Driving this normalization campaign is the mainstream media, with platforms like the talk show Piers Morgan’s Uncensored and the liberal Zionist outlet Haaretz playing pivotal roles.

The role of dehumanization in genocide

Recent research has advanced understanding of why people participate in genocide. Influences like peer pressure, group norms and obedience to authority often outweigh deeply held beliefs or ideologies. Class, economic inequality and lack of resources also make some individuals more vulnerable to coercion.

Several studies highlight the role of dehumanizing propaganda in promoting and shaping genocidal violence. While such rhetoric may not convince everyone, it shifts social dynamics by promoting the repression of dissent, normalizing violent ideas and emboldening those with pre-existing biases to act on them. This propaganda does not always create hatred though it can legitimize and create consent to deadly aggressive solutions, making them seem acceptable although they are illegal, morally abhorrent actions.

Dehumanization also plays a role after participation in violence. While many genocidaires initially experience intense emotional and physical distress, repeated acts of violence dull these reactions. Dehumanizing narratives then play a critical role in reframing and normalizing such actions, helping participants justify continued violence and view it as morally acceptable.

Spreading lies and debating mass murder

White settler societies, including Zionist society in Palestine, construct their identity through misinformation, dehumanization of “the other” and a commitment to expansion and dispossession, with media shaping public opinion and influencing policy to sustain these narratives. Since October 7, 2023, the mainstream media has perpetuated what may be one of the most elaborate and insidious misinformation campaigns in modern history. This includes the widespread dissemination of fictitious atrocity propaganda dehumanizing Palestinian people, such as claims of mass rape, beheaded babies, infants hanging on a clothesline, a baby baked in an oven and other fabricated horrors.

British media personality Piers Morgan has used his extremely popular News Corp platform to amplify debunked atrocity propaganda, facing no accountability. Through his debate show, he has provided a stage for Islamophobes, official Israeli state and military spokespersons and unapologetic antisemites to air their abhorrent, fascistic and bogus viewpoints.  These reactionaries have been featured alongside anti-war, anti-apartheid, anti-genocide, pro-humanity, progressive, liberal and leftist activists, politicians and media personalities as a supposed counterbalance, muddying the waters of acceptable debate.

“Piers Morgan all over the Place,” Digital, Dream / Dreamworld v3, 2024

Morgan’s show trivializes atrocities by framing genocide as a topic for “debate” rather than the moral and legal outrage it is. This process of normalization, as defined by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, makes the inherently abnormal, illegal and repugnant apartheid, genocide and settler colonialism – seem ordinary and acceptable, while diverting focus from the Palestinian struggle for liberation. The BDS movement opposes normalization, viewing it as a tool used by oppressors to legitimize oppression and suppress resistance. Normalisation enables Israel to whitewash its apartheid, genocidal regime and weaken global solidarity with Palestinian liberation through manipulative rhetoric.

Programs like Morgan’s claim to be neutral platforms, yet his overt pro-Trump stance and role as a henchman for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and Fox News expose the façade, steering the narrative behind his so-called “uncensored” approach. Similarly, another Trump aficionado, now appointee Elon Musk claims to champion “free speech” while actively suppressing dissenting voices on his increasingly reactionary X platform.

Morgan’s show exemplifies Orwell’s concept of “newspeak,” as described in 1984. This distortion of language, repackaged as seemingly innocent discourse, aligns with what Italian philosopher Umberto Eco termed “Ur-fascism,” warning in his 14th point that such manipulations can even manifest in the guise of popular talk shows. Morgan positions himself much like Israeli war-criminal Netanyahu and US President elect Trump, who embrace a cult of tradition, whether rooted in the myth of a once “great” America or an expansive Greater Israel, syncretizing diverse and often contradictory beliefs into an immutable “truth,” while rejecting modernism and intellectual, academic critique.

Haaretz and justice

The foremost liberal Zionist media outlet – Haaretz (“the land” in Hebrew) – serves a particularly noxious normalization function; to present Zionism as aligned with human rights, claiming to encompass a political spectrum from right to left, with democratic, progressive values and a commitment to peace and justice. This façade legitimizes a hollow “peace process” of fruitless negotiations, all while Israeli bulldozers and developers persist in stealing Palestinian land, with some of it even marketed in the U.S. at Zionist land sales cynically hosted in synagogues.

Much like its portrayal of the anti-Netanyahu protests in the spring of 2023 as indicative of Israeli so-called “democracy,” Haaretz obscures the genocidal foundation of Zionism by framing the intensified violence against Palestinians since October 7, 2023, as a symptom of the Netanyahu government’s extremism – a bug rather than a feature of Zionism. Additionally, similar to Piers Morgan’s program which fosters open collaboration with genocidal entities, Haaretz has featured reports from regime-aligned journalists embedded within the Israeli military. It played a key role in amplifying the fabricated Hamas mass rape narrative, among other regime agitprop.

Piers Morgan Uncensored and Haaretz are not merely examples of media manipulation; they are instruments of societal conditioning designed to sustain global systems of oppression. Resisting this insidious normalization demands critical engagement with media narratives and a steadfast refusal to accept these atrocities as unavoidable.

Reclaiming the language of justice is essential, standing in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation as a critical front in the global fight against white supremacist imperialism.

Reprinted from Counterpunch with the author’s permission.

( Al Jazeera English ) – Donald Trump’s re-election as president of the United States marks a shift in US policy – from the Joe Biden administration’s hypocritical denial of American complicity in Zionist genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity to an unapologetic endorsement of all these actions.

Besides bringing Washington’s support for all of Israel’s excesses, crimes and violations out into the open, Trump’s return to the White House will also intensify and make even more overt the persecution of those who dare resist white supremacy and its Zionist incarnation.

Under Biden, those who opposed American-funded and -facilitated Zionist genocide, from university students and civil servants to racial justice activists and authors, already faced threats from politicians, police harassment, baseless accusations of anti-Semitism in the media and relentless intimidation from employers, university administrators and far-right-linked Zionist “self-defence” groups.

And yet, Trump says Biden has been “weak” in countering “Hamas radicals” and he would do even more to shut down anticolonial resistance as president. On the campaign trail, he called for the deportation of foreign nationals who support Palestinian resistance and, since being elected, has nominated pro-Israel hawks to key intelligence and security posts in his government, signalling he intends to keep his promises on cracking down on anti-Zionist activists. For example, Trump named Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor who once introduced a bill cracking down on criticism of Israel on the grounds of “ensuring the security of God’s chosen people”, as his secretary of homeland security.

Another indication that Trump’s second term will be marked by a new crackdown on anticolonial and antiracist resistance came in the form of a strategy to “combat anti-Semitism” titled “Project Esther”, drafted by the prominent Trump-aligned conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation.

The Heritage Foundation has been open about its intention to transform “Project Esther” into government policy under a second Trump administration. It states within the strategy document itself – which was published on October 7 to mark the first anniversary of the Hamas attacks on Israel – that it hopes “Project Esther” would present “an opportunity for public-private partnership when a willing administration occupies the White House”.

