The Demographic Destruction of the Palestinians: Israeli Victimhood & Fascism. Pt One.
Extreme right-wing politics, bordering on fascism, & a culture of victimisation wrapped in a warm blanket of impunity provided by its’ benefactor, the U.S., has led Israel, & Israelis to become the genocidal monsters of its’ own worst nightmares.
“Morality is a body of principles and rules which must be applied in every realm of human activity: in family life as in business, in art as in politics. Moral laws determine the exact limits which the private citizen and the public official, the artist and the merchant, cannot exceed if he wishes his deeds to benefit both himself and others; if he wishes to contribute to the order of the world rather than its destruction.”
Guglielmo Ferraro, Machiavelli and Machiavellism, Foreign Affairs, 1939.
Breaking News…
Overnight, the UNSC has finally passed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire, the release of hostages, and unrestricted access to aid for the remainder of Ramadan. Negotiations were pushed through over the weekend by the non-permanent members of the council who managed to persuade the U.S. not to use its veto — in the end the U.S. abstained to vote. China and Russia have said the resolution is binding, and predictably Netanyahu slammed the U.S., saying it was ‘retreating’ from a ‘principled position,’ and he then proceeded to cancel a high level delegation who were due to visit Washington later this week. Gilad Erdan, Israel’s UN representative called the vote a ‘travesty’ saying the ‘price of Israeli blood’ is cheap to the council.
Whilst I welcome this wholeheartedly, if, come the end of Ramadan, the slaughter continues then I have to ask what was the point? This ceasefire shouldn’t be a PR exercise for the West, or a way to give Palestinians a good meal before they are murdered. I can only hope that once the world sees the full extent of the suffering and the destruction endured by the Palestinians that the outcry leads to a more permanent ceasefire and the war will finally come to an end.
It is worth noting that despite the calls for the ceasefire to be implemented, Hani Mahmoud reporting live from Gaza for Al Jazeera, says that 12 hours after the resolution was passed Palestinians are still dying in huge numbers and Israel has not stopped its operations.
The rhetoric of victimhood hides a role call of shame that Netanyahu will own as his legacy…
And at the heart of modern day fascism is a necessity for an underlying myth that perpetuates majority victimhood. Jason Stanley explains that the ‘exploitation of the feeling of victimhood by dominant groups at the prospect of sharing citizenship and power with minorities is a universal element of contemporary international fascist politics (1).’
Interestingly, an article in Scientific American posits that ‘research suggests that increased attention to an in-group’s (such as Israeli Jews) victimization reduces empathy toward the adversary as well as toward unrelated adversaries. Even just the priming of victimhood has been shown to increase ongoing conflicts, with the priming leading to reduced levels of empathy toward the adversary and people being more willing to accept less collective guilt for current harm. In fact, research on “competitive victimhood” shows that members of groups involved in violent conflicts tend to see their victimization as exclusive and are prone to minimize, belittle or outright deny their adversary’s suffering and pain.’
And this fits perfectly to my mind…and I made an initial examination of Israeli victimhood in my previous post, Israeli Victimhood and Becoming What You Fear the Most, when I explained how that victimhood had turned in on itself and had led Israelis to be become the very thing that Israel was supposed to save Jews from.
A elitist race bent on genocide…
‘(This) war was imposed on Israel by a despicable enemy that openly declares that it wants to destroy all Jews,’ Netanyahu said. On October 7, “if they could have, they would have slaughtered us all.”
By this logic, it was Hamas who were committing the genocide, and not the Israelis with their response. But that highly flawed logic can be rejected by simple analysis of the immense power differential between Hamas and Israel (see here for an illustration).
Furthermore, just the fact that Hamas took hostages, rather than kill everyone they encountered is a sure indication of their desire to prolong the conflict, opting for a some sort of negotiation, using the hostages as leverage, further down the line. This is not the behaviour of a group bent on genocide.
However, the political fly in the ointment, the underlying factor that neither Netanyahu, his right wing extremist colleagues, or their Western colonial backers fail to acknowledge, or even pay lip service to, is the decades of brutal occupation, siege, violence, dispossession, displacement, illegal imprisonment, murder and deprivation imposed on the Palestinians prior to October 7, without which Hamas and the extremists the occupation has birthed, would not be present.
