New BBC documentary ‘The Road to 7th October’ is an utter travesty

Pressured into removing a humanising portrait of Gaza’s children, the BBC offers instead a series on Israel-Palestine that frantically revives the very narrative that made the genocide possible

Mar 09, 2025

There has been a prolonged furore over the BBC’s craven decision to ban a documentary on life in Gaza under Israel’s bombs after it incensed Israel and its lobbyists by, uniquely, humanising the enclave’s children.

The English-speaking child narrator, 13-year-old Abdullah, who became the all-too-visible pretext for pulling the film Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone because his father is a technocrat in the enclave’s Hamas government, hit back last week.

He warned that the BBC had betrayed him and Gaza’s other children, and that the state broadcaster would be responsible were anything to happen to him.

His fears are well-founded, given that Israel has a long track record of executing those with the most tenuous of connections to Hamas – as well as the enclave’s children, often with small, armed drones that swarm through its airspace.

The noisy clamour over How to Survive a Warzone has dominated headlines, overshadowing another new BBC documentary on Gaza – this one a three-part, blockbuster series on the history of Israel and Palestine – that has received none of the controversy.

And for good reason.

Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7th October, whose final episode airs this Monday, is such a travesty, so discredited by the very historical events it promises to explain, that it earns a glowing, five-star review from the Guardian.

It “speaks to everyone that matters”, the liberal daily gushes. And that’s precisely the problem

What we get, as a result, is the very worst in BBC establishment TV: talking heads reading from the same implausibly simplistic script, edited and curated to present western officials and their allies in the most sympathetic light possible.

Which is no mean feat, given the subject matter: nearly eight decades of Israel’s ethnic cleansing, dispossession, military occupation and siege of the Palestinian people, supported by the United States.

But this documentary series on the region’s history should be far more controversial than the film about Gaza’s children. Because this one breathes life back into a racist western narrative – one that made the genocide in Gaza possible, and justifies Israel’s return this month to using mass starvation as a weapon of war against the Palestinian people.

‘Honest broker’ fiction

The Road to 7th October presents an all-too-familiar story.

The Palestinians are divided geographically and ideologically – how or why is never properly grappled with – between the incompetent, corrupt leadership of Fatah under Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, and the militant, terrorist leadership of Hamas in Gaza.

Israel tries various peace initiatives under leaders Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. These failures propel the more hardline Benjamin Netanyahu to power.

The United States is the star of the show, of course. Its officials tell a story of Washington desperately trying to bring together the two parties, Israel and Fatah (the third party, Hamas, is intentionally sidelined), but finds itself constantly hamstrung by bad luck and the intransigence of those involved.

Yes, you read that right. This documentary really does resurrect the Washington as “honest broker” fiction – a myth that was supposed to have been laid to rest a quarter of a century ago, after the Oslo accords collapsed.

The film-makers are so lost to the reality in Israel and Palestine that they imagine they can credibly keep Washington perched on a pedestal even after we have all spent the past 16 months watching, first, President Biden arm Israel’s “plausible” genocide in Gaza, killing many tens of thousands of Palestinians, and then President Trump formulate an illegal plan to ethnically cleanse the enclave of its surviving Palestinian population to develop it as a luxury “waterfront property”.

A viewing of a short, Trump-endorsed, AI-generated promo video for a glitzy, Palestinian-free “Trump Gaza”, built on the crushed bodies of the enclave’s children, should be enough to dispel any remaining illusions about Washington’s neutrality on the matter.

Enduring mystery

This documentary, like its BBC predecessors – most notably on Russia and Ukraine, and the implosion of Yugoslavia – excels at offering a detailed examination of tree bark without ever stepping back far enough to see the shape of the forest.

The words “apartheid”, “siege” and “colonialism” – the main lenses through which one can explain what has been happening to the Palestinian people for a century or more – do not figure at all.

There is a single allusion to the events of 1948, when a self-declared Jewish state was violently founded as a colonial project on the ruins of the Palestinians’ homeland.

Or as the documentary delicately puts it: “Millions of their people [the Palestinians] had been made refugees by decades of conflict.”

As ever, when the plight of the Palestinians is discussed, the passive voice is put to sterling use. Millions of Palestinians were accidentally ethnically cleansed, it seems. Who was responsible is a mystery.

In fact, most of Gaza’s population are descended from Palestinian families expelled by the newly declared state of Israel from their homes in 1948. They were penned up in a tiny piece of land by European colonisers in the same manner as earlier generations of European colonisers confined the Native Americans to reservations.

Even when the term “occupation” appears, as it does on the odd occasion, it is presented as some vague, unexamined, security-related problem the US, Israel and the Fatah leadership are engaged in trying to fix.

The settlements are mentioned too, but only as the backdrop to land-for-peace calculations that never come to fruition as the basis for an elusive “peace”.

In other words, this is the reheating of a phoney tale that Israel and the US have been trying to sell to western publics for many decades.

It was holed well below the water line last year by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest court in the world. It ruled that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem was illegal, that Israeli rule over the Palestinians was a form of apartheid, and that its illegal settlements needed to be dismantled immediately.

That is the forest all the documentary’s furious bark-studying is designed to avoid.

Path to genocide

The makers of Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7th October choose to begin their time line on an obscure date: 19 August 2003, when a Palestinian suicide bomber blows up a bus in Jerusalem, killing 23 Israelis.

Why then?

The programme, despite its title, is not really about the “Palestinians”. Note that the BBC dares not refer to “Palestine”.

The true focus is on Hamas and its rise to power in Gaza, as viewed chiefly by the other parties: the US, Israel and Fatah.

Starting the story in 2003 with a bus bombing, the programme can navigate “The Road to 7^thOctober” in ways that assist the self-serving narratives those other parties wish to tell.

On the Palestinian side, the story opens with a terror attack. On Israel’s side, it opens with Sharon deciding, in response, to dismantle the illegal settlements in Gaza and withdraw Israeli troops from the enclave.

This entirely arbitrary date allows the programme makers to create an entirely misleading narrative arc: of Israel supposedly ending the occupation and trying to make peace, while being met with ever greater terrorism from Hamas, culminating in the 7^th October attack.

In short, it perpetuates the long-standing colonial narrative – contrary to all evidence – of Israel as the good guys, and the Palestinians as the bad guys.

In an alternate universe, the BBC might have offered us a far more informative, relevant documentary called Israel and Palestine: The Path to Genocide.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for that one to air.

Dystopian movie

In fact, Sharon’s so-called Disengagement Plan of 2005 had nothing to do with ending the occupation or peace-making. It was a trap laid for the Palestinians.

The disengagement did not end the occupation of Gaza, as the ICJ noted in its ruling last year. It simply reformulated it.

Israeli soldiers pulled back to the perimeter of the enclave – what Israeli and US officials like to falsely term its “borders” – where Israel had previously established a highly fortified wall with armed watchtowers.

