Showing posts with label Suez War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Suez War. Show all posts

24 March 2026

Will the State of Israel Survive? Does Israel Deserve to Survive?

Are we seeing the beginning of the end of Zionism?


How will Israel Collapse?

One of the most common tropes is that Israel has ‘a right to exist’. It is as if any state has a right to exist. Only people have that right.

What Israel is really saying is something entirely different. Israel is an illegitimate state and therefore it fears those who question its legitimacy. From 2009 onwards the Reut Institute, Israel's ‘premier strategy policy group’, devoted itself to what it called the 'delegitimization' of Israel.

The Reut Institute defined 'delegitimization' as the "convergence of seemingly unrelated movements and associations” that delegitimised the Jewish nature of the Israeli State.

Israel’s founding myth (the Jewish ‘return’) does not stand up to scrutiny. Israel was founded on the dispossession of another people who ironically are the real descendants of the ancient Hebrews.

How the Jews of Judea Became the Arabs of Palestine

However much Israel portrays itself as just another hi tech western state it is a state with a difference. It is a ‘Jewish’ ethno-nationalist state. What does this mean?

Is Israel like for example Britain which is nominally a Christian state? Absolutely not. In 1858 Parliament passed the Jews Relief Act which removed restrictions that prevented Jews entering Parliament. It was the beginning of Jewish Emancipation.

No longer were the rights of British citizens dependent upon their religion. This was a rejection of the medieval model whereby the identity of a state was based around a particular religion and those not of that religion were discriminated against.

This marked the transition from a state which accorded rights depending on one’s religion to a secular state. Except for the fact that no-one Jewish can become the monarch Jews face no disability in the UK.

Israel is not just a state where Judaism is the official state religion. In Israel one’s rights and privileges are related to one’s religion or rather race. In Israel a Jew can be recorded in the Population Registry as being of no religion but is still recorded as being of Jewish nationality. There is no Israeli nationality. There are dozens of other nationalities, none of them entitling anyone to anything.

This was spelt out in the Jewish Nation State Law 2018 which states:

1.B  The State of Israel is the national state of the Jewish people, in which it exercises its natural, cultural, and historic right to self-determination.

1.C    Exercising the right to national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.

7.    The state views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value.

Netanyahu described what this meant when he said that

“Israel is not a state of all its citizens... Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people – and only it."

In Israel state land is Jewish state land - that is why half the Arab villages in Israel are 'unrecognised'. They have no right to be on state land and like Umm al Hiran they face demolition - something that never happens to a Jewish settlement

In Israel there are two categories of citizen – Jewish and non-Jewish. From this flows one’s rights and privileges. This is the basis of Israel as a Jewish Supremacist State. Israel is a throwback to medieval times.

For example 93% of Israeli land is controlled or owned by the Jewish National Fund in conjunction with the Israeli Lands Authority. The JNF by its constitution only leases land to Jews not non-Jews. The JNF is not some voluntary charitable organisation. It is a para-state body established by the 1953 JNF Law.

In Adalah v. The Israel Lands Administration the JNF argued that it was entitled to lease land to Jews. 80% of its landholdings, 13% of total land in Israel, was confiscated from the Palestinian refugees who were expelled in 1948.

It is as if 93% of English land were owned by the Christian National Fund and when I sought to rent a flat built on its land I was told that I couldn’t because I wasn’t a Christian.

This is why Israel is so sensitive when anyone questions its legitimacy. Apartheid and discrimination against non-Jews is part of Israel’s constitutional DNA. All else is hasbara (propaganda).

Brian Berletic: Iran War - A Gateway to War with China & Russia

October 7, Expansion & Israel’s Forever Wars

When you are in the middle of great historical events it is difficult to see which direction things are heading in or  what is happening with any great clarity. This is especially true of Israel today, with the current war with Iran.

It is not helped by having an imbecile as the US President. Trump’s inability to outline his goals reflects not just his own inadequacies but US imperialism’s arrogance of power, its ‘manifest destiny’ and the belief that might is right. It is not helped by the fact that each statement of Trump contradicts his previous utterances.

Trump is not unique. He reflects the dilemmas of the United States as its ambitions to remake the world fall foul of reality and its waning influence.

However we should not believe that but for Trump all would have been well. Trump reflects a political consensus that ‘something must be done’ about Iran. The question is what. Why? Because Iran’s insistence on being politically independent falls foul of US plans. It also obstructs Israel’s desire for political hegemony in the region.

It is also worth emphasising the point that Marx made in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, that people make history, but not of their own time or choosing.

This is particularly true of Hamas. When it launched the uprising on October 7, little did it realise that it would have the consequences that we are seeing today, both inside and outside Gaza. The whole world order and the US’s role as the world’s hegemon is being challenged and thrown into doubt.

NATO countries are reluctant to join in with Netanyahu and Trump’s attack on Iran. Even as servile a creature as Starmer has had his doubts about the Mafioso boss who doubles as President of the US and his zombie assistants although he has since fallen into line.

There are those who see the war against Iran in terms of Netanyahu having dragged Trump into it. This is a fundamental misconception. If Trump hadn’t wanted to go to war he wouldn’t have. Rather I see the situation as analogous to the Suez War where Israel’s attack on Egypt was the pretext for Britain and France’s invasion of Egypt.

When Hamas planned the break-out on October 7 it clearly misjudged Israel’s reaction. It didn’t aim to bring down the Zionist entity. Rather it wanted to capture Israeli hostages in order to exchange them for Palestinian captives.

What it failed to understand was the profound political changes taking place in Israel itself. In particular the rise of the Messianic Religious Nationalist Right led by Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar ben Gvir. These are Jewish Nazis. Even Moshe Yalon, the former Likud Defence Minister said so.

From 1948 to 1967 Israel consolidated what it had seized when it was established. Although it wanted to expand (for example the Suez War) it had to give back its ill-gotten gains. Israelis look back at this period as one when Israel was relatively ‘normal’ despite Israeli Palestinians living under military rule until 1966.