These are inescapable facts that will not go away, no matter how often, no matter how coldly Netanyahu et al try to brush them aside, because they know that any acknowledgement of those facts renders Israeli victimhood, effectively null and void, and whatever sympathy October 7 may have elicited, would be washed away by a wave of revulsion as their argument for self-defence would disintegrate before their eyes.
Indeed, as former policy adviser, Matt Duss, wrote in TNR in December:
‘…I heard President Biden’s October 20 Oval Office speech positing an equivalence between Israel and Ukraine, which I found misleading and, frankly, offensive. The reality is that Russia is occupying Ukraine to end Ukrainian self-determination, and Israel is doing the same to Palestine. “They’re not a real people and the land is really ours by right” is the position of both the Russian and Israeli governments regarding Ukrainians and Palestinians. Israel’s methods are not as extreme as Russia’s, and it’s very important to acknowledge that, but its goal is nonetheless the same: the prevention of the other’s independence.’
He goes on to condemn Hamas, and particularly its October 7 attack, in the strongest terms, as we all should. He rightly says both the attack, and their treatment of their own people in Gaza is ‘abominable,’ and so it is. Apart from Duss’s opinion that Russia’s actions are more extreme than Israels, I could not agree more.
But then he says, ‘What I won’t do, what none of us should do, is pretend that history began on October 7. I will not pretend that Israel is acting purely in self-defense. Its occupation, the various acts of violence against civilians, and the settlement/colonization project that the occupation facilitates are a war crime — in fact, multiple war crimes, committed every single day, for years.’
And here, I couldn’t agree more, and with every single word.
And yet, because Israelis see themselves as the (wholly improbable) ‘victims’ of the weak, hungry masses in Gaza, the lack of empathy for the immense suffering the Israelis have visited upon the residents of Gaza becomes a direct consequence of the ongoing victimhood that Israel cannot out run. They ‘are so preoccupied with their own victimhood that they are oblivious to the pain and suffering of others,’ and there is no doubt that Netanyahu and the media knowingly play on that fact because, not only does it read well for the strategies of both Israel and their backers, it also facilitates the Zionist maximalist agenda pushed by Netanyahu under the guise of state security.
In the trial brought by South Africa at the ICJ in January, the Israeli lawyers said the so-called genocidal rhetoric of Netanyahu et al. was mere bluster, spoken in the heat of the moment. But even if that was true, which I for one, do not believe, even bluster uttered in the heat of the moment by a minister, and more especially by the Prime Minister, finds a home in the mind of someone.
In the days after the verdict was issued an Israeli soldier, who in his ‘other life’ is a Rabbi, posted this video (below) of himself echoing Netanyahu’s biblical tale of Amalek, where God orders the mass slaughter of an entire society. “We killed tens of thousands of Amalekites,” the soldier boasted. “The moral thing is to understand that every Arab is a suspect.”
‘The moral thing to understand is that every Arab is a suspect!’ Really?
At The Hague, South African representative Tembeka Ngcukaitobi said, after playing the court the now infamous video of Binjamin Netanyahu’s Amalek reference, that the violence and meaning of such rhetoric, whether inferred or genuine, reaches and influences people regardless of the speakers intent.
Lest he forgets, he is their leader.
I’m reminded of Trump’s inane, insane and highly irresponsible comment that injecting bleach would be a valid defence against Covid. The fact he said it was a joke after many had been hospitalised is irrelevant. The damage had been done.
The use of religious symbols and Biblical tales and metaphor’s for Netanyahu, is a useful political tool in spite of his secular Zionist beliefs, because he knows that it appeals to his religious backers, not only in Israel, but also more pertinently, his wealthy Christian Zionist supporters in the U.S.. But the point is, that such rhetoric can stab at the consciousness of the religious, and even the most secular of Israelis during times of anguish. And those fighting in the conflict zone are undoubtedly a target when he spouts these calls for annihilation.
