States with Israel’s apartheid status — one hopes — have no long-term future in the modern world, says Lawrence Davidson.
Empty streets in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip as families continue to flee in search of safety, May 14. (UNRWA)
By Lawrence Davidson
TothePointAnalysis.com
Unless you are the victim of a moral narrow-mindedness (and there seems to be an epidemic of this defect nowadays), it should be obvious to you that Israel has descended into barbarism.
Why barbarism? Because in Israel, cruel, murderous, and otherwise criminal behavior has become state policy. Let’s review the signs of this meltdown:
— Establishing an apartheid state to satisfy a racist ideological doctrine.
— Committing “probable” genocide in Gaza.
— Committing mass executions at, among other places, Gaza hospitals.
— Issuing orders to shoot unarmed Palestinian civilians.
— Torture and murder of Palestinian detainees.
— Inducing an artificial famine in Gaza.
— Blocking humanitarian aid.
— Systematic destruction of most of the infrastructure needed to sustain human life in the Gaza Strip.
— Committing increasing numbers of pogroms against Palestinian villages and towns on the West Bank.
Israeli protesters attacked aid trucks and destroyed humanitarian supplies destined for desperate Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip. pic.twitter.com/6AG9igT6gm
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 14, 2024
All of this is documented in the reports of credible human rights organizations (including Israel’s own), United Nations agencies, as well as in the decisions of the International Court of Justice. Face it, this is not a matter of opinion or perspective — be it President Joe Biden’s or anyone else’s. It is a matter of (often televised) fact.
The Excuses
Israeli Jews, and Zionists generally, get really mad when you cite the above facts without referencing their excuses. So, let’s run down some of them:
— Israeli behavior in Gaza is one of self-defense in reaction to the attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.
The way the Israelis talk about the Oct. 7 action is as if there never was an Oct. 6 or, for that matter, as specifically regards Gaza, the prior 17 years running back to 2006.
Erez Check Point in the Gaza-Israel border wall. (Catholic Church England and Wales, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
The history of those years helps put the lie to Israel’s claim of self-defense.
In January of 2006 there was an internationally supervised national election in Palestine. Because of the corruption associated with Fatah, the party that controlled the Palestine National Authority (PNA), and Fatah’s cooperation with the Israeli occupation, Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, won the election. Hamas’ reputation had been one of honesty and reliability and it had always insisted on continued resistance to Israeli occupation.
Israel’s reaction to the Hamas victory was to arrest members of the new government resident on the West Bank. The United States and other European powers demanded that Hamas carry on the PNA’s collaborative relationship with Israel.
Hamas refused.
The U.S., Israel, and Fatah started to conspire on ways to annul the election and destroy Hamas. By 2007, Israel, with the cooperation of Egypt, instituted a blockade of the Gaza Strip.
The blockade was the equivalent of a process of de-development that impoverished over one million people. Periodic armed Israeli incursions into the Strip kept up the persecutional tension. The Gaza Strip was transformed into an “open air prison.”
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To this picture might be added the fact that all prior attempts at negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians had been sabotaged by Israel because any compromise settlement would have undermined the Zionist ideological determination to turn all of Palestine into a “Jewish” controlled land.
August 2016: During a visit to southern Israel, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Shannon visited the Kerem Shalom crossing point to see how goods enter and leave the Gaza Strip. (U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Under the circumstances, the only party really exercising “self-defense” on Oct. 7, 2023, was the Palestinians under the leadership of Hamas and other allied resistance groups.
— “We are fighting an existential war.”
That is the assertion of Yair Lapid, the head of Israel’s opposition party. He has no doubt that Hamas wants to kill Jews because they are Jews. He feels that the Israelis have only one other option than to fight the war in Gaza and that is to allow themselves “to be murdered.”
Lapid is convinced that Americans objecting to how Israel fights in Gaza don’t understand the complexity of the situation. And that includes “the betrayal of the intellectuals. Meaning the intellectuals of the West, or some of them.”
He assures us that “Israel is not committing genocide. That the Israeli army is behaving honorably. Israel is not doing anything but defending itself in a war we didn’t want.”
