Hostile takeover

AT PENPOINT

The Israeli government has doubled down on what was initially an untenable position, and is now ordering the Israeli Defense Force into Gaza, to achieve what it could not do in several attempts since 7 October 2023. The Israeli Cabinet enunciated a war aim which was unrealistic, but it should be forgiven that, for it has proved, if proof was needed, that the Zionist project was so alien to the Middle East that it should not have been started in the first place.

Perhaps another sign of the desperation which prompted this move is the timing. It is almost as if it was a response to the Belgian decision to airdrop humanitarian aid over Gaza, which was joined by France, while Germany, Italy and Spain helping. Israel is apparently trying to regain control over the process. The attempts to raise the Israeli blockade by sea, the last led by climate activist Greta Thurnberg, failed, but the blockade has been raised from the air.

It is not as safe a route as landing supplies at an airport, with orderly unloading for onward distribution for those in need, but involves just throwing stuff into the air, hoping that those in need will get stuff. Distribution is by means of discovery. If supplies are found by Israeli forces, one can bet they will not pass them on.

Perhaps the main reason why the Israeli government has chosen to take this action is that there is enough starvation now in Gaza for over 200 people to have died, which means that many more are under threat because of shortages of food, and many more are going hungry. While it appeared that Israel was trying to use this as a means of exterminating the Gazans. It is not as if bombing and gunfire had been abandoned. Indeed, a new tactic has been reported by doctors: attacking reproductive organs. At least one surgeon has reported that civilians are brought to hospitals with injuries to one area on a particular day of the week, and one day is reserved apparently for shots to crotches. That indicates at least a division-level decision, or even higher, and seems designed to ensure that fewer Palestinians can reproduce.

That is one of the main Zionist fears, that if they allowed Palestinians to become Israeli citizens, they would ultimately become the majority. That is why the Israeli project is forced to practise apartheid. The demographic problem for Israel is that Jews migrate from the USA and Europe, and also have small families. A lot of the Orthodox Jews who have large families are against Israel anyhow.

Killing off the Gazans did not work, because the process was so slow.  Moving them so that Gaza could be developed as a sort of Levantine Riviera caught US President Donald Trump’s imagination for a time, but was abandoned when it was realized that no one except the Israelis were on board. Starvation is being tried, but it is increasingly clear that the world will not accept it. Indeed, it has provoked an even greater wave of antipathy to Israelis than existed before.

Has Israel finally dropped its object of wiping out the Palestinians? It does not seem so, judging by the stubborn-ness with which the Israeli Cabinet stuck to its target of eliminating Hamas.

However, instead of withdrawing its support, the West is trying to do nothing. The vaunted power of the Zionists over the West is because it let money talk a century ago, and lets it do so now. Yet it is time to pull the plug on Israel before it goes further out of control.

The cabinet’s support for the ‘disarming of Hamas’ is not really a realistic goal, because if Hamas is disarmed, some other platform will emerge for the liberation of Palestine. Israel should realize that it is asking too much from the Palestinian people. The resistance is fuelled by the fact that a great wrong has been done to them.

The cabinet also wanted the return of all 50 remaining hostages, the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip, Israeli security control over the Gaza Strip, and an alternative civilian government that isn’t Hamas or the Palestinian Authority. In short, the Cabinet wanted the IDF to go in, disarm Hamas and free the remaining hostages; and then assume security control. How this would be reconciled with the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip is unclear. It should be remembered that unless the Israeli use police, which it has not done before, it will use the military, as it did after occupying the territory in 1967. As for an alternative civilian government other than Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, it has shown it has not solved an essential problem.

Israel needs a collaborator. For a while, it seemed that Hamas could be replaced by the Palestinian Authority, or rather the PLO. Now, it seems that that option has been taken off the table. In short, it needs a political force that will help keep the populace under control. Hamas and the PLO illustrate the dangers. Hamas attacked Israel instead of assisting it. The PLO has been helping in the West Bank, but at a cost of credibility that has made Israel use its troops there.

In short, what Israel needs are kapos. In this way, Israel will repeat the Nazi experience of genocide in yet another detail. So far, Israel has been following the Nazi playbook, and has been acting the way the Nazis did to Jews. The latest examples come in the shape of images of starving Gazans, who seem exactly the same as the starving Jews liberated from the concentration camps in 1945.

Now they seek out kapos. Kapos were Jews, prisoners, who carried out administrative tasks or supervised the forced labour of the other inmates, under the general supervision of the SS. When the camps were liberated, some of these trusties were lynched by the former inmates. Some were tried by Israel, which was conflicted by this trying of Jews, even if they were collaborators. (It is perhaps understandable why Israelis want exemption for their forces being punished for war crimes. The leniency shown to the kapos indicates the belief that Jews enjoy immunity.

Some would say the Palestinian Authority is already acting as kapos in the West Bank, as the police there, which is Palestinian, facilitates the Israeli occupation forces. One of the problems Israel faces is that it itself has killed 1400 officers of the Palestine Civil Police, thus creating a huge hole in policing. There have been reports that gangs have formed which loot aid convoys. Once Israel takes over the responsibility for the Strip, it will find these gangs forming the nucleus of the criminal element which needs policing. There are also reports of vigilante groups, which will need to be policed by any government. It is no wonder that IDF senior commanders baulked at the task, but now they seem to be on board, for the plan has not been accompanied by any resignations or dismissals.

The very impracticality of the plan indicates that the Israeli project should be wrapped. There were definite reasons for Western nations to introduce an alien colony in the Middle East, but the spate of recognition commitments (the latest being from France, Canada and Australia) shows not only a horror at the slaughter of Palestinians but a hardheaded realization that the experiment has failed.

However, instead of withdrawing its support, the West is trying to do nothing. The vaunted power of the Zionists over the West is because it let money talk a century ago, and lets it do so now. Yet it is time to pull the plug on Israel before it goes further out of control.