The past six months of an almost incredible level of Israeli genocide and Palestinian resistance have taught the world some valuable lessons but particularly perhaps those of us living among the Western powers.
PART TWO: LESSONS FROM THE ISRAELI ZIONISTS
Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 5 mins.)
- The Nature of Zionism
The Zionists have taught us the nature of Zionism as an ideology upholding a people allegedly chosen by religion to occupy a land and to repress or expel the indigenous occupants of that land.
- Nature of settler states
As Zionism is a variant of occupier-settler ideology we have, by extension, learned to recognise the nature of all settler states. To be fair, the evidence of that nature was clearly before us but we had perhaps learned to push it to the backs of our minds.
The European settler states of USA and Canada practiced genocide against their native indigenous peoples, of which only discriminated fractions remain from “California” to “Newfoundland”, from Pacific to Atlantic coasts. Both those states have diligently supported the Zionist settler project.
Those Northern American territories were primarily English colonies1 as were Australia and New Zealand, both also practicing genocide and discrimination against their indigenous populations and both those states too have supported the Zionist settler project.
Less unanimous have been the mainly Spanish and Portuguese settler colonies of what is now called “Latin America”, from Brazil to Argentina to Mexico. Their indigenous populations too were ethnically cleansed and subjected to genocide, although to varying degrees of intensity.2
The Caribbean islands have all been settler and imported slave colonies of the states of England, Spain and France3, all now having nominal independence but, with the exception of Cuba,4 remaining within the imperial ambit of the USA (mostly) and France and have responded accordingly.
- Nature of the zionist state
The Zionist State has demonstrated to us the true outcome of the Israeli zionist ideology, expansionist and prepared to inflict any horror upon the indigenous people in order to achieve its aims, descending to depths of inhumanity unimaginable only if Nazism were forgotten history.
Currently the Israelis’ toll of Palestinians is at least 34,049 dead and 76,901 wounded, with an estimated further 8,000 under rubble in Gaza, nearly 2 million displaced (many several times), all medical, educational and social facilities and infrastructure degraded if not totally destroyed.5
And with at least 9,500 prisoners (i.e hostages) reportedly ill-treated, humiliated and even tortured, of which an Israeli-admitted 27 have died during these six months alone and 3,660 are held without trial or release date in “administrative detention”.6
- Brazen Truth and Lies
We have also learned from the Zionist state its brazen genocidal intentions towards the Palestinians, expressed for internal Israeli consumption, alongside its outlandish lies for the international public about October 7th: beheaded babies, mass rapes, disfigurements, burning alive, etc.
All of those have been debunked and the recorded statistics alone (but also backed by evidence of other agencies) expose the lies that the Israeli army is attacking only7 the Palestinian resistance, that it is not applying collective punishment and using starvation as a weapon.
Not bothering to give excuses for its demolition of universities and museums, schools and places of Muslim and Christian worship, ‘Israel’ has claimed the existence of tunnel entrances in them as excuses for the total elimination of Palestine’s main hospitals and degradation of all others.
It has done this despite its lack of evidence of such use of the hospitals, despite denials of hospital staff and organisations and without having to explain how such claims, even if they were true, could justify siege of hospitals, killing patients and staff and their destruction as functioning hospitals.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5XQ2YQIQwP/
- Impunity from world legal order
What Israel and the western imperialist states have shown us to date is that Israel has impunity to carry on its genocide. Not only will it not be boycotted, much less blockaded, not to even mention invaded, it will continue to be supplied with weapons, money and political support.
Even after the ICJ judgement in favour of S. Africa that Israel was “plausibly committing genocide” and restrictions imposed on Israel by the court, the genocide continued without pause and without any serious international repercussions by any western state.
Israel has given us a clear demonstration in practice of the hollowness of western institutional democracy and liberalism, not only in its continued support for the genocidal state but in the repression by western states of those who have supported the Palestinians in word or deed.
Demonstrations and pickets have been forbidden8, protesters threatened and arrested9, academics hounded and sacked,10 artists and public speakers cancelled, social media profiles hampered or blocked. In fact, all the kinds of undemocratic actions of which some other states are often accused.