Stationed along this perimeter, the Israeli army instituted an oppressive Medieval-style siege, blockading access to Gaza by land, sea and air. The enclave was monitored 24/7 with drones patrolling the skies.

Even before Hamas won legislative elections in 2006 and came to power in Gaza, the tiny coastal strip of land looked like it was the backdrop for a dystopian Hollywood movie.

But after Hamas’ victory, as the talking heads cheerily explain, the gloves really came off. What that meant in practice is not spelled out – and for good reason.

The Israeli army put Gaza on “rations”, carefully counting the calories entering the enclave to create widespread hunger and malnutrition, especially among Gaza’s children.

The Israeli official behind the scheme explained the reasoning at the time: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

That official – Dov Weisglass, Olmert’s main adviser – is one of the central talking heads in episode one. And yet strangely, he is never asked about Gaza’s “diet”.

‘Die more quietly’

Stephen Hadley, George W Bush’s deputy national security adviser, claims – unchallenged – that Sharon’s disengagement was “a downpayment on a Palestinian state. … They [the Palestinians] would have an opportunity to build and show the world that they were ready to live side by side in peace with Israel”.

Israel’s real goal, all too evident then and impossible to ignore now, was something else entirely.

Yes, withdrawing from Gaza allowed Israel to falsely claim the occupation in Gaza had ended and focus instead on the colonisation of the West Bank, as the documentary briefly grants.

Yes, it split geographically the main territories forming the basis of a future Palestinian state and encouraged irreconciliable leaderships in each – divide and rule on steroids.

But even more importantly, by making Gaza effectively a giant concentration camp, blockaded on all sides, Israel ensured that the accommodationists of Fatah would lose credibility in the enclave and militant resistance movements led by Hamas would gain ascendancy.

That was the trap.

Hamas, and the people of Gaza, were denied any legitimacy so long as they insisted on a right – enshrined in international law – to resist their occupation and besiegement by Israel.

It was a message – a warning – directed at Fatah and the West Bank too. Resistance is futile. Keep your heads down or you’ll be next.

Which is exactly the lesson Abbas learnt, soon characterising his security forces’ collusion with the Israeli occupation as “sacred”.

For Gaza, the US notion of living in “peace alongside Israel” meant surviving just barely and quietly, inside their cage, accepting the diet Olmert and Weisglass had put them on.

Making any noise – such as by firing rockets out of the concentration camp, or massing at the heavily armed walls of their cage in protest – was terrorism. Die more quietly, Israel and the international community demanded.

Perversely, much of episiode one is dedicated to US officals spinning their conspiracy to foil the results of the 2006 Palestinian election, won by Hamas, as democracy promotion.

They demanded Hamas give up armed resistance or the 2 million people of Gaza, half of them children, would face a continuing blockade and starvation diet – that is, illegal collective punishment.

Or as Robert Danin, a US State Department official, puts it, the plan was “either Hamas would reform and become a legitimate political party or it would remain isolated”. Not just Hamas isolated, but all of Gaza. Die more quietly.

The hope, he adds, was that by immiserating the population “Gazans would throw off the yoke of Hamas” – that is, accept their fate to live as little more than “human animals” in an Israeli-run zoo.

‘Mowing the lawn’

Hamas, both its proto-army and its proto-government, learnt ways to adapt.

It built tunnels under the enclave’s one, short border with Egypt to resist Israel’s siege by trading with the neighbouring population in Sinai and keeping the local economy just barely afloat.

It fired primitive rockets, which rarely killed anyone in Israel, but achieved other goals.

The rocket fire created a sense of fear in Israeli communities near Gaza, which Hamas occasionally managed to leverage for minor concessions from Israel, such as an easing of the blockade – but only when Israel didn’t prefer, as it usually did, to respond with more violence.

The rockets also prevented Gaza and its suffering from disappearing completely from international news coverage – the “Die more quietly” agenda pursued by Israel – even if the price was that the western media could denounce Hamas even more noisily as terrorists.

And the rockets offered a strategic alternative – armed resistance, its nature shaped by Hamas’ confinement in the Gaza concentration camp – to Fatah’s quietist, behind-the-scenes diplomacy seeking negotiations that were never forthcoming.

Finally, confronted with the permanent illegitimacy trap set for it by Israel and the US, Hamas approved in 2018 mass, civil disobedience protests at the perimeter fence of the concentration camp it was supposedly “ruling”.Subscribe

Israel, backed by the US, responded with increased structural violence to all these forms of resistance.

In the last two programmes, Israeli and US officials set out the challenges and technical solutions they came up with to prevent their victims from breaking out of their “isolation” – the concentration camp that Gaza had been turned into.

Underground barriers were installed to make tunnelling more difficult.

Rocket fire was met with bouts of “mowing the lawn” – that is, carpet-bombing Gaza, indifferent to the Palestinian death toll.

And thousands of the ordinary Palestinians who massed for months on end at the perimeter fence in protest were either executed or shot in the knee by Israeli snipers.

Or as the documentary’s narrator characterises it: “At the border with Israel, protesters clashed with Israeli forces, and dozens of Palestinians were killed.”

Blink, and you might miss it.

Nothing learnt

Only by looking beneath the surface of this facile documentary can be found a meaningful answer to the question of what led to the attack on 7^th October.

Israel’s strategy of “isolation” – the blockade and diet – compounded by intermittent episodes of “mowing the lawn” was always doomed to failure. Predictably, the Palestinians’ desire to end their imprisonment in a concentration camp could not be so easily subdued.

The human impulse for freedom and for the right to live with dignity kept surfacing.

Ultimately, it would culminate in the 7^th October attack. Like most breakouts from barbaric systems of oppression, including slave revolts in the pre-civil rights US, Hamas’ operation ended up mirroring many of the crimes and atrocities inflicted by the oppressor.

Israel and the US, of course, learnt nothing. They have responded since with intensified, even more obscene levels of violence – so grave that the world’s highest court has put Israel on trial for genocide.

Obscured by The Road to 7th October is the reality that Israel has always viewed the Palestinians as “human animals”. It just needed the right moment to sell that script to western publics, so that genocide could be recast as self-defence.

The 7^th October attack offered the cover story Israel needed. And the western media, most especially the BBC, played a vital part in amplifying that genocide-justifying narrative through its dehumanisation of the Palestinian people.

Its one break with that policy – its humanising portrait of Gaza’s children in How to Survive a Warzone – caused an uproar that has echoed for weeks and seen the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, dragged before a parliamentary committee.

But in truth, we ought to be appalled that this is the only attempt the BBC has made, after 17 months of genocide, to present an intimate view of life for the people of Gaza, especially its children, under Israel’s bombs. The state broadcaster only dared doing so after stripping away the politics of Gaza’s story, reducing decades of the Palestinian people’s oppression by Israel to a largely author-less “humanitarian crisis”.