In the 1950s Israel was still too weak to expand and it lacked the settlers. That didn’t stop Israeli leaders entertaining many ideas of how to expand and destabilise their neighbours.

Livia Rokach published a book ‘Israel’s Sacred Terrorism’ based on the Diaries of Moshe Sharrett Israel’s second Prime Minister. It described how on February 25, 1954, Syrian troops stationed in Aleppo revolted against Adib Shishakly's regime.

After lunch Lavon [Defence Minister] took me aside and started trying to persuade me: This is the right moment to act this is the time to move forward and occupy the Syrian border positions beyond the Demilitarized Zone. Syria is disintegrating. A State with whom we signed an armistice agreement exists no more. Its government is about to fall... This is an historical opportunity, we shouldn't miss it.

I was reluctant to approve such a blitz-plan and saw ourselves on the verge of an abyss of disastrous adventure. I asked if he suggests to act immediately and I was shocked when I realized that he does. ... He repeated that time was precious and we must act so as not to miss an opportunity which otherwise might be lost forever. Again I answered that under the circumstances right now I cannot approve any such action.... (25 February 1954, 374)

The next day the Shishakly regime actually fell. The following day, February 27, Sharett was present at a meeting where Lavon and Dayan reported to Ben Gurion that what happened in Syria was - "a typical Iraqi action." The two proposed again that the Israeli army be put on the march. Ben Gurion, "electrified," agreed. Sharett reiterated his opposition, pointing to the certainty of a Security Council condemnation, the possibility of the use against Israel of the Tripartite Declaration of 1950, hence the probability of a "shameful failure" The three objected that "our entrance [into Syria] is justified in view of the situation in Syria. This is an act of defense of our border area." Sharett closed the discussion ...

Lavon's face wore a depressed expression. He understood this to be the end of the matter. (27 February 1954, 377)

On Sunday, February 28, the press reported that no Iraqi troops had entered Syria. The situation in Damascus was under the complete control of President Hashem Al Atassi. The cabinet approved Sharett's position and rejected Lavon's vehement appeal not to miss a historical opportunity. ...

On December 12, 1954, however, a Syrian civilian plane was hijacked by Israeli war planes shortly after its takeoff, and forced to land at Lydda airport. Passengers and crew were detained and interrogated for two days, until stormy international protests

It must be clear to you that we had no justification whatsoever to seize the plane,... I have no reason to doubt the truth of the factual affirmation of the U.S. State Department that our action was without precedent in the history of international practice. ..... What shocks and worries me is the narrow-mindedness and the shortsightedness of our military leaders. They seem to presume that the State of Israel may or even must-behave in the realm of international relations according to the laws of the jungle. (22 December 1954)

All the madcap schemes that Sharrett prevented in the 50s have come to pass today.

Israel's Two Jewish Neo-Nazi Ministers - Ben Gvir & Smotrich

In 1967, the Labour government of Levi Eshkol launched a war against Syria, Jordan and Egypt. The genie was out of the bottle. The conquering of the West Bank and Gaza gave rise to a messianic settler movement. Many on the ‘left’ of the Zionist movement – Yitzhak Tabenkin, Yisrael Galili and Yigal Allon – were to the fore of the settler Greater Israel Movement.

Settlement in the West Bank started with very few settlers at first but by 2021 they had grown to 720,000 when Ben Gvir of the Jewish Nazi Otzma Yehudit was elected to the Knesset.

The break-out on 7 October 2023 took place less than a year after the 2022 elections which brought Ben Gvir and Smotrich into the Israeli government. They took full advantage of October 7 to destroy Gaza, with a view to colonising it and also launched an open reign of terror in the West Bank.

Their viewpoint was summed up on October 9 by Yoav Gallant who described the Palestinians of Gaza as ‘human animals’. The very same phrase used by Heinrich Himmler about non-Aryans in his address to senior SS Generals:

I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.”

Israel's Protests Against the Judicial Reforms

Throughout 2023 there had been massive protests in Israel against the judicial reforms with sections of the military, in particular the airforce, saying they would refuse to serve.

It must have seemed to those planning October 7 that the contradictions within Zionism were leading to a fundamental breakdown in Israeli society. What they did not understand was that the whole basis of the Judicial Protests was they had been launched on the basis of protecting Israeli Jewish democracy whilst ignoring the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.

Although Israeli activists made efforts to inject those issues into the protests the campaign allowed only token representation for Israeli Palestinians and anti-Occupation groups.

As Yiftach Golov, spokesperson for Brothers and Sisters in Arms said: “(while) it’s important to one day solve the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict, this is not an immediate threat” to Israeli democracy.’

Moshe Yaalon, ex-Likud Defence Minister describes Smotrich & Ben Gvir as 'Mein Kampf reversed'

Hamas failed to understand that the protests against the judicial reforms, a product of the ascendancy of the messianic fascists, took place within Israeli Jewish society and on the basis of an acceptance of the position of the Palestinians.

When October 7 happened, the protests folded as Israeli Jewish society came together. The Israeli state was now prepared to embark once more on a program of expansion with the full support of all wings of Zionism.

During the course of the Genocide in Gaza, Israel occupied both Lebanon and Syria. The ‘left’ Zionists, in so far as they existed, fully accepted all Netanyahu’s wars. Yet when Iranian missiles hit Israeli civilian areas, Israelis - without a hint of irony - complained bitterly at these 'war crimes' - having done their best to discredit the International Criminal Court and all international law.

How will Israel Collapse

In the video How will Israel Collapse? five factors are listed that will lead to Israel’s collapse. They are:

1.           The weakening of United States Support

2.           The weakening of support from American Jews

3.           The breakdown in Social Cohesion

4.           The Fight for Survival

5.           The Economy

Although all of these are important, the most important is the first factor, US support. Today we are seeing a fracturing of the political alliance in support of Israel with sections of the Democrats splitting off coupled with a division in the MAGA base. In particular there has been a sea change in American political opinion such that a majority of the population now sympathise more with the Palestinians than the Israelis. This is true of the West as a whole.

