in the biblical religious teachings. They wanted to create a secular state based on Jewish “nationality” or “ethnicity” rather than Jewish “religion”.
For the Zionists, the Jews were a nation just like any other national group, such as Italians, French, German or Russian. The Jewish nation had been scattered to the winds, but just like those other nations, the Jewish people deserved their own nation state.
For religious Jews, however, this is blasphemy. They believe that Jews are NOT like any other national group. They believe that Jews are “God’s chosen people” and as such, they are transnational and exist above the tawdry, ephemeral construct of the “nations”.
Church versus State remains a problem
When Israel was founded, the founding father and first PM David Ben-Gurion, himself an avowed atheist, wanted to avoid enacting a constitution, fearing that the process of writing a constitution would pit religious Zionists against the secular Zionists, and resulting in a struggle that would make it impossible to create the Western, or British-style secular democracy that he and his fellow secular Zionists wanted.
As Dr. Guy Lurie, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, explains:
Concerns about disunity in particular centered on the religious and secular cleavage…Religious parties argued that the Jewish people already has a constitution, the Torah.
That “cleavage” exists even today, with the religious and the secular forces in Israel struggling for supremacy. Unfortunately, it looks like that struggle is over, and the religious cohort, fuelled by right wing settlers and religious Zionist newcomers, has won the war.
What is a Jew?
One of the reasons that a constitution could not be defined was that there was considerable dispute among Israelis as to what a “Jew” is. Indeed, this matter of “legal Jewishness” remained an open question until the (secular) Israeli Supreme Court ruled on the question in 1970.
In fact, there still remains basic friction and contradictions in Israeli Law, which is a mix of secular law and Halakha as imposed by the Rabbinate (for example, marital law).
Western Law versus Jewish Law
Just as the Jewish people have the Torah as a constitution, Religious Zionists argue that the Jewish people also have their own laws ready made. Jewish Law, known as Halakha, which encompasses civil, criminal and religious law.
Indeed, much of the “judicial reform debate” going on in Israel currently is an attempt to take power away from the secular Supreme Court and give it to the Knesset, which is currently dominated by religious parties like Likud, Jewish Power, Religious Zionist, and Shas. These parties want to pass laws that bring Israel closer to Halakha, and they do not want the Supreme Court to be able to strike them down.
Israel is full of contradictions and falsehoods
Israel was never a real thing; it was a “Jewish State”, yet it was founded by atheists. That alone makes no sense.
And yet the secular Zionists were quick to seize — cynically — upon biblical and religious references to lay claim to their “ancestral homeland”.
Many if not most Zionists were — and still are — Ashkenazi Jews who are descended from Europeans, and don’t have a drop of Semitic blood in their veins. And yet they have completely “owned” the term “anti-Semitism” and use it as a weapon against anyone who criticises Zionist expansionism, chauvinism and racism.
Indeed, Zionists charge that the Palestinians are the “interlopers” who have unjustly settled on “Jewish” land.
Even Israeli names are fake. In order to create a narrative and a sort of Hebrew, Semitic mystique, Israeli leaders give themselves Hebrew names. David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s “founding father”, was actually named David Grün. Benjamin Netanyahu’s real last name is Mileikowsky (his father changed it when he emigrated from Poland). Mark Regev, who served as Israeli Ambassador to the UK from 2016–2020, is actually an Australian named Mark Freiburg.
I must agree with Hamas
At first, I was tempted to “follow the crowd” and blindly condemn the Hamas attacks on October 7. In general, I condemn the taking of civilian life, and if such may have been committed by Hamas (which has yet to be adequately proven, in my opinion), I would condemn the individual acts, although I cannot condemn Hamas generally.
Indeed, following the series of revelations that I have elucidated above, I find myself agreeing with the Hamas Charter article in which Hamas accurately define the Zionist project that is the State of Israel:
14. “The Zionist project is a racist, aggressive, colonial and expansionist project based on seizing the properties of others; it is hostile to the Palestinian people and to their aspiration for freedom, liberation, return and self-determination. The Israeli entity is the plaything of the Zionist project and its base of aggression”.
Israel has reached its end stage
Chris Hedges wrote recently:
The late Yeshayahu Leibowitz, one of Israel’s most brilliant scholars, warned that, followed to its logical conclusion, the occupation of the Palestinians would mean “concentration camps would be erected by the Israeli rulers” and “Israel would not deserve to exist, and it will not be worthwhile to preserve it.” He feared the ascendancy of right-wing, religious Jewish nationalists and warned that “religious nationalism is to religion what National Socialism was to socialism.”
Leibowitz also wrote:
“Not every “return to Zion” is a religiously significant achievement: one sort of return which may be described in the words of the prophet: “When you returned you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination” (Jeremiah 2:7)”.
#End.
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Additional Reading:
The short answer to your question is YES!!!
Israel was a mistake. Apartheid states can no longer be allowed to exist, much less to have nuclear weapons in their arsenals.
South Africa shows us the way. BDS will come for Israel for the simple reason that most Americans really are decent people and take a dim view of genocidal maniacs. It's 2024, not 1824.
Biblically, they should never have been there in the first place. It's in opposition to God. However, Israel does translate to wrestle with God or God wrestler. They gotta go. They're terrible neighbors who refuse to love their neighbors.