Not only is the programme never likely to see the light of day again on the BBC but, after all this commotion, the corporation is unlikely ever again to commission a similarly humanising programme about the Palestinian people.

There is a good reason why there has been no comparable clamour for the BBC to pull Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7th October.

The historical and political context offered by the documentary does nothing to challenge a decades-old, bogus narrative on Israel and Palestine – one that has long helped conceal Israel’s turning of Gaza into a concentration camp, one that made something like the 7^thOctober breakout almost inevitable, and one that legitimised months of genocide.

The Road to 7th October seeks to rehabilitate a narrative that should be entirely discredited by now.

In doing so, the BBC is assisting Israel in reviving a political climate in which the genocide in Gaza can resume, with Netanyahu re-instituting mass starvation as a weapon of war and spreading Israel’s ethnic cleansing operations to the West Bank.

We don’t need more official narratives about the most misrepresented “conflict” in history. We need journalistic courage and integrity. Don’t look to the BBC for either.

[Many thanks to Matthew Alford for the audio reading of this article.]

The Coup d’État Has Begun

Michael Moore

Michael Moore

Feb 06, 2025

Friends,

The actual Coup in DC is underway. I don’t want to waste much time writing this when most of you already know that, and because every hour right now is precious.

It is Day 18 of the Coup. If you had been waiting for confirmation of that, there’s no need to wait for the ref to look at the instant replay or make a call to the front office. None of what’s happened in these past 18 days is surprising, as I — like many of you — have been watching all of this unfold since the day he and his spouse rode down the “golden” escalator on June 16, 2015 to the cheers of the hundred or so SAG extras he had hired for the event. This was almost ten years ago.

And none of Trump’s actions since January 20th have surprised me. He is the most “honest” President we’ve had in our lifetime. He has announced over and over what he was going to do should the American people let him back into the White House. He is transparency on steroids. He hasn’t just given us the facts and the blueprint of his long-promised coup, he has done the most audacious thing any autocrat in history has attempted — he has openly BRAGGED about exactly how he was going to pull it off. The more he performed his schtick, the more people thought either “I can’t wait for him to shut down the FBI, the CIA, the Deep State and AOC” or “Everybody should calm down, it’s just Trump! Haha!”

Haha?

You mean, “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

It’s just a big joke.

Well the joke is on all of us.

His latest announcement of the newest country that he intends to take over — “Gaza, we will own it” — has already shocked the Palestinian people, the entire Arab world, most of Europe, and numerous Jewish peace groups. He has much more up his sleeve.

Trump believes that this is actually his country and can do whatever the fuck he wants to it. Like Gaza, he owns it. What he doesn’t know is that there are literally thousands of us working right now to stop him. We have numerous ways to do that — through the courts, in Congress, mass actions of civil disobedience, police and district attorneys refusing to break the law and joining with us to block the only person the Supreme Court has declared can break the law.

Our work, though, is enormous. But not insurmountable.

Yes, the daily roundup of Brown people from mostly Catholic countries has begun. He hopes to arrest upwards of 3,000 people per day to be sent to Guantanamo or to be deported to other nations. By the end of the year he will have removed 1-2 million people from the US. He will claim that another 3-4 million people will have “self-deported.”

He has also announced his desire to defund and shut down the United Nations. He hopes to exit NATO. He has already removed the United States from the World Health Organization. Let me be very clear about this one. A worldwide bird flu epidemic seems to have begun. To remove ourselves from the World Health Organization, and for him to refuse to let the CDC tell us how many Americans are contracting this deadly virus, these are the actions of a lunatic and the results will be the potential deaths of millions of people. Every one of those people will have family and friends who are grieving. At some point, Mr. Trump, the people will rise up against you.

Now, his U.S. attorney, Edward R. Martin Jr., and the DOJ have announced they will begin arresting anyone who “threatens” actions against this Administration, especially anyone who bears ill will toward Elon Musk. Do not misunderstand the above paragraph as in any way denigrating to Mr. Musk. As is the duty of any society, we must protect our best and brightest.

I, as you can imagine, am already busy on what you would expect me to be doing. There’s no need to send me to Guantanamo yet. Also, what I’m cooking up is not only legal and safe, it is being kept at room temperature per the terms and conditions that I have agreed to sign. (Note to NSA person who reads my mail: According to my lawyer, there’s nothing to worry about as long as the Constitution is being strictly adhered to. Meanwhile, I’ll just be catching up on past seasons of “Below Deck” on Bravo.)

Finally, I want to encourage all of you to read yesterday’s column from Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale University and one of the stars of my film Fahrenheit 11/9.

-Michael.

Of course it’s a coup

Miss the obvious, lose your republic

TIMOTHY SNYDER

FEB 05, 2025

Imagine if it had gone like this.

Ten Tesla cybertrucks, painted in camouflage colors with a giant X on each roof, drive noisily through Washington DC. Tires screech. Out jump a couple of dozen young men, dressed in red and black Devil’s Champion armored costumes. After giving Nazi salutes, they grab guns and run to one government departmental after another, calling out slogans like “all power to Supreme Leader Skibidi Hitler.”

Historically, that is what coups looked like. The center of power was a physical place. Occupying it, and driving out the people who held office, was to claim control. So if a cohort of armed men with odd symbols had stormed government buildings, Americans would have recognized that as a coup attempt.

And that sort of coup attempt would have failed.

Now imagine that, instead, the scene goes like this.

A couple dozen young men go from government office to government office, dressed in civilian clothes and armed only with zip drives. Using technical jargon and vague references to orders from on high, they gain access to the basic computer systems of the federal government. Having done so, they proceed to grant their Supreme Leader access to information and the power to start and stop all government payments.

That coup is, in fact, happening. And if we do not recognize it for what it is, it could succeed.

In the third decade of the twenty first century, power is more digital than physical. The buildings and the human beings are there to protect the workings of the computers, and thus the workings of the government as a whole, in our case an (in principle) democratic government which is organized and bounded by a notion of individual rights.

The ongoing actions by Musk and his followers are a coup because the individuals seizing power have no right to it. Elon Musk was elected to no office and there is no office that would give him the authority to do what he is doing. It is all illegal. It is also a coup in its intended effects: to undo democratic practice and violate human rights.

In gaining data about us all, Musk has trampled on any notion of privacy and dignity, as well as on the explicit and implicit agreements made with our government when we pay our taxes or our student loans. And the possession of that data enables blackmail and further crimes.

In gaining the ability to stop payments by the Department of the Treasury, Musk would also make democracy meaningless. We vote for representatives in Congress, who pass laws that determine how our tax money is spent. If Musk has the power to halt this process at the level of payment, he can make laws meaningless. Which means, in turn, that Congress is meaningless, and our votes are meaningless, as is our citizenship.

