The Genocide of Gaza

I am taking a break from posting this week but I am interrupting that break because of the dire situation in Gaza. The utter destruction of Gaza and the expulsion, confinement, or death of its inhabitants is nearing completion. The U.S. government is a full participant in this genocide and, even today, few in the political establishment — whether Republican or Democratic — are willing to speak out against it.

In the early part of the 20th century, those favoring the settlement of European Jews in the land that is present-day Israel often claimed that it was "A land without a people for a people without a land." In reality, the land had a people, and that people presented a major hurdle to the Zionist project. At the time of Israel's creation, Zionists confronted this issue by expelling the majority of the native Palestinians from what would become the state of Israel. However, the fact that two peoples claim the same land has been a constant source of conflict. Today, in Gaza, we are seeing Israel again use the tactics of massacre and expulsion, with the added weapon of starvation, to remove the local population. Starvation has reached a critical state in Gaza. Meanwhile, food distribution is limited to a few Israeli-controlled aid hubs at which the Israeli military conducts daily massacres of those desperately trying to obtain food. Food and starvation have been weaponized to aid the expulsion of the Palestinians from Gaza.

Gazans are starving because of an embargo on food and medicine imposed by Israel. Even water supplies have been disrupted. Potemkin aid centers have been established, but in daily horrors, the food distribution hubs have primarily been used to attract desperate, starving Palestinians who are then massacred. Not a day goes by without 100 or so Palestinians being slaughtered near a food hub. A Palestinian journalist in Gaza has reported that "85% of Gaza’s population have entered the ‘fifth stage’ of malnutrition — the most critical and dangerous phase, which is often irreversible even if food becomes available in the future." Every day there are reports of more deaths from starvation in Gaza, often involving children. 

Israel's actions in Gaza are consistent with the same Zionist thinking that preceded Israel's creation. In 1923, for instance, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the founder of the Revisionist Zionist movement, wrote a remarkable essay titled "The Iron Wall" in which he discussed what to do about the native Arab population. Jabotinsky expressed indifference to the Arabs so long as they would accept a Jewish majority. However, he realized that this was something that the Arabs were unlikely to do. Therefore, he proposed that Zionists "proceed regardless of the native population" and continue colonization "behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach." Jabotinsky was convinced that "As long as the Arabs feel that there is the least hope of getting rid of us, they will refuse to give up this hope." Jabotinsky's solution was to build a state that was so strong and powerful that the Arabs would give up hope of destroying it and acquiesce to its existence. This vision of Israel living behind an iron wall with a constant need to maintain dominance over an Arab population hostile to its existence is roughly what came to pass.

It is important to emphasize that as early as 1923 (and probably much earlier), Zionists were debating how to deal with the existing native population of the land that they hoped to settle. Many, like Jabotinsky, came to the conclusion that Zionism justified whatever actions were necessary. As Jabotinsky put it, "We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not. There is no other morality." This has always been a fundamental truth of Zionism. Zionist interests are paramount. It is an ideology of supremacy. The mass starvation of Gazans is the end result of the ideas put forth by Jabotinsky and those who followed him. In Zionist supremacist thinking, the only morality is Zionism, and anything is permissible in its defense. Apparently, even genocide.

The history of Israel has been a history of the constant expansion of Jabotinsky's "Iron Wall". It started with the United Nations' partition plan that allocated 56% of the land to the Jewish state at a time when less than 30% of the inhabitants were Jewish, leaving 44% to the two-thirds of the population that was Arab. The expansion continued with what Israel calls its War of Independence and the Palestinians refer to as the Nakba. The conflict resulted in the Jewish state controlling all of its own allocation as well as over half of the proposed Arab state. In 1967, Israel occupied Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. With the recent collapse of the Syrian government, Israel quickly moved to seize parts of Mount Hermon and to establish its forces in Syrian territory. While the Iron Wall expands, the reality that Jabotinsky predicted has remained true. The Arab population of the lands that Israeli covets has understandably remained hostile to an ideology that demands supremacy over it. The same problem that confronted early Zionists remains today: what to do with the Palestinians?

Israel has never engaged the Palestinians as equals. Instead, the Jewish state has always taken an approach based on Zionist supremacy. The most moderate of Israelis have been willing to accept a feeble Palestinian entity deprived of most functions of an independent state. The "Palestine" envisioned by these Israelis would not be a country with the rights of other countries, but rather a state subject to Israeli dominance. At the other end of the spectrum were Israelis adamant that the Palestinians simply be expelled. Jabotinsky's vision of an Iron Wall was accepted by both groups, and their primary disagreement simply involved the dimensions of the iron wall. The vast majority of Israelis do not accept that Palestinians are endowed with the sort of unalienable rights cited in the American Declaration of Independence. To the contrary, Palestinian rights are viewed as being completely alienable if they are not compatible with Zionist supremacy.