Created by the same minds that brought us the authoritarian, Christian nationalist “Project 2025”, “Project Esther” syncretises the story of Queen Esther, the Jewish heroine celebrated during Purim for saving Jews of ancient Persia from extermination at the hands of Vizier Haman, with modern day Zionist narratives of defence and victimhood to depict her as a defender of Jews against activists, academics and progressive members of Congress in the US who oppose racism, apartheid and genocide. The strategy paper, supposedly designed to be “a blueprint to counter anti-Semitism in the United States”, includes several fundamental aspects of fascistic thought and practice as outlined by Umberto Eco, such as syncretic culture, xenophobia, a cult of heroism and anti-intellectualism.

Targeted individuals – including numerous Black, Brown and Jewish elected representatives who voiced any criticism of Israel, including Senators Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer – are collectively mischaracterised as members of “Hamas Support Organisations (HSO)”, part of a “Hamas Support Network” and equated with Purim’s villain, Haman. Through this framing, the campaign targets prominent social justice advocates and progressive Democratic Party representatives as enemies of the Jewish people, using the mythology of Queen Esther to justify their persecution and repression.

“Project Esther” shamelessly states its aims to eliminate anticolonial perspectives from the US education system, limit the dissemination of related information and restrict advocates’ access to American society, the economy and Congress. It seeks to prosecute alleged legal and criminal violations by “HSO” members, disrupt their communications, restrict demonstrations and rally the Jewish community, allies and the American public against anticolonial resistance movements.

“Crushing Resistance,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024.

With fearmongering rhetoric draped in patriotism and “American values” and the latest Zionist spin on rebranding offensive aggression as “defence”, “Project Esther” institutionalises repression of dissent within a fallacious, fascistic theoretical framework, casting itself as the final bulwark against an imaginary threat of “foreign influence” and valiant protector of citizens from brown-skinned heathen hordes who have supposedly promised to infect white American open society with an anticapitalist agenda. Typically, “Project Esther” ideologues see themselves as heroes, courageously waging a holy war, much to the tune of the Ku Klux Klan’s infamous portrayal in Birth of a Nation.

Calling on “the silent majority” to “break its silence and speak” to “recover its voice and convert its words into actions to render impotent an illegitimate, hateful minority that threatens America’s soul” by, among other accusations, “corrupting our education system”, “Project Esther” weaponises xenophobic trends bolstered by the incoming Trump administration to threaten and fracture anticolonial movements that conscientiously oppose Zionism and white supremacy alike.

Under the guise of combating hate and appealing to a supposedly terrorised and humiliated underclass, “Project Esther” seeks to frame antiracist opposition to Zionist apartheid and genocide as inherently anti-Semitic. However, this exposes Zionism itself as white supremacy and a modern embodiment of anti-Semitic ideology, much like Haman in the myth of Queen Esther, actively targeting Jewish organisations such as Jewish Voice for Peace and the Reformed Jewish movement.

“Project Esther” criticises what it sees as “complacency” within the American Jewish community, invoking the Zionist-manufactured anti-Semitic ideal of a “new Jew” who rejects traditional beliefs that interpret oppression and hardship as divine punishment for sins. This vision disparages traditional reliance on defence as passive and weak, promoting instead an assertive, offensive approach to resistance. In line with this view, Zionists adopt the anti-Semitic notion that Jews have been responsible for their own suffering, advocating for segregation and land acquisition in a new homeland as the ultimate solution.

Notably, fearmongering has long been used by Zionists to encourage Jewish, preferably white, immigration to Israel as a means to restock the Israeli military and combat the Palestinian “demographic threat”. By amplifying the partnership between US white supremacy and Zionist expansionism, “Project Esther” presents a serious threat to anticolonial and justice-oriented intersectional movements across the country, on the one hand, and minorities, including Jews, on the other.

“Project Esther” promises to continue to speed up the mobilisation of Zionists and right-wing anti-Semites, now emboldened by Trump’s victory, to dismantle resistance to their racist policies through financial and academic audits, “name and shame” campaigns and “lawfare”. While shielding Zionist policies and aligning with US white supremacy, the document – riddled with misinformation about “anti-Israel and anti-Zionist Jew-haters attempting to lay siege to our education system, political processes, and government” – reinforces the incoming Trump administration as well as Zionist vigilante groups like the “Jewish Defence League” and their natural allies, American neo-Nazis, to stifle free speech and dissent.

Ultimately, campaigns like “Project Esther” manipulate Jewish historical trauma to promote white supremacy and suppress anticolonial, antiracist movements while gaslighting the public to accept Palestinian solidarity, even when expressed by Jews, as anti-Semitic. This alignment not only stifles dissent to right-wing agendas, it also perpetuates a fascist narrative that promotes violence against those who resist oppression, casting them as an existential threat. This Zionist-white supremacist partnership poses a direct challenge to justice movements, and humanity as a whole, using fear, propaganda and violence to undermine efforts for genuine solidarity and liberation.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s or Informed Comment’s editorial stance.

Reprinted with the author’s permission from Al Jazeera English.

( The New Arab ) – In what war criminal and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called “history’s greatest comeback,” sexual predator, game show host and former Wrestlemania idol Donald Trump was re-elected as US President.

Netanyahu, ever quick to kiss Trump’s ring, has been scheming toward this very moment since last October when Hamas fighters embarrassed his government by breaking out of Gaza’s prison walls and attacking Israeli military bases.

Indeed, Netanyahu’s investment paid off. Trump’s re-election reshuffles the Middle East colonial deck in Netanyahu’s favour, shifting US policy from the Democratic Party’s hypocritical complicity with and denial of Zionist genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity to a shameless embrace and encouragement of these malevolent actions.

Though historically Trump has been far from an ally to the Palestinian people, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and recently using “Palestinian” as a pejorative on the campaign trail, he sent a message to Netanyahu to conclude the “Gaza war” by inauguration day.

Trump likely seeks to distance himself from the growing discontent over the Biden administration’s perceived weakness in failing to rein in its Israeli junior partner, allowing him to focus on advancing a series of xenophobic, regressive domestic policies aimed at “Making America Great Again.” 

Emboldened by Trump’s green light and timeline, Netanyahu may escalate his genocidal actions leading up to the inauguration, while a lame-duck President and defeated Vice President lick their wounds and walk off into the sunset, hopefully via The Hague.

That said, Trump is anything but predictable and could very well shift course entirely due to Netanyahu’s persistent grovelling, providing continued imperial backing for belligerent Zionist expansionism. 

In their demagoguery, corruption, racism and lack of social conscience, Trump and Netanyahu are mirror fascist images.

They deploy a right-wing, ethnocentric populist appeal with dog whistles and fear-mongering to consolidate their power. Operating above and outside the law, they are both avoiding corruption trials, inhabiting the same unrestrained, tyrannical Hobbesian world.

Essentially, Trump and Netanyahu aim to promote private capital by fragmenting the working class, pushing relentless privatisation of social resources and eroding workers’ rights and union protections. They rely on a fabricated white, Western “nation” to advance their nationalist agendas, claiming to protect the purity and security of their in-groups and white, Western interests while promoting a racist capitalist system of global apartheid.

Raised in the shadows of powerful fathers, the two leaders developed a narcissistic need for power, fame and wealth, indulging in corrupt extravagance and throwing spiteful tantrums when challenged.