Resistance to the coup is the defense of the human against the digital and the democratic against the oligarchic. If Musk controls these digital systems, Republican elected officials will be just as helpless as Democratic ones. The institutions that they voted to create can also be “deleted,” as Musk puts it.

President Trump, for that matter, will also perform at Musk’s pleasure. There is not much he can do without the use of the federal government’s computers. No one will explain this to Trump or to his supporters, of course.

A coup is underway, against Americans as possessors of human rights and dignities, and against Americans as citizens of a democratic republic. Each hour this goes unrecognized makes the success of the coup more likely.

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Ali Abunimah freed

Ali Abunimah on X 27 January 2025

I’m free! I wrote this on the plane and I’m posting it just after landing at Istanbul.

On Monday evening I was brought to Zurich airport in handcuffs, in a small metal cage inside a windowless prison van and led all the way to the plane by police.

This is after three days and two nights in a Swiss prison cut off from communication with the outside world, in a cell 24 hours a day with one cell mate, not even permitted to contact my family. On Saturday in a police interview in the presence of my lawyer they accused me of “offending against Swiss law” without ever telling me what crime I had committed in Switzerland or listing any charges.

As far as I know I have not been charged with any crime whatsoever and I was held in “administrative detention.” On Sunday morning, they took me from my cell for questioning by Swiss defense ministry intelligence agents without the presence of my lawyer, and they again refused to allow me to contact her or my family. I refused to talk to them without my lawyer and told them take me back to my cell.

During my imprisonment I refused every meal and every cup of coffee or tea they offered me except the last meal, after I knew I would be going home. I accepted only water, which is the right of every human being.

All of this was after I was abducted off the street around 1:30pm on Saturday while on my way to the Palestine teach-in by undercover agents, handcuffed, forced into an unmarked car and sped straight to the prison.

My “crime”? Being a journalist who speaks up for Palestine and against Israel’s genocide and settler-colonial savagery and those who aid and abet it. I came to Switzerland at the invitation of Swiss citizens to talk about justice for Palestine, to talk about accountability for a genocide in which Switzerland too is complicit.

But while I was hauled off to prison like a dangerous criminal before I even had a chance to say a word, the Israeli president Isaac Herzog, who declared at the start of the genocide that there are no civilians in Gaza, no innocents, received a red carpet welcome in Davos, a carpet soaked in the blood of the more than 47,000 known victims of the genocide and the thousands more still under the rubble, or who died of deliberately inflicted starvation and denial of medical care. And on this very day Netanyahu freely travels to Poland to make a mockery of the Auschwitz commemoration despite an outstanding ICC arrest warrant. That is the perverse, unjust world we live in.

This ordeal lasted three days but that taste of prison was more than enough to leave me in even greater awe of the Palestinian heroes who endure months and years in the prisons of the genocidal oppressor. More than ever I know that the debt we owe them is one we can never repay and all of them must be free and they must remain our focus.

The police gave me my phone back only at the gate of the plane so I’m only seeing now the extent of the overwhelming support and solidarity from all over the world. I’m deeply grateful to each and every person who stood up for me. I’m especially grateful to my lawyer Dina Raewel and her team, to our friends in Zurich who I learned afterwards demonstrated outside the prison, to my family and my colleagues at EI and so many others. I honestly had no idea what was happening outside that concrete room! Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I want to tell the whole story of what happened, perhaps in an @intifada livestream in the next day or two, because I think it’s important for people to know the depths to which their Western so-called “democracies” have sunk in the abject service of genocidal Zionism.

Right now I’m glad to be on my way home. I’m looking forward to hugging my mom and dad, taking a shower and sleeping in my own bed. Journalism is not a crime! Speaking out for Palestine is not a crime! Standing against racist genocidal Zionism is not a crime!

Say it with me:From the river to the sea Palestine will be free

January 27, 2025 0

Avigail Abarbanel’s Fully Human Essay

‘Source https://avigail.substack.com/p/identity-and-shared-humanity

Positive’ and ‘negative’ exceptionalism

Readers’ comments and the discussions that unfold beneath my articles often inspire my thinking and writing. These exchanges reveal what preoccupies people’s minds as they struggle, both emotionally and intellectually, to process Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people and their own relationship to these events. A recurring theme emerging from these discussions is the complex question of identity—specifically, how Israel invokes its self-designation as a ‘Jewish state’ to claim exceptional status in human history. The following essay is built around some of those discussions.

Thanks for reading Avigail Abarbanel’s Fully Human Essays! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

‘Positive’ and ‘negative’ exceptionalism

Israel is gradually exterminating the Palestinian people in full view of the world. Most of the West’s leaders and the corporate media maintain shameless and unrepentant support for Israel. They repeat the fraudulent justifications Israel offers for what it does, namely that Israel is reluctantly engaged in a ‘war against terror’, and that everything Israel is doing, including (but not limited to) destroying hospitals, directly targeting medical staff, and murdering children and babies, is necessary for Israel’s security. Most media outlets continue to perpetuate the fallacy that there is symmetry between Israel—a settler-coloniser society—and its victims—the Palestinian people.

The phrase ‘settler-colonialism’ is never mentioned. Infuriatingly, our politicians and the media continue to peddle the image Israel has sold the rest of the world for decades, that it is an ‘enlightened’ and ‘normal Western democracy’, a nice and benevolent country that desires nothing other than to live in peace. This, along with the ongoing supply of arms, munition, spare parts, and other destructive military and surveillance technology enables Israel to proceed, uninterrupted, with its genocidal settler-colonial plan.

Israel’s Zionist settler-colonialism’s aims are:

To eliminate all the Palestinian people from all of historic Palestine,
Destroy all evidence of their culture, history and existence,
Take over all the land and natural resources from the river to the sea, and now also to the north (parts of Lebanon and Syria), and
Replace all of historic Palestine’s non-Jewish inhabitants with what Israel calls Jews.

You do not have to be an expert in International Law to recognise that Israel’s actions qualify as genocide.

It is clear for anyone to see that Israel enjoys extraordinary exceptionalism that enables it to not only get away with genocide, but also receive seemingly unlimited military and diplomatic cover. (Whether this will finally change remains to be seen). However, the exceptionalism that others see Israel enjoying bears little resemblance to Jewish Israelis’ understanding of their own situation.

Inside Israeli society, Israel’s exceptionalism is perceived differently. Jewish-Israeli society focuses only on criticism of, and objections to what Israel does. Israeli Jews perceive any criticism of Israel’s policies and behaviour as stemming solely from antisemitism, treating it as completely detached from, and unrelated to Israel’s actual conduct. The strong belief within Israeli society that everyone hates Jews serves as justification for their view that Israel is treated differently to other countries. Israeli society and its politicians, as well as supporters of Israel around the world, frequently compare what Israel is doing with other examples of human rights violations and genocide. They ask, ‘Why are you criticising us? Why do you single us out when others are doing bad things too?’