And finally, Lapid warns that if you hear any other version of this story “it’s not the right one. And I was involved, so I know.”
Lapid meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Jerusalem on Jan. 31. (State Department/Ron Przysucha, Public domain)
Lapid was raised, as he tells us, “an Israeli patriot.” That translates into being raised in a controlled, closed-information environment. So his point of view is predictable, but also consequently, lacking in an unbiased historical context.
Israeli Jews have never been at risk of being kicked into the sea. The State of Israel has never been seriously in danger of losing a war. What has always been dubious is Israel’s status as a democracy.
What is putting Zionist Israel in real danger is the growing international doubts on this score — on the Zionist state’s similarity to an apartheid state like the one South Africa used to be. Such states have, one hopes, no long term future in the modern world.
Israel’s war of “self-defense” on the Palestinians is only showing the rest of the world Israel’s capacity for barbarism — behavior Lapid excuses because “things are complex.”
— The Gaza War is like World War II.
Damaged buildings in Gaza, Dec. 6, 2023. (Tasnim News Agency, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
This is the assertion of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. By which he means that Israel is fighting surrogate Nazis and so, reducing the Gaza Strip to Dresden in February 1945, is not a war crime. Such slaughter is just an unfortunate consequence of “self-defense.”
This comparison reflects the fact that anti-Semitism, particularly in the extreme Holocaust version, has long defined the Israeli view of Palestinian motives and behavior.
However, when viewed from the outside, objectively, this borders on delusion. For instance, the Palestinian attack of Oct. 7 (which is supposed to demonstrate the incurable and murderous anti-Semitism of the Palestinians) led to the death of some 1,200 Israelis, a number of whom died as the result of the “friendly fire” of Israeli helicopter gunships and tanks.
We really don’t know the ratio of Israelis killed by invading Palestinian forces and those who were slain by Israeli responders. In response, the Israelis have, to date, killed, in a largely indiscriminate manner, around 35,000 Palestinians.
Whatever is the desire of some Palestinians to rid the world of Zionists, they do not have the capacity to do so. On the other hand, there appears to be multiple generations of Israelis who want to rid the world (or at least their part of the world) of Palestinians and they do have the capacity to do it.
What Netanyahu characterizes as a struggle like World War II is actually the Israelis, convinced of their own status as victims, waging a war of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians.
What Is At Stake?
- The nature of Jewish Israel is at stake.
What we are witnessing in terms of Israeli behavior in Gaza is yet another example of learned fanaticism. This is the type of indoctrination that, as Thomas Suarez notes, allowed the Israelis to see their own terrorism as “self-defense.”
Whether based on religious myth or multi-generational, state-generated storytelling, the outlook among Israeli Jews has been predetermined. That outlook has paved the way for barbarism.
Thus, concerning the Palestinians, the difference in political aims of Yair Lapid, Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the right-wing setters, the religious parties, etc. is one of nuance — variations on a basically apartheid theme for Israel’s future.
This is not an outlook arrived at through independent reasoning. It is a community supported, indoctrinated outlook that can only be overcome by some sort of shock treatment. Success of the BDS movement and the International Criminal Court indicting Israeli leaders would certainly be steps in the right direction.
- Israel’s relationship to the United States is also at stake.
Leaving aside Donald Trump, it is hard to imagine a future U.S. president taking the same unqualified pro-Israel stand as Joe Biden. The die has also been cast for the Democratic Party — even if Biden is reelected (and for sure if he is not reelected) the political influence of the U.S. Zionist lobby will never again stand unopposed. Opposition should increase as long as Israel does “what comes naturally” to an apartheid state.
- The Nature of the Palestinian struggle is at stake.
Ceasefire Now – Stop the War on Gaza protest in London, Oct. 28, 2023. (Steve Eason, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)
We are also witnessing a sea change in the posture of the Palestinian people. The present powerful example of tenacious resistance will now help to define their ultimate fate. There is a horrible irony in this, for it took the near total destruction of the Gaza Strip and the ongoing pogroms in the West Bank to convince much of the world that Israel cannot have its way with the Palestinians.