Their motivations centre on domination, personal gain and the thrill of victory, driven by an insatiable desire to inflate their own grandiose egos. With little regard for integrity or the welfare of others, they routinely scapegoat society’s disadvantaged people to deflect criticism and wield power, prioritising in-group social identity over truth and morality.

Media manipulation is another shared skill. Trump, the reality show star, mastered this during his campaigns, using an array of far-right media networks to spread misinformation, xenophobia and deflect criticism.

Similarly, drawing on skill first honed as a furniture salesman, Netanyahu, the quintessential Teflon politician, has polished the arts of spin, cajolery and propaganda, deftly seizing on the October 7 events to push his agenda unchecked.

With atrocity propaganda eagerly consumed by Israel’s compliant press and promoted by a liberal Zionist “opposition,” he shepherds the Israeli flock to endless war, perpetually delaying his pending corruption trial.

Trump and Netanyahu’s Ur-Fascism

Beyond similarities in their backgrounds, personalities and motivations, Trump and Netanyahu exemplify figureheads of what Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco described as “Ur-fascism.’ 

Ur-Fascism combines traditionalism, irrationalism and authoritarianism to manipulate and control through several defining traits.

It adopts a cult of tradition, whether a delusion of a once “great” America, or a vast Judean Kingdom, fusing diverse, often contradictory teachings into an unchangeable “truth,” rejecting intellectual progress and embracing mysticism to legitimise its ideology. This rejection of modernism ties into an anti-Enlightenment stance, superficially accepting technology yet viewing reason, rationality and liberal values as corrupt.

Irrationalism lies at Ur-Fascism’s core, glorifying action over thought and condemning intellectual culture as weak and untrustworthy.

In this environment, disagreement equals betrayal, and questioning established norms is cast as subversive. Thriving on a fear of difference, it fosters racism and xenophobia, uniting followers against outsiders as a trick to divert attention from internal corruption.

Ur-Fascism is nurtured by social frustration, appealing to a disillusioned middle class and those lacking social identity by promoting nationalism and a sense of unity through battles with imagined enemies.

“Fascist Hell,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

Whether through Trump’s villainisation of immigrants or Netanyahu’s “Amalek,” followers are made to feel both humiliated by and superior to their enemies, creating a contradiction that leads to inevitable defeat.

This struggle manifests in a heroic narrative where death and martyrdom are celebrated. Toxic masculinity further defines Ur-Fascism, with disdain for women and nonstandard sexualities and a fetishisation of violence and weapons. 

Misogynoir, deeply embedded in Zionist and American white supremacist ideology, fuses religious and fascistic dogmas to cast non-whites, including immigrants and Palestinians as “demographic threats” while erasing Indigenous female identities and lives.

In place of these identities, a Western femininity is constructed, where women are integrated into male-dominated, capitalist and militaristic structures “whether they like it or not.” In fascistic, genocidal escapades, controlling women, who uphold cultural, reproductive and territorial continuity, symbolises ultimate conquest. 

Ur-Fascism’s qualitative populism denies individual rights, presenting the people as a unified entity whose will is interpreted by the leader, bypassing democracy through controlled media and staged public support.

Language is deliberately simplified to suppress critical thinking, reminiscent of Orwell’s Newspeak, often disguised in seemingly innocuous forms like talk shows. Through this web of manipulation, Ur-Fascism ultimately seeks to dismantle rational discourse, undermine democracy and create a society ruled by fear, conformity and unquestioning loyalty to a single leader.

Globalisation of white supremacy

The Trump-aligned Heritage foundation has produced complementary documents which outline the globalisation of American white supremacy and Zionism with “Project 2025” and “Project Esther,” respectively.

The texts, which read like dystopian fascist manifestos, detail plans which attempt to institutionalise apartheid and genocide, with vigilante groups under the guise of ‘self defence’ as enforcers.

Netanyahu’s appointment of Yechiel Leiter — a prominent settler and former member of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), an FBI designated terrorist organisation — as ambassador to the US signals his intent to escalate his campaign in Gaza, push toward the annexation of the West Bank and embolden already manifest fascist Zionist mob attacks with the assistance of Mossad beyond Israel (e.g. Amsterdam, Toronto).

In a possible scenario, if Netanyahu persists in his crusade, Trump could broker one of his signature “deals,” offering to recognise annexation of the West Bank, a move articulated by far-right Israeli Minister Smotrich, in exchange for a halt to Zionist aggression against Lebanon and Iran. Trump could then posture as a “peacemaker,” at the expense of the Palestinian and Lebanese people, of course.

That said, recent reports of an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump may prompt the vindictive President-elect to abandon any thoughts of diplomacy with Iran, aligning perfectly with Netanyahu’s fervent ambitions to pull US forces into a war with Iran in a fascist tag-team effort straight from hell.

Reprinted from The New Arab with the author’s permission.

Zionism’s exclusionary makeup has reinforced a social identity in Israel that is rooted in the degrading of Palestinians and non-Jews, writes Yoav Litvin.

( The New Arab ) – On October 7 2023, Hamas breached the 17-year-long Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip with a brutal, coordinated attack on at least seven Israeli military installations surrounded by more than 20 residential communities.

In a retaliatory frenzy, Israel unleashed a mass Hannibal directive, with tanks and gunships firing indiscriminately at both Palestinians and Israelis, foreshadowing its deliberate criminal atrocities to come.

Netanyahu’s murderous rampage, assisted by the manipulation of trauma with fabricated atrocity narratives and debunked systemic rape allegations reminiscent of Jim Crow, aligns with the Zionist ‘Greater Israel’ plans and practices of land and resource theft with as few Palestinians as possible.

In contravention of international law, Israeli genocidal expansionism knows no limits, as recently conveyed by its Finance Minister who called for Israel’s borders to extend to Damascus.

Zionist genocide functions as it always has, now supercharged by US imperial impunity. This emboldened aggression allows for shameless expansion beyond Gaza, targeting the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran, with eyes on swaths of Saudi Arabia and potentially Iraq and no signs of de-escalation in sight.

Shockingly, Israeli soldiers have documented their own war crimes, flaunting them online for “likes,” seemingly using these displays to gain attention, even from potential partners, showcasing a disturbing normalisation and sexualisation of violence.

Zionist actions reveal a chilling level of detachment, cruelty and a lack of empathy toward the Palestinian “other”.

These can be witnessed in the military through its genocidal campaign, which regularly targets women, children, peacekeepers, journalists, academics, prisoners of war and medical personnel, among others, and within Israeli society through countless examples from the past 12 months, including numerous cases of Israelis mocking Palestinians for their pain and loss.

These sectarian tendencies are intrinsic to Zionism’s core design, rooted in its origins as a reactionary movement which champions global apartheid.

From its start, Zionism relied on a manufactured social identity built on misinformation, the dehumanisation of “the other” and a commitment to expansion and dispossession.

The appeal of Zionism

In response to the wave of antisemitic violence in the late 19th century in imperial Russia, Jewish people defended themselves in several ways.

First, those with the means fled to Western Europe, the Americas, Australia and other locations. Second, many chose avoidance, further self-segregating within Jewish communities or shtetls. Third, a minority opted for defensive aggression, organising self-defence units to repel antisemitic attacks.