However we haven’t seen any significant diminution in the support of corporate America and establishment opinion, not least the military-industrial base in support of Israel.

It is important that public opinion is now moving against Israel and no longer buys into the idea that Israel is the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’. However we should not forget that US foreign policy has never depended on public support.

It will take a concerted campaign from below to force US corporations to disinvest and withdraw support from Israeli apartheid. What may happen is that the US will reduce its support for Israel and refuse to automatically support every Israeli adventure that Netanyahu or his successors propose.

The aftermath of an Iranian missile strike

What the video doesn't mention, but which the Iran war is demonstrating,  is the elephant in the room - the corrupt and authoritarian Arab regimes. Their overthrow are key to the US dropping its support for the Zionist state. They are Israel's junior allies. What is missing is the Arab masses themselves who have tolerated or acquiesced in the maintenance of these regimes.

The weakening of support from American Jews, although welcome, is not a decisive factor for the simple reason that contrary to the propaganda of the imperialist politicians and the anti-Semitic Right, US support has never depended on Jewish support for Israel. Jews provided the moral alibi and political shield for that support. They have never been the reason for that support.

Israel is a settler colonial state that is bound together by its antagonism to the Palestinians. War and expansion are part of the Zionist DNA. Without the Palestinians and external enemies Israel may already have been engulfed in a civil war.

Israel's War for Survival Means Endless Wars and the Dehumanisation of Non-Jews

That is why Israel will never be a ‘normal’ capitalist state. It sees itself as the bulwark of the West in a hostile region. As Joe Biden said, if Israel did not exist it would have to be invented. Israel will never be content with its existing borders. Israel is the only state in the world not to define its borders.

However we should not fool ourselves that Israel will be destroyed or collapse from within. Rather there will be an incremental erosion of democratic rights even for Jews. It will be increasingly intolerant even for Jews.

The days of a steady stream of immigrants from the Jewish diaspora via Aliyah are over. The direction of migration is out of the country not into it.

As Israel moves further to the neo-Nazi right and increasingly theocratic under the influence of halachic rather than civil law, coupled with the never ending wars, so we can expect an increasing number of Jews to emigrate. Emigration today is at a record high. Israel will more and more come to resemble a theocracy with religious nationalists in the driving seat.

The Zionist organisations invested heavily in capturing diaspora Jewish organisations like the Board of Deputies. Increasingly, despite the weaponisation of anti-Semitism, they will have greater difficulty in controlling Jewish opposition to the Israeli state, not least amongst the young. Already today it is clear that the Board is to the right of most Jews in Britain.

As we see in the war against Iran, the further Israel extends itself the weaker it will become. Expansion has its downside and those Zionists who dream of a Jewish Empire should remember the fate of all empires.

Western politicians will continue to pretend that Israel is a democracy. In so doing they ignore the genocide in Gaza, the apartheid and settler terror on the West Bank and the open racism such as the ‘Death to Arabs’ marches. To say nothing of the racism and apartheid within 1948 Israel.

We saw after October 7 how those who considered themselves part of the Zionist ‘left’ accepted the narrative of the Israeli Right. Over 60% of Israeli Jews support the extermination of the Palestinians of Gaza and 56% support the expulsion of Israel’s Palestinians.

The Israeli Jewish working class will play little or no part in opposing these things. In a settler colonial state the working class sacrifices its class interests for what it sees as its national interests. The Israeli working class has never broken from Zionism.  Mechanical and economistic Marxists who reduce everything to a sociological definition of class will continue to be baffled as to why their predictions of working class unity with the Palestinians never come to pass.

The Israeli working class has never been able to create its own independent political organisations. Its ‘trade union’ Histadrut was at one and the same time the largest employer after the state itself. It was a colonising agency not a trade union except in the narrowest sense. Zionism is an alliance between the settler working class and the settler capitalists.

The Israeli working class, like the White South Africa working class, is on the right of Israeli politics. If South Africa is any guide, the first sections of the Israeli population that will be prepared to abandon Zionism will be its capitalists and middle class not the Israeli working class.

Israel sees itself as in an existential battle for survival as in the slogan of Israel’s ‘right to self defence’. ‘Self defence’ means Israel’s right to attack anyone who challenges its hegemony.

It is an essential component of Israeli settler identity that it is always the victim, even when it’s the aggressor. This is true of all settler colonialism. It was the ‘left’ Zionists of Mapam (long since disappeared) who talked of ‘shooting and crying’. Today the Zionists don’t cry when they kill – that is the main difference between ‘left’ and ‘right’ Zionism.

This self pity is a characteristic of colonialism in general. The British Empire according to Rudyard Kipling’s poem had to:

Take up the White Man's burden—

And reap his old reward,

The blame of those ye better,

The hate of those ye guard

Israel’s economy is bound up with Israel’s role as a projection of US power. Whatever the strain of war on Israel’s economy it will survive as long as it is bailed out by the United States.

Also missing from How will Israel Collapse is any mention of the solidarity campaign outside of Israel, BDS or Arab and Palestinian agency. It presupposes that Israel will just collapse.

What will Happen to the Settler State?

The Palestine solidarity movement rarely discusses what will happen to the settlers if there is a solution. There are approximately 7 million Israeli Jews. This question is vital to the de-Zionisation and decolonisation of Israel. It may be crucial to achieving a settlement along the lines of apartheid in South Africa.

It is naive to suppose that all Israel’s Jews will emigrate to Europe or the USA. For many Israeli Jews there will be nowhere to go. As Israel becomes increasingly a theocratic police state under the Ben Gvirs and Smotrichs, social tensions will be exacerbated within the settler community. The question how to take advantage of these tensions and divisions is crucial.