Therefore, it is through this terrible destruction that the Palestinians have positioned themselves for long-term survival. The West must bear much responsibility for this high price.
- The nature and character of the Jewish people worldwide is most certainly at stake.
The Jewish people and religion are at a crossroads. Zionism is a political ideology the logic of which has led straight to the creation of a “Jewish” apartheid state.
As is the case with the facts that have led to its practice of genocide and pogroms, Israel’s apartheid status is not a matter of opinion or perspective. Again, documented by just about every credible human rights organization on the planet, it is a matter of fact.
Yet, persistently the Zionists are shouting from the rooftops that Zionism is synonymous with the Jewish religion and the Jewish people. It seems that they have managed to get this high volume message accepted by American power elites through the offering of large sums of money to politicians, or the threat to withhold those sums from universities.
Given the slogan that “the medium is the message,” this suggests that the Zionists want us to accept the idea of bribe money an integral part of their Judaism (an anti-Semitic proposition).
Against this heresy stand Jewish organizations that insist that the Zionists can’t do this “in my name.” In the U.S. and perhaps Western Europe too, these anti-Zionists, who care about their ethnic and religious values, constitute a sizable plurality of Jews.
Signs at a Gaza ceasefire rally and march in Washington, D.C., on Oct 28, 2023. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Make no mistake, there is really no meaningful room for compromise between these two sides. If the Zionists prevail, Israel’s prime minister will become the equivalent of a Jewish Pope. I know that sounds very strange!
As suggested above, there is something dreadfully predictable about Israeli behavior in Gaza. You can actually arrange for people (any people) to behave this way. You don’t even have to do it consciously.
People instinctively break down into groups: families, friendship circles, tribes, communities, states, etc. The message of each group, that it is somehow “special,” also seems to commonly arise. The exploitation of such a message by all manner of politicians also is an historical constant.
Given these impulses, the real work is not to prod local groups to be hostile toward the “other.” The real work is to prevent them from doing so.
That is, among other things, what humanitarians and other true progressives try to do. But it ain’t easy. Why is it such a struggle? Because feelings of suspicion and fear appear to come naturally, both genetically or environmentally. This is perhaps the best explanation of why the struggle for justice seems to never end.
Regardless, it is a remarkable and truly wonderful fact that some folks break the pattern and are out there to wage this struggle. About 90 years ago the cause was the right of Jews to life and liberty. Today the cause is the same rights for Palestinians. History does in fact repeat itself.
Lawrence Davidson is professor of history emeritus at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. He has been publishing his analyses of topics in U.S. domestic and foreign policy, international and humanitarian law and Israel/Zionist practices and policies since 2010.
This article is from the author’s site TothePointAnalysis.com.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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“Our intelligence is but a make-do defence to mask the despair of the human condition. Can we really face and decipher ourselves?
How do we come to terms with the knowledge that most of these crimes against humanity were perpetrated in surroundings of advanced culture? Were the Germany of the thirties and, later on, Britain and France and Portugal and the United States not steeped in fine music and beautiful works of art and literature of the highest order and good philosophy? So then, were (are) the horrors of genocide and wars against the weak committed despite the cultural environment – or, (seen by the perpetrators) with arrogant superiority, as necessary prolongations thereof?”
One paragraph, pg. 3 of Breyten Bretenbach’s book, The Memory of Birds in Times of Revolution: Essays on Africa
Great article articulating the facts. I too have often thought how can the world survive if such behavior continues to be tolerated no matter how it comes about. Couple with the WEF reset idea, it seems that those who are hell bent on ruling the world also have a barbaric mindset or as the author too graciously puts it, “victim(s) of a moral narrow-mindedness.”
Great job also of explaining how this kind of barbaric mindset is created. I too hope there is no short or long term future for Israeli Zionists and their barbaric mindset and also for all of who are accomplices in this act of mass murder.
While I oppose the nasty right-wing state of Israel, I do not see how this has anything to do with “Jewish people worldwide”.