Zionism emerged during a time marked by the rise of European colonial and nationalist movements, particularly in reaction to the restrictive “May Laws” governing land ownership in Jewish communities within the Russian Empire.

Like other fascist movements, Zionism offered a romantic vision of heroism and valorisation of violence, in its case, through the construct of the ‘new Jew.’

This narrative adopted the antisemitic notion that Jews were responsible for their own suffering, promoting segregation and land acquisition in a new homeland as the solution.

“Slouching toward Jerusalem,” Digital, Midjourney / Clip2Comic, 2024.

The allure of Zionism for Jewish people lay in its promise of social cohesion and the narrative of “safety” through land acquisition and segregation, at a time when they faced restricted rights to own land and their social structure was under siege.

This period signified the moment when Jewish Zionists began viewing themselves as a distinct marauding group of colonists. 

Zionist Partisan Identity

Zionist ideology and its associated propaganda offer rewards of sociality, resources and empowerment, making it particularly attractive to alienated people in a capitalist society that victimises them.

However, it conditions the reward on alternative truth, sectarianism and additional white supremacist, colonial constructs. 

The Identity-Based Model of Belief explains how social identity, particularly partisan identity, influences individuals’ beliefs and behaviours.

It suggests that people are more likely to align their beliefs with their party or social group than with facts, prioritising identity over accuracy when processing information and frequently sharing negative misinformation about out-groups.

This model highlights the tension between social identity and factual accuracy in addressing misinformation. Research has even shown that perceiving others as part of one’s group activates the brain’s reward system, fostering loyalty and preference.

Partisan identities, like all identities, involve cognitive elements (self-perception, beliefs, shared experiences, social norms) and motivational factors (belonging, distinctiveness, status) that shape beliefs and behaviours.

When identity goals, such as belonging, outweigh accuracy goals, individuals are more likely to adopt their group’s views over factual information and in-group norms often dictate the acceptability of spreading false or dubious claims.

While these dynamics help individuals fit in and strengthen group cohesion, they can also lead partisans to believe and disseminate misinformation. When enough partisans spread false content, it becomes difficult for citizens to form accurate beliefs, undermining a shared sense of reality and consensus.

The Identity-Based Model of Belief can help decipher how for over 76 years, Zionists have consistently prioritised partisan beliefs to defend their shared, manufactured identity. This has been used as a tool to instil fear in the colonised Indigenous population, justify genocidal policies and provide a legal cover for criminal actions, all while rejecting any form of accountability grounded in facts or working-class solidarity with Palestinians.

Further, apartheid and periodical wars of aggression have served to entrench misinformation and violence in subsequent generations.

Importantly, class oppression is far more significant than identity-based divisions, which often serve to distract from ruling-class exploitation.

In white-dominated societies, for example, whiteness is used to placate the working class with the illusion of superiority. This false sense of privilege tricks workers into acting against their own interests, undermining solidarity with a broader, multiracial workers’ movement that includes marginalised groups like people of colour.

This dynamic is why Zionist institutions like the Histadrut went as far as excluding Palestinians, reinforcing division rather than fostering true class unity.
Empathy and Prejudice

The relentless campaign by Zionist leaders to dehumanise Palestinians has had two primary goals: first, to portray them as a monstrous, uncivilised, unworthy threat which must be conquered and exploited; second, to reduce them to a pitiable, fragmented state so weak and disorganised that their displacement provokes no moral outrage.

Mental segregation works in tandem with physical separation, i.e. apartheid. Indeed, studies demonstrate the promotion of intergroup contact is the foremost strategy for reducing prejudice, with apartheid serving the partisan agenda of reduced empathy leading to land and resource theft with little moral qualms.

In the classic text The Nature of Prejudice (1954), Allport conjectured that prejudice:

“may be reduced by equal status contact between majority and minority groups in the pursuit of common goals. The effect is greatly enhanced if this contact is sanctioned by institutional supports (i.e., by law, custom, or local atmosphere), and provided it is of a sort that leads to the perception of common interests and common humanity between members of the two groups. (p. 281).”

Lack of contact between groups serves as a means to degrade empathy, boosting campaigns of dehumanisation, like the one employed by Zionists following the October 7 Hamas attack.

Since then, Israeli military and citizenry have valorised in-group soldiers who raped Palestinian prisoners, yet lack any empathy for Palestinian people suffering through genocide, starvation and displacement.

For Zionists to decolonise their communal aggression and regain empathy for all humans, they must undergo a process of desegregation, deprogramming and contend with capitalist oppression, racism and fragmentation.

This would involve confronting the truth about the history and nature of Zionism, committing to genuine accountability, recognizing the humanity of Palestinians and understanding their suffering.

Once co-resistance facilitates the dismantling of the oppressive framework of Zionism, a path toward rehumanisation and reconciliation can emerge through empathy, paving the way for genuine coexistence.

True liberation, reconciliation and an end to Israel’s genocidal violence can only be achieved through a steadfast, anti-Zionist framework that aligns with broader leftist, antiracist and anticolonial principles.

Reprinted from The New Arab with the author’s permission.

The views expressed are those of the author and not of Informed Comment.

Meanwhile, liberal Zionists have been whitewashing these events, regurgitating fantasies of a “two-state solution” and ignoring widespread use of the Hannibal Directive while scapegoating Netanyahu as a bug rather than a feature. Undeniably, Zionism remains a colonialist, white supremacist movement aimed at capitalist resource acquisition while appropriating Judaism.

Viewing this dynamic through a behavioral neuroscientific lens, which studies violence as an expression of defensive and offensive aggression, provides insight into the mechanisms of a deadly, escalating cycle of eliminatory force, its underlying motivations and associated propaganda. The genocidal imperial practices in Gaza constitute a blueprint for future aggressive actions in the Global South and for suppressing dissent within the imperial core. Thus, such an analysis may assist in identifying state criminality, fostering an improved process of truth and accountability en route to reconciliation, peace, and justice.

Defensive versus Offensive Aggression

Vertebrates, including humans, exhibit defensive reactions to mitigate danger and ensure survival. These behaviors involve the activation of similar brain structures and associated neurotransmitters, leading to the consensus that they are species-typical and consistent across species in form, function and triggers.

Defensive responsivity is influenced by several factors. Context plays a crucial role; an animal will typically flee a threat if escape is possible yet will freeze when trapped. The intensity of the stimulus is also important. Ambiguous stimuli trigger risk assessment behaviors, while clear and immediate threats trigger flight, avoidance, defensive threat and/or attack. The distance to the threat further influences defensive strategies; longer distances prompt avoidance, while shorter distances and contact lead to defensive threat and attack postures, collectively termed defensive aggression.

The primary objective of offensive aggression, as opposed to defensive aggression, is resource acquisition. Offensive aggression targets competitors and typically involves disputes over territory and access to assets crucial for evolutionary success. Notably, in many mammalian and primate groups, offensive aggression is employed to establish authority within a social hierarchy, where both dominant and subordinate roles are crucial for collective survival, making it typically non-lethal.

In contrast, defensive aggression, or ‘self-defense,’ is driven by the perceived intensity of the threat and can escalate to lethal force. Indeed, an analysis of fighting patterns in animals reveals offensive aggression targets protected body areas to convey dominance, while defensive aggression targets vulnerable body sites.