Between early 2022 and mid-2024, more than 125,000 Jewish citizens left Israel than entered. The trend is believed to have continued through 2025. The current war with Iran is almost certain to ensure that emigration increases.

Knesset Immigration Committee chair MK Gilad Kariv warned that

this is no longer a trend — it’s a tsunami. Many Israelis are choosing to build their future outside the State of Israel, and fewer and fewer are returning.”

If this emigration continues Europe and the USA may raise their immigration barriers and prevent Israeli Jews coming.

Israel has now become a state of permanent war. If Iran is defeated then it will look for a new enemy such as Turkey. Israel cannot survive without an external enemy.

It is essential that any movement for decolonisation holds out the promise that Israeli Jews who wish to live in peace and equality will be able to do so. That is why the old PLO call for a Democratic, Secular State is more relevant now than ever. Those who call for the expulsion of all the Jews in Israel are holding up a mirror to the Ben Gvirs and Smotrichs.

Israel is an artificial state that is not destined for a permanent place in the sun. With the rise of the messianic settler right it is going to be increasingly uncomfortable for secular Israelis.

The aftermath of an Iranian missile strike in Arad

Israel’s existence is a temporary one. I doubt that it is even going to last for the first 100 years. There is no going back from the forever wars as Israel expands into Lebanon, Syria soon to be followed by Jordan and possibly Egypt.

It is important that anti-Zionists abroad enters into a close relationship with that section of the Israeli Jewish population, however small, that is prepared to reject either Zionism, Jewish Supremacy or apartheid. It is possible that a small section of Israeli Jewish workers will realise that their class interests and Zionism do not coincide.

My fear is that Israel, like South Africa before the end of apartheid, is going to have a very bloody end before Zionism is finally ended. Many people both in Palestine and the wider Middle East region, are going to have to pay a very heavy price for its demise.

Tony Greenstein

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18 October 2023

Israel's Denial That It Bombed Al Ahli Hospital Is As Credible As Its Denial That It Murdered Shireen Abu Akleh

After Killing 500 More Palestinians It's Time We Accepted that Israel is a Genocidal, Ethnic Cleansing, Failed Apartheid  State - We Need a Democratic not a Jewish State


Israel’s bombing of Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza

Israeli Ghoul & Liar-in-Chief  

How the Media Converted Lies Into Truth & Truth Into Lies

This was published in the Western Mail 31.7.14. in the midst of Israel's last major blitzkrieg in Gaza. See how accurate are its predictions?

The BBC and the Prostitute Media are going into overdrive to convince us that the Palestinians bombed their own hospital. They are lying through their teeth. If you want to read about the mendacity and dishonesty of the establishment press see Media Lens's The ‘Absolute Right’ To Commit War Crimes? Gaza, Israel And Labour ‘Opposition’.   

Whilst Israeli right-wingers are boasting about Israel's bombing of the hospital, its leaders are pretending that it was an own goal. Israel did exactly the same a year ago when it put out a fake video claiming that the Palestinians had killed Shireen Abu Akleh. It was only research by CNN, the NYT, Forensic Architecture, B'tselem and Bellingcat among others that forced Israel to admit that its soldiers had murdered Shireen.

Jonathan Cook, an award winning former Guardian journalist, hit the nail on the head when he said that we are in another WMD situation. We are being gaslighted. Cook declared:

It's not just unlikely that a Palestinian rocket hit the Gaza hospital. It's impossible. The media know this, they just don't dare say it 

Max Blumenthall of Grayzone in Judgment Day - The Grayzone live   methodically examines the footage of the missile hitting the hospital. This was no misfired rocket dropping from the air at a slow velocity but a high explosive supersonic missile.  But Biden and the United States will buy into any lie to exonerate its guard dog in the Middle East.

Max Blumenthall of Grayzone Examines the footage of the missile strike on Al Ahli Hospital and finds Israel's explanation woefully lacking

The BBC and Sky are happy to run with these lies because they serve the British State's interests. These are the same media outlets who tried to convince us in September 2022 that Russia bombed its own Nordstream 2 oil pipeline. They then 'forgot' to mention that Biden had declared only 7 months previously that the US would not allow the pipeline to operate.

Israel has once again resorted to putting out videos 'proving' it was a failed rocket. At least one of them is of 2022 vintage. 

Israel’s military and political echelons have developed a culture of lying. 20 years ago, Israelis expressed skepticism about official statements. Quoting from Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom:

[R]espected Israeli commentators have grown skeptical of Israeli government sources. “The state authorities, including the defense establishment and its branches,” Uzi Benziman observed in Haaretz, “have acquired for themselves a shady reputation when it comes to their credibility.” The “official communiqués published by the IDF have progressively liberated themselves from the constraints of truth,” B. Michael wrote in Yediot Ahronot, and the “heart of the power structure”—that is, the police, army, and intelligence—has been infected by a “culture of lying.” 

Sources: Uzi Benziman, “Until Proved Otherwise,” Haaretz (18 June 2006); B. Michael, “Of Liars and Hunters,” Yediot Ahronot (3 September 2005); B. Michael, “Stop the Lying!,” Yediot Ahronot (5 September 2008).  

Norman Finkelstein “HOW CAN ANYONE TRUST THE ISRAELI MILITARY?”

It is obvious to anyone with a brain cell that Hamas and Islamic Jihad do not possess a rocket with the capability of completely destroying a hospital. If they had such a capacity then they would have caused mass casualties in Ashkelon, Tel Aviv and elsewhere. This was not a rocket that fell from the sky having misfired but a high explosive missile that hit the hospital at supersonic speed.

The fact that Biden, who recently falsely claimed to have seen photos of the severed head of Israeli babies, is prepared to lie so blatantly demonstrates that the West is willing to turn a blind eye to any and every Israeli war crime. But why shouldn't Biden approve of Israel's bombing of a hospital? He is seeking the extradition of Julian Assange for revealing American war crimes in Iraq.

