Ending Israel
The genocidal settler colonial state, guilty of crimes as severe as those of the Nazis, won’t stop itself. How do we bring it to an end?
A screenshot from a video featuring an image of Benjamin Netanyahu in August 2023, before the genocide in Gaza began, when he was facing huge protests about his efforts to undermine the judicial system.
My new article on my website, How Can the Genocidal State of Israel Be Brought to an End?, which has taken me nearly two weeks to write, in fits and starts, is my considered analysis of how and why the genocidal State of Israel must be brought to an end.
It’s been a difficult article to write, not because I haven’t reached this conclusion in the 100 or so articles I’ve written about the genocide over the last 34 months, but because it’s the first time that I have sought to address it directly, and it is a topic that Israel itself strives decisively to prevent — a conclusion, drawn from analogies with the Nazis, from Israel’s entire 78-year blood-soaked history, and from the evidence of the last 1,045 days of relentless, remorseless military extermination, and deliberate, life-ending deprivation across the whole of Palestinian society, that a state that behaves like this cannot be allowed to continue.
Although I have been broken many times over the last 34 months, and “paralyzed by despair that such evil is not only taking place, but is openly celebrated by those engaged in it, openly supported by western political leaders, and tacitly, if not openly supported by the gatekeepers of the mainstream media”, as I describe it, recent actions by Israel prompted me to write this open condemnation of its intolerable existential depravity.
Two weekends ago, in military attacks on Gaza, 19 civilians were killed, including, in an attack on a residential apartment in Al-Sousi Tower in western Gaza City, Abdullah Abu Taif, 33, his pregnant wife, Abeer Anan, 29, and their five-year-old son, Azzam, along with the family’s unborn child. As I describe it, “The blast tore Abeer Anan apart so violently that her unborn foetus was hurled from her body, and was only later discovered by rescue workers, buried under the rubble.”
Killing civilians is nothing new for Israel. It does it all the time. What tipped me over the edge on this occasion, however, is that these killings took place because of what I describe as a temper tantrum on the part of Israel’s leaders, brought about because the Board of Peace created under Donald Trump, and the regional negotiators who have been working to bring hostilities to an end, secured a disarmament agreement from Hamas that, if enacted, would have ended Israel’s relentless slaughter. A family, and an unborn foetus, was deliberately slaughtered out of spite.
Again, even the killing of civilians out of spite is nothing new. Israel has, for example, done so on the eve of every ceasefire deal to date. However, after 1,045 days of genocide — and when undertaken with such open contempt for even mild steps towards an end to hostilities, undertaken by its closest ally, the US — this particular war crime exemplified for me how Israel must be stopped, because it will not stop itself, and because, as I describe it, “A state that lives only to commit genocide, and to spread terror in an alleged quest for peace and security that is actually a barely disguised quest for unfettered supremacy at all times, has no place in the world.”
Please read the entire article here, and please share it if you find it helpful.
Please also read my Substack Notes
Just a reminder that, in between posts, I regularly post Notes here on Substack, which you can find here.
Over the last few days, as I’ve been writing this article, I haven’t had much time to post Notes, but you can find here my appreciation of the families and friends of the Ulm 5 Palestine Action activists on trial in Germany singing a moving song of resistance and resilience in the courtroom, and also feel free to check out ‘Extinction Weather’, about the extreme heat in Europe this summer, accompanied by a photo I took from the top of Greenwich Park in London.
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Thank you for the article! I have been thinking the same, comparing Israel behaviour to a cancer that can’t be treated, spreading fast to the rest of the body (the world). It saddens me to realize that our politicians that we voted for in a democratic system, chose to ignore or support the state of Israel.
Hugely brave & insightful article.
“I’m calling for the state, as it currently stands, to be brought to an end for unassailable legal and moral reasons.
A monstrous, deranged state that lives only to kill its perceived enemies, without any meaningful distinction between civilians and combatants, every minute of every day, is not only a threat to everyone around it; it also corrodes, like acid, any notion that there can and should be any kind of restraint on any kind of military activity, or any sense of proportionality in warfare.”
The hypocrisy of the Israeli position on both armament & military action in the region is a sneering example of double standards, which has been allowed to persist because many foreign governments have been bought & paid for. Article 51 of the UN Charter is being conveniently ignored. The “right to defend herself”, so often quoted as a perfectly reasonable excuse for executing a genocide, is not afforded to occupying forces. The endless repetition of this empty phrase by Western politicians suggests a wilful intent to deceive rather than true ignorance or misunderstanding.