An extrapolation to human social behavior reveals interesting parallels. Collective offensive aggression, aka war, a far later, explicitly human development, as expressed by the acquisition and annexation of territory through conquest, is prohibited by the UN charter and establishment and expansion of settlements on such land is a violation of international humanitarian and human rights law. In contrast, Article 51 of the UN Charter explicitly recognizes self-defense, including defensive aggression, as a right.

Jewish Defense

The 1881 assassination of Czar Alexander II, carried out by the revolutionary group Narodnaya Volya (“People’s Will”), triggered a surge in antisemitic sentiment and widespread pogroms.

In response to this onslaught of violence by antisemites, Jewish people defended themselves via the above outlined patterns. First, those who had the means and ability chose to escape, leaving for Western Europe, the Americas, Australia and other destinations. Second, many opted for avoidance, further self-segregating in Jewish communities – shtetls. Third, a minority chose defensive aggression, forming organized self-defense units aimed at repelling antisemitic attacks.

During this period, many Jewish inhabitants had become secular yet were not emancipated. Consequently, their understanding of antisemitism and its associated violence and trauma was modern, contrasting with the traditional Jewish belief that viewed oppression and hardship as divine punishment for sins.

Zionism, emerging amidst the rise of European colonial and nationalist movements and the imposition of the restrictive “May Laws” on land ownership in Jewish communities in the Russian Empire, recognized the potential in this dynamic. It presented an empowering vision of a “new Jew,” rejecting outdated beliefs perceived as passive and weak, including sole reliance on defense. Instead, Zionists advocated for an offensive response to oppression and adopted the antisemitic notion that Jews were responsible for their own suffering, promoting segregation and land acquisition in a new homeland as a solution.

Zionist Propaganda

Nationalistic propaganda merges the perception of ‘self’ with that of ‘nation’ into a cohesive identity loyal to the ruling class. Zionist propaganda fused Jewish longing for safety with white supremacist, messianic and fascistic ideologies aimed at land theft.

Settler colonialism often relies on depicting targeted territories as inhabited by dehumanized, primitive barbarians unworthy of land. Contrary to the reality of an historically continuous Palestinian society with an educated and politically engaged urban elite and a flourishing web of rural communities, this portrayal allowed Zionists to displace Indigenous Palestinian people without moral qualms, framing the establishment of ‘Jewish only’ settlements as a divine right.

In this context, any threat to the manufactured Zionist collective became existential, used to justify an often-brutal, so-called ‘defensive’ response, which involved genocide of the Indigenous, Palestinian “other”.

In the movement’s early days, Zionists employed various settlement tactics in Palestine, leading to frequent clashes with Palestinian people. The causes of tension were typically land disputes, quarrels over pastureland, the use of spring water and wells, thefts and robberies. Consequently, Zionist self-defense militias were formed with the aim of protecting settlements on acquired lands.

The tangible rewards from Zionist offensive aggression – power and resources – in conjunction with increased Jewish migration encouraged by Zionists, the rise of antisemitism in Europe and the British Passfield White Paper (1930), which attempted to limit Jewish immigration and land purchases in Palestine and increased frequency of Arab rebellions, encouraged the various Zionist militias to transition increasingly to openly offensive tactics, such as the “wall and watchtower” doctrine.

Their goal was to secure as much land with as few Palestinians as possible, using offensive tactics in concert with propagandized Jewish victimhood, so-called deterrence and dehumanization of Palestinian people to justify the brutality afforded by defensive aggression, i.e. self-defense – the ability to respond to threat by any means necessary, including lethal force.

The concept of ‘self-defense’ carries entirely different meanings for the colonized and the colonizer. For the colonized, self is rooted in ancestral land, identity and resources. In contrast, the colonizer’s self is built on expansionism, a manufactured identity and stolen resources.

“Gaza Guernica 23,” by Juan Cole, Digital, Dream / Dreamworld v3, PSExpress, Ibis Paint, 2024

Indeed, the foremost Zionist militia which later transformed into the IDF was called “Haganah” – “defense” in Hebrew – and the settlers’ mission was outlined in three stages: ‘from survival to defense to struggle to war.’

This strategy culminated in the Palestinian Nakba, sanitized as the Israeli “war of independence” during which Israel, under the guise of ‘defense’, carried out mass expulsions, genocide and land grabs.

Atrocity Propaganda and Genocide

While the events on October 7^th were still unfolding, Zionist leaders within political, military and media echelons launched a propaganda campaign serving their established pattern of colonial genocide.

The campaign targeted Israeli citizenry with Zionist tropes aimed at fortifying a united front against Palestinian people, including their dehumanization by reinstatement of fear-conditioning with Jim Crow-style rape allegations and other fictitious horrors. This deliberate, malicious embroidery served to garner support for wide-scale eliminatory aggression branded as ‘self-defense,’ transforming the Israeli public’s shock into genocidal tribalism, diverting attention from Israel’s political, intelligence and military failures that enabled Hamas’s attack. Additionally, the campaign helped the government secure crucial public support for the mass mobilization of reserve units, paving the way for the subsequent full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip accompanied by a host of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

While the underlying aim was consistent with historical Zionist criminality – the acquisition of the land of Gaza with as few Palestinian people as possible – the Israeli campaign sought to circumvent legal barriers to conquest by portraying the October 7^th attacks as an existential threat and defense of hostages which warranted defensive aggression. In this manner, and throughout much of Zionist history, Jewish victimhood was used as a tool of oppression, apartheid and genocide of Palestinians, while enriching Zionist leaders and their benefactor in Washington.

What began as an appeal to ‘self-defense’ has morphed into a military adventure with openly offensive aims and associated propaganda, including potential annexation of Gaza and possibly elsewhere, into Lebanon, whilst wallpapering over concurrent settler attacks and massive land heists in the occupied West Bank. ‘Self-defense’ has even been used as an excuse for torture.

Similarly, the state of Israel was instituted under the propagandized premise of ‘self-defense’, yet now as then, as its leaders threaten nuclear war in the Middle East and by extension the world, its offensive aggression is clear and criminal. In contrast, Palestinian people have the full right to defend themselves against Zionist aggression by any means necessary.

For more info, please visit yoavlitvin.com/about/  

Reprinted from Counterpunch with the author’s permission.

The views expressed are those of the author and not Informed Comment.

From West Bank real estate ads to violent expulsions and ethnic cleansing, the theft of Palestinian land is key to the Zionist project, writes Yoav Litvin.

( The New Arab ) – The marketing of ‘Anglo neighbourhoods’ in the occupied West Bank at real estate events in synagogues in Toronto, Los Angeles, New Jersey, and other locations wouldn’t be out of place 30 years ago in apartheid South Africa or Rhodesia. But perhaps that’s the point. 

Branded ‘Anglo Neighbourhoods’, the marketing of illegal settlement real estate in the Israeli-occupied West Bank primarily target Zionist Jews from the US, Canada and the rest of the English-speaking West.

Corporate real estate investment by companies both within and outside Israel have long been integral to settlement policies, with new developments reinforcing this trend. 