The fake news story of 40 babies who had been decapitated is atrocity propaganda whose purpose is to provide the justification for very real atrocities, such as are currently happening. And if false news stories don't work then don't worry. Israel's Communications Minister, Shlomo Karhi, is proposing draft regulations titled “Limiting Aid to the Enemy through Communication.”  Karhi has openly declared that their purpose is to stop Al Jazeera reporting from Israel. Karhi fully understands that the BBC and the western media can be trusted not to report the truth. 

Israel’s bombing of Al Ahli hospital in Gaza was predictable. Contrary to the lies of Mark Regev that Israel doesn’t target medical facilities, this is exactly what Israel has been doing. 

Hananya Naftali, a staffer to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu boasted of Israel’s attack on the hospital before he realised that that was not the official line. See Israel claims Hamas blew up hospital – but Netanyahu staffer boasted Israel did it.

Israel’s Operation Barbarossa

Just 3 days ago Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer prize winning journalist who exposed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and the US blowing up of Russia’s Nordstream 2 pipeline, wrote about The Plan To Wipe Out Hamas.

Hersh had been told by an Israeli official that Israel has been trying to convince Qatar to fund a tent city for the million Palestinian refugees waiting across the border.

The key issue for Israel’s war planners was their reluctance, despite mobilising more than 300,000 reservists, to engage in a door-to-door street battle with Hamas in Gaza City. One veteran of the IDF told Hersch that half of the Israeli Army has been engaged in the protection of the West Bank settlements. 

“The Israeli planners don’t trust their infantry…. (because of) a disastrous lack of combat experience.”

Israel's soldiers are very good when it comes to killing women, children and the elderly but they're not so great when it comes to fighting hardened guerilla fighters.

another child killed

Israel’s operational plan calls for the Air Force to destroy the remaining structures in Gaza City and elsewhere in the north. Gaza City will be no more. Israel will then begin dropping American-made 5,000-pound bombs known as “bunker busters,” or JDAMs, in the flattened areas where Hamas fighters are known to live and manufacture their missiles and other weapons underground.

The Israeli plan to raze Gaza City to the ground is not one whit different from Hitler’s intention in Operation Barbarossa to raze Moscow and Leningrad to the ground. 

The plans of Israeli strategists are, like their Nazi predecessors, also likely to meet with failure. The bombing of the Al Ahli hospital will make it more difficult for Israel’s planners to achieve their objectives given the worldwide repugnance felt to Israel's proposed carnage. The Palestinian refugees too don’t want to leave and Egypt’s regime doesn’t want them.

However the plans of Netanyahu’s war mongers, the deliberate bombing of a hospital and the open rejoicing of Israelis at the murder of 500+ Palestinians raise questions that cannot be avoided.

The Israeli state began its life with the massacre of thousands of Palestinians and the expulsion of three-quarters of a million refugees in what became known as the Nakba. Throughout the 1950s there were smaller expulsions and then the 1956 Suez War in which Israel attacked Egypt before being forced to retreat by President Eisenhower. In 1967 Israel launched another war and this time captured the Sinai, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Former Israeli Labor Party Deputy Prime Minister and Supporter of the Greater Israel Movement, Yigal Allon

From the occupation of the West Bank there grew the messianic settler and religious nationalist movement which continued the old Labour Zionist project of settlement, theft of Palestinian land and now open pogroms against the indigenous Palestinians. The founders of the Greater Israel Movement were not right-wing Zionists but some of the most revered members of the Labour Zionist movement like Yisrael Galili, Yitzhak Tabenkin and Yigal Allon, the former Deputy Prime Minister.

The goal of these settlers, as with their Labour Zionist predecessors, was to make Palestine as Jewish as possible with as few Arabs as possible. In the words of Yair Lapid, leader of Israel’s centrist Yesh Atid,

My principle says maximum Jews on maximum land with maximum security and with minimum Palestinians.

Zionism and the Israeli state has always been a racial preservation project. Only stupid westerners fell for the oxymoronic Jewish Democratic State formula. As Rabbi Meir Kahane, the leader of the neo-Nazi Kach Party, who Ben Gvir, Israel’s Police Minister reveres to this day, explained Israel could either be a Jewish or a Democratic state but it could not be both. If Israel was democratic then Palestinian Israelis, some 20% of the population could grow into a majority and Israel would no longer be a Jewish state.

Israel is an ethno- religious state. It is a throwback to the feudal era whereby the State was identified with a particular religion. Those not of that religion were persecuted. This was the major achievement of the 1789 French Revolution which separated religion from the state.

The Christian ethno-nationalist states of Eastern Europe in the 1930s and 1940s - Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Croatia - were also the most anti-Semitic states whose savagery outdid that of the Nazis themselves. An ethno-religious state is inherently a racist and apartheid state.

There are a number of states that call themselves religious states – from Iran to Britain, which is nominally a Christian country. But in Iran Muslims are not privileged over Jews. If anything it is Muslims who are the most oppressed. Islam is used to justify their oppression. In Britain Jews and Muslims don’t have inferior political and civil rights to Christians. No one argues that Jews or Muslims should not be allowed to buy ‘Christian’ land.

Israel blocks humanitarian aid

But in Israel 93% of the land is in the hands of the state. Non-Jews are barred from that land, which is controlled by the Jewish National Fund and the Israeli Land Authority. As the Jewish Nation State Law  makes clear the State belongs to the Jews and no one else. Hence State land is Jewish land.

Citizenship in Israel is almost meaningless since the criteria for belonging to the national collective is not citizenship but nationality. Only Jewish nationality counts. You can be an Arab, Druze, Muslim or a hundred other nationalities but none of them carry with them any entitlements.

Massive Demonstration in Karachi

As a British Jew I have more rights under Israel’s Law of Return than Palestinians who were born there. I have the automatic right to be an Israeli citizen if I emigrate to Israel whereas Palestinian refugees have no such right. That is why Gaza’s refugees do not want to exit Gaza for Egypt because they know very well that if they do cross into Egypt they will not be returning as Israel settles the Strip with Jews.

Those who argue for Egypt to take in Gaza’s residents, for ‘humanitarian’ reasons, to escape Israel’s bombing, are encouraging the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. There is only one response to Israel’s blitzkrieg and that is to demand an immediate ceasefire.

As long as Israel is a ‘Jewish’ State it will be an apartheid state and a genocidal state. Massacres of Arabs at Israel’s hands are nothing new. In 1982 Israel murdered more than 20,000 Lebanese civilians when it invaded Lebanon. It has killed thousands of Palestinians since its founding but worse than that, as a militarised state Israel has become the weapons supplier of choice to other genocidal regimes.

Demonstrators Attack UN Building in Beirut

In Guatemala Israeli supplies of arms and training military helped the regime kill up to 200,000 Mayan Indians. In Chile Israel was to the fore in arming Pinochet. In Argentina Israel helped to arm and train the regime’s torturers and military despite them having killed up to 3,000 Argentinian Jews. As Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister explained, when there is a choice between Jews and the Jewish state, then the latter comes first.

In a speech to the Central Committee of Mapai, Israel’s Labour Party, in December 1938, after Britain agreed to admit 10,000 Jewish children from Germany Ben Gurion said:

If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel.

The policy of the Zionist movement throughout the Holocaust was to oppose the rescue of Jews to any country bar Palestine. The Zionist movement preferred dead Jews in Europe to rescuing Jews in countries other than Palestine.

Those who believe that Israel can become a normal western democracy are either fools or knaves. Israel can no more become a democracy than a dog can become a cat. Israel is an artificial state. In the words of Akiva Orr, Israel is an unJewish State. There is nothing Jewish about Israel except racially. Israel is the antithesis of ethical Judaism. Racial Judaism and Zionism is the mirror image of the Nazis' racial creed.

Israel is also irreformable. You would have a greater chance of getting a fox to befriend, rather than eat, a chicken than getting Israel to become a democracy. War and ethnic cleansing is part of its DNA. It has always rejected any peace initiative. Netanyahu made his name through his virulent opposition to the Oslo Accords and he helped incite those who killed Yitzhak Rabin. Whenever the Palestinians or Arabs wished to negotiate, an Israeli leader, be it Ehud Barak or Netanyahu would say that they have no partner for peace.

And if Israel is irreformable then there is only one answer left. The State of Israel has to be dismantled and destroyed. I emphasise the state. Unlike fascists I distinguish between a state and those living in it. In the same way as the Nazi and South African Apartheid states were destroyed. The people of Israel, be they Jewish, Christian, Muslim or of no religion have the absolute right to live there, but as equals not with any group being racially superior.

Of course the messianic Zionists won't accept living in peace and will either emigrate or die out, but it is time that the Palestinian solidarity movement moved on from 2 states to accept that Israel as a Jewish state has to go.

Israel Posts a 2022 Video to Prove That It Didn't Bomb the Al Ahli Hospital!

Extermination & Murder Are Part of the Zionist DNA

Although Israel officially denies that they targeted the Al Ahli hospital, supporters of its government aren’t denying it. Quite the contrary these human rodents are celebrating it. Dan Cohen, an Israeli journalist, in a series of tweets quotes one member of an Israeli Telegram channel with 87,000 followers exclaiming at the sight of the dead and mutilated: ‘“Great picture, although I’m missing some ketchup and corpses.” Let no-one be under any doubt that these Judeo-Nazi sentiments aren’t just those of the 87,000 lunatics but they represent the private positions  of the majority of Israel’s coalition. This is Zionism red in tooth and claw.

Today I was sent an article The Most Horrifying of Times - And What Can We Still Do? by veteran Israeli peace campaigner, Adam Keller. Keller is one of the few genuine anti-racists who supports a two state solution. I disagree with him but he is at least sincere unlike liars like Labour Friends of Israel.

Keller writes how genocide is now an appropriate term to use about Israel’s actions. He describes how the word ‘extermination’ with all its resonance of Auschwitz has now entered the language of Israeli politics in the so-called liberal oasis of Tel Aviv.

For many years, when I saw the word "Genocide" in the statements of radical groups in Israel and abroad, I would approach the writers and comment that - however appropriate the condemnation of Israeli acts of oppression - Genocide is not among these acts. But this week Roy Sharon, a "respectable" radio and TV commentator on the main Israeli broadcasting corporation, spoke very explicitly of his desire to see “a million dead bodies in Gaza”.

And the streets of Tel Aviv are flooded with red stickers reading "Exterminate Gaza!". Not "Destroy!", not "Flatten!" – but clearly and explicitly "Exterminate Gaza!". "Le-Ha-Sh-Mid!" - "Exterminate!" Every Hebrew-speaking Jewish Israeli knows from a young age exactly what this word means. ….

There is no escaping the horrifying statement - the idea of Genocide has now entered the public agenda in the State of Israel, and there is every justification to use this terrible word and to beat all the drums and raise all the possible alarms. ….

Almost immediately with the beginning of the war, demonstrations began demanding an exchange of prisoners, which persisted even when they encountered blatant violence by the right-wing people, in some cases joined by equally violent police. The demand for an exchange of captives and prisoners, for the return of the Israelis captured by Hamas and taken to Gaza, is an important and vital humanitarian demand in itself. But it is also the best way to still try to put a brake on the escalation towards a destructive and bloody ground invasion of Gaza.

An invasion in which the army would invade and crush Gaza with all its might would most likely lead to the killing of the Israeli abductees, among all the many others who would be killed. This was expressed with characteristic bluntness and ruthlessness by the extreme right Minister Smotritz: "We need to be cruel, not to think too much of the captives". Negotiating with Hamas for a prisoner exchange deal is not compatible with a total war whose goal is to completely destroy Hamas. This was explicitly stated by Tzachi Hanegbi, head of Israel's National Security Council. The State of Israel has a choice between two courses that in practice rule out each other - either an effort to bring back the captives and abductees from Gaza, or a ground invasion that will multiply the killing and destruction already caused in the week of bombings.

