Brecht Jonkers
By launching Operation Al-Aqsa Storm on October 7, that marked the fiftieth anniversary of the 1973 October War, the Palestinian resistance movement demonstrated its tenacity and resilience of hitherto unseen proportions. With this, the world entered a new stage.
If there is one point on which the western mainstream media is right, it is that it marks an “escalation” in the 75-year long conflict between Palestine and the zionist settlers. Note however, that contrary to imperialist claims, “escalation” in this case does not need to be seen as something negative.
Because at the end of the day, what was the “normal” situation that now has escalated? Constant ongoing occupation, a 16-year long siege on Gaza, and the murder of Palestinian men, women and children as a common everyