In Justifying Their Treatment of the Palestinians, Israelis Dehumanize Themselves

The genocidal rhetoric in Israel has reached a fever pitch among elected representative and citizen alike, but it carries unintended consequences for their own safety.

In my previous entry, I cited numerous examples of racist and fascist rhetoric from Israeli sources being used to justify the continued and accelerating ethnic cleansing of Gaza:

In the intervening month, this bellicosity and racism has increased along with the Israel-authored humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The view that Palestinian non-military casualties are at worst a regrettable but necessary aspect of their “self-defensive” invasion of Gaza to defeat Hamas and at best a laudable goal in an of themselves as part of an overarching campaign of collective subjugation and elimination is a position with overwhelming attendant evidence (see my previous articles here and here for many more examples). The Israeli government has justified their expansionist terror for many decades by citing the need for security; though demonstrably false, Israel’s very existence, though it comes at a great humanitarian cost for others, has been argued as necessary to justify the absolute safety and comfort of whichever Jews worldwide have decided emigrate there as well as their descendants. Overwhelming evidence shows that Israel’s existence in fact leads to (unjustified) anti-Semitic feelings elsewhere, though Israel’s existence is not a peaceful, innocent one in and of itself, and the increase in anti-Semitic incidents it fosters worldwide if anything leads to more Jews emigrating there and is therefore a desirable outcome. Around this noxious existence in which Zionists use and abuse Judaism to pursue their colonial goals has arisen a collective, and worryingly accelerating, form of Nazism: racism against, and the justification of mass murder and ghettoization of, the Palestinian people.

In response to the Hamas incursion last month, Israel has launched a campaign of collective punishment which has given even its staunchest allies pause as they scramble to explain their continued support of what amounts to the wholesale destruction of Gaza.

Echoing justifications for our own genocidal war in the Middle East two decades ago, Kirby posits a nebulous “terrorist” threat to justify Israel’s ethnic cleansing, while the President dutifully repeats Israeli accusations and refuses to elaborate on the evidence, likely because he knows no such intelligence exists.

What do most Israelis make of this horrifying destruction? If the elimination of Gaza is justified by some existential threat posed by Gazans and their resultant collective guilt, does the same rationale not apply to the average Israeli (who, it is important to note, is required to serve in the military unlike any Gazan and therefore at the onset a valid military target)? Most Israelis, in fact, feel that the brutality has thus far been insufficient:

Poll results were also hawkish when it came to the use of force in Gaza: 57.5% of Israeli Jews said that they believed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were using too little firepower in Gaza, 36.6% said the IDF was using an appropriate amount of firepower, while just 1.8% said they believed the IDF was using too much fire power, while 4.2% said they weren’t sure whether it was using too much or too little firepower.

Settler violence elsewhere has increased as well, casting doubt on the idea that any of this violence is preventive or reactive:

With the world’s attention on Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there, the violence of war has also erupted in the West Bank. Israeli settler attacks have surged at an unprecedented rate, according to the United Nations. The escalation has spread fear, deepened despair, and robbed Palestinians of their livelihoods, their homes and, in some cases, their lives.

“Our lives are hell,” said Sabri Boum, a 52-year-old farmer who fortified his windows with metal grills last week to protect his children from settlers he said threw stun grenades in Qaryout, a northern village. “It’s like I’m in a prison.”

In six weeks, settlers have killed nine Palestinians, said Palestinian health authorities. They’ve destroyed 3,000-plus olive trees during the crucial harvest season, said Palestinian Authority official Ghassan Daghlas, wiping out what for some were inheritances passed through generations. And they’ve harassed herding communities, forcing over 900 people to abandon 15 hamlets they long called home, the U.N. said.

When asked about settler attacks, the Israeli army said only that it aims to defuse conflict and troops “are required to act” if Israel citizens violate the law. The army didn’t respond to requests for comment on specific incidents.

This is clearly not self-defense or even the frightened lashing-out of a legitimately beleaguered population. This is a program of expansionism, carried out by an occupier who steadfastly refuses to apply the same violence-justifying logic to themselves. Indeed, as the true power-holders in this conflict, the Israelis have a much greater responsibility to seek peace; holding Gazans in what amounts to an open air prison is a choice freely adopted by the Israeli government and even its more reluctant subjects. The Palestinians had no real say in the matter and their occasional retaliatory efforts are thoroughly expected and tolerated by the Israeli regime, who could staunch the militancy at any moment but do not.