While Jabotinsky's prediction of Arab hostility was correct, he appears to have vastly underestimated what would be required to compel Palestinian acceptance of Israel. Israel has always taken the approach of using overwhelming force to attempt to intimidate its enemies. This is best exemplified by the Dahiya Doctrine, "an Israeli military doctrine that calls for the use of massive, disproportionate force and the deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure." Yet this practice has not been successful with regard to the Palestinians. Israel has repeatedly increased the level of violence used against the Palestinians, yet Palestinian resistance has continued and even intensified.

October 7, 2023, was the strongest and most violent act of Palestinian resistance since Israel's establishment took place. We can debate the morality of the Palestinian attack until we are all blue in the face — and I condemned the Palestinian atrocities immediately after the attack and have consistently done so ever since — but the fact remains that October 7 was an expression of the Palestinians' refusal to live with an Israeli boot on their neck. There was never any doubt as to how Israel would respond. It would be the Dahiya Doctrine on steroids.

Almost immediately after the Hamas attack, Israelis began speaking in genocidal terms. On the day of the attack, May Golan, an Israeli cabinet minister, argued that "All of Gaza’s infrastructures must be destroyed to its foundation and their electricity cut off immediately. The war is not against Hamas but against the state of Gaza". The Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, joined in, saying "[I]t’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware not involved, it’s absolutely not true …" The Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Parliament, Nissim Vaturi, was particularly vocal about his desires. He tweeted, "Now we all have one common goal – erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the Earth". He later continued saying that "The war will never end if we don’t expel everyone" and stated that the Israeli goal was "To wipe out Gaza. Nothing else will satisfy us … Don’t leave a single child there, expel all the remaining ones in the end, so they have no chance of recovery." In a radio interview, Vaturi said that "The children and women must be separated and the adults in Gaza must be eliminated. We are being too considerate". Yoav Gallant, until recently the Israeli Defense Minister, said "Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything". An Israeli Knesset member, Amit Halevi, argued that "There should be 2 goals for this victory: 1. There is no more Muslim land in the Land of Israel ... After we make it the land of IL, Gaza should be left as a monument, like Sodom…".

Across the United States, protests in support of the Palestinians erupted, particularly on college campuses. The political establishment in the U.S. — the so-called adults — reacted by calling the protesters naive at best, pro-Hamas antisemites at worst. "The kids just don't understand", we were told. But the kids understood only too well. Truthfully, the "adults" probably understood as well; they just didn't want to admit it. As observers began using the word "genocide" to describe Israel's intentions, Israel's supporters either sunk deeply into denial or provided increasingly creative justifications.

The Israelis have openly discussed their plan to concentrate one million or more Gazans in a camp in southern Gaza. As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz opined, "Israel Wants to Build the Most Moral Concentration Camp in the World". The plan is to encourage the Gazans to leave Gaza for other countries, never to return. Gaza is being systematically destroyed and made uninhabitable. Those who fail to either emigrate or move to the concentration camp will be the victims of disease, starvation, or the Israeli military.

This is where Zionism has led. Just as Jabotinsky didn't care about "Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet", Israeli officials don't care about what other world leaders think. They believe, just as Jabotinsky did, that "There is no other morality." Gaza is being incorporated behind Jabotinsky's Iron Wall. Next, the same will happen to the West Bank. Already there are daily attacks by settlers on Palestinian homes in the West Bank. The U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has described the attacks on Arab villages as "terrorist acts", but don't expect much more than words from the United States. The United States is not only condoning the genocide being committed by Israel in Gaza, it is actively supporting it. The same will likely be true in the West Bank.

As Zionism took hold among the Jews of Europe, the idea of establishing a state in the historic land of Israel gained appeal. But there was the question of what to do about the existing inhabitants. One reaction was to simply deny that such people existed. Even today, some Israeli apologists argue that Palestinians are not indigenous to the land. But other Zionists understood the reality and debated how to respond to the native Palestinians. The subsequent strategy, heavily influenced by Jabotinsky, was to defeat, dominate, and expel them. Many of Gaza's inhabitants were previously expelled from what is now Israel during the Nakba. They are now facing their second Nakba and being forced to choose between death, life in a concentration camp, or emigration. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, in which European Jews faced genocide, many asked why more had not been done to stop it. We all should be asking ourselves that question about the genocide in Gaza right now. We are perhaps only days away from when we can stop talking about Gaza's genocide as something that is happening and begin referring to it in the past tense.