The simple truth: Israel has no right to exist — You would laugh at nobodies who said that Zeus/Jupiter gave them the right to Italy and Greece
Israel has completely beyond relinquished any rationale for its right to exist.
You would laugh and laugh at nobodies who said that Zeus/Jupiter gave them the right to claim Italy and Greece because they became followers of Ancient Roman and Greek gods & goddesses and started learning Latin.
Just as we would laugh at nobodies who converted to Buddhism and said that Buddha gave the the right to Tibet and India.
Prelude
I learnt Latin, the language of ancient Roman empire, in high school when I got a full academic scholarship to a private school when I was younger. Being a new student in the middle of high school in year 9, it was the only language I was allowed to learn, because all the other languages were taught from the beginning of high school in year 7.
I excelled at it — my Latin teacher privately said to me and another student when she nominated us both for awards that she could not distinguish between us in terms of our skill — but ultimately I would say that learning it is kind of useless in some ways because no one speaks it anymore. For me it's useful for understanding conjugation and declension (which both appear in other languages like Russian) as well as understanding vocabulary of the Romance languages (like Spanish, French and Italian).
Whenever I hear the rationale for the state of Israel's existence, it would be akin to someone having eagerly learnt about the ancient Roman & Greek gods and goddesses now asking me to teach them Latin, so that they can go kill and torture millions of present-day Italians and Greeks and claim the territory of ancient Rome—even when those Italians would be the actual descendants of ancient Romans, and not them.
Introduction
The first fundamental issue when advocating for Palestine that is probably more obvious to people outside of the West than inside is that there is no proper legitimate rationale for settler-colonialism. Because the rationales have never made any sense, you should not treat the rationale seriously.
In Australia, I met people who think that the god-awful incompetency of the British to provide for all in their society is a legitimate excuse to have invaded a whole continent of First Nations. One of my ex a few years ago, who was half Asian and half white Australian, said—in response to something I said about conditions faced by First Nations people—that white Australians expelled from Britain were jailed and sent to another continent just for stealing bread.
Any outsider would privately wonder how the British were so incompetent that they had to jail people for stealing bread and dump them on the other side of the planet because Britain, a) you were so incompetent that you could not feed your own people despite your expanding planetary empire, and b) you were so incompetent that you jailed the hungry and then your jails were full that you had to steal more space from the other side of the planet.
First Nations people on the largest island continent in the world had absolutely nothing to do with creating the poverty in Britain.
Yet somehow mainstream Australians have it in their minds that the poverty of Britain was a legitimate excuse to cover for the crimes of massacre, theft and genocide of First Nations peoples.
But it's just like for the Holocaust, which is claimed as one of the rationales for the existence of Israel — the Europeans perpetrated that and the indigenous Palestinians had nothing to do with it.
Of course Zionists were already looking at colonising Palestine before 20th century.
Seeing the ceaseless destruction and devastation that Israel has wrought during its existence compounds more and more and more reasons against its existence than for it.
This includes massacres and mass expulsions of Palestinians during the ongoing Nakba starting from 1948, ongoing genocide in Gaza after the creation of the 18 year long blockade on Gaza that turned it into a concentration camp, mass torture and killings of Palestinians across the occupied territories, as well as raids and total oblieration of their homes, hospitals, schools and more.
Israel already previously kept Gaza on minimum amounts of food—as minimal as would not immediately lead to an international humanitarian crisis—before the genocide, and 97% of water was undrinkable there.
The Israel Defence Force reportedly used the Hannibal Directive on October 7 2023 which is an allowance for killing Israeli citizens to stop them from being taken hostage.
Today we remember that horrible, awful tragedy one year ago when Israelis were massacred in huge numbers by Israeli tanks and Israeli helicopters and Israeli soldiers, and also by Hamas a bit. pic.twitter.com/2ZvmeCUMEx
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) October 7, 2024
IDF Ordered Hannibal Directive on October 7 to Prevent Hamas Taking Soldiers Captive
'There was crazy hysteria, and decisions started being made without verified information': Documents and testimonies obtained by Hareetz reveal the Hannibal operation order, which directs the use of force to prevent soldiers being taken into captivity, was employed at three army facilities infiltrated by Hamas, potentially endangering civilians as well.
As other political commentators have said, the reason for Hamas taking hostages from Israel to negotiate is because Israel held 2.3 million Palestinians hostage in Gaza as well as more throughout the occupied territories, for committing no crime.
Before October 7 2023, there were moves towards normalization of diplomatic relations between Israel and other US-backed regimes in the Middle East like the Gulf States, especially Saudi Arabia, which would have seen Israel the settler-colonial state become more legitimised. This was accelerated with the Abraham Accords initiated under former US president Trump.