“Soldiers obviously believe that this language and their actions are acceptable, because the destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza is articulated state policy,” Ngcukaitobi said pointedly, and the video below hammers home the point.
Honestly, I see things like that and I wonder for the continued sanity, the very future of our so-called civilisation and humanity. In what world is this acceptable? These guys, sad to say, are truly lost in their blood lust, yet no doubt, they will be treated as heroes for the cause.
The fourth book in the Hebrew Bible, and the fourth of five books in the Torah, is the Book of Numbers, which is now being harnessed by the extremists in the government who are inspiring the troops on the ground with a literal interpretation aimed at crushing the enemy and expelling every single Palestinian from Gaza, in any way possible.
The Biblical slogan passed down to the troops on the ground, lifted directly from the Book of Numbers, is ‘…Then you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land,’ and was also the headline employed at the ‘Conference for the Victory of Israel — Settlement Brings Security: Returning to the Gaza Strip and Northern Samaria,’ that was held a couple of days after the ICJ verdict was issued at the Hague that Israel was plausibly committing a genocide in Gaza.
The quote in full is then; ‘Then you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land. But if you will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then shall those that you let remain… harass you in the land wherein you dwell.’
Words that Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says have been pushed by extremists at the Conference that included, ‘10 cabinet ministers from four parties — Likud, Religious Zionism, Otzma Yehudit and United Torah Judaism — in addition to 27 MKs (Members of the Knesset), almost one-quarter of the Israeli parliament,’ to mean ‘if you allow your enemies to live by your side, they will continue to kill you, so it follows that the Palestinians must be killed in war, or expelled.’
Adnan Mahmutovic, a survivor of the Serbian genocide, calls this the ‘glorification and triumphalism’ of genocide. In contrast to the Serbian genocide though, nothing here is hidden or covered up. ‘The hubris of Israeli soldiers drives them to produce countless images and videos of their work: endearing messages to loved ones from sites of destruction, the mocking of everything Palestinian, proud repetitions of the genocidal discourse.’
Indeed, Mahmutovic continues, ‘the Palestinians have been dehumanised to such an extent that their executioners are deeply convinced that their violent acts are not just morally justified but also noble, and they must take pride in their “good work”,’ and broadcast their ‘heroism’ to the world.
But such militarised ‘tourism’ is not new to Israeli campaigns of conquest, according to anthropologist Sophia Goodfriend. Ariella Azoulay’s 2011 article, ‘Declaring the State of Israel, Declaring a State of War,’ documents the same disregard for the victims and the same militarised shows of bravado and Israeli supremacy, the photos and trophies taken to be ‘as a series of unproblematic, quasi-natural events and justified as side effects of the state-building project.’
Rebecca Stein describes similar scenes from 1967, with victorious Israeli soldiers striding through conquered territories with ‘a gun in one and a camera in the other (2).’
And of course, Israelis are not alone here; the glorification of war and the mocking of defeated foes is a common phenomenon in times of war. In the last few days we have seen dreadful images of the ‘alleged’ ISIS-K terrorists (see below) from the Moscow theatre attack that has tragically killed some 144 people at the time of writing. Each of the four paraded out showed the obvious signs of brutal torture, behaviour that in Russia, so we are told, is becoming more and more acceptable as the nation falls ever deeper under the shadow of an increasingly brutal and costly war with Ukraine.
We all remember the images of U.S. soldiers lording it over and abusing Muslims POW’s at Abu Ghraib. While these images were widely condemned at the time, both in the U.S. and more widely at the time.
Such is the acceptance of such images in Russia, in Israel, in the West, and the violent behaviour that obviously accompanies them, that the shock value has been diminished. Globally, such violence is fast becoming normalised and that is, I firmly believe, the grave consequence of the breakdown of IHL, human rights and respect for basic human dignity. Since when did the edification of such medieval violence and grotesque glorification of the brutality one human can inflict upon another become acceptable?
And yes, I am showing this image, and the one at the top of the post, in the hope of shocking, not glorifying such treatment and behaviour. This is wrong in every possible way, no matter what they may, or may not have done. The loss of life in Moscow is beyond tragic, but this display just shows that Russia is in the same psychological hell hole with those they label as base terrorists.
