From the start the zionist project aimed to kick out people out of their lands and set up a colony. Later they presented themselves as a young, leftist nation that freed itself of British colonial rule. Israel tried to get the aura of a developing nation that rid itself of invaders and occupiers, the British and the locals. Later they claimed the locals had flocked to a supposedly empty Palestine after the newly arrived Jews had made ‘the desert bloom’ and Arabs from outside of Palestine came looking for jobs created by the Jewish immigrants, who also brought modern healthcare to the region. The message is clear: the land was empty and then primitive Arabs came in to get a slice of the new prosperity created by the Jews.

Of course, the land was populated, the Palestinians do have a distinct culture and their own language, food, tradition, values and spirit. From the outset zionists knew this and ignore it and made plans to get rid of the indigenous population. Already on the 10th of March 1948 plan Dalet was rolled out to accomplish this through violent means. The armies of neighbouring countries only attacked in May, months after the zionists had already started their ethnic cleansing. Thanks to weapons supplied by the Soviet Union and a more unified command structure the Palestinians and their allies were defeated.

You are very likely familiar with the story of the Naqba and how many massacres took place, the most famous one being Deir Yassin. The zionists then pretended that their first large scale ethnic cleansing offensive was merely self-defense. They claimed the Palestinians had left ‘voluntarily’ and that over the radio the Arab leaders had asked them to leave to safety temporarily and that upon their return they would find their own house intact and would also get the house of their Jewish neighbour. The historical record doesn’t back this up, as you can learn from Illan Pappé and others who have meticulously pieced together what exactly happened anno 1948.

The newly founded state then did whatever it could to make the return of the displaced impossible, to deny them statehood and to decapitate any political Palestinian movement it perceived as a real threat. Any aggression by Israel was spun and presented as self-defense. To this day Israel murders Palestinians by misrepresenting the issue and by accusing them of outrageous atrocities. It always does so by demonizing the Palestinian people as a whole.

Strongly suggested is the notion that a Palestinian child is only a future terrorist. So the only good Palestinian becomes a dead Palestinian or one who ‘voluntarily’ left to some other country, the further away the better. Over the decades Israel has been heaping myth upon myth. One of the more popular ones is that Gaza was given back in the early 2000s and that the Palestinians could have turned Gaza into one of the most attractive tourist spots on earth. The truth is that Gaza at the time was untenable for Israel at the time and that the small number of settlers there were removed because hanging on to Gaza was too troublesome, there was too much resistance. Better was to wall it off and turn it into a concentration camp.

While the media and western politcians made a big deal about how Gaza was given back, Israel injected hundreds of thousands of settlers into the West Bank. The West Bank was atomized. Small islands, enclaves, with Palestinians were the result, with more and more territory taken up by settlers who have their own road system and make travel between the remaining Palestinian held areas very difficult and time consuming. Essentially the Palestinians in the West Bank were herded into small reservations with a corrupt Palestinian Authority ruling over them, which acts like some sort of mob control entity in exchange for privileges. The word ‘kapo’ comes to mind.

Israel managed to get the US Congress behind it, controls US politicians, institutions, media, publishing houses via lobbying groups, the same to a lesser extent in Europe. Israel treats the US as a horse it can ride till it drops dead and then it can eat it. Israel doesn’t care about the US, it only cares about what the US can do for them and it is rarely enough. Even right now the Israeli regime is annoyed that the US hasn’t done more to bomb Israel or to put boots on the ground in Lebanon and Gaza. Israel on its own can hurt Hezbollah and Hamas, but as long as they have the will to resist Israel’s ground forces are too weak and incompetent and too small to achieve a total victory over them. Israel has taken out its rage against civilians in Gaza, but Hamas is obviously alive and kicking, recruiting and rebuilding and its local production of crude, but effective armements hasn’t been eliminated.

Why is Israel struggling? Hamas has done a good job at hurting Israel where it can. If Israel is the snake, then Hamas is the eagle. An eagle doesn’t fight a snake on the ground, it could be bitten and dies. An eagle bides its time and launches itself at the snake at the opportune time and lifts it off the ground and bites off its head there. Israel has to control the narrative for people to continue their support. Hamas has found ways to undermine that. Thanks to social media the truth has not only leaked out, it has stormed out.

How can you take a state that lies about the deaths of two infants and kills circa 20,000 children seriously? ‘Hamas made me do it’, was a weak argument from the start. Comparisons to allied bombing during World War II didn’t help much either, because allied bombing had at least some effect on the war. In the case of Israel the so called colateral damage was actually the main damage. All those civilian deaths were mostly accomplishing the rejection of Israel by millions around the world. The bombs didn’t destroy Hamas. The bombardments were a punitive campaign against civilians to make them turn on Hamas. This failed and could never have worked. Even if those civilians had wanted to turn on Hamas, how would they have done so? With no weapons and fighting for their lives during an Israeli siege and campaign of annihilation? People could see how senseless and murderous Israeli violence was.

It didn’t help that Israeli civilians found it necessary to mock the victims online and to storm a prison to free sadistic rapists. This is a very quick summary, even a 500 page book wouldn’t cover everything, but we are witnessing a cycle that started with ethnic cleaning, with zionists killing civilians and looting their houses, taking everything from live stock to simple pots and pans, and is continuing with ethnic cleansing. We have all seen how the IDF had no respect whatsoever for things all humans hold sacred, the toys of children, the clothing of women, of mothers, family homes, family belongings with immense emotional value, cultural heritage sites, no respect for pregnant women, the injured, the elderly, children.

What kind of society creates soldiers who smile and dance as they blow up homes? What kind of society worries more about soldiers coming home with PTSD than about the atrocities committed by those soldiers and the horrible fate of the victims of those soldiers? Israel has the tanks and the F-35s and other expensive high tech, but might doesn’t make right. The settler state has revealed its true nature, its true history and that is not going to go away. Israeli arrogance, lack of insight in their own actions, total lack of willingness to recognize and honor Palestinian victimhood, gross sense of entitlement, dominant racist views and endemic paranoia made it impossible to react reasonably to October 7th.

They couldn’t ask: ‘Ok, so what fucked up shit have we done that we have enemies with the determination to do this on a tiny budget against our powerful army?’ It’s shot itself in the foot. Not once, but at least 40,000 times.

The snake’s been lifted off the ground, but it doesn’t know it yet.

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