But Hamas' operation and act of resistance put a stop to all that.
What remains in Israeli society are cheerleaders of massacres and rapists.
Norman Finkelstein
I have hesitated thus far to sound the alarm. But at the risk of being thought mad, it must, as an act of political responsibility, be said out loud: Israel is hurling toward the precipice and dragging the rest of the world with it.
A rational analysis of the current predicament must begin with this bedrock fact: Israel is a crazy state. Not a “bad actor.” Not a “rogue” regime. A crazy state. The full range of Israeli elite opinion, itself reflective of Israeli society at large (which overwhelmingly supports the genocidal war in Gaza; only a handful of Israelis have refused to serve), spans a mere flea’s hop.
[SAMSON AND CASSANDRA by Prof. Norman Finkelstein on Substack]
Israeli soldiers conducted a brutal gang rape of a Palestinian prisoner in Sde Teiman prison recorded on camera, and the main suspect of the case became a media star, among those released due to pressure from Israeli society.
Simon Speakman Cordall
‘Everything is legitimate’: Israeli leaders defend soldiers accused of rape
Adam Horowitz
In Israeli society, the dissident Israeli historian Gideon Levy reported to Chris Hedges and Middle East Eye that even expressing sympathy for Palestinians is not allowed (bold emphasis mine):
Chris Hedges
Well, you write in the book about how after October 7, the liberal Israelis just completely collapsed and said: "Well, I guess the right wing, they're right, we were wrong."
Gideon Levy
Yeah, and other voices are not only very lonely, but became really illegitimate. You know that today, if you pay some empathy to the suffering of the children of Gaza — I can't think about something more innocent than this, I can't think about something more human than this — you might lose your job, you might be fired, you might be called for interrogation, and you might even go to jail. And all those things happened without any resistance in Israeli society. Now it's focused on Israeli-Palestinians and Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, but there were also some Jewish teachers and headmasters who were called for interrogation because of paying empathy, expressing empathy with the children of Gaza, with the victims of Gaza. Even this is not legitimate anymore in Israeli society 2024.
Chris Hedges
It began by criminalising any display of compassion, solidarity, sympathy or even pain in response to the terrible punishment of Gaza. Such views are considered treasonous. Israelis expressing compassion or humanity on social media have been monitored and summoned for police investigation. Some have been fired from their jobs.
This form of McCarthyism has mainly harmed Palestinian citizens of Israel, but sympathetic Jews, too, have evoked a harsh response from authorities. In essence, compassion has been outlawed. It cannot be expressed towards Palestinians - not even dead, wounded, hungry, disabled or orphaned babies. All are rightfully being subjected to the punishments Israel inflicts.
Losing its collective humanity vis-a-vis the Palestinian people may prove irremediable for Israel. That the country will reclaim it after this war is exceedingly doubtful.
The loss of humanity in public discourse is a contagious and sometimes fatal disease. Recovery is very difficult. Israel has lost all interest in what it is doing to the Palestinian people, arguing that they “deserve it” - everyone, including women, children, the elderly, the sick, the hungry and the dead.
The Israeli media, which has been more disgraceful over the past year than ever before, voluntarily carries the flag of incitement, inflaming passions and the loss of humanity, just to gratify its consumers.
Gideon Levy
What Levy says about Israel could absolutely be said about Australia, the US and other settler-colonial states too:
Losing its collective humanity vis-a-vis the Palestinian people may prove irremediable for Israel. That the country will reclaim it after this war is exceedingly doubtful.
The loss of humanity in public discourse is a contagious and sometimes fatal disease. Recovery is very difficult.
In Australia, the culture of killing black and brown people never left. It's a quintessential part of the Australian worldview.
In Vietnamese culture, we don't have any stories of Vietnamese massacring black and brown people and murdering then in cold blood.
In Australia, you see it come up all the time and no one bats an eyelid.
Australian soldiers committed war crimes in Afghanistan, including among many other crimes: ordering an Afghan villager to be killed by kicking him off a cliff, massacring villagers including a 13-year old boy to hide up the killing of a non-combatant in cold blood. The person in jail right now is David McBride, the whistleblower for a bunch of those crimes, not the war criminals. Australians ignored all of this.
An Australian terrorist went to New Zealand and killed more than 50 Muslim people in mosques, and Australians barely even reacted.
The US itself has also caused such a nightmare for the world with its imperialism, being built on slavery and waging wars killing millions of innocent people, during its mere first centuries of existence.
What we refer to as international law is not made and led by anti-colonial forces in the world. There aren't provisions for effectively dealing with terrorizing settler-colonial nightmares like Israel – weirdly there are what are politely described as "obligations as an occupying power".
