Blood and Soil

Contrary to what most people claim, the Israel-Palestine conflict is not in itself complicated. Roughly five million people are under military occupation, meaning they don’t get the right to vote, freedom of movement, or access to good employment opportunities. They are often incarcerated without trial or even without pending charges—something called “arbitrary detention”—and many of them never get to travel abroad, ever. In the Gaza Strip, since at least 1991, the Israelis have imposed a blockade of goods and travel; throughout the last 33 years, banned items have included musical instruments, sports equipment like footballs, chocolate, potato chips, farming or fishing tools, wheelchairs, stationary and crayons, fresh meat and fresh fruit, shampoo, jam, candles, books, paint and other art supplies, tomato paste, toilets, all building materials including plaster and wood, spices like nutmeg or cumin, plastic food containers, livestock, sewing machines and fabric, children’s toys, newspapers, heaters, planters for saplings, razor blades, seeds and nuts, hairdryers, x-ray machines, and water pumps. Israel also regularly sprays toxic herbicides to destroy any crops Gazan farmers try to grow. There are Holocaust survivors, alongside Jewish and Israeli scholars, who refer to Gaza as a concentration camp. For the Palestinians living under this occupation, it has inspired a desire for freedom. Merely expressing that desire, however, is punishable by death. Any actions Palestinians might take to garner sympathy for their plight are strictly forbidden. For an illustrative example, we need to look at perhaps the most comprehensive peaceful protest in Gaza’s history: the 2018 March of Return. One woman said, “I decided to participate in the demonstrations because of the blockade. They are killing us slowly, we want to lift the blockade, we want to let the international community see Gaza and see our suffering, and we want to remind them that we are still here and will keep protesting until the blockade is lifted, we don’t live in human conditions anymore.” From the beginning, the organizers stressed the importance of nonviolence, writing: “It is a fully peaceful march from the beginning to the end. It adopts the style of open sit-ins, gradual progress, the construction of tents, and the establishment of a normal life near the separation fence … the organizers are keen to invite international media to cover their message to all the world and are keen on the participation of international and human rights organizations to monitor and ensure the march is peaceful.” Throughout their lengthy white paper, they keep stressing the word peaceful. One of the organizers also explained why the march was happening: “The status quo is unbearable, no salaries, no job opportunities, no horizon for the youth. … We do not ask for much, we just ask to live a normal life.” Hamas even expressed their support and vowed to stay out of the way and to keep it peaceful, with their Political Bureau Chairman saying: “Here I am emphasizing more and more that the march is peaceful, and I hope all the factions and our people understand the aim behind this.” Israel’s response would trigger a lengthy and exhaustive 252-page investigative report by the United Nations. Instead of relying on less-lethal crowd control methods, like water canons, which the IDF said would not have enough range to reach the protesters, they deployed their best snipers behind the separation fence to fire on protesters—whom they referred to as “Hamas families.” The UN report described the protest as “festive, with activities in tents ranging from poetry readings, seminars, lectures, and cultural and sporting activities.” They further noted that “The commission did not find evidence of weapons present at the demonstration site on 30 March, nor were any attempts made to cross the separation fence.” The IDF would end up killing 223 people (including children, journalists, doctors, nurses, and people on crutches and confined to wheelchairs), and injuring 9,204 others. Those injuries are also worth examining, because the snipers deliberately targeted knees—being shot in the knee with a 50-caliber round causes permanent “life-changing” injury, many of them requiring amputation. One IDF sniper told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz about the competition he had with his colleagues: “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. … When I came back from the field they would ask, ‘Well, how many today?’ … I kept the casing of every round I fired, I have them in my room. So I don’t have to make an estimate—I know: 52 definite hits.” He also bragged about holding the all-time “knee record” from 2008, “On that day, our pair had the largest number of hits, 42 in all. My locator wasn’t supposed to shoot, but I gave him a break, because we were getting close to the end of our stint, and he didn’t have knees. In the end, you want to leave with the feeling that you did something, that you weren’t a sniper during exercises only. So, after I had a few hits, I suggested to him that we switch. He got around 28 knees there, I’d say.” The UN report details these shootings. For the sake of brevity, I will only include a small portion of the report: Ahmad Abu Aqel was a 24-year-old from the Jabalia refugee camp. He walked with crutches. … On the morning of 20 April, after having his bandages changed at the medical tent, he sat down alone on a small sand hill near Jakkar Road approximately 150 m from the separation fence of Abu Safia, with his back towards the fence. The ISF [Israel Security Forces] shot him in the back of the head as he sat on the sand hill at approximately 11.15 a.m. He died the same day. The Commission finds that Ahmad did not appear to pose an imminent threat of death or serious injury to the ISF when he was shot. 13-year-old Hussein Madi … was shot at while he ran, he was not hit. He reportedly waited behind a tree for a few minutes, and when he came out, he was shot immediately with a single bullet. According to testimony, there was no warning before the shots came. The Commission finds that Hussein did not pose an imminent threat of death or serious injury to ISF soldiers when he was shot. Fadi Abu Salmi was a 29-year-old double amputee from Khan Younis. … The ISF shot him in the chest with live ammunition as he sat in his wheelchair under a tree approximately 250-300 m from the separation fence with two friends. The Commission finds that Fadi did not appear to pose an imminent threat of life or injury to ISF soldiers at the time he was killed. Mohammad Abdulnaby was a 27-year-old man from the Jabalia refugee camp. He had to walk on crutches after being injured a few months previously. … The ISF shot him in