I thought exactly this way when I still lived in Israel. The Israeli media routinely downplay the support Israel receives and emphasise statements that are seen as hostile or critical of Israel. When I was in Israel, I believed everyone hated us. It is hard to explain to outsiders how obsessive we were about scouring every story about some celebrity overseas to see whether they liked us or not. If they did not absolutely admire us, or were even the least bit critical, we dismissed them as antisemites. (In Israel there is no distinction between society and the individual — ‘us’ means ‘Israel’). People’s views about Israel were the only measure by which we evaluated their worth. It did not matter what character or achievements people had. All we cared about was what they thought of us. I was frightened when I moved to Australia, because I genuinely believed everyone there would hate me. I still remember how shocked I was to discover that reality was exactly the opposite of what I was taught.

This selective understanding of exceptionalism—seeing only criticism whilst remaining wilfully blind to the unprecedented level of support Israel enjoys—reveals a deeper pattern. Israeli Jews have no real concept of how much money and how much support Israel is getting, as this would contradict their deeply held belief that they are uniquely victimised. This cognitive dissonance enables the population to be perpetrators while maintaining their self-image of victimhood. In other words, Israel’s perception of exceptionalism is ‘negative’. They believe they are singled out for unfair treatment, because of antisemitism, which is also seen as a unique and ‘exceptional’ form of racism.

About identity and ’specialness’ — Sharing a few comments and replies

In my previous article I wrote about my own relationship with the definition of Jewishness imposed on me by Israel, and referred to Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro’s interview with Katie Halper. In the interview Rabbi Shapiro argued that Jews do not need to emphasise Jewishness when they stand up for the Palestinian people because this just lends support to Israel’s false claim to be the state of all Jews, and to speak for all Jews. Katie Halper kindly commented on my article, and I share some of our exchange below.

Katie Halper: Thanks for the shout out. I identify as Jewish for several reasons but what I find undeniable is that it is politically wise to identify as a pro Palestine Jew because it dispels the notion that being Zionist and being Jewish is one in the same and it helps dispel the notion that antizionism is antisemitism.

My reply: Thanks for taking an interest in my essay and for commenting. Here is a previous reply I made to someone with respect to this essay: … I see both sides. I agree with the Rabbi’s point, but also with those who choose to call themselves Jews and do not accept Israel’s definition of a ‘good Jew’ (that’s a real thing in Israeli culture). I wanted to mention my own choice, which is to not call myself a Jew because I have no idea what makes me a Jew except Israel’s nonsense ‘race science’. I am only making a choice for myself, while seeing that others have a pov of their own.

Katie Halper: If, for argument’s sake, a majority of Palestinians thought it was helpful for people to identify as anti Zionist Jews would you still advise against it?

My reply: There are many opinions among Palestinians I know. Most don’t care about my background at all, only that I am another human standing shoulder to shoulder with them. The article [my previous essay, on which Katie is commenting] is entitled ‘our shared humanity’ for a reason. I believe the majority of Palestinians do not see what Israel is doing as a ‘Jewish thing’, and have no qualms with Jewish religion, only with Zionism’s genocidal setter-colonialism.

I find it offensive that Israel defines my ‘identity’ and ‘affiliation’ for me, seemingly leaving me with no choice. I did not grow up on any of the ‘Jewish values’ that you and other good people in the US say you have grown up on. I believe you, and I envy you to some extent, but that was not my experience at all.

Israeli society, its philosophy of life, and its institutions are there to justify genocide. This includes the interpretation of Jewish religion they teach even in the secular school system.

I have always been puzzled by how anyone who calls themselves Jewish does not, at least, critique the morality behind Joshua leading a comprehensive genocide in Canaan1, supposedly at god’s instructions. I never understood how anyone can celebrate the Passover Seder and not consider how wrong it is to rejoice in the killing of all the eldest sons of Egypt on the eve of the Exodus.

Of course, none of it is actual history but these are identity myths that go right to the heart of Jewish ‘identity’. As a human being I can’t possibly identify with this, and if to be Jewish means I have to accept such stories/myths uncritically, then I choose to not be Jewish (and it is a choice, unless you believe in ‘race science’).

I don’t know (I really don’t know) what goes on in non-orthodox synagogues in the West, and how they reconcile these stories with enlightened ‘Jewish values’. Israel revels in these stories, which are taught uncritically right from kindergarten and in families even earlier. There is never any moral questioning of any of this.

It is all taught as identity stories even in the secular school system, which I attended. No one questions the morality of it, because the moment they do, the entire quasi-religious justification for Zionism, the Nakba and the continued genocide in Palestine falls apart.

In light of my upbringing in Israel and my education there, I am justifiably suspicious of Jewish identity, as it is understood by non-religious Western Jews. As I said, I don’t know anything about what is taught in non-orthodox Synagogues, and whether these identity stories are questioned and critiqued on moral grounds. If they are not, then you can see the inherent contradiction between them and universal human values.

I think everyone needs to make their own choice, katie … I am making mine. I am not decreeing anything for anyone else. My position is just that, my position, and there is always a diversity of views in any group and in any contexts, as you obviously well know. I also do not know everything as I said above.

My own personal moral sense does not align with any version of Jewishness that I grew up with in Israel. One of the disadvantages of Western Jews, I think (and I could be wrong), is that they really don’t know, or understand Israel at all. The only ones who do are the ones who join the ranks of the ‘settlers’. “

Until you live there you can’t know Israel and this is deliberate. Israel has always presented a very carefully crafted image of itself to the world, including to Western Jewish communities. Its citizens (including the 20% Palestinian citizens who are now in great danger) know the real Israel. Thank you for reading and commenting.

On another thread I had this exchange with reader Irfan A Khan

Irfan A Kahn: Indoctrination based on religious and racial exceptionalism can create a deep sense of entitlement in the minds of any population and that feeling of entitlement can be exploited easily toward mistreatment of ‘the other’. The extent of mistreatment of ‘the other’ can be exacerbated into settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing and genocide with a small nudge in the right direction.

This phenomenon is not true for Jews of Israel only. Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and even small tribes in the mountains have this trait in common. In Bangladesh, ~90% Muslims majority population is protesting and crying for the plight of Palestinians, but are doing the exact same thing to the indigenous tribes in the hill tracts of Chittagong for more than 50 years. No empathy. Interestingly, one of the victims of this abuse – the Chakma tribe tends to do the exact same thing to the smaller tribes when they get the opportunity.