If there was instead a consensus based on the centuries of experience of anti-colonial freedom fighters in winning our freedoms and defeating colonial powers, we would approach it very differently.
Right now Palestine has the right to armed resistance, but it means little in practice. The armed resistance in Palestine is not substantial enough to completely defend itself and liberate itself from the occupation. And the world has mostly sat on its hands as more than 42,000 Palestinians have been confirmed killed in Gaza, with the likely actual death toll being way higher—aside from the Houthi and Hezbollah armed resistance groups and occasional retaliation strikes by Iran, as well as the legal cases brought by South Africa and Nicaragua.
I would say still that there is just way too little direct action of directly defending the Palestinians and liberating them and their land.
In Chris Hedges' interview with Palestinian journalist and therapist Ashira Darwish, they discuss how Israel has typically crushed non-violent resistance by Palestinians just as much as violent resistance:
Chris Hedges
I want to talk about Rashid Khalidi and his book, 100 Year War in Palestine. He makes this point, which I think is lost on many people outside Palestine, that repression carried out by Israel against nonviolent resistance has, over the decades, always been far harsher than repression against violent resistance because Israel, and the Great March of Return would be the most recent example, Israel realizes that that nonviolent existence resonates. Whereas it's very easy to demonize the violence carried out by groups like Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Can you talk about that, Ashira?
Ashira Darwish
Yeah, this I have experienced on my body. Whenever I used to think that popular resistance is not as powerful, but the way that Israel reacts to nonviolent resistance is what showed me how dangerous it is to them. When we were protesting in Nabi Saleh, and you see Ahed and you see the families and the community there, and how it affected Israel, this idea of having people marching peacefully every day.
Chris Hedges
And you should, I don't want to interrupt, because most people won't know about the importance of that community and what they were doing. It was kind of the epicenter of nonviolent resistance, but explain what they were doing.
Ashira Darwish
Yeah, so every, the popular resistance pockets everywhere around the West Bank, and people would protest every week against the Israeli occupation of their land. In the village of Nabi Saleh, it was specific to the occupation of the water, the spring of the village. And every week we would go and we would march together and we were met by an unbelievable amount of violence from the Israeli army. People were killed for just protesting and chanting and standing in front of the army. It's the place where I was beaten by a commander and lynched until my neck was broken. Many international activists, Israeli activists, were injured in horrific ways so that they can stop it. And when I used to read the Israeli media and how they reacted to every protest, and they were so upset why the international community was applauding and supporting this nonviolent form of resistance, and always trying to play it as what they call “Pallywood” as if the Palestinians are faking it, because they didn't know how to fight, they didn't know how to fight back except with violence. So violence was the only way that they can try to stop the resistance and they arrested everyone in the village, they arrested the children. At some point when we started going it was, all the men of the village were in detention and arrested by the Israeli military and the children, most of the children in those villages have either been arrested, injured, or lost a friend in this struggle, and Israel went with all its might against young women, children, men just chanting. And it scares them because it allows for the West to have empathy for the Palestinians. It scared them because it also removed the veil on this state. And it's much more powerful in a way when you have hundreds and thousands in Gaza marching towards the fence. And they're just basically chanting and wanting to go home. And the way that Israel reacted was to shoot, kill anything that moves–medics, journalists, kids, to try to stop it in any way and form.
And then they ask the Palestinians, why do you resort to violence? [Arabic] Give us an option. We've tried it all. There's not one form of nonviolent resistance that we haven't tried. Singing, chanting. I've done clowns. We've done every form to try and to stop this apartheid regime. We've tried to negotiate. The Palestinian authorities tried its negotiations for 20 years. Nothing.
Nothing moves Israel except for violence and pressure. And this is because this is the only language they know. And this is the only language that really moves them into demonizing us and to enable them to use more violence. But they use the violence anyways. They use the violence against us whether we're chanting or whether we're launching missiles. There's no difference in the actual level of violence that Israel uses towards me or towards if I was holding a rocket. It's the same. The imprisonment, the torture, the amount of pressure they come after your family, the targeting. It's the same, and sometimes worse, for people who are activists and nonviolent. And we've seen it in the way they've targeted Ahed Tamimi and her whole family because of the protests that they launched. We've seen how they try to go after everyone they love and destroy them and arrest them and torture them, so that the pockets of nonviolent resistance are no longer able or capable of chanting and protesting.
Chris Hedges
The language of violence is not only the only language the Israeli occupiers speak, but it's a language they have mastered. Violence is something they do really well.
Chris Hedges
For now, I think that Israel will keep inflicting mass horrors on its neighbours and the people whose land it is occupying, until we finally get rid of the entire state. But it will have come too late for all the people who have been maimed and martyred.