A Human Rights Watch report reveals how Israeli and international companies build, finance, service and market settlement communities. Settlement businesses thrive on Israel’s unlawful confiscation of Palestinian land and resources, supporting the growth and functioning of settlements.

These businesses, from real estate to construction, benefit from Israel’s discriminatory policies in planning, zoning, land allocation and access to natural resources, financial incentives, utilities and infrastructure.

These policies displace Palestinians and disadvantage them compared to settlers. Consequently, the Palestinian economy suffers, forcing many Palestinians to work in settlements; a dependency used to justify settlement businesses.

But the sale of real estate in stolen land, while outrageous, is not surprising. It is just a recent tactic in a longstanding systematic problem that is now escalating beyond the point of no-return.

The establishment and expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem are widely recognised as violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.

These initiatives accurately encapsulate the function of Zionism in Palestine as a settler colonialist, capitalist and white supremacist movement which opportunistically and antisemitically coopts Judaism to justify its criminal practices of apartheid and genocide against Indigenous Palestinians.

Its strategy, tactics, and goals focus on land grabs and demographic dominance, utilising both official state-sponsored and unofficial methods, such as corporate real estate.

Official colonisation of Palestine

Contrary to the Zionist movement’s duplicitous claims that Palestine was largely uninhabited, Zionist leaders have recognised the necessity of assuming control over Indigenous Palestinian land to realise their exclusivist goals.

For this purpose, they’ve applied a variety of tactics orchestrated by official and unofficial state actors, ranging from peaceful appropriation within questionable legal confines to genocidal aggression.

Numerous official acts of genocide have been executed through deliberate warfare. A defining genocidal episode in Israel’s establishment, during the Palestinian Nakba, was Plan Dalet, a military initiative orchestrated by the Haganah under David Ben-Gurion’s leadership.

Further genocidal bouts of “mowing the lawn,” have demonstrated the Zionist settler colonial dynamic since Israel’s establishment to this day. 

The current Israeli government has enhanced its military aggression and prioritised illegal settlement construction, bolstered by the presence of several far-right ministers residing in illegal West Bank settlements.

Indeed, since the departure of former Defense Minister Benny Gantz from Israel’s emergency war cabinet amid disagreements over the Gaza war strategy and the return of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, Netanyahu has increasingly leaned on far-right factions within his coalition government.

In April 2024, the government expanded its control over West Bank land, setting the stage for unprecedented levels of settlement construction. At present, Israel’s Supreme Planning Council is poised to discuss proposals for 6,016 new housing units in West Bank settlements, underscoring the ongoing expansionist policies of the Netanyahu administration.

Notably, annexation and the acquisition of territory through military conquest are prohibited under international law, including the founding principles of the UN Charter.

Bezalel Smotrich, who resides in the illegal settlement of Kedumim, personifies Israel’s genocide-for-land-grab policies. Holding dual roles as Finance Minister and minister within the Defense Ministry overseeing Civil Administration, Smotrich has called for genocide and expulsion of Palestinian people both in Gaza and the West Bank.

In response to international pressures and increased European recognition of a Palestinian state, Smotrich has pursued legal recognition for settler outposts, announcing plans to advance thousands of housing units. Further, Smotrich has spoken in favour of illegally annexing the entirety of the West Bank under the Hebraized name “Judea and Samaria.” 

In June, the Israeli military quietly transferred significant legal powers in the occupied West Bank to pro-settler civil servants under Smotrich. He and his allies have long viewed control of the Civil Administration, or substantial portions of it, as a means to extend Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank. 

Their ultimate goal is direct control by the central government and its ministries. This transfer methodology diminishes the likelihood of legal checks on settlement expansion and development. By consolidating power, they aim to facilitate and accelerate settlement growth, thereby entrenching Israeli presence and diminishing Palestinian claims.

TRT World: Pro-Israel Mob attacks at Real Estate Event

Unofficial colonisation in the West Bank

Genocidal actions not directly affiliated with the state of Israel have assisted in the circumvention of state accountability before international bodies.

These include settler vigilante rampages often emboldened by military protection and legal cover. Claiming a fictional divine sanction, radical far-right settlers seize hilltops on Palestinian land, forcibly evicting residents to establish illegal outposts. These outposts are subsequently fortified by the Israeli military and eventually legitimised by Israel. 

This dynamic has played out in the occupied West Bank since 1967, spanning administrations led by both Labor “liberal” Zionists and right-wing “revisionist” governments alike. 

In quasi-legalistic efforts to appropriate Palestinian land, unofficial state organisations antisemitically conflate Zionism and Judaism, appealing to sympathetic Jewish and Christian Zionists globally.

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) has played a pivotal role since its establishment in 1901 as a key land appropriation agency of the Zionist movement. The JNF’s efforts have included land acquisition, settlement development and influencing land policy.

Since its foundation, it has employed various methods to prevent the return of land to its original owners, including land title acquisition, development of Jewish-only colonies, discriminatory practices, forestation, legal frameworks, political influence, land confiscation, settlement construction and legal actions.

These strategies, often cloaked under the guise of ‘environmental sustainability,’ perpetuate the dispossession and displacement of Palestinians, preventing their return to their land.

The JNF has also served a propaganda function by Hebraizing and renaming Palestinian lands, effectively erasing Palestinian heritage. For instance, the JNF named a forest after Coretta Scott King.

This act sought to appropriate American and Christian Zionist culture and belief, fostering a notion of a shared struggle between African Americans and Jewish people, promoting the conflation of Zionism and Judaism, while undermining the natural alliance between Black people and Palestinians against white supremacy and rebranding white settler colonialism as a popular, victorious struggle of victims against their oppressors. 

Nowadays, and in line with the government’s shamelessness and unlimited impunity, a large section of the JNF’s function has been superseded by brazen private capitalist companies. 

Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and destruction of infrastructure serves to bolster Zionist capitalist fantasies of a real estate bonanza. In March, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law who may return to the White House in January, praised the “very valuable potential of Gaza’s waterfront property.” 

Whether Kushner’s statement was a slip or wishful thinking, an Israeli real estate firm based in the occupied West Bank had already developed building plans dating back to December 2023, only three months into the Gaza genocide, with several of its employees directly participating in the aggression. It is unclear whether Israel’s alleged use of depleted uranium bombs, or threats of nuclear war will affect sales at future real estate marketing events.

With impunity from the white supremacist West and especially the US, Zionist praxis of genocide-for-land-grab can replicate without restraint in Gaza, the West Bank, in historic Palestine, South Lebanon and even the Sinai peninsula. 

Unless the Zionist regime, including its corporate proxies, is held accountable with its crimes ended and impunity challenged and abolished, Israel’s malign process will continue indefinitely, destroying the lives and futures of countless Indigenous Palestinian people and endangering the wider Middle East and global communities, including the growing number of conscientious Jewish people who support Palestinian rights and do not identify with Israel and Zionism.

Republished from The New Arab with the author’s permission.

Instead of upholding a left-wing agenda and a critical lens, liberal Zionists are a mouthpiece for Israel’s occupation and genocide, writes Yoav Litvin.

( The New Arab ) – Israel’s ongoing genocide is part of a downward spiral for the Zionist project. In the words of acclaimed historian Professor Ilan Pappe: “We are witnessing a historical process – or, more accurately, the beginnings of one – that is likely to culminate in the downfall of Zionism.”