the head when he was still close to Jakkar Road and far from the separation fence. The Commission finds that Mohammad did not appear to pose an imminent threat or serious injury to the ISF when he was shot. 18-year-old Tahir Wahba was deaf. … The ISF shot him in the back of his head with a single bullet at the Khuzaa demonstration site in Khan Younis. The ISF shot 17-year-old Ahmad Al Aayidi in the head as he walked away from the separation fence toward the Camp of Return at the demonstration site … when he was 400-500 m from the fence. According to the eyewitness Ahmad was holding his hand and was shot mid-sentence talking to him. Izzedine Samak was a 13-year-old from El Bureij Refugee Camp. … On their way back to the demonstration area, they stopped to rest about 150 m from the fence … The ISF soldiers shot Izzedine as he sat on the sack with his back to the fence. Wisal Sheikh-Khalil was a 14-year-old girl from Al Maghazi Refugee Camp. The ISF shot her in the head in the early afternoon of 14 May when she was approximately 100 m from the separation fence. The gunshot entered the right side of her skull and exited from the left side of her skull. She died instantly. According to an eyewitness, Wisal had approached the separation fence several times. On one occasion, she laid a Palestinian flag on the ground in front of the fence and knelt to pray. The ISF shot 17-year-old Bilal Ashram from El Nusseirat Refugee Camp twice as he was running away from the separation fence toward the Camp of Return. … According to an eyewitness, the first shot hit Bilal in the leg, causing him to fall forward. As he struggled on the ground, ISF soldiers shot him a second time in the chest. The ISF shot 14-year-old Haytham Jamal in the abdomen at the demonstration site in east Rafah. He was killed with a single shot as he stood in a crowd watching the ISF fire tear gas at another group of demonstrators. ISF soldiers shot 16-year-old Ahmad Abu Tyoor in the thigh as he danced a traditional Palestinian dance alone with his hands in the air, … The bullet severed his femoral artery and he died of his wounds the following day. On 28 September, ISF soldiers shot Mohammad Hoom, a 14-year-old boy from El Bureij camp, in the side of his chest as he was running away from the separation fence. … According to an eyewitness, Mohammad had earlier joined a large group of demonstrators that was trying to rescue a smaller group of demonstrators pinned down by heavy ISF gunfire about ten metres from the separation fence near Wadi Abu Qatroon. ISF soldiers opened fire on Mohammad’s group as it approached the fence. An ISF vehicle mounted with a machine gun also came toward Mohammad’s group and began to fire at them indiscriminately. … Mohammad and others began to run away from the fence in an attempt to escape the heavy ISF gunfire. Mohammad was approximately 250 m from the fence, fleeing towards Jakkar Road, when ISF soldiers shot him. On 28 September at approximately 5 p.m., the ISF shot 11-year-old Nasser Mosabeh in the back of the head with live ammunition at the demonstration site in Khan Younis. … On that day, Nasser had been helping his two volunteer paramedic sisters treating injured people at the protest site towards Jakkar Road. He would bring saline water bottles to paramedics and would keep his distance 150 m from the fence. … When the victim was shot, he was under a tree, 250 m from the fence. Musa Abu Hassainen was a 35-year-old Civil Defense Paramedic. ISF soldiers killed him with a shot to the chest … while he was wearing a high-visibility Civil Defense vest. Shortly before he was shot, he had been treating injured demonstrators. Razan Najjar was a 20-year-old volunteer paramedic with the Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS) from Khan Younis. … Shortly before she was shot, Razan had gone closer to the fence with three other paramedic colleagues to provide medical assistance to two injured protesters. They held their hands up in the air to show the ISF they meant no harm. … Razan was wearing a white vest clearly marking her as a paramedic. … Visibility was good when she was shot [110 meters from the fence]. The bullet hit her chest and exited from the back. … She was killed by a single shot. Abed Abdullah Al Qotati was a 22-year-old volunteer paramedic. … Abdullah was wearing a white paramedic jacket and carrying a red first-aid kit when the ISF soldiers shot him. The ISF shot 30-year-old journalist Yasser Murtaja with live ammunition in the lower abdomen as he covered the demonstration site east of Khuzaa village, … Yasser was wearing a dark blue bulletproof vest clearly marked with the word “PRESS,” and a blue helmet. He was shot … as he filmed the demonstrations with a video camera … He was standing approximately 300 m from the separation fence, behind a large group of demonstrators. Visibility was good, and there were no other shots fired in the vicinity at the time. At approximately 9 a.m. Mohammad Obeid, a 24-year-old footballer from the Al- Salah Sports Club arrived at the demonstration site with his friend. Mohammad took out his phone and began recording a “selfie” video. An ISF sniper shot him in the right side of his right leg as he filmed himself approximately 150 m from the separation fence. The bullet passed through his right leg and hit his left leg just above the knee, shattering the base of his femur. … At the time he was shot he was standing alone. The ISF shot a 21-year-old student … [who] had just arrived at the demonstrations and got out of a car, approximately one kilometre from the separation fence. The ISF first shot him in his left leg. A few seconds later, ISF soldiers shot him in his right leg. … The gunshot to his right leg caused catastrophic tissue and bone damage, requiring seven surgeries, including a bone transplant, to avoid amputation. Yousef Kronz was a 19-year-old student journalist … He wore a blue “PRESS” vest and carried his photography equipment, including a camera and a tripod. He sat cross-legged on top of a dune to take photographs of the demonstrators, at least 800 m from the separation fence. After approximately 40 minutes he stood up. As he stood up, the ISF shot him with two bullets in immediate succession which hit him in the right knee and left knee. He collapsed on the ground. Yousef’s right leg was later amputated. A 16-year-old boy climbed onto high ground near the School Gate, approximately 300 m from the separation fence. He was distributing sandwiches to demonstrators. The ISF then shot him in the face with a single bullet, which entered his nose and exited his skull. As a result of his injuries, he had a fractured jaw, is deaf in one ear and is unable to taste or smell. Naji Abu Hojayeer was a 25-year-old mechanic … An ISF soldier