- Exposure of the world order of legal democratic institutions
The exposure of these institutions was almost complete. The United Nations of 193 states was shown powerless to act without the authorisation of the five Permanent Members11 of the Security Council — which itself was shown nullified by a veto of even one Member.12
United nations
The International Court of Justice, a sub-institution of the UN itself, with a history of never even trying a western power, though judging Israel plausibly guilty of genocide,13 failed in its judgement on 26th January to order an immediate cease to the state’s attacks on the Gaza population.
The ICJ failed even to take action on Israel’s non-compliance with the interim measures it ordered, viz: “to take all measures to prevent any acts that could be considered genocidal according to the 1948 Genocide Convention”, other than to issue another non-complied order on 28th March.14
The United Nations failed to defend its own aid organisation for the relief of Palestinians (both in Palestine and as refugees in other parts) from unsupported Israeli allegations of the participation of 0.04% of its staff in the Palestinian resistance operation of October 7th 2023.
The UNWRA chiefs responded by failing to stand up to Israeli bullying and by sacking nine of their own workers without any evidence presented against them and without a right to a hearing or appeal. It also for a time failed to denounce Israel for reported torture of the agency’s employees.15
The UN failed to defend the staff of UNWRA from unproven allegations, unfair internal treatment and Israeli intimidation and murder or to maintain the essential funding of UNWRA essential for the Palestinians, or to insist on the regular and protected entry of aid trucks safe from Israeli attack.
The European Union refused to even call for a ceasefire; continued to act as Israel’s biggest export market; some of its members withdrew UNRWA funding and continued to supply the genocidal state with arms, while many states repressed their own citizens acting in solidarity with Palestine.
- The need for revolutionary resistance
The Zionist state and its imperialist backers and, to be fair to it, our own Irish state too, have demonstrated to us the fragile and temporary nature of western liberalism and democracy on the one hand and the need, by implication, of revolutionary resistance and organisation on the other.
IN CONCLUSION
It remains to us to learn those hard-earned lessons, to internalise them and to apply them externally. We owe that to the Palestinians and to ourselves.
End.
FOOTNOTES
SOURCES
https://www.voanews.com/a/7577969.html
https://www.addameer.org/statistics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_v._Israel_(Genocide_Convention)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_allegations_against_UNRWA
1The Dutch also colonised the north-east of what is now the USA and the French particularly Louisiana, in what is now the USA and Quebec in what is now Canada. What is now SW USA was part of the Spanish colonial empire, subsequently part of the Mexican Empire and gained by the USA in two wars with Mexico.
2The disparity in approach of these states is underlined by for example on the one hand El Salvador unreservedly supporting the zionist state and by Nicaragua on the other hand taking Germany to the International Court of Justice in accusation of being complicit in the Israeli genocide by supporting the state with weapons and finance.
3Without overlooking the fact that each of those states (England now as the United Kingdom) contains other dominated nations within it.
4During the existence of the USSR Cuba was often described as being under Soviet colonial influence but remains today the only truly independent (though part-occupied) state in the whole of the Caribbean.
5https://www.voanews.com/a/7577969.html, a pro-Israeli source.
6 At the time of writing Adameer, the Palestinian prisoner and human rights organisation reports 9,500 Palestinian prisoners of which 3,660 are “administrative detainees”, 200 children and 80 women. Seventeen of the prisoners are elected Legislative Council members (similar to MPs or TDs) https://www.addameer.org/statistics. These figures have changed regularly during the 6 months of zionist genocide and the trend is always upward except for a brief period during the truce and exchange of hostages.
7In fact, not even mainly.
8Particularly in Germany and France
9Particularly in Britain
10Particularly in the USA
11UK, France, USA, Russia, China
12Most often and recently in the case of Israel/ Palestine several time by the USA but at times also by the UK and France.
13In a case taken by South Africa lodged at the end of December 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_v._Israel_(Genocide_Convention)
14In response to application of South Africa again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_v._Israel_(Genocide_Convention)
15https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_allegations_against_UNRWA
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