Then you look at the ethnic cleansing and genocide in Kashmir by the Hindus, in Myanmar by Buddhist monks, in Iraq and Syria by the Turks, In China by communists, in Yemen by Saudi Arabia and see the pattern. I am sorry if I have missed any other genocide and ethnic cleansing going on at the moment.

One thing I know for sure, it is not really about religion or race.

My reply: Of course. One of the main points I always emphasise is that despite Israel’s sense of ‘specialness’, there is nothing special about it or what it is doing. Israel is just a case study in world history. It is among the most noxious ones, but it is by no means original. Israel needs to be called out for what it is: One of the worst examples of humanity, but still one of many in human history, as far back as we remember our history.

Very clearly it is not about religion and race, but both are used to justify a particular psychological mindset based on deep fear and survivalism. Very human. Having said that Israel is making it about race and to some extent religion as well, and it is important that people do not get trapped in the Israeli mindset, and maintain the position you (and I) hold, that what Israel is doing is a fundamentally a human problem. The Palestinians are human and their persecutors, Israel and its society are also human. That is why what Israel is doing is a crime against humanity, not some ‘special case’ that requires ‘special consideration’.

Does religion justify genocide?

Discussions in the comments section keep going back to Judaism and Jewish identity and their relationship to what Israel is doing. In South Africa, Christian interpretations were wielded to justify apartheid. To those who called themselves ‘Christian’ supporters of apartheid, the fundamental command to ‘love one another‘ conveniently excluded black people. Today, we see the Taliban use their interpretation of Islamic teachings to enforce what stands as one of modern history’s most severe examples of formal oppression of women. Meanwhile, in parts of Asia, Buddhist monks—followers of one of the world’s most explicitly non-violent religions—preach hatred against Muslims and participate in their murder. One can only imagine what the Buddha’s response would be to such a perversion of his teachings.

In a 2010 interview with Amina Chaudary, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said:

It is people. … some people are able to use Bible as a means of opposing injustice, whereas others are able to find justification. You can find justification for slavery in the Bible. Some say this is what the Bible says and that closes the argument. You will find that the Bible, if you want it to, will justify many things. St. Paul had a very male chauvinistic view of women. He would say things like women must not talk in church, must cover their heads, they mustn’t talk and must remember that it was a woman who first tempted and this whole mess started because women messed us up. So you can read it in such a way that it justifies polygamy. Most of the leading figures of the Old Testament were polygamists. Abraham had several wives and concubines. If they wanted, they could say this was approved in the Bible.

People will use anything. Look, when you think of the KKK, they actually have as their emblem a fiery cross. And they don’t see any contradiction between the cross, an instrument of suffering that procured our reconciliation with God, and its use as a symbol for nefarious attacks on black people. But they believe that they are being obedient to God because they can read things that they see. People in apartheid South Africa can tell you that God cursed black people when they cursed Him. And so the hermetic people were condemned to be drawers of water and of wood.

There are no monolithic religions or philosophies. Everything splits into countless interpretations as humans mould these belief systems to their needs. We, humans, possess an extraordinary talent for manipulating any system of belief to validate our pre-existing convictions, and we seem to harbour a deep psychological need for such validation. Even the most morally compromised individuals must possess a conscience somewhere in the depths of their being—a quiet voice that unsettles their certainties. Religious justifications and rationalisations have proven particularly effective at silencing this inner voice, especially because they can invoke divine authority.

Self-deception comes at a psychological cost, usually manifesting in chronic anxiety. But for many people, perceived survival takes precedence over everything, including their own wellbeing. They would rather endure a life riddled with anxiety, than confront their own inner contradictions. When Israeli Jews believe that they are facing mortal danger from Palestinians, they will find something in Jewish religion to justify genocide. But are such justifications truly there? As Desmond Tutu points out, the Bible says many things.

Our fundamental psychology, which predates all religions and philosophical systems, underlies every belief we hold and every action we take. People will extract whatever meaning serves their purposes from any text. Zionists reading my essays immediately perceive the words of a traitor. What others might consider basic human decency, they can only interpret as betrayal of the group. Their psychology predisposes them to elevate group loyalty above all other values, including truth and justice. Meanwhile, some anti-Zionist readers scan the same text and somehow see pro-Israeli sentiment. When I ask either group to read my actual words more carefully, they respond with hostility. I have had to ban some Zionists and anti-Zionists from this Substack page, because they are unable to engage with what I say and end up attacking me as a person.

This selective perception is not accidental. Our more primitive limbic psychology predisposes us to see what we want to see, filtering out information that contradicts our pre-held beliefs. We are all at risk of that. Only through conscious integration can we hope to transcend these limitations. (See my short book Therapy Without A Therapist). A psychology dominated by fear and survivalism inevitably breeds tribalism, cultism, or racism. It also produces the ‘me first’ mentality we witness in our new ‘religion’ of economic neoliberalism, where indifference to others’ suffering is repackaged as rational self-interest.

Our identity is not given to us, we need to choose it

In my family therapy education, I studied Murray Bowen’s body of theory with a special focus on his theory of ‘self-differentiation’2. Bowen defined ‘differentiation’ as ‘the amount of self you have in you’. Differentiation is another word for maturity or growth, or in Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) terms, integration. My teachers were adamant that if psychotherapists do not commit to their own process of ‘differentiation’, they have no business seeing clients.

Bowen understood differentiation as the process of crafting one’s own identity within the web of relationships that shape us. He recognised that as human beings develop, they inevitably synthesise their unique identity from a complex tapestry of influences: their family of origin, its beliefs and patterns, their societal context, and the historical forces that shaped their family, their people, and humanity. Bowen urged individuals to trace their family history as far back as records would permit. While we cannot draw straight lines of causation from past to present, we can develop a profound understanding of the rich context that shaped us.

I cannot recall if it was Bowen’s own metaphor, or one my teachers devised, but we can understand differentiation through the image of sorting through a personal inheritance chest. Picture a chest filled with everything you have inherited from your family and ancestors: beliefs, patterns, traditions, values, behaviours, ways of relating to others, and of seeing yourself and the world around you. As you open this chest and examine each item within, you must decide what to keep and what to discard. If your goal in life is to grow and develop to your potential, you would keep the elements that nurture your authentic development, and discard everything else. If your main goal is to survive, you would keep the elements the support your survival, and get rid of the rest. This mental exercise demands both a clear-sighted perspective and honesty with ourselves. It makes us think about what we want from our life and what is important to us. We do not simply accept all of our inheritance and live with it. By differentiating, we choose our own identity.