shot him in the abdomen shortly after 5 p.m. He died the same day. … Naji was standing 300 m from the separation fence when he was shot. He was wrapped in a Palestinian flag, surrounded by hundreds of people. Mohammad Ajouri, a 17-year-old boy from the Jabalia Refugee Camp and a member of the Palestinian Athletics Organization, went to the demonstration site with his friends. He handed out onions and water to protesters to relieve symptoms of teargas inhalation. When he was approximately 300 m away from the fence, ISF soldiers shot Mohammad in the back of his right leg. Doctors had to amputate his leg as a result. The ISF shot a 64-year-old female teacher in the leg. She was 130 - 150 m from the separation fence approaching three injured youths who had been burning tyres before they were shot [to try to obscure the line of sight from the snipers]. According to her she assumed that, as an older woman, she would not be shot by soldiers. She removed her veil which covered her face so the ISF could see that she was a woman and not a man in disguise. As she was about to approach the injured demonstrators the ISF shot her in her left leg, just above the knee. ISF soldiers shot a 13-year-old boy in the leg … as he was 300 m from the separation fence. He had been standing among a crowd of people on Jakkar Road looking towards the separation fence when a young man nearby was shot in the leg. As he turned to leave the demonstration site, he too was shot in the leg and fell to the ground. He spent 13 days in hospital and underwent five surgeries on his leg to repair nerve damage. As a result of his injuries, he missed three months of school and has nightmares about what happened. The Commission finds that he did not pose an imminent threat of death or serious injury to ISF soldiers at the time he was shot. It goes on like that for many more pages. One foreign journalist who was there said, “What was notable was the number of injured people. And the slow, methodical shooting. Every few minutes … you would hear a shot ring out and you would see someone fall. And then another shot and another person fell. It went on for hours … There was a constant stream of bloody bodies being carried back towards the ambulances. It was surreal and endless. It became almost normal, it was happening so often. A shot, a person falling, people carrying the body away. The number of wounded was astonishing. I couldn’t say how many people I saw who were shot because it was so high. I have covered wars in Syria, Yemen, [and] Libya. I have never seen anything like this. The slow methodical shooting. It was just shocking…” Eventually, the protest was called off when doctors in Gaza asked them to stop because they couldn’t keep up with the amount of patients. The Israelis have not made it too difficult to unearth their motives. In 2014, Israeli Knesset member and former Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, made a post on Facebook, originally written by Netanyahu’s speech-writer: “The Palestinian people have declared war on us, and we must respond with war. Not an operation, not a slow-moving one, not low-intensity, not controlled escalation, no destruction of terror infrastructure, no targeted killings. Enough with the oblique references. This is a war. Words have meanings. This is a war. It is not a war against terror and not a war against extremists, and not even a war against the Palestinian Authority. These too are forms of avoiding reality. This is a war between two people. Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people. Why? Ask them, they started [it].” “What’s so horrifying about understanding that the entire Palestinian people is the enemy? Every war is between two peoples, and in every war, the people who started the war, that whole people, is the enemy. … In wars, the enemy is usually an entire people, including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property, and its infrastructure. … [War] does not condemn the British air force, which bombed and totally destroyed the German city of Dresden, or the US planes that destroyed the cities of Poland and wrecked half of Budapest, places whose wretched residents had never done a thing to America, but which had to be destroyed in order to win the war against evil. … This also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.” A day after Shaked posted that on Facebook, a Palestinian teenager named Muhammad Abu Khudiar was kidnapped and burned alive by Israeli teenagers. I often mention “Sderot theatre,” where Israelis would sit in lawn chairs on a hill overlooking Gaza, laughing and applauding when they saw bombs being dropped. As part of South Africa’s case accusing Israel of Genocide at the International Court of Justice, they had to include statements of genocidal intent—which is usually the most difficult part to prove in such cases. But, as Raz Segal, a Jewish genocide scholar put it, this case is unusual because Israeli leaders have been so “explicit, open, and unashamed” that it is “a textbook case of genocide.” “Perpetrators of genocide usually do not express their intentions so clearly,” he wrote. Here are some of South Africa’s list of quotes: Benjamin Netanyahu, among many other statements, referred multiple times to the Biblical story of the destruction of Amalek by the Israelites, “You must remember what Amalek has done to you,” the Prime Minister said. The Bible passage reads: “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.” (Before you ask, I also don’t know what “asses” means in this context) Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, said: “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.” Yoav Gallant notoriously announced on October 9th 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.”  Like Norm Finkelstein asked, if you're imposing a complete blockade like this on a civilian population, “Can you tell me what you’re advocating?” Gallant also said, “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 also, in his words, “released all the restraints” and “removed every restriction” from the IDF. National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir stated: “To be clear, when we say that Hamas should be destroyed, it also means those who celebrate, those who support, and those who hand out candy—they’re all terrorists, and they should also be destroyed.” Israel Katz also put his foot down: “All the civilian population is ordered to leave immediately. We will win. