By Latheef Farook
Fair minded intellectuals from United States, Europe, Middle East and even Australia predict the inevitable collapse of Israel in view of its heinous crimes on Palestinians for almost a century.
Many point out that Israel turned vengeful, tribal and adamant on destruction and expansion with total disregard for basic human decency and international law. Israel’s colonial war became a war on hospitals, schools, mosques and residential buildings, financed, armed and protected by the United States and other Western lackeys and killing thousands of Palestinian civilians – children, doctors, teachers, journalists, men and women, old and young, as if they were enemy combatants.
As a result this alien entity has no chance of surviving among all the indigenous people of the region, who have coalesced more than ever before against the savage intruder. Israel can no longer use its fanciful theological claims to justify its violent racist practices. God does not sanction the slaughter of innocent children. And nor should Israel’s American and Western patrons.
American political scientist and international relations scholar John J. Mearsheimer said “ it appears that Israel is losing its war in Gaza. At the same time, Israel is fighting Hezbollah on its northern border, the International Court of Justice has ruled that a plausible case can be made that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Mearsheimer emphasizes the corrupting influence of occupation, asserting that treating the occupied population as subhumans is a consequence of political dynamics.
The ICJ hearings involve arguments from both Israeli and South African representatives, with the Israelis using the Holocaust argument and attempting to shift the focus to events on October 7th. The human shield argument is presented to deflect blame from the IDF for civilian casualties. The overall sentiment is that Israel is losing the global public relations battle, except in the United States.
Qatar based Al Jazeera’s Senior political analyst Marwan Bishara predicted that Israel “has no future in the Middle East. The Gaza war may turn out to be the beginning of the end, but not for Palestine”. He added that Israel’s sadistic war on Gaza, the culmination of a long series of criminal policies, may well prove suicidal in the long term and lead to the demise of the mighty “Jewish State . Indeed, Israel’s deliberate, industrial-scale murder of the Palestinian people under the pretext of “self-defence” won’t enhance its security or secure its future. Rather, it will produce greater insecurity and instability, further isolate Israel and undermine its chances for long-term survival in a predominantly hostile region.
In an article titled The end of a charade: Israel’s collapse under Global Condemnation retired professor Adrian Liberto said “Israel is as good as finished. It has lost all credibility as a responsible nation in-the-making. From the onset its creation has depended on abusing superpowers, injustice and crime. It has been those three forces that have kept it enduring and spreading until now, while skilfully dodging every attempt to hold it to account, often by playing the victim. Despite the numerous massacres perpetrated along the way, something very different has happened now that has shaken its very foundations; mortally so: Gaza.
Israel is a theocratic and apartheid state that was created through the theft of Palestinian lands, homes, livelihoods and lives. It has been allowed and supported to incrementally abuse the native population to the point where more and more Zionists are now claiming openly that the whole of Palestine should be theirs by divine right, despite the fact that most Israelis are postwar immigrants, their descendants and relatively new arrivals. So in a way what is happening in Gaza is no surprise, though the fact that Israel has so bullishly peeled off the mask is. What is utterly bewildering, however, is why the “West” is persisting in its aiding and abetting of these murderous crimes even though Israel no longer makes any attempts to hide them.
Long before the war on Gaza, a leading Israeli journalist, Ari Shavit, predicted the demise of Israel “as we know it”, if it continued on the same destructive path. And Ami Ayalon, a former head of Israel’s Shin Bet secret service, warned that the government’s war and territorial expansion will lead to “the end of Israel” as we know it. Both have written books warning Israel about the dark future ahead if it continues its occupation.
Like all other violent intruders, from the ancient crusaders to the modern-day colonial powers, this last colonial entity, Israel, as we know it, is destined to vanish, regardless of how much Palestinian, Arab and Israeli blood it sheds.
The Gaza war may turn out to be the beginning of the end, but not for Palestine. Just as apartheid South Africa’s bloody supremacist regime imploded, so will Israel’s, sooner or later.
In truth, I never thought Israel could have much of a future in the Middle East without shedding its colonial regime and embracing normal statehood. Israel’s colonial nature dominated its behaviour at each and every turn. It wasted countless opportunities to end its occupation and live in peace with its neighbours.
Instead of ending its occupation, it doubled down on its colonisation project in the occupied Palestinian territories. Thus as one apartheid was dismantled in South Africa, another was erected in Palestine.
In the absence of peace and in the shadow of colonisation, Israel has slid further towards fascism, enshrining Jewish supremacy into its laws and extending it to all of historic Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. In no time, the fanatical and far-right parties gained momentum and took over the reins of power under the opportunistic leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, undermining Israel’s own institutions, and all chances of peace based on coexistence between two peoples.
They rejected all compromise and have begun devouring the entirety of historic Palestine, expanding the illegal Jewish settlement on stolen Palestinian lands throughout the occupied West Bank in an attempt to squeeze the Palestinians out. They also tightened their siege of the Gaza Strip, the world’s largest open-air prison, and dropped all pretence of ever allowing it to unite with its Palestinian hinterland in a sovereign Palestinian state.
Then came the October 7 attack – a rude wake-up call reminding Israel that its colonial enterprise is neither tenable nor sustainable, that it could not lock in two million people and throw away the key, that it must address the root causes of the conflict with the Palestinians, namely their dispossession, occupation and siege.
Latheef Farook is a journalist from Sri Lanka
25 June 2024
Source: countercurrents.org