Yet Zionism’s long-standing settler goals have not only thrived through genocidal aggression masked as “self-defence” with subsequent land grabs as obscene rewards for its adherents but also via its “liberal” flank serving a crucial propaganda role, posturing as benevolent and humanitarian whilst aligned with aims of American imperialism.

Now, confronted with Israel’s failure to achieve its stated goals and international outrage over its barbaric aggression, liberal Zionist propagandists are intensifying efforts to whitewash Zionism’s genocidal criminality. Their aim is to prevent the project’s collapse by shifting from circling the wagons to rehabilitating the liberal Zionist facade, enabling a return to management of the Occupation with periodic “mowing the lawn.”

What is Liberal Zionism?

The liberal wing of Zionism sanitises and revises the movement’s reactionary, settler-colonialist, and white supremacist nature, masking its true strategy and motive of expansionism through apartheid and genocide.

It deceitfully presents Zionism as compatible with human rights, containing a right-to-left political spectrum with democratic and progressive values and a desire for peace and justice. This facade sanctifies a “peace process” of futile negotiations, while Israeli bulldozers and contractors continue to colonise Palestinian land, marketed in the US at Zionist land sales in synagogues.

Zionism’s liberal propaganda apparatus presents Israeli and Palestinian narratives as parallel truths, duplicitously portraying both peoples as victims with legitimate claims that require lengthy negotiations and concessions. This revisionist narrative equates Israeli settler colonialist aggressors, backed by the global US hegemon, with their Indigenous Palestinian targets. 

Media and Academia

Liberal Zionist media, NGOs, academia and other organizations have been busy obscuring the events of October 7, as well as Israel’s subsequent deceit, including atrocity propaganda and the Hannibal Directive.

They portray Zionist genocide as a trait of an “extreme” form of Zionism, scapegoating Prime Minister Netanyahu and his coalition as an anomaly rather than acknowledging it as an inherent aspect of the eliminationist project. Additionally, they suggest that by ousting Netanyahu, Zionism could revert to an acceptable trajectory.

Subject to military oversight and censorship under Israel’s “democratic” laws, Haaretz, Israel’s longest-running newspaper and a bastion of liberal Zionism, has engaged in atrocity propaganda, served as a stenography service for political and military agendas, including targeting hospitals in the Gaza Strip, alongside Islamophobic rants which conflate Zionism and Judaism, and attempts to whitewash war crimes such as looting.

“In contrast to their portrayal as aligned with humanitarian and leftist values, liberal Zionists sanitise, justify, sustain, and gatekeep the Zionist project”

Haaretz and its editorial board claim to advocate for “left-wing” and “liberal” agendas, though in fact they promote civil liberties for the privileged class (Zionists) and refuse to address the core white supremacist nature of Zionism, which has terrorised Indigenous Palestinians for over seven decades.

Indeed, anti-Zionist writers, other than a token couple of regular columnists, stand no chance of being published there. Similarly, Israel bars participation of parties in its elections if they negate “the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,” clearly outlining the boundaries of acceptable debate.

Israeli academia has also served Israel’s reactionary Zionist agenda. In her recently published book, Towers of Ivory and Steel (Verso, 2024), Maya Wind lays out the case against Israeli academia and universities as embodying the apartheid typical of Israeli society and tools of Zionist settler colonialism and ongoing oppression of Palestinian people.

To this end, Israeli universities and legal scholars frequently collaborate with the Israeli military, legitimising Zionist atrocities and collective punishment of Palestinians, while developing and marketing police and military methodologies and weaponry intended for export.

Well-known liberal Zionists, including politicians, such as Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Yair Golan and former Chief of Shin Bet Ami Ayalon, and academics such as Yuval Noah Harari have all stepped up to the Zionist plate, regurgitating claims of guilt on “both sides” of “the conflict,” amongst other liberal Zionist canards.

The new political movement, Standing Together, exemplifies efforts to normalise the liberal Zionist framework. Consistently strengthening the conflation of Zionism with Judaism, Standing Together blames “extremists on both sides,” recently with homophobic graphics.

As stated by the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions: “By trying to paint Israel as a tolerant, diverse, and normal state, and focusing on “hatred” rather than oppression as the problem, this organisation is intellectually dishonest and outright complicit. It is serving a key role in Israel’s international propaganda strategy at this time.”

Within our lifetime

Popular protest in a democracy is aimed at producing political pressure on elected representatives to create substantial change in policy. Protest is typically effective if those protesting have sufficient power to vote the target of the protest out.

Recently, Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a Palestinian-led community organisation in New York City since 2015, faced strong opposition from liberal Zionists, progressives, and Democratic Party loyalists.

They protested at a rally featuring progressive Congressmembers Bowman, Ocasio-Cortez, and Sanders for their continued support of the Biden administration, demanding “pro-Palestinian” politicians: (i) rescind endorsement of Biden; (ii) declare anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, and; (iii) defend Palestinian right to resist. Following WOL’s protest Nerdeen Kiswani, an organiser at WOL said: “Our action accomplished the goal of confronting the hypocrisy within the Democratic Party and not allowing the demonization of those fighting against genocide to be normalised.”

Haaretz critiqued WOL’s protest with typical liberal Zionist talking points, smearing them as a “hard-line group,” simply for reiterating the Palestinian right of self-defence in all forms against occupation as established by international law, echoing critique against the group for rightfully demanding accountability from their elected representatives.

Haaretz’s gatekeeping aligns with recent findings showing wide-ranging Israeli government efforts to shape US discourse around the genocide in Gaza.

In contrast to their portrayal as aligned with humanitarian and leftist values, liberal Zionists sanitise, justify, sustain, and gatekeep the Zionist project. Media, academia, and political figures within the liberal Zionist sphere are complicit in advancing Zionist agendas and silencing dissent. 

To effectively halt ongoing aggression and the genocide of the Palestinian people, and in line with the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) it is crucial to recognise liberal Zionists who act as agents for the Israeli regime and are reactionary proponents of Zionism and to advocate for their boycott, divestment, and sanction.

Reprinted from The New Arab with the author’s permission.

Israel has shattered its precedent of sadism, paving the way for wider imperial corruption and the end of the West’s neoliberal mirage, writes Yoav Litvin.

( The New Arab ) – On Saturday, October 7 2023, a significant shift occurred in the Palestinian-Israeli narrative.

A normalised, gradual genocide over 76 years of Zionist colonialism, peppered by savage episodes of “mowing the lawn”, obscured by liberal Zionist propaganda and backed by imperial Washington, became an unapologetic, even gleeful mass murder of Palestinians, grotesquely captured on video for the world to witness.

Throughout its history, the Zionist movement has exploited fear-mongering and the lure of land and resource theft to subjugate and entice its populace into compliance.

In the aftermath of October 7, Israeli propagandists escalated their gaslighting of Palestinians and their allies, silenced opposing viewpoints in the media, concocted atrocity propaganda to justify Israel’s brutality and rallied support for extensive military action utilising Judaic motifs of revenge and trauma.