The Lie that Israel Doesn't Target Medical & Health Facilities

Al Jazeera reported six days ago how Talal Taha and his team at al-Shifa, Gaza City’s largest hospital, received an emergency call and leapt into action.

Three vehicles headed to a location in the vicinity of the city’s eastern cemetery on Saturday 7 October. The team followed the sound of cries for help as the city was enveloped in darkness.

 “All of a sudden we were targeted [by an air attack] and we ran for safety,” Taha, a paramedic, told how the emergency team jumped into their cars on Salah al-Din Road and the vehicles proceeded a few metres before another air strike hit. Three of his colleagues were killed and Taha was lightly injured. “Our mission is humanitarian, we provide humanitarian service only, and we were targeted without any reason, without any excuse,” he said.

Health authorities and medical organisations in the Gaza Strip have accused Israel of deliberately bombing ambulances and health facilities in the Gaza, despite it being a war crime.

Protests in Lebanon Against Bombing

The Palestine Red Crescent Society condemned

"the intentional targeting of medical teams”, which killed “four paramedics in less than half an hour today, despite prior coordination. Targeting medical personnel is a grave breach to international humanitarian law and to humanity, PRCS demands accountability for this war crime, urging immediate investigation and justice for the victims."

Fifteen ambulances and nine health institutions have been hit, including the Ministry of Health building, the Rimal Clinic and the International Eye Center. Doctors Without Borders, (Medecins sans Frontieres) said it had counted 16 medical personnel killed since Saturday 7 October, 18 ambulances destroyed and eight medical facilities damaged either totally or partially.

Sohaib Safi, medical coordinator for MSF in Gaza, said the scale of the damage was “very clear evidence” that medical aid in the enclave was being intentionally attacked by Israeli forces. Safi told Al Jazeera

“When ambulances are trying to reach areas under fire, they are targeted as a message that no one should get inside to evacuate injured or stuck people,”.

effect of Israel’s bombing of Gaza Hospital

At al-Shifa Hospital, it is not just patients and their families seeking help. Frightened Gaza City residents, too, have found shelter at the hospital, in the hope that it will not be attacked.

But already, the neonatal unit has been partly damaged due to bombardments around the facility. Mahmoud Shalabi, senior programme manager for Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) expressed concern that this may be ‘the worst humanitarian catastrophe that Palestinians have seen since 1948.”

But instead of calling out Regev, the BBC entertains this liar and doesn’t even bother to grill him over his egregious lies. This despite the Israeli army's admitted lying about these things in the past.

The BBC also had to issue a ‘correction’ not an apology, for having branded the Palestine solidarity demonstrations at the weekend as ‘pro-Hamas’ an outrageous lie but yet more proof of its Zionist bias.

Bombing of Al Ahli Hospital

During the attacks on Gaza Israel has been absolutely clear that nothing will stand in the way of its objectives – to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its Palestinians.

What other meaning can one derive from a total blockade of food, water and fuel? This is a war of genocide and yet our political leaders, from Biden to Sunak, Starmer and Emily Thornberry gave their approval for these Nazi tactics.

At the Nuremberg trials of the major Nazi war criminals in 1946-7 and subsequent trials, 10 Nazis who were responsible for war crimes were hanged. Although the International Criminal Court doesn’t have the power to execute anyone, Biden et al should be charged with aiding and abetting Israeli war crimes and together with Netanyahu and Gantz, the two Israeli leaders most responsible, should be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

The Hannibal and Dahiya Doctrines

Israel is employing both the ‘Hannibal’ and ‘Dahiya’ doctrines. The first allows for massive attacks on civilian targets in order to prevent the capture of Israeli soldiers by enemy forces. It was introduced in 1986, after a number of abductions of IDF soldiers in Lebanon and until 2003 Israeli military censorship forbade any discussion of the subject in the press. Its basis is that " kidnapping must be stopped by all means, even at the price of striking and harming our own forces."

In other words Israel is prepared to sacrifice the lives of the 250 hostages in Gaza rather than allow them to be exchanged for Palestinian hostages in Israel’s prisons. Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a ‘proud homophobe’ who is also Gauleiter of the West Bank had previously said “there is no such thing as a Palestinian nation.” Smotrich urged the Israeli army to “hit Hamas brutally and not take the matter of the captives into significant consideration”.


Israeli forces shot their own civilians, kibbutz survivor says

Yasmin Porat, a 44-year-old mother of three, told how

They eliminated everyone, including the hostages. There was very, very heavy crossfire” and even tank shelling.

Porat said that prior to this she and the other civilians had been held by the Palestinians for several hours and treated “humanely.” She had fled the nearby “Nova” rave. A recording of her interview, from the radio program Haboker Hazeh hosted by Aryeh Golan on state broadcaster Kan, was reported by Electronic Intifada

Porat, who is from Kabri, a settlement near the Lebanese border, undoubtedly experienced terrible things and saw many noncombatants killed. Her own partner, Tal Katz, is among the dead.

However, her account undermines Israel’s official story of deliberate, wanton murder by the Palestinian fighters. Although it no longer appears on the Kan website, there can be little doubt about the recording’s authenticity.

At least one Hebrew-language account posted part of the interview on Twitter and accused Kan, the Israeli broadcaster, of functioning as “media in the service of Hamas.”

In other words if you tell the truth you are a ‘terrorist’.

Israel, the ‘Jewish’ State would prefer to murder its own captives rather than exchange them for Palestinians. This gives the lie to the idea that Israel cares a fig for the lives of  its own Jewish citizens. Israel is a racial preservation project not a humanitarian endeavour as its politicians pretend.

The Dahiya directive, named after a Beirut suburb that was bombarded, was explained by Israeli General Gadi Eisenkot

We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases. This isn't a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized.