The most significant limitation in Bowen’s theory lies in his tendency to ignore or overlook the role of emotions. Bowen saw differentiation as primarily an intellectual journey. He underestimated, I believe, the role of uncomfortable emotions, especially fear. Difficult emotions often drive people’s resistance to differentiating from their family or group. Bowen could not imagine any reason why anyone would not want to grow towards their potential. But it is usually uncomfortable emotions that people cannot face or handle that hold them back from differentiating, and growing towards their innate potential. Emotions such as fear, guilt, loyalty, often keep people tied to an inherited identity, or a group sometimes at a great personal cost. I had to differentiate from my family of origin to be well psychologically, and from Israeli society and the identity it gave me in order to become a decent human being.

Bowen did acknowledge the fundamental tension between ‘separateness’ and ‘togetherness’ that all humans experience. We harbour both a deep need to be our unique selves, and an equally powerful, survival-driven need to belong. I have always interpreted ‘togetherness’ not merely as belonging, but as sameness. In other words, we experience tension between the need to be ourselves, and the need to be like others, to conform. This tension emerges at the very start of life in response to our environment.

Growth and differentiation are easier within mature, confident groups that are not driven by fear. Such groups value difference and diversity, and actively encourage and support their members to develop their authentic selves. For example, mature parents and grandparents consciously help children develop their own unique self, and do not demand that they think, feel, behave, eat, or dress like others in the family. Unfortunately, mature groups remain the minority. At its present level of development humanity is dominated by immature groups that make conformity the price of belonging. The more primitive the group, the more intensely it demands our conformity, and the more likely it is to interpret the individual need to differentiate as betrayal.

When people actively engage with their process of self-differentiation, their moral compass increasingly points away from group loyalty. Their ethical choices emerge from a deeper understanding of a human connection that transcends tribal boundaries. This understanding is fundamentally embodied—it starts with our shared physical experience of being human.

I have a human body, a brain, sensations, and emotions. It requires little imagination to connect with what it feels like to be wet, cold and hungry. I can viscerally relate to the terror of human beings like me who are bombed out of their homes, losing all their familiar surroundings, cherished possessions, and routines. Fear lives in every human body. I know its taste, and can imagine the primal dread of hearing approaching jets, drones and bombs. I can comprehend the psychological devastation of witnessing, or experiencing abuse by barbaric Israeli soldiers. I understand what loss feels like, and the bewildering pain of not understanding why it’s happening, or why the world stands by and does nothing to stop it.

Our shared humanity provides all the moral guidance we need. It is the most trustworthy anchor, more reliable than any religion, philosophy, or group identity, no mater how benign. The deep, embodied recognition of our shared humanity does not require us to abandon our diversity, customs, beliefs, traditions, or any labels we choose for ourselves. These can enrich our lives and communities. But our fundamental guiding principle must be our recognition of our shared human experience. I support the Palestinian people for no other reason than the simple and profound truth that we are all human beings, and this does not require any explanation or justification of any kind. It is a self-evident truth.

A comment on paid subscriptions

Substack encourages writers to apply paid subscriptions. They take a small cut to enable them to provide this, otherwise free-to-use platform. A few readers have pledged money for monthly or yearly subscriptions, to which I am grateful. I enjoy, and feel privileged to write and publish on this platform. But I am holding back on monetising my Substack channel, because I do not want to turn my writing into an obligation.

Below you will see a ‘buy me a coffee’ button. If you haven’t seen it before, it is a way of offering a donation to freelance writers, and others who provide similar services that are not paid work. Payments are processed securely on the ‘Buy Me A Coffee’ site, using Stripe, and I believe people can keep donations anonymous if they wish. This is entirely voluntary. Everyone is welcome to read my work free of charge.

Thank you so much for reading my work!

Buy me a coffee 🙏🏼

The story of Joshua’s colonisation of Canaan is told in the Biblical book of Joshua. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Joshua)

See also my paper Differentiating from Israel. You should be able to access it via this link, but if you encounter any problems, give me a shout. See also my adaption of Bowen’s scale of differentiation, available to download from my work website.

January 27, 2025 0

QUNFUZ

The Background

Security prisons, and the terror they inspire in the Syrian population, have underpinned the Assad regime’s rule from the start.

The history of such prisons stretches back before Hafez al-Assad’s seizure of power in 1970, though his regime expanded and intensified the system. From 1946 on, Syria was racked by a series of military coups and counter-coups, interspersed with brief episodes of parliamentary democracy. Whenever a coup succeeded, the new rulers would round up the previous government and its supporters and detain them in prison.

The numbers of people held in security prisons increased during the United Arab Republic (UAR) of 1958 to 1961, and the conditions of detention worsened. The UAR brought the Syrian and Egyptian states together under the dictatorship of the Egyptian president, Gamal Abdul Nasser. Abd al-Hamid al-Sarraj, Nasser’s preferred Syrian secret policeman, is credited with introducing two particular torture methods to Syrian prisons during this period: the doulab, or tire, in which victims are stuffed, and then whipped; and the shabah, or ghost, by which victims are strung by their wrists from the ceiling for hours or days. Both methods are still applied in the Assad regime’s prisons today. ISIS inherited them from Assad, and also routinely applied such tortures in its own security prisons.

The UAR was widely seen as an economic as well as a political disaster, and was soon ended by a coup led by conservative army officers. When, in turn, a secret Military Committee of Baathist officers seized control in March 1963, it quickly set about rounding up and detaining those it considered a potential security threat. These included first the conservative officers who had seceded from Abdul Nasser’s UAR, then supporters of Abdul Nasser, then anyone who dissented from the ruling party’s line. As the Baathists had banned all media and all forms of civil organization beyond Baath Party control, this category covered many members of civil society.

READ ON HERE

December 18, 2024 0

Israel’s Support for Apartheid, War Crimes and Genocide Around the World, a Brief History

PALESTINE NEXUS /ZACHARY FOSTER

audio version on spotify

For decades, Israel has supplied weapons and military technology to the world’s most brutal military regimes. This is a brief history of Israel’s support for apartheid, atrocities, war crimes and genocide around the world.

Chile

In the 1970s-80s, Israel supplied arms to Chile’s Augusto Pinochet during its 17-year long military rule in which civilians were routinely targeted, tortured, and disappeared. The Israeli military trained the Chilean secret service, the DINA, described by the CIA in 1974 as a “Gestapo-type police force,” which tortured at least 35,000 and disappeared over 3,000 people. Meanwhile, Israel maintained excellent relations with Chile throughout Pinochet’s rule, sponsoring Chilean leaders on many state visits.

Now, an Israeli-Chilean family seeks justice for their father, who was tortured and killed by the dictatorship. They have sued the Attorney General to open investigations into the involvement of Israeli government institutions in arms deals with Pinochet. The Israeli lawyer and human rights activist Eitay Mack has filed a series of freedom of information petitions for the release of documents that would detail the nature of Israel’s involvement. “The human rights issue is not part of the consideration of the officials in the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, unless there is big public pressure on them,” Mack said. Israeli leaders are unconcerned with how the weapons are used so long as they improve Israel’s diplomatic ties abroad.