Each person is an individual, and free to find their own soul and their own beliefs. The crimes of an insane majority in Israel don’t have anything to do with any other person I happen to meet out in the world. But then again, when I meet a new person, I start with “Hello, how do you do?” and not the modern “Who’s your daddy?, What’s your family tree?”
If someone is wearing blue and white and telling me about the need to hate and kill, then I will react to them on that basis, most likely by being somewhere else. If they instead just say “Hello, how do you do?”, I’ll proceed on that basis, which might on a good day lead to laughter, music and dance.
But the choice is always there and nothing forces them to go any particular way. Certainly not any sort of Jewish Identity or any other Identity. Certainly not any guru or rabbi. All of those are always a choice. Free People in a Free Society are always free to make any choice they want to make, as long as they don’t infringe on others trying to do the same. As far as I care, who’s their daddy is irrelevant, and I only care about their religion in terms of how it makes them act in the real world. No matter their genealogy or religion, they are always free to say “Make Love, Not War”. To do otherwise, is always a choice. But be careful with your personal choices, because America is today a living, walking example that Karma is real.
“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope some day you’ll join us, and the world will live as one” — John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band.
And 75 YEARS OF ISRAELI OPPRESSION ARE JUST SHOVED UNDER THE RUG??? You reap as you sow.
Please explain! How can a country with the ‘most moral army in the world’ descend into barbarism??? Repeat any slogan, in any country, often and long enough and it will be believed…not only believed but swallowed hook, sinker and liner.
Please see: W.R. Knight
May 16, 2024 at 01:32
“You can actually arrange for people (any people) to act this way.”
As described ever so well in Orwell’s 1984.
Show me one human being who is immune to the highly contagious disease of ‘indoctrination’, which does not metastasize instantaneously in any body politic, and perhaps a fresh insight will satisfy you enough that you, individually, will be able to rid yourself of the self-loathing you seem to be atoning for on behalf of the global Judaic religion.
When it comes to institutionalized religions, it is apparent that we are all products of someone else’s ‘indoctrucatory’ mythical, delusions.
“You can actually arrange for people (any people) to act this way.”
As described ever so well in Orwell’s 1984.
As Hafez al-Assad said to Henry Kissinger – Yes, I know that the holocaust was horrible. But why do you take it out on my people? Indeed, why? The Palestinians and the Arabs in general had nothing to do with the holocaust. The Europeans perpetrated the holocaust. And the Zionists (not the Jews) have learned nothing from the experience other than how to replicate it.
RACISM plays a big role in all of this. The EXCEPTIONAL Anglo/Saxon…
Israel was founded in barbarism and has functioned in barbarism and has never been anything but barbaric.
Exactly. This truth is historical fact, not opinion. The British, also known for numerous barbaric acts, gave the Jews ‘licence’ to act in this way justified by the horrors of the Holocaust, and a twisted religious ideology.
The barbarism is too deeply embedded in their culture, and will eventually be their undoing. The sooner it happens the better.
More than thirty years ago the Israeli sage Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903-1994) warned his countrymen that:
‘There’s a path that leads through nationalism and militarism to barbarism. Prussia took that path and now Israel is following it too.’
But who heeds philosophers?
Charles Enderlin is a great journalist, born in France and bi-national franco-israeli. He served as a Tsahal’s soldier. He was for decades correspondent of french media France 2. He is certainly not anti-semic, neither antisionist. He produced many books on Israel’s history since the beginning of sionism. He knows what is a good specialist and as impartial as one can be.
Decades ago he wrote: ” After WW2 and the holocaust every body thought : this should never happen again/ But for many jews it was : This should never happen again to us”. He understood that his fellow citizens in Israël were ready to do ANYTHING to prevent a new genocide of jews….
This was written during the ’90. We see it in action now.