Both doctrines are based on committing war crimes. Attacking civilian targets to protect the military is not new. That was what the Nazis did when they invaded countries, especially in Eastern Europe.

Barnaby Raine shows up Novara Media's Michael Walker for the pompous ass and opportunist he is as he gives him a lesson in racism & colonialism

Let no one think that Israel will stop at the bombing of a hospital. ‘Defence’ Minister Yoav Gallant promised that it will be a long war. Israel gets away with this because of the support it gets, not only from the United States but the entire West. It is not just Gallant and Netanyahu who are war criminals – it is the entirety of Western politicians from Biden to Sunak to Starmer, Macron and Olaf Scholtz.

Let no one be fooled that this is about Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’. For 17 years Gaza has been under a suffocating siege. Hamas, as early as 2007, repeatedly offered Israel the opportunity of a de facto peace settlement only to be rebuffed. Israel has long wanted to clear the Gaza Strip of Palestinians and has been looking for an opportunity. Unfortunately the attack on October 7 provided them with just such an opportunity.

The silence of the British Labour Movement is deafening. Sharon Graham, the General Secretary of my own union, Unite, has been conspicuous by her deafening silence.

Skwawkbox reported that the London and Eastern branch of Unite has written to Graham deploring her and the union's lack of support for Palestinian victims of Israeli war crimes, despite support for the Palestinians being union policy.

The London and Eastern regional secretary demanded immediate action to ensure the union is fully represented at next week’s pro-Palestinian demonstration and that Graham personally write to every branch of the union urging them to participate. See Unite London/Eastern slams Graham’s silence and union’s inaction over Israeli war crimes

Graham’s silence is in stark contrast to her clenched-fist posturing in front of a Ukrainian flag and she has also been exposed using proxies to order a senior union official to try and cancel a pro-Palestinian event at Labour's conference fringe last week.

Starmer is also facing a backlash over his and Evans attempt to prevent support for the Palestinians. Councillors were warned only a week ago that they may be expelled for attending Palestine solidarity demonstrations. Today Walsall Labour councillors publicly denounced Starmer’s support for war crimes.

According to Labour NEC member Luke Akehurst, Bombing Hospitals is Perfectly Acceptable 

Starmer is facing mass resignations of councillors over his support for Israeli war crimes. Starmer and his sidekick Luke Akehurst should be prime candidates for prosecution for aiding and abetting war crimes.

Can the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs Sink Any Lower?

It is difficult to know why the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs even exists given their deafening silence over Israel's genocidal attack on Gaza. John McDonnell, Richard Burgon, Dianne Abbot, Bell Ribeiro Addy,  Lloyd Russell Moyle, Apsana Begum, Zarah Sultana et al. have been conspicuous  by their deafening silence. Not a peep out of these cowards.



They tabled on 17 October EDM 1685 Protecting civilians in Gaza and Israel which is about as weak as you can get. Firstly it equates civilians in Gaza and Israel when 2 million Gazans have had food, water, electricity cut off and thousands have died. Israeli civilians have suffered no such deprivations.

It fails to recognise the difference between the oppressor and the oppressed.  Instead it 'utterly condemns the massacre of Israeli civilians and taking of hostages by Hamas' yet can only manage to express 'its deep alarm at the Israeli military bombardment'. Condemnation is reserved for the Palestinians, who have been under a 17 year starvation siege, not Israelis who sat by and voted for those who kept Palestinians in the world's largest open air prison.



The only member of the SCG who has expressed solidarity with the Palestinians has been Andy McDonald. The rest of them have behaved like racist liberals genuflecting to 'Zionist without qualification' Starmer. If ever there was a reason for socialists to get out of the Labour Party this is it  

The Metropolitan Police Have Been Busy - Apart from Harassing a Doctor's Family they have Closed Down a Book Fair on Palestine 

Israel’s war crimes did not however stop the Metropolitan Police, following orders from Home Secretary Braverman, harassing the family of a doctor who went out to Gaza to help treat the victims of Israeli war crimes. These are the values of the police in London today.

This follows the suspension of a Sussex University student earlier this week. Now a student from SOAS, a college with a formerly progressive administration, has been suspended and several members of the Palestine Society warned as to their conduct for having organised a demonstration in support of the Palestinians.

PLEASE SUPPORT THE PETITION IN SUPPORT OF SOAS  STUDENTS HERE

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/Y9TYWJ5

Those of us in Brighton and Hove have a local MP Peter Kyle, who is on Labour’s front bench as well as being Vice-Chair of Labour Friends of Israel. You might want to email this apologist for Israeli war crimes at peter.kyle.mp@parliament.uk.

 All over the Arab world there are mass demonstrations against the killings. In Lebanon the American Embassy has been besieged. In Jordan police fired tear gas to disperse crowds intent on attacking the Israeli Embassy. ‘Normalisation’ has, at least temporarily been halted.

Israel Tells Gazans to Leave the North & Then Bombs a Convoy of Civilian

Everywhere in the Arab world the corrupt and rotten regimes are fighting back against demands to cut off relations with Israel. It was the big mistake of the PLO that instead of calling for the overthrow of these regimes they tried to get into bed with them.

The PLO’s ambition was to become just another corrupt Arab regime. Unfortunately for it Israel had no intention of playing ball.

Today in Ramallah the Palestinian Authority is all that is left of the Oslo Accords of 1993. Mahmoud Abbas, the self-styled President of the PA is derided by Israel as the Mayor of Ramallah. He is hated by Palestinians for having become a sub-contractor to the Israeli army.

When protests broke out against the slaughter of 500+ people in Al Ahli hospital their chants quickly turned to calls for Abbas to step down. Abbas’s security forces began shooting at the protesters. The liberation of Palestine will begin with the overthrow of Abbas and his corrupt cronies. It is to the  shame of Palestine Solidarity Campaign that it refuses to even utter even one word of criticism against this Quisling regime that Israel imposed on the Palestinians.

Tony Greenstein

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