How Israel’s war on Gaza exposed Zionism as a genocidal cult

Protesters wave Israeli flags during a demonstration against the hearing at the International Court of Justice on a genocide complaint by South Africa against Israel, in The Hague, Netherlands, on 11 January 2024 (Robin Utrecht/AFP)

“57.5 percent of Israeli Jews said that they believed the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) were using too little firepower in Gaza,
36.6 percent said the IDF was using an appropriate amount of firepower,
while just 1.8 percent said they believed the IDF was using too much firepower.”

The Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University’s Peace Index

The Israeli press has published seemingly “reasonable” articles,
which frames Israel’s planned ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians of Gaza and their potential expulsion to the Egyptian Sinai as something wonderful, describing it as “one of the most suitable places on Earth to provide the people of Gaza with hope and a peaceful future.”

Ever since the current Israeli cabinet, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, came to power in December 2022, there has been a consensus, even in the western mainstream and among the Israeli political opposition, that it is a Jewish supremacist, racist government.

Characterisations of the government, which clearly expressed the preferences of a majority of the Israeli Jewish electorate, as “the most extreme”, “the most fundamentalist”, and “the most racist” in Israel’s history, became common. Other descriptions deemed it Israel’s “first fascist” government.

This is aside from the fact that two years before the rise of the current government, historically pro-Israel mainstream western human rights organisations had adjudged Israel a racist “apartheid” state since its founding. Palestinians and their supporters have also used this label to describe Israel since at least the 1960s.

It is the same government, which was the object of international condemnation, that has launched the ongoing genocidal war against the Palestinian people, which has so far killed and injured upwards of 100,000 Palestinians and displaced more than two million.

Yet this very same racist government and its genocidal war are supported, armed, and financed by the US and its European allies, who, forgetting their earlier criticisms, have not flinched from justifying Israeli crimes, just as they previously defended the Jewish settler colony against accusations of apartheid.

‘No longer fringe’

Middle East Eye editor-in-chief David Hearst recently observed that those expressing genocidal racism among Israeli Jews – including soldiers, singers, artists, and politicians – “are no longer a fringe. They represent what mainstream Israel thinks. They have become genocidal, racist and fascist when talking about Palestinians – unashamedly so. They are proud of and joke about their racism and do little to disguise it.”

Since its inception, the Zionist movement has always set out to ethnically cleanse Palestine of the country’s indigenous Palestinian population

According to the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University’s Peace Index polls taken more than a month after the beginning of the massive Israeli bombing of Gaza, which by then had killed thousands, “57.5 percent of Israeli Jews said that they believed the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) were using too little firepower in Gaza, 36.6 percent said the IDF was using an appropriate amount of firepower, while just 1.8 percent said they believed the IDF was using too much firepower.”

Commenting on the genocidal views of a majority of Israeli Jews and their support of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy appears to be at a loss: “Either that’s the real face of Israel, and the attack on the 7th legitimised it to be above the surface, or that the 7th really changed things,” he said, adding: “I don’t know which one is true.” Increasingly, however, the question being debated is no longer whether the Israeli government is racist, fascist, or genocidal, but whether a majority of Israeli Jews also fit those descriptions and that this government is, indeed, no more than a manifestation of Israeli Jewish political culture.

Levy’s response is surprising, however, given the documented racism of the Zionist movement since its inception and the well-known fact that it has always set out to ethnically cleanse Palestine of the country’s indigenous Palestinian population.The Israeli press has published seemingly “reasonable” articles, which frame Israel’s planned ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians of Gaza and their potential expulsion to the Egyptian Sinai as something wonderful, describing it as “one of the most suitable places on Earth to provide the people of Gaza with hope and a peaceful future.”

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