This story is told in three parts. The first documents the unequal system of justice that grew around Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. The second shows how extremists targeted not only Palestinians but also Israeli officials trying to make peace. The third explores how this movement gained control of the state itself. Taken together, they tell the story of how a radical ideology moved from the fringes to the heart of Israeli political power.
By the end of October, it was clear that no one was going to help the villagers of Khirbet Zanuta. A tiny Palestinian community, some 150 people perched on a windswept hill in the West Bank near Hebron, it had long faced threats from the Jewish settlers who had steadily encircled it. But occasional harassment and vandalism, in the days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, escalated into beatings and murder threats. The villagers made appeal after appeal to the Israeli police and to the ever-present Israeli military, but their calls for protection went largely unheeded, and the attacks continued with no consequences. So one day the villagers packed what they could, loaded their families into trucks and disappeared.
. . .
Such violence over the decades in places like Khirbet Zanuta is well documented. But protecting the people who carry out that violence is the dark secret of Israeli justice. The long arc of harassment, assault and murder of Palestinians by Jewish settlers is twinned with a shadow history, one of silence, avoidance and abetment by Israeli officials. For many of those officials, it is Palestinian terrorism that most threatens Israel. But in interviews with more than 100 people — current and former officers of the Israeli military, the National Israeli Police and the Shin Bet domestic security service; high-ranking Israeli political officials, including four former prime ministers; Palestinian leaders and activists; Israeli human rights lawyers; American officials charged with supporting the Israeli-Palestinian partnership — we found a different and perhaps even more destabilizing threat. A long history of crime without punishment, many of those officials now say, threatens not only Palestinians living in the occupied territories but also the State of Israel itself.
Some quotes from David Ben-Gurion, one of the early zionist founders of Israel:
“A partial Jewish State is not the end, but only the beginning. … I am certain that we well not be prevented from settling in the other parts of the country, either by mutual agreements with our Arab neighbors or by some other means. . . [If the Arabs refuse] we shall have to speak to them in another language. But we shall only have another language if we have a state.”
“I don’t understand your optimism,’ Ben-Gurion declared. 'Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: THEY THINK we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it’s true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?”
"Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country. … Behind the terrorism [by the Arabs] is a movement, which though primitive is not devoid of idealism and self sacrifice.”
Or one of my favorites from his diary:
"We must do everything to insure they (the Palestinians) never do return.”
It’s with that context in mind that the recent genocidal rhetoric from Israeli officials makes more sense:
“In order to preserve the security achievements that our soldiers lost their lives for, we must resettle Gaza with security forces and settlers that will embrace the land with love,” Karhi said. He said that “this is the only real way to make the Hamas Nazis pay a price and to defend our nation and country.”
Ben-Gvir also spoke at the march, saying that what the protesters are calling for was the “true solution.” [source]
Or when Netanyahu compared the Gazans to “Amalek” an ancient tribe from a story in the Torah that the tribe of Israel genocided. Or when they describe Palestinians as “human animals” etc.
Israel has always been a European colonial project from the very beginning and violence has always one of the primary means of ensuring settlement is possible. One thing many people don’t realize is that the Zionist colonial project was in motion long before WWII, as far back as the late 1800s. They saw WWII and the holocaust as an opportunity thus quotes like:
“The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war.” -David Ben-Gurion, 1937
Or after the holocaust:
“If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.”
What we cannot do now is let Zionists argue that “Every nation had genocide in its founding, it’s inevitable” because this is happening right now, we are witnessing it. We can’t discuss it as if it’s some regretable historical fact. The reason we say “never again” is to prepare people for times like what are happening right now. We’re all under a moral mandate to stop this from happening.
I agree with a lot of this but this bit is a non-sequitur:
One thing many people don’t realize is that the Zionist colonial project was in motion long before WWII, as far back as the late 1800s.
Political zionism did get started in the late 1800s, as a proposed solution to the centuries of pogroms, expulsions and discrimination against Jews in Europe. Prior to the horrors of WWII, most Jews considered it literal heresy. It was the Holocaust that convinced many that Zionism was their only option, not least because most of the free world closed its borders to Jews fleeing the Holocaust and its aftermath. There was nowhere else to go.
This is a very useful short piece by a Jewish anti-zionist, pleading with the pro-Palestinian movement to take more care with their understanding of history: Zionism, Antisemitism and the Left Today
The Palestinians are paying the price for Europe’s crimes. The problem cannot be solved by denying that those crimes ever happened.
No one is denying the holocaust happened. What the actual fuck? God damn that is insidious.
All you’re doing is trying to soft-sell the justification that Zionists use for their on-going genocide, you’re basically claiming they had no choice but to take land from someone else, which is complete bullshit.
When you compare the rhetoric and methods of the Israeli colonial project to every other crime against humanity committed by Europeans during and preceding that period it’s the same game plan because it’s the same racist, far-right playbook. The Israeli settlers were Europeans and had zero claim to the region they took over, Ben-Gurion himself even acknowledges that.
They are there now, Israel is not going anywhere, but the fact that they are an actively expanding colonial state has not changed, it does not justify their continued occupation of Palestinian land nor the wholesale slaughter of the people in Gaza. That is what the discussion needs to be centered on.