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world.” He added that “no one will preach us morality.” Another Israeli minister proclaimed, “The north of the Gaza Strip, more beautiful than ever. Everything is blown up and flattened, simply a pleasure for the eyes.” The Deputy Speaker of the Knesset said, “Now we all have one common goal—erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth. Those who are unable will be replaced.” Major General Giora Eiland wrote about the blockade of water, fuel, and food that Yoav Gallant first announced: “It’s not enough. In order to make the siege effective, we have to prevent others from giving assistance to Gaza.” He added that “The people should be told that they have two choices; to stay and to starve, or leave. If Egypt and other countries prefer that these people will perish in Gaza, this is their choice.” He reasserted in a newspaper later that same day that “you don’t feed them, you don’t provide them electricity or gas or water or anything else. … A country can be attacked in a much broader way, to bring the country to the brink of dysfunction. This is the necessary outcome of events” because “Israel has no interest in the Gaza Strip being rehabilitated and this is an important point that needs to be made clear to the Americans.” He said it was necessary to create “a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” and that “we should prevent any possible assistance by others, and to create in Gaza such a terrible, unbearable situation, that can last weeks and months.” He has repeatedly reiterated to the Israeli media that “Israel has no choice but to make Gaza a place that is temporarily, or permanently impossible to live in.” And there are many more quotes you can look up for yourself. Those of you who study Israeli history will likely be familiar with Ezra Yachin—a particularly heinous figure during the 1948 Nakba, who continues to publicly celebrate the slaughter of civilians well into his 90s. He’s still employed by the IDF as an honorary reservist and motivational speaker, on October 11th he told the troops to “Be triumphant and finish them off and don’t leave anyone behind. Erase the memory of them. Erase them, their families, mothers and children. These animals can no longer live. … Every Jew with a weapon should go out and kill them. If you have an Arab neighbor, don’t wait, go to his home and shoot him. … Let them drop bombs and erase them.” An IDF Colonel standing in Gaza stated: “Whoever returns here, if they return here after, will find scorched earth. No houses, no agriculture, no nothing. They have no future.” His tone was anything but solemn. Another Colonel added to his colleague’s speech: “Vengeance is a great value. There is vengeance over what they did to us. … This place will be a fallow land. They will not be able to live here.” By the time roughly over twelve thousand women and children had been killed, approximately seventy percent of all casualties, IDF soldiers were chanting, dancing, and singing on social media: “May their village burn, may Gaza be erased,” “We know our motto: there are no uninvolved civilians,” and “to wipe off the seed of Amalek.” And a former Knesset member stated: “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.” This attitude towards Palestinians is nothing new either. Ever since the first Zionists arrived in Israel in 1882, they wrote in their journals how offended they were to see people living on what they considered to be their biblical homeland. They didn’t mind the fact that the Palestinian natives were descendants of the Jewish community exiled by the Romans over two thousand years ago, simply having converted to Islam over the course of history. David Ben- Gurion, the man who would become Israel’s first Prime Minister, referred to avoda aravit (Arab Labor) as a disease, for which the cure was avoda ivrit (Hebrew Labor), which would cure the nation with healthy blood.  Nevertheless, the early settlers, most of them having been forbidden from owning and cultivating land in Europe, had a fascination with starting their nascent colony as an agricultural society. But they needed the Palestinians to teach them how to cultivate the land. From the diaries of the early settlers, we learn how, to their surprise, the Arabs welcomed them warmly; they provided food and shelter and taught them how to farm. Through these close interactions, many settlers softened their opinions of the natives. They worked shoulder-to-shoulder on farms and even started many joined businesses together. That is until the Zionist leadership caught wind of this and forbade any settler from working with or hiring Arabs. The Palestinian resistance only grew gradually when many began to realize the true aim of the settlers: building a Jewish-supremacist state. Observing these rising tensions, the British, in 1928, during their Mandatory Period (when Palestine was under British rule after the fall of the Ottoman Empire), wanted the Palestinians and Zionists to formally agree to treat each other as equals during any future negotiation concerning the fate of Palestine. To the Zionists it was inconceivable that the Palestinians would agree to this, so they proclaimed their support. They were shocked when the Palestinians agreed, which they did partly because they agreed with the principle that Jews fleeing anti-Semitic persecution in Europe deserved a safe haven. What they objected to was the establishment of a Jewish-supremacist state, in which they would have no rights, and be forcibly driven out of their homeland to ensure a Jewish demographic majority. When the Palestinians agreed that the settlers would have equal representation in future deliberations, the Zionists instantly withdrew their support and reneged on the agreement—Palestinians are never equal according to Zionist ideology. What happened in 1928 became a standard pattern; when the Israelis were vying to join the United Nations, the UN demanded Israel engage in peace talks with Palestinians and recognize the refugees’ right to return to their homes—which was already internationally recognized by the famous UN resolution 194, which instructs “that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damaged property.” It has since been supported by other declarations, such as Security Council Resolution 237 and the General Assembly Resolution 3236 which “Reaffirms also the inalienable right of the Palestinians to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted.” Israel was forced by the UN to participate in the Lausanne peace conference if they wanted member status. The United States, for its part, while being pro-Israel was still looking for a peaceful solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Harry Truman became increasingly frustrated with the Israelis' attitude at the Lausanne Conference, sending a letter to David Ben-Gurion, he wrote: “The Govt of the US is seriously disturbed by the attitude of Israel with respect to a territorial settlement in Palestine and to the question of Palestinian refugees, as set forth