In reality, all true Israeli pacifists have long since left the country. Those who remain are, despite their protestations to the contrary, actively complicit in the mistreatment of the Palestinians, whereas not all Palestinians are complicit in whatever nebulous acts of debatably unjustifiable violence Hamas has actually committed on their behalf, though from beheaded babies to mass rapes, Israel has supplied no evidence of its claims and changed its recounting of these supposed crimes several times (most recently concerning the supposed headquartering of terrorists under Gaza’s largest remaining functioning hospital). The Zionist government is in effect acting as the accusers of Emmett Till, throwing around baseless accusations to justify its brutality in the eyes of an already-captive international audience and facing any criticism with cries of “anti-Semitism” which are so baseless and meaningless as to be unworthy of discussion. The audacity of these lies and their lack of even rote efforts at substantiation belie the (regrettably correct) position of Israeli intelligence that its Western patrons in the US government and media will dutifully amplify and repeat these narratives, no matter how flimsy or absurd. The results of this paralysis? Incidents such as this one (there are too many more like it to count, and many more the world will never know about):

Hundreds of patients, medical staff and people displaced by Israel’s war against Hamas left Gaza’s largest hospital Saturday, with one evacuee describing a panicked and chaotic scene as Israeli forces searched and face-scanned men among those leaving and took some away.

Israel’s military has been searching Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital for a Hamas command center that it alleges is located under the facility — a claim Hamas and hospital staff deny. The evacuation, which Israel says was voluntary, left behind only Israeli troops and a small number of health workers to care for those too sick to move.

“We left at gunpoint,” Mahmoud Abu Auf told The Associated Press by phone after he and his family left the crowded hospital. “Tanks and snipers were everywhere inside and outside.” He said he saw Israeli troops detain three men.

Elsewhere in northern Gaza, dozens of people were killed in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp when what witnesses described as an Israeli airstrike hit a crowded U.N. shelter in the main combat zone. It caused massive destruction in the camp’s Fakhoura school, said wounded survivors Ahmed Radwan and Yassin Sharif.

The difference between the two sides in this conflict is simple. It is between that of the comfortable, voluntarily-jingoist aggressors and exploiters, and their victims, between a captive population and their captors, between a gun-wielding assailant and their pleading victim. In provoking a self-defense scenario such as this, Zionists have legitimated the barest and most peaceful form of resistance (political solutions such as the BDS movement, sanctions, etc.), but in stating their genocidal intentions so clearly, they have justified much more than the barest and most peaceful form of resistance. In openly declaring their own evil, the Zionists have called for their own destruction.

To argue that civilians should be targeted or that Gazans (or any occupied group) are collectively guilty of fostering or tolerating the occasional pushback is to abandon one’s own humanity and in turn transform oneself into a legitimate target. Accepting their own views casts the average Israeli as something worse than a bully, as something worse than even a rabid dog which no longer controls its own violence. They are the true heritors of Nazism (indeed early Zionists worked with Nazis to spur emigration to Israel—see Alison Weir’s excellent and well-sourced history of the state’s creation), and no peaceful coexistence can exist when such willful evil inextricably colors one side of any conceivable pact.

Often, this targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure is justified with a pat explanation: “they use human shields!” This (again baseless) accusation has been employed to explain away attacks against everything from hospitals to residences, and is well-worn among invading forces who either do not care to prevent civilian casualties or willingly encourage them, as the US did in Iraq for example, forgetting that a necessarily guerrilla resistance cannot help but reside among “human shields.” At any rate, the Israeli government employs its own human shields, in the form of armed settlers. Once again by its own logic, Hamas would have been justified in killing any number of children just to eliminate one expansionist settler, or, to use another recent example, one stealing Palestinian water.

We are all human shields in our own way, and the Israeli military’s clear disregard for its own hostages, let alone those among them who prefer to peace to settler violence, reveals the undeniable truth that its nature is one of hatred and inextricable harm.

Most Gazans are too young to have meaningfully voiced support for Hamas in any way, but most Israelis are vocally and actively supporting a genocidal war of expansion and extermination (which, as noted above, they feel is not destructive enough); by their own arguments, they are all legitimate targets. If even one whit of Israeli violence is justified in any conceivable case, then by any such logic Palestinians would be justified in going exponentially farther.

There is a more peaceful solution as always, ironically the inverse of one supported by Israel’s Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel:

I call upon all Israelis to give up the violence of your nation and move elsewhere, and for all nations to offer save haven and financial incentives for them to do so, and allow the rightful owners of the land to reclaim their homes and rebuild what remains of their existence. Israel will soon cease to exist as it currently does either way; the decision whether the transfer of power will be an easy or a hard one is wholly in the hands of the occupier.