So he chose the path completely the opposite of being accepted and free in a new land. Every action and word has been to avoid acceptance and sharing with the indigenous people, stoking “antisemitism” on purpose
Let’s not forget the value system of profit over life. Indigenous people would never destroy the land that gives life. They understand how crucial the land is to their survival. Settler colonialist power structures, value the profit that is derived from extracting natural wealth from the land at the expense of life. That, I think is the battle that has been waged for centuries. We have reached the point where it is obvious this system is not sustainable. Nor is it moral or just. We must turn back to Indigenous wisdom and reconnect with our roots. Israel is destroying indigenous land for profit. Killing not only the indigenous Palestinian keepers of thousand year old olive trees, but life giving nature itself. This is not what self defense looks like. It is what a death cult looks like.
The current trend in geopolitics is away from Washington’s global domination. The realization that neither Russia or China will shed blood and treasure in support of the zionist project as America has, is driving zionists to achieve dominion over the whole of Palestine before the petro-dollar goes caput. It is likely believed that once Palestine is cleansed and colonized thoroughly, the world will accept it as a fait accompli, nothing to be done about it now.
‘What can you do! Nothing can bring back the dead, what is done is done, let us move on … and never again!’
YEAH RIGHT!
This is going to stay fresh in the minds of Arab peoples for centuries to come.
Will our descendants care? Will they simply look on in horror, impotent to do anything about it.
Or will they cheer? What if they conclude that AIPAC is the reason they are so poor and America is no longer great?
My elderly uncle already knows what is in store for them. He believes it is all god’s plan.
Once the third temple is built, Jesus will return, cast the unrepentant into the fires of hell and reign in peace for a thousand years.
There is no reasoning, no logic, that will penetrate a nation of psychotics. Their lies are pathological and inherent to their notions of nationhood.
Pathological lies from pathological liars.
An impenetrable complex.
An infinite paradox wrapped in a permanent conundrum.
In this state, of place and mind, they have absolved themselves from any wrongdoing as perceived by those outside of their cult.
Some alt-news sources say contrary to his latest claims the lawless Biden regime is quietly continuing arms shipments to the genocidal Israeli regime.
America used to be the arsenal of democracy. Now it’s just the arse.
Yup! You are so right. No one could have ordered up two administrations in a row that have trashed Miss Liberty and the U.S. “ship of state” to the extent Trump and Biden have.
trump who has become the laughing stock of the world for his inept asinine behavior. Behavior relegated to prepubescent boys and Biden who seems stuck in a Twilight Zone episode.
A question though. Do you actually submit an opinion here claiming trump is any less lawless that biden?
I’m thinking you believe trump above the law. Maybe? I’m right aren’t I? If not how so?
On America having been the arsenal of democracy. Seriously Dude you need to read your history from say 1861 forward.
Now about that arse thing. Between the last two presidents, they have jointly, without ever intending to appear to be working together, reduced the U.S. reputation around the world to a point where the U.S. Government is getting less and less respect and rightly so, for since Bush 43 the country has made and ass of itself. See the Iraq war that resulted from 911.
This happening after the electorate absolutely blew it by electing the orange turd then the totally incompetent democrats rubber stamped first, the queen of chaos and then Joey Biden.
With all due respect to Mr. Davidson. I would like to express my opinion about his title, which I do understand serves a utility to his effort here. And I’m not sure I think I’m splitting airs here.
I like my title better. Israel Descends, Hell-Bent, Into Barbarism while dragging the the U.S. right along with it.
Thanks CN
I think Trump is bad news. He keeps saying he never started war but the truth is, after assassinating General Suleimani it was Iran who didn’t start that war, not him. Trump has an ego that’s easily bruised but true statesmen like Putin let insults slide past them.
The difference between Trump and Biden is the difference between being mauled by a crocodile or an alligator.
Thank you for your reply. Mr. McNulty.
Your last line here is “classic” and very aptly describes both the democratic and republican parties.
I do, especially, appreciate you civility. I apologize for being far too “edgy”. I have learned we both see many things in the same light.
One thing, about my last line above, , “Israel Descends, Hell-Bent Into Barbarism while dragging the U.S. right along with it.”
I blew it! The more truthful statement would have said . . . while dragging an impotent U.S. Government right along with it.