by the representatives of Israel at Lausanne in public and private meetings. According to Dr. Eytan, the Israeli Govt will do nothing further about Palestinian refugees at the present time, although it has under consideration certain urgent measures of limited character. In connection with territorial matters, the position taken by Dr. Eytan apparently contemplates not only retention of all territory now held under military occupation by Israel, which is clearly in excess of the partition boundaries of Nov 29, 1947, but possibly an additional acquisition of further territory within Palestine.” Truman points out that these resolutions are “based upon elementary principles of fairness and equity.” He also writes that “far from supporting excessive Israeli claims to further territory within Palestine, the US Govt believes that it is necessary for Israel to offer territorial compensation. … The Govt of Israel must be aware that the attitude which it has thus far assumed at Lausanne must inevitably lead to a rupture in those conversations.” So, under US and UN pressure, Israel signed the May Protocol, recognizing resolution 194—in turn, they were granted UN membership the day after signing the protocol. Israel’s first action after acquiring membership was retracting its recognition and support for the protocol. For its entire history as a state, Israel has viewed participation in any “peace process” as strategic bargains to be made when it needed to, and then disowned and rejected whatever agreement it signed as soon as the leadership got what it wanted. It vocally supports peace agreements, only to reject them when they are agreed to by the Palestinians. The pattern holds up—recently, Israel announced its support for Joe Biden’s cease-fire agreement, which would have freed all Hamas-held hostages. Hamas announced its acceptance shortly after, and that’s when Israel changed positions and rejected the Biden- proposed deal. Their support for peace always ends when they get it. Because blatant Zionist revisionism has rendered this history controversial, the people who defend Israel are able to hide behind the contrived “complexity” of this issue. Shrewd politicians can easily dismiss any journalist who asks a critical question about their Israel positions by accusing them of oversimplifying a “very complex conflict.” As a result, many ordinary citizens dismiss the conflict as unsolvable—even blaming this feud on religion, in the spirit of Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations, believing these seemingly irreconcilable differences are centuries old, as opposed to the byproduct of colonialism. However, anti-Semitism was mostly a European illness; Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived peacefully together for centuries in the Middle East. They were equals under the law—Zionism changed that. What undoubtedly is complex, are the various reasons and excuses given for a murderous ethno-supremacist state. Academics and activists have tried for years to counter many of the misconceptions and historical falsehoods that Israeli and European Zionists deliberately spread. The Israeli historian Ilan Pappé even wrote a short book called Ten Myths About Israel to try and dispense with many of these fictions—such as, “Zionism is not Colonialism,” “Palestine was an empty land,” and “Jews were a people without a land.” These falsehoods have been exposed by scrupulous scholars over and over again, but the exposure has no effect. It’s proven nearly impossible to dispossess Europeans (and those in the Anglosphere) of this simplistic and erroneous mythology that’s treated as quasi-religious dogma by politicians and columnists: that all Jews would be in perpetual peril were it not for “the Jewish state,” and that Israel is unfairly besieged by malevolent “evil-doers” (to use George W. Bush’s phrase for terrorists). As opposed to reality, where colonized people are resisting their extermination—as they should. Something eye-opening for me these past months is seeing the egregious indifference and double standards shown by various people whose true colors I did not imagine to be this bleak. Commentators who became enraged or almost tearful when talking about Ukraine, October 7th, or American school shootings, who have—as children in Gaza starve to death and Israel bombs UN schools—remained shamefully quiet. They have proven themselves to be without principle. Israeli officials recently floated a “post-war” plan which would include reeducation camps for Palestinians, by banning “every existing school book” and teaching “Israeli history and culture” instead. Similar tactics were used against Native Americans, they too, were “reeducated” in “schools” about European history, and Native children were given to White parents. This is ethnic cleansing. When Western commentators, who like to bask in their own nobility, accuse China of committing genocide against the Uyghur population in the Xinjiang province—as the United States officially did in 2021, specifically using the word genocide—by erasing their culture through “reeducation,” we now know this is not a principled stance; it is merely a politically expedient criticism, rendering all their preaching about ethics and international law as nothing more than vulgar propaganda. Those who do not, in unmistakable terms, condemn Israel for what it’s doing, should never be allowed to wear a thin pretense of moral legitimacy ever again. They have proved their convictions to be as hollow as that of the self-described “pro-life” crowd—as Israel continues, unabated, to bathe Gaza’s streets in the blood of children, the same theocratic Republicans outlawing abortion are arming the perpetrators to the teeth and hail Netanyahu as a hero, while they work to shield him from the International Criminal Court. During the last several months, all of Gaza’s infrastructure has been destroyed, including the Health Ministry. As a result, the official death count has been hovering around forty thousand—unquestionably a drastic undercount. The fact that the true scale of this carnage won’t be known until the bombs stop falling has served Israel, and its allies, well. Nevertheless, a recent letter from forty-five American healthcare workers who volunteered in Gaza estimated the death toll to be greater than 92,000. “With only marginal exceptions, everyone, in Gaza is sick, injured, or both,” they wrote. “This includes every national aid worker, every international volunteer, and probably every Israeli hostage: every man, woman, and child.” Furthermore, a recent report by The Lancet, one of the oldest and most respected medical journals in the world, estimated the number of dead Palestinians to be 186,000 or higher. If that’s true, which I think it is, it would mean that Israel killed over three times as many Palestinians as there are Hamas fighters. Al-Qassam (Hamas’ military wing) only has around forty thousand members, according to the highest estimates (which are probably exaggerated). The CIA estimates Al-Qassam’s membership to be around twenty thousand. If The Lancet’s conservative estimate is correct, it would automatically mean that ninety percent of all victims are civilians; that is if we stipulate that every single Hamas fighter is dead, which we know isn’t the case. So the percentage of civilians killed is well over ninety percent, which would correspond with other analyses from human rights monitors such as Euro- Med. In their letter, the US healthcare workers urged the Biden administration to “withhold military, economic, and diplomatic support from the State of Israel and to participate in an international arms embargo.” As they write, many of the letter’s signatories have “experience working in humanitarian and conflict zones.” Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma and critical care surgeon, wrote: “I’ve never seen such horrific injuries, on such a massive scale, with so few resources. Our bombs are cutting down women and children by the thousands. Their mutilated bodies are a monument to cruelty.” Dr. Thalia Pachiyannakis, an obstetrician and gynecologist, added: “I saw so many stillbirths and maternal deaths that could have been easily prevented if the hospitals had been functioning normally.” Asma Taha, a pediatric nurse, said: “Every day I saw babies die. They had been born healthy. Their mothers were so malnourished that they could not breastfeed, and we lacked formula or clean water to feed them, so they starved.” Dr. Mark Perlmutter, an orthopedic and hand surgeon, said: “Gaza was the first time I held a baby’s brain in my hand. The first of many.” Together, in what was eerily similar to doctors’ testimony about the 2018 March of Return, the 45 doctors wrote: “Specifically, every one of us on a daily basis treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head and chest.” According to the New York Times, Palestinian prisoners detained without trial or charges at Israel’s Sde Teiman military base, are being brutally tortured, sometimes to death. One man, according to the Times, was sodomized with a metal, electrified rod, which killed him. IDF soldiers literally raped a man to death. Besides the various reports of sexual abuse in Sde Teiman, inmates were also subjected to bone- breaking beatings, and put inside “the disco room” where to prevent sleep, music was played so loud it caused inmates' ears to bleed. Some prisoners were also handcuffed so tightly and for so long, that their hands needed to be amputated. Even before October 7th, there were reports of systemic sexual violence inside Israeli prisons, including sexual abuse of children and teenagers. It’s worth contrasting this with the testimony of several freed Israeli hostages once held by Hamas. One mother said she was scared of being forcibly separated from her child, but her captors reassured her they could stay together. She recalled how Hamas soldiers taught her child a card game to pass the time and distract them from the bombings. Even as Israel’s blockade made food scarce, the Hamas fighters gave them equal amounts of food. One woman recalled making small talk with her hostage takers and said that, despite having been kidnapped, was treated relatively well in captivity. On the occasion that an aid truck carrying flour to make bread should be permitted entrance into Gaza, Israeli troops have, on several occasions, opened fire on the desperate crowd surrounding the aid truck, in what have become known as "Flour Massacres." The Israelis sometimes mark a grid or building in Gaza as "safe zones" for the Palestinians. UN schools are designated as such. But when displaced Palestinians fill these locations, they are usually bombed shortly afterward; killing some, and displacing the others once again. The trivial nature of the current situation cannot be understated: people are being killed and it must end. That’s it. No added context will take away from that simple reality. People are being massacred on an industrial scale, and it must end. This is not, in any way shape or form, a “complicated conflict.” There is an ongoing genocide, and it must end. It’s not about international law or even about the hostages, this is about elementary morality. People are being tortured, starved, shot, and bombed to death; it must end. Incidentally, none of this is particularly hidden. Other than the standard PR tactics that politicians use, “condemning” the Hamas “terrorist organization,” while “expressing concern” over the “civilian suffering in Gaza”—as if they were talking about the aftermath of an earthquake or tsunami. Israeli officials have been very open and honest about what this is about (and have been for years): the complete elimination of Palestine. In 2021, one Knesset member told the Arab members: “You’re only here by mistake, because Ben-Gurion didn’t finish the job, didn’t throw you out in ‘48.” Quotations of Israeli officials indicating a deep desire to permanently remove Palestinians are easy to find. This is why the majority of Israeli citizens violently recoil at any effort by the international community to get Israel to recognize the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees: because that threatens the founding principles of the country. Israelis sometimes say that accepting peace agreements would spell the end of the state—“This peace is killing us,” was the slogan used to decry Oslo. The Israelis are not being remotely hyperbolic when they say these things—they truly believe that cohabiting the land with native Palestinians means the end of Israel, a state founded on the principles of Jewish supremacy and expulsion of the natives. Equality is necessary for peace, but equality would challenge the state’s foundational fabric. According to the Zionist definition of Israel, it would mean the end of the state. And yet, despite Israel’s relative honesty in this matter (recall Raz Segal’s comments from earlier), the West en bloc seems largely unbothered by Israel’s actions. Besides some light grumbling and groaning whenever Israel kills Western aid workers and some flowery speeches about unity and other various niceties, they will still happily arm these rapacious scum-fuckers to the teeth, as well as run diplomatic interference. Despite Europe and the Anglo-sphere being virtually alone in their support for Israel, other countries, perhaps sympathizing—for some reason—with colonized people rather than the colonizers, are, despite being in the majority, powerless to stop it. For the record, the United States is the