For nearly eight months, Israel’s settler colonial, white supremacist genocide has systematically shattered international taboos with its military accused of committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide.

Israel has sought to obliterate Palestinian society by bombing hospitals, aid trucks, churches, mosques, schools, universities, UN facilities and tent encampments, while targeting women, children, the elderly, the sick, the disabled, journalists, healthcare workers and academics, among others. 

Yet, in the process, Israel has done more than devastate the besieged Gaza Strip. It has intensified an inevitable unravelling of its internal apartheid fabric, with significant implications for global neoliberal dominance.

As Israeli actions continue with impunity – backed by financial, diplomatic, and military support from Western countries, led by the United States, and complicity of many countries in the Global South – they threaten to trigger a cascade of global acts of fascistic aggression.

“All Eyes on Gaza,” by Juan Cole, Digital, Dream/ Dreamworld v 3, IbisPaint, PS Express, 2024

The ethical fabric of human society 

An orderly society shares a common ethical fabric, upheld by taboos at its extremes. Taboos shape human communities by regulating behaviour, defining identity, maintaining social control, preserving cultural practices, protecting communities, and influencing norms.

Ethical boundaries define the societal mainstream and are typically codified by laws and enforcement practices. For example, the United States Constitution defines rights and restrictions, with evolving interpretations empowering or disempowering individuals within society.

Taboos can be broken in various ways: (i) Violation: Deliberate acts against the taboo, like incest or forbidden rituals; (ii) Ignorance: Unintentional breaking due to lack of awareness; (iii) Rebellion: Acts of defiance against societal norms; (iv) Cultural change: Evolution of societal values can modify or eliminate taboos, and; (v) Contextual exceptions: Taboos may be relaxed in specific contexts, such as religious ceremonies.

Breaking taboos can lead to social progress and dismantling oppressive norms but also cause social tensions and conflicts. Societies constantly face conflicts between forces aiming to stretch or shrink ethical boundaries to serve specific agendas — ideological, social, political, or economic. Taboos are deeply embedded in the human psyche, making their erosion a process that requires both resistance and persistence.

Trial balloons

Breaking taboos and redefining behavioural boundaries often start with experimentation – trial balloons. Successful experiments, where society is conditioned to accept change while maintaining structural integrity, set precedents that shatter taboos. If these experiments face little resistance and set precedents, ethical and moral boundaries may stretch, shifting society in a regressive or progressive direction. 

Importantly, trial balloons are effective within a broader context of a society primed for a particular change. In addition, an experiment must receive sufficient support so as to withstand a variety of challenges to its integrity, whether from within the society or external to it.  

For example, bombing of hospitals has been deemed a war crime. To justify targeting hospitals in the Gaza Strip, Israel initially claimed, with no proof, that there were Hamas command centres underneath Gaza’s hospitals.

On October 17, a massive explosion hit Al Ahli Hospital, causing hundreds of casualties. Israeli officials suggested a failed rocket launch by Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) caused the explosion, while Palestinian authorities, reports from the ground and several independent investigations (e.g. see here) attributed it to an Israeli airstrike.

Regardless, the event was used by Israeli leaders as a trial balloon to assess public and imperial reaction to such a grave violation of a societal taboo.

Since it deemed opposition to it, most significantly the US, inconsequential, and despite the negative reaction of the West to a Russian attack on a maternity hospital in Ukraine in 2022, the Israeli military has targeted many more hospitals throughout the strip.

The Ahli Hospital incident was one of many trial balloons the Israelis carried out in Gaza, including the targeting of schools, UN facilities, universities and aid delivery convoys.

How Israel scapegoats to obscure criminality

 The calculated dehumanisation and scapegoating of the Palestinian people echo a historical pattern of white supremacist colonial atrocities masking subsequent land grabs and gangster-like corruption of society from its highest echelons.

In fact, current Israeli genocidal aggression against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have served to conceal failures preceding October 7, and have extended to targeting any perceived and manufactured threats to the colony.

This signals an impending escalation of conflict between Israeli military/Zionist militias and opposition to apartheid and genocide in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and within Israel itself.

Of particular concern are Arab citizens of Israel, constituting over 20% of Israel’s population, primarily identifying as Palestinian but also encompassing Druze, Circassians, other Muslims, Christian Arabs, and Armenians, all of whom are already subjected to an array of discriminatory laws. Such an escalation may very well unravel the existing apartheid structure of Israeli society, leading to civil chaos and its ultimate collapse.

Further, the genocidal imperial laboratory in Gaza could serve as a template for future aggressive episodes in the Global South and against dissent in the imperial core, potentially marking the beginning of the end for the neoliberal mirage of “the West” in which, under the guise of “promoting democracy” and “humanitarian interventions,” the United States and its allies in the global north have aimed to extend their capitalist dominance whilst disrespecting and attacking international legal bodies.

In this scenario, naked fascism constructed of US-imposed taboos and lack thereof would prevail, propelling a colonial race to plunder global resources while scapegoating BIPOC communities. Israeli actions thus serve as a trial balloon for continued US imperial corruption and exploitation on the road to climate change-induced international turmoil.

Resistance to erosion of taboos on the one hand, and the promotion of accountability for criminal actions toward decolonisation on the other, may serve to blunt this dangerous downward spiral toward lawlessness and violence.

Reprinted from The New Arab with the author’s permission.

Professor Yuval Noah Harari, a name whispered with reverence among the learned denizens of the galaxy, is a beacon of knowledge, whose canon traverses the celestial planes of history, philosophy, human psychology and beyond.

Informed by years of contemplative transcendence and prodigious mastery of the written word, his concepts, like cosmic dark matter anomalies rippling through the fabric of reality, challenge our understanding of existence and propel us toward the final frontier of enlightenment. 

“A playlist of Zionist apologia, Harari’s rhetoric perpetuates the shallow canards of “liberal” Zionism, ensconced in fake notions of human rights, in a facile attempt to salvage a crumbling Western narrative”

It is within these boundless realms, with Enterprise captain boldness and sage wisdom, that Harari recently journeyed into his nuanced quagmire imaginary version of Zionism.

In a twist of revisionism as astonishing as his repurposing of “humanism,” Harari embarked on a fantastical odyssey, gazing balefully at those who weaponise “Zionism” as a slur, likening it to a sinister form of tribalism or even racism.

For in the great beyond of Harari’s philosophy, nothing about Zionism suggests any hint of superiority toward native Palestinians. Certainly not Israeli discriminatory laws and inconvenient evidence embedded in Israel’s Basic Law: Knesset, Article 7(a), which erects Zionism as a gatekeeper to participation in the facade of Israeli “democracy.”

The gospel according to Yuval Noah Harari

How mundane to concern oneself with the musings of figures like the obscure Ukrainian Vladimir Jabotinsky, a mere blip on the Zionist radar, albeit Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s ideological guru, who said: 

“If it is immoral to colonise a country against the will of its native population, the same morality must apply equally to the black man as to the white. Of course, the blackman may not be sufficiently advanced to think of sending delegations to London, but he will soon find some kindhearted white friends, who will instruct him.” 

And:

“There will always be two nations in Palestine – which is good enough for me, provided the Jews become the majority.” 

And: 

“We are seeking to colonise a country against the wishes of its population, in other words, by force.”