Washington has become putrid cesspool. Enough to turn even the strongest stomach! It has been a rough few weeks for my family and I, I think I need to throw up now.
Thanks CN
No, not just the arse. It has become arsenal of death and destruction…
The irrational claim that a far-right, nationalist political ideology (Zionism) speaks for all Jews and that Israel represents world Jewry is a red herring and an obvious lie. The equation of criticism of a political ideology equates with hatred of Jews should be ridiculed and rejected after all these years of abuse. Zionism is a European invention, that attempts to justify settler-colonial imperialism, apartheid and genocide and cynically uses the European Shoah/Holocaust as a pathetic excuse to commit atrocities against innocent people.
It is remarkable that the only arguments Zionists have left are ad hominem attacks – insults and smears that would disqualify in a formal debate. Zionists always lose rational debates, so they resort to attack, distraction, and projection. Zionists have no argument – they use insults and violence.
The corrupt US govt. – all three branches – support Israel as it benefits the domestic US oligarchy and benefits US geopolitical objectives (the Empire). However, all empires and great powers rise and fall, and the US is on the decline.
Prof Michael Hudson wrote an article a couple of weeks ago: “Gaza – Civilization will Win over Barbarism” that is also a good read.
History does not repeat, but it sure does rhyme… (Mark Twain) The state of Israel was imposed by European imperialists and, like the Crusader States, will not survive. In the meantime, however as Bob Marley wrote: “…how many more will have to suffer? how many more will have to die? don’t ask me why…”
Thank you. I have also read that in the US there are about 8 Christian Zionists to 1 Jewish Zionist.
As Alastair Crooke has pointed out, Jews and Arabs lived side by side for hundreds of years in the ME with no problem. There is even a old and sizable Jewish community in Iran today. It’s not about Jewishness, it is about Zionists. Zionists have the same exceptional mindset as necons and fascists in which all others are inferior and must take a knee.
The Jews do not need to leave Israel in order to live peacefully with their Arab neighbors, only the Zionists.
The leaders of the West, the US and Europe in particular, are demonstrably morally corrupt. They have chosen to support ethic cleansing and genocide, a replay of the Nazi holocaust, for their own political and economic comfort. And that’s not enough, they want the public to join them as they descend into hell within their own lives. Whether hell is place, or a state of mind (perhaps a distinction without a difference), it is the outcome of being led into the utter corruption of one’s soul. How do you come back from that? You can only choose not to be a part of it.
And please, do not send them (the Zionists) here! Just what we need, another rabid, lunatic demographic…
Thanks again for the strong, straightforward description and assessment. As a corollary point, let us acknowledge that Israel sinking into barbarism is also part of the US sinking into barbarism–or further into it–and also part of “the West” or “Western civilization” slipping into barbarism——or flailing and sinking in its attempts to maintain barbarism.
It seems to be a central factor in much that we have called “progress.”
Over 90% of the Israeli population has no problem with the pulverization the Netanyahu regime’s carrying out against the Palestinian people in Gaza. As one can see, Israel’s now chock-full of psychopathic neurotic cretins.
The Israeli public’s becoming more unhinged and paranoid by the minute. This is a warning sign, as desperate people do desperate things. A quick example, a majority of Israelis actually feels that 10/7 is equivalent to the Nazi Holocaust!
Netanyahu, believe it or not, is one of the more rational and sane people in the Israeli gov’t at this point in time.
Jewish supremacy has gone berserk and if the world is to survive this we must start to call it out. (Not all Jews are Jewish supremacists; not by a long shot.)
The most important book in the world right is by the late brilliant professor Israel Shahak entitled “Jewish History, Jewish Religion”. It came out c. 1995 and is a relatively short and straight forward read. The book is an absolute MUST!
I think it was Nietzsche who said psycopathy is rare in individuals but common in groups. Zionists must be taught such hate in the home, the schools and synagogues. Imagine going through life with such hatred for other groups that it makes the individual cruel, the group dangerous and the state a mass murderer bent on genocide. The Nazis were the same.
Very informative post. Thanks Michael.