Godfather in this relationship. I’ve seen many pundits arguing that Israel is calling the shots while leading the US by the nose; do not believe it. Remember, Israel is the only country that still has to lobby (i.e. bribe politicians) billions of dollars to ensure its continuing existence. So, the question arises, why is there so much resistance to pro-Palestinian sentiment in Europe and its offshoots? Part of the answer must be the deeply ingrained Islamophobia in Western society, especially after the toxic propaganda brew we’ve been collectively marinating in since September 11th. But, to my mind, a far more important factor is that Israel was sold to Europeans as reparations for the Holocaust. Germany paid reparations for the Holocaust in large part to Israel (Israel then used that money for their nuclear weapons program… the irony). This is why Israel can call itself “the Jewish state” without being laughed out of the room. They are not just a hyper-militarized Jewish-supremacist state, they are also European guilt-relief, a gift to the Jewish people, if you will. Therefore, it pays to examine Israel’s bona fides as a Jewish entity. One illuminating chapter in Israel’s foreign policy history was its support for Argentina’s military dictatorship, which lasted from 1976 to 1983. Argentina, under Juan Perón, had welcomed many Nazi war criminals, including Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann. During the Junta’s rule, around 30,000 Argentinians were murdered; Jews were often targeted specifically, because, like the German Nazis, the Junta believed Jews to be the masterminds behind communism—the West’s true enemy. Jews in Argentina were rounded up by the regime, put into camps with pictures of Hitler and other Nazi insignia on the walls, and tortured. Although torture was the regime’s métier, special torture techniques were specially reserved for Jewish women. Despite these facts, Israel (as well as the US, of course) funded, armed, and diplomatically supported the regime throughout its entire rule. The US only stopped one year before the Junta’s collapse because it sided with the English in the Falkland Islands dispute. Israel, however, never ceased arms shipments, even during the Falklands War—British soldiers were killed by Israeli made-and-sold weaponry. To say that Israel was fond of the regime is an understatement. According to declassified documents, the Israeli government knew of the torture of Jews but didn’t care. In return for their support, the Israelis received what they still crave more than anything: diplomatic support at the UN for its occupation of the West Bank. Incidentally, this same motivation played a role in driving Israel into bed with several brutal dictatorships. Including the Hutu government of Rwanda while it was massacring the Tutsi minority. When the genocide started in 1994, it killed between 800,000 and 1 million Rwandans, this did not deter Israel from selling armaments and profiteering of Genocide. Of course, in fairness, they were far from alone. Israel also happily supported the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar for the same reason. But, back to our subject at hand: Israeli society also emulates another ugly aspect of European society: racism. Israeli society is incredibly racist toward Black Jews. Israel infamously gave Ethiopian Jewish women birth control without their knowledge or consent. Netanyahu has called refugees coming from Africa “something much worse” than “severe attacks by Sinai terrorists.” This all contributed to an atmosphere that, in 2014, led to an Israeli man approaching an African refugee in Tel Aviv who was carrying her one-year-old baby, and stabbed her baby three times in the head. “They said that a Black baby, Blacks in general, are terrorists,” he explained. Israel is not even looked upon favorably by a good number of Holocaust survivors: Aryeh Neier, co-founder of Human Rights Watch accused Israel of Genocide. Rene Lichtman, a Holocaust survivor and educator, explained: “I see it as genocide, I see it as equivalent—you know, it’s difficult for me to say that, but it’s equivalent to what happened in the Holocaust. Now, you can say the numbers are different, you can get into all these distractions, et cetera. But in terms of what it’s doing and what it’s done… as a speaker, I’m sure this—these speakers like myself are being asked at the end of their talk, at a Holocaust museum or at school, ‘well, you’ve suffered so much, how do you explain what you’ve done in Gaza? How do you explain that? All these civilians who’ve been killed all these children,'—and I’m supposed to represent children, you know, I talk a lot about children because a million and a half Jewish children were murdered by the Germans, and how did they do that? One way it was explained by Himmler, one of the Nazis, why these Germans were killing civilians and children—because these German soldiers were having PTSD in those days, [because] they were killing civilians, and we know they were having those issues, emotional issues, because they wrote home letters to their family about that, and they complained to their officers that they were killing civilians and they didn’t sign up for that—and to the degree where Himmler, second-in-command in the Nazis, went out in ‘43 and ‘44 to the eastern front and gave them pep-talks, and he said to them: ‘It’s very difficult for you Germans to be killing civilians, we know that, because you are such a caring people, but you have to kill these children because if you don’t they will grow up and be avengers’ and that’s the terminology that he used ‘avengers’ ‘they will seek revenge on you for what you did to their family members.’ And that’s what the Israelis are doing, and saying, and thinking when they kill Palestinians—it’s preventive murder. ‘If we don’t kill them now, they will grow up and become avengers.’ “But what it’s doing in practice, of course, is creating recruits for what I call the Palestinian resistance. And I’ve talked about this where I see the resistance, Hamas, as equivalent to the Jewish ghetto uprising. I see them as resistance, as, maybe not ‘freedom fighters’ the way they were in Vietnam, but in the Jewish ghetto, the young people—and they were always left-wingers, socialists or communists, who organized this resistance—and their thinking was: ‘We’re gonna be murdered, we’re gonna die, and we want to take some of them with us,’ which they did. They killed quite a few Germans … [and] these young people in Gaza, which is an open-air concentration camp … you can’t get in, you can’t get out, these people are born there … they lived there, they’re gonna die there. And with that mentality, I could see young people joining the resistance, and the resistance would be Hamas.” Stephen Kapos, a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor, recalled his surprise when he went to visit his cousin in Israel once: “She herself—although quite clearly traumatized, and could not talk about her experiences, not even to her daughter—was quite clearly racist, against Palestinians. So was my aunt with whom I stayed, on one occasion we were watching the news, and there was a demonstration by Palestinians, and suddenly helicopter gunships appeared over them and shot into the crowd. Probably rubber bullets—I hope—but anyway, they’re shooting into the crowd. And I was completely shocked, and my aunt, who was a converted Christian on top of her Holocaust, very brave Holocaust experiences, said, ‘What’s the problem they are Arabs.’ I—I—can’t make any comment, I was just flabbergasted.” About what Israel is doing now, since October 7th, he said: “Anyone who sees the news and can see the cruel and indiscriminate destruction, cannot but agree that it is Genocide. I mean, after all, how can you argue any further after killing tens of thousands of kids—young children? End of argument, I think. “The pretexts provided, that it is ‘self-defense’ doesn’t wash, because we’re way beyond that. [And] self-defense doesn’t go with dropping two-thousand-pound bombs on living quarters. The other excuse is to liberate hostages, again, you don’t liberate hostages by bombing—it will never work. If you want to liberate hostages you negotiate. If Hamas are as evil as they’re made out to be, what chance of cornering them and still expecting to find the hostages alive? If they are such evil people they’re never going to allow that. So the whole attitude, the whole claim, that this is about saving hostages is a very transparent lie. It is genocide. And ethnic cleansing.” One of the most outspoken survivors was the German-born Dutch physicist Hajo Meyer, who survived the most infamous Nazi death camp: Auschwitz. He once said, “I can write up an endless list of similarities between Nazi Germany and Israel. The capturing of land and property, denying people access to educational opportunities, and restricting access to earn a living, to destroy their hope. All with the aim to chase people away from their land. And what I personally find more appalling than dirtying one’s hands by killing people, is creating the circumstances where people start to kill each other. Then the distinction between victims and perpetrators becomes faint. By sowing discord in a situation where there is no unity, by enlarging the gap between people—like Israel is doing in Gaza.” When he was asked about how he felt being labeled an anti-Semite he said: “Formerly, an anti-Semite was someone who hated Jews because they were Jews and due to their Jewish nature and their race… Nowadays an anti-Semite is somebody who is hated by a certain type of Zionist. Like one of the important Nazi leaders, Göring, said: ‘I determine who is a Jew.’ And so the Zionists determine who is an anti-Semite.” “Zionism and Judaism are contrary to each other,” he added. “Because Judaism is universal and humane, and Zionism is exactly the opposite. It is very narrow, very nationalistic, racist, colonialist, and all this. There is no “National Judaism.” There is Zionism and there is Judaism, and they are completely different. “[Zionism] has nothing to do with Judaism. Because Judaism, as I learned it—the reform movement—is highly, highly ethical. And so you cannot connect Zionism with ‘highly ethical.’ You can only connect the words ‘aggressive,’ ‘oppressive,’ ‘stealing,’ [and] ‘robbing’ with Zionism. But not ‘highly ethical.’” He explained “A very important insight that I saw in Auschwitz, is that if a dominant group wants to dehumanize others, so as the Nazis wanted to dehumanize me, this dominant group must first be dehumanized, in a way, themselves. By diminishing their empathy due to propaganda and indoctrination, to enable them to be as cruel as some were. But the same holds true nowadays.” Zionists, he said, “have given up everything that has to do with humanity, with empathy, for one thing: the state. The ‘blood and soil,’ just like the Nazis.” He added, “One of my great fears [is] the Israelis—the Zionists—if they have the slightest chance to go down as a country they will take the whole world with them. They don’t give a damn about the world. The only thing they give a damn about is this Zionist state, Israel, and nothing else. And they don’t care if the Jews go down, because they have nothing to do with these Jews who live elsewhere and don’t want to come to their blessed and paradisaical country called Israel.” In his last interview before his death, he said: “We must get up and call the Zionists what they are: Nazi criminals.” The renowned Gaza scholar, Norm Finkelstein, himself a child of Holocaust- surviving parents (who were the only survivors of their families), once called Israel “Satanic.” The uncomfortable truth is that in 2024 there exists one country whose policies resemble those of the Nazis the most, and that’s Israel. It subjugates and seeks to exterminate an entire ethnic group whose culture they see as inferior. This is their “final solution” to “the Palestinian problem.” Since its founding, Israel has sought to get rid of the Palestinians, either by driving them out—by forcing them to live in pessimum and subjecting them to terror—or by killing them. Just because it is not on the same scale as the Holocaust, doesn’t mean it’s not genocide. It is, and our leaders in the West are complicit. What the United States should be doing is cutting all military and economic aid to Israel; placing heavy-handed sanctions on Israel, akin to those put on Iraq in the ‘90s; and we should even be considering military aid to Hamas—since they are now the only fighting force capable of protecting Palestinian civilians—or consider direct military action against Israel. If any of these options seem too extreme to you, you likely would have considered them too extreme during other genocides. After all, “the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the coming of the dusk.” Or in other words, only with the comfortable benefit of hindsight do these actions seem correct, logical, and ethical—ask yourself, what should have happened to prevent the Rwandan Genocide? Or the Armenian Genocide? Or the Holocaust? What questions will we be asking in twenty years? Since October 7th, Netanyahu has repeatedly expressed that this is not a war between Israel and Hamas, rather, “This is a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.” Recently, in his speech to the US Congress, he reiterated, “This is not a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between barbarism and civilization.” For once, I completely agree with him.