However, in Israel this time round they’ve gone mainstream, with videos and images gaining thousands of ‘likes’ from the public and prominent politicians alike. Indeed, ‘…many government officials and their supporters are enunciating the expansionist aims of this war loudly and clearly. Right-wing ministers drafted plans for Jewish settlement in the Strip less than a week after troops rolled into Gaza. Others joined resettlement conferences attended by thousands. As unrelenting Israeli aerial bombardments have killed more than 31,000 Palestinians in five months, emboldened activists block roads to prevent humanitarian aid from entering the besieged Strip.’
And arguably, the widespread nature of these videos among the Israeli public at large may refute the commonly Israeli held narrative that the public at large are ignorant of the suffering of the Palestinian people.
Perhaps though, the most troubling, disturbing and disquieting aspect of this need to be ‘seen’ is that of the Palestinians, who, in their times of disaster, ‘have felt compelled to report in detail the atrocities they face. It is perverse that people suffering so much are forced to record and broadcast unimaginable slaughter to be believed, to be humanised, to be pitied enough so their cry for help is heard.’
And it breaks my heart…
…because for all that, they are still not being heard or seen…their cries for help fall on deaf ears and cold hearts…and those mute, unfeeling features belong to the democratically elected leaders many of us in the West have chosen. Even though for me, there wasn’t a good choice among them, and my last vote became one of protest, the shame I feel to be even remotely associated with such woeful, callous leaders is deep and profound.
I wrote on a Facebook post of late, that ‘the shame I feel keeps me awake at nights; the anger I feel during the days drives me on.’
And so it is…
I digress…
The New York Times has analysed hundreds of these soldiers videos, some of which have subsequently been taken up by Israeli media, put to music and even used in comedy sketches, and yet the content is often illegal, going directly counter to Israeli military regulations. In response the military itself condemned these videos saying, ‘The conduct of the force that emerges from the footage is deplorable and does not comply with the army’s orders,’ the military said in a written statement. It added that the ‘circumstances’ were being examined.
And from past history, we know what that means…nothing at all! Witness, the sham investigations into the blatant killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, and the investigation admitted one of its soldiers likely did the killing, but that it was not a criminal offence.
And all this and more, so much more, since the verdict was given. But, if this isn’t further evidence of Israeli intentions, I don’t know what it is.
I just wonder how many more young Israelis are with these men down the same depraved, blood-soaked rabbit hole, brothers in arms as they are…
But can we blame them? Are they not reacting as the state, its media and government officials told them to react?
Masha Gessen, writing in The New Yorker, said that the vast majority of Israelis see the war in Gaza and the threat posed by Hamas as an existential one. ‘It is fighting an inevitable, necessary, and just war. The sense of righteousness and the underlying fear are so great that Israeli officials probably speak for their country when they say, in effect, How can you call it genocide if it’s waged by us?’
Just as Tony Judt observed back in 2006, ‘When Israel breaks international law in the occupied territories, when Israel publicly humiliates the subject populations whose land it has seized — but then responds to its critics with loud cries of “anti-Semitism” — it is in effect saying that these acts are not Israeli acts, they are Jewish acts: The occupation is not an Israeli occupation, it is a Jewish occupation, and if you don’t like these things it is because you don’t like Jews.’
There is then always the classic Israeli fall back — when in doubt scream “antisemitism!” and the slate will inevitably be wiped be cleaned.
The next day at The Hague Israeli lawyers argued that Netanyahu’s statement was not an incitement to genocide, but was actually a description of the genocidal evil of Hamas on October 7 and the need to confront such evils.
Well, if that was the case the point was poorly made indeed — by Netanyahu, not the lawyers after the fact — because I’ve not read a single line anywhere that took Netanyahu’s meaning any other way than as a call for wiping Palestinians off the face the earth.
In Part Two of this post tomorrow, I’ll continue this examination of Israelis victimhood, looking at the psychology that lies behind this and how it has led to the twisted narratives that are justifying the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Numbered references will be provided at the end of tomorrows post.
Thanks for reading.