Guatemala

In 1977, Israel became Guatemala’s principal weapons supplier, providing the country’s authoritarian leaders with $6 million worth of Galil rifles and Uzi submachine guns. Israel also supplied spyware and electronic surveillance and designed and operated the radar system at Guatemala City’s international airport. Guatemalan officials have even bragged their soldiers carry Israeli weapons and underwent training from Israeli soldiers. Guatemalan leaders have also embraced Israeli military tactics, such as using the theoretical presence of guerilla forces in an area as a pretext to indiscriminately kill civilians. During the civil war, right wing supporters of the regime even spoke about the “Palestinianization” of Guate’s indigenous population.

Then, in 1982, Israeli officials helped Guatemala’s Efraín Ríos Montt carry out a military coup. Montt, who later thanked over 300 Israeli advisors for their help in the takeover, ruled during the bloodiest period of Guatemala’s civil war — known as the Mayan genocide or the Silent Holocaust. In 30 years, over 200,000 Mayan people were killed, tortured, and disappeared. Montt’s rule lasted from 1982-83 during which time his regime disappeared some 70,000 people.

South Africa

In the 1970s and 1980s, Israel became one of apartheid South Africa’s most important arms suppliers. In 1988, South Africa saved Israel’s cash-starved defense industry after it purchased 60 Kfir combat planes for $1.7 billion. Israel was then able to launch a reconnaissance satellite that was only made possible after the weapons sales to the apartheid regime.

South Africa operated an apartheid state, a racist legal system that segregated social and civil life in South Africa, privileging the white minority and condemning the Black majority. Apartheid security forces killed between 11,000 and 21,000 people and detained more than 80,000 people without trial over the course of the regime’s four decades of rule. Today, South Africa continues to suffer from the ramifications of apartheid rule.

Serbia

In 1991, Israel made one of the largest arms deals with Serbia during the Bosnian Genocide, concealing the weapons transfers in violation of a UN arms embargo that same year. Israel’s military relationship with Serbia continued through at least 1995, with Serbian soldiers having received covert Israeli training in Greece and toting Israeli Uzis, snipers, shells and missiles. In 2016, the Israeli Supreme Court declined to release documents despite a petition filed by Mack and others because it would pose a risk to Israeli foreign relations. To this day the extent of Israeli support for the Bosnian genocide remains unknown.

The Serbian wars waged against Muslims in Bosnia and Croatia after the dissolution of Yugoslavia have been described as the most egregious acts of ethnic cleansing “Europe had seen since the Holocaust.” Between 1991 and 1995 over 250,000 people were killed, and many more injured, raped, and held in concentration camps.

Rwanda

Israel provided arms to Hutu government forces during the Rwandan Genocide. Israeli weapons manufacturing companies sent 7 shipments of bullets, rifles and grenades to Rwanda between April and July 1994 alone despite an international arms embargo. In 2014, human rights lawyer Mack, alongside others, once again petitioned for documents on the arms trade but were denied because the information might harm “Israel’s state security and foreign relations.”

In 1994, Hutu militias killed more than half a million Tutsis in Rwanda in less than 100 days. It was the culmination of decades of tension between Rwanda’s majority ruling ethnic group, the Hutus, and the Tutsi minority. In total, over 1 million people perished in what is considered to be the fastest genocide in human history.

The Philippines

Israel supplied weapons to the Philippines during President Rodrigo’s Duterte’s infamous drug war in which government forces and death squads killed over 12,000 people. Philippine Security forces carried out the executions with Israeli rifles and handguns in largely poor, urban neighborhoods of the country.

In a 2018 visit to Israel, Duterte openly acknowledged that he favored purchasing Israeli weapons because there are virtually no restrictions on the sales while boastfully comparing himself to Hitler. In 2016, Duterte ran on a presidential campaign promising to kill 100,000 people in his first six months in office. He won by a landslide.

Myanmar

Since 2018, Israeli companies have supplied at least four shipments of weapons to the military junta in Myanmar, including patrol boats, advanced radar systems, air combat maneuvering instrumentation and drones.

Israel Aerospace Industries and Elbit Systems, for instance, continued pre-existing trade relations with the regime, ignoring both an international arms embargo and a 2017 Israeli Supreme Court ban. Israel’s government claimed it had stopped sending weapons to Myanmar in 2018, but arms shipments continued as late as 2022, after the junta overthrew the country’s democratically elected leaders a year earlier. In addition, Israel CAA Industries sold millions worth of arms-manufacturing equipment to Myanmar while an Israeli cyber firm supplied the country with spyware to surveil civilian populations.

In 2017, Israeli weapons and equipment were used to carry out a genocide of Rohingya Muslims. That year, Myanmar’s military Junta killed 9,000 Rohingya between August and September alone, with over 500,000 having fled to Bangladesh.

South Sudan

An Israeli general has been accused of trafficking $150 million worth of arms to the South Sudanese government under the guise of an agricultural firm. Israel provided assault rifles and operated surveillance equipment that has been used to target journalists and opposition figures. This was in spite of a 2018 UN Security Council arms embargo, a 2015 UN Report detailing Israeli violations of a previous ban of weapon sales and Israel’s ongoing promises since 2011 to suspend transfers of lethal equipment.

Years of political unrest and conflict between ethnic and militia groups in South Sudan have culminated in what some say is the “biggest hunger crisis” in recent history. Since 2018, some 400,000 people have been killed due to violence, starvation and disease, and between 4 and 11 million people have been displaced.

Azerbaijan

Israel has sold billions of dollars worth of arms to Azerbaijan since 2012. The Azerbaijani military even published videos displaying Israeli missiles and suicide drones and a factory producing these drones on Azeri soil. Meanwhile, the government has also used the Israeli company NSO’s spyware to target journalists and opposition activists.

In 2023, Azerbaijani forces continued to use Israeli arms to institute a 9-month blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh after decades of fighting that had left tens of thousands dead. They starved out the region’s 120,000 ethnic Armenians, blocking access to food, medicine, and fuel until January 24, 2024 when Azerbaijani forces ethnically cleansed the last remaining Armenians in the beleaguered enclave.

——

Israeli arms dealers have been intimately involved in many of the world’s most horrific acts of violence over the past half-century. In addition to the cases cited above, Israel has also reportedly supplied weapons to Argentina, Venezuela, Equatorial Guinea, and Nicaragua. In each of these cases as well, Israeli arms have been used to carry out atrocities. The Israeli firm Pegasus is also distributing its spyware to authoritarian states, where the technology will almost certainly be used to crack down on journalists and opposition figures.

Israeli human rights lawyer Mack emphasizes that the sales are intended to boost Israel’s diplomatic standing in the world. “In my opinion, economic incentive should never be above the moral issues and the human rights issues.”

December 18, 2024 0