Our Wednesday News Analysis | Israel's legitimacy was built on the Holocaust. Now its own genocide is destroying it

A man carries a child while walking past a building destroyed by Israeli bombardment in the Bureij camp for Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip on 9 October 2024 (Eyad Baba/AFP)

One of the more remarkable aspects of the history of Zionism is that the majority of European Jews rejected the movement from its inception in the early 19th century until the Second World War.

What had begun as a Protestant British project to convert European Jews to Protestant Christianity and ship them to Palestine transformed in the last two decades of the 19th century into a European Jewish project.

Even so, the movement failed to gain traction among European Jews in contrast to its popularity then among European and American Protestants and especially Europe's imperialist leaders.

It was not until the Nazi genocide of European Jews that a majority of European and American Jews were swayed and began to support this colonial-settler movement that forbade Jews to self-expel and colonise Palestine.

Indeed, the Holocaust was instrumental in convincing these communities to support the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, if for no other reason than to provide refuge for Jewish survivors of the genocidal catastrophe in Europe.

The shift in the attitude of these Jews, however, was neither immediate nor spontaneous. The Zionist movement worked assiduously and ultimately successfully to convince them to support its colonial-settler programme...

Read more: Israel's legitimacy was built on the Holocaust. Now its own genocide is destroying it

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THE WORLD AFTER 7 OCTOBER: ISRAEL'S STRATEGIC DEFEAT AND THE FUTURE OF ZIONISM

Source: Middle East Monitor
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241008-the-world-after-7-october-israels-strategic-defeat-and-the-future-of-zionism/

By Nasim Ahmed
Published October 8, 2024

Supporters and members of the Palestinian community gathered to stage a pro-Palestinian march peacefully through the streets in Lima, Peru on October 7, 2024 [Klebher Vasquez/Anadolu via Getty Images]

The world will never be the same again post-7 October 2023. The events that have unfolded over the past year have shaken the foundations of the Middle East and challenged long-held assumptions about what is commonly referred to as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Ever since it founding in Palestine, the ball has always been in Israel’s court to demonstrate to the world that Zionism and the idea of settler-colonialism could reconcile with its neighbours that it has taken their land, and live in peace. After eight decades, Israel has demonstrated beyond any doubt that it cannot square this circle. The continued indulgence of the Zionist project to establish a state built on Jewish supremacy in Palestine promises nothing but more death, more destruction and more wars.

The significance of this moment was captured by the famed Israeli writer Yuval Noah Harari: “Israel is at a crossroads,” said Harari in an interview three days ago. “I do think its [Israel’s] identity is at stake. The soul of the country is now the battleground, and the outcome will decide not just the shape of Israel for many, many years to come, but also the shape of Judaism.”

Harari drew a stark parallel between the current situation and a pivotal moment in Jewish history when Jewish extremists in the first century CE threated the existence of Judaism itself. “The Second Temple era ended after the Zealots took over with messianic visions and almost destroyed the Jewish people, almost destroyed the Jewish religion, which had to then reinvent itself,” he explained, referring to the Jewish sect known for their violent opposition to Roman rule in Palestine. Their extremism gave rise to the modern term “zealot”, denoting a fanatical adherent to a cause...

Read more: The world after 7 October: Israel's strategic defeat and the future of Zionism

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MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI REFLECTS ON THE FUTURE OF THE PALESTINIAN STRUGGLE IN A TIME OF GENOCIDE AND ETHNIC CLEANSING

Source: Mondoweiss
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/10/mustafa-barghouti-reflects-on-the-future-of-the-palestinian-struggle-in-a-time-of-genocide-and-ethnic-cleansing/

By Mondoweiss Editors
Published October 7, 2024

In an interview with Mondoweiss, General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative Dr. Mustafa Barghouti reflects on the importance of Palestinian national unity, the challenges facing the Palestinian struggle, and the right to resist.

General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, Mustafa Barghouti, meets with members of the national and Islamic forces in Gaza City on March 20, 2022. (Photo: Youssef Abu Watfa/APA Images)

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti is a Palestinian physician and politician, serving as the General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, which he founded in 2002. Barghouti is also known for founding the Palestinian Medical Relief Society in 1979, which provides medical services to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. He has featured prominently in both English-language and Arabic-language media over the past year since October 7, emerging as a prominent advocate for Palestinian national unity and the holding of immediate democratic elections as an urgent requirement for confronting the threat of genocide and ethnic cleansing faced by Palestinians. He has strongly advocated over the past year for the rights of Palestinians to resist occupation and apartheid, in Gaza and beyond. Mondoweiss spoke to Dr. Barghouti on October 2, 2024, to reflect on the ongoing genocide that started a year ago and what it has meant for the Palestinian struggle.

Mondoweiss: It has been an entire year since the Israeli genocide in Gaza began, and it has now expanded into a regional war involving Hezbollah and, potentially, Iran. When Hamas launched its surprise attack a year ago, what went through your mind? Did you expect that the Israeli response would be a genocide like the one you have witnessed?

Mustafa Barghouti: Nobody expected that the second largest and strongest Israeli command brigade, [the Israeli army’s Gaza Brigade] would collapse as it did. That led to many things that, in my opinion, were never planned, such as taking civilians prisoners. There was a certain level of chaos. I didn’t, of course, know that there would be such an attack, but I did expect some sort of explosion [from Gaza], because of the fact that Israel was ignoring any demand to end this state of siege. We witnessed a situation where the Israeli occupation had continued for 57 years. Ethnic cleansing continued for 76 years. The siege on Gaza was becoming unbearable. You’re talking about 17 years of siege on Gaza that led to a situation where people had almost no electricity, only a few hours a day, where 24 percent of the water was either polluted or saltwater, where 80 percent of young graduates were unemployed, and where there was not only a complete economic disaster but a total loss of hope. I think when we reached that moment on October 7, it became clear to all Palestinians that Israel had no plan whatsoever for a peaceful resolution of this situation.

The new Israeli government is a fascist government with people in it like [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich and [National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir, who are themselves settlers and were previously accused by the Israeli judicial system of being members of terrorist groups. They declared clearly that the Israeli plan is to fill the West Bank with settlers and settlements so that Palestinians would lose any hope for a state of their own, and they would have to choose between leaving, which is ethnic cleansing, living a life of subjugation, which is apartheid, or dying, which is genocide. In reality, this is an officially declared Israeli policy. So, of course, people were expecting some sort of reaction to get us out of a terrible situation in which Israel was literally eliminating the Palestinian cause. Netanyahu was very clear about his plans. He declared that the goal of normalization with Arab countries was to liquidate the Palestinian cause.

And if you want another reason, just two weeks before October 7, Netanyahu appeared before the United Nations General Assembly and showed a map of Israel that included all of the West Bank, all of the Gaza Strip, all of the Golan Heights, and a map of the new Middle East, which he is trying to construct, as he said, for 50 years to come...

Read more: Mustafa Barghouti reflects on the future of the Palestinian struggle in a time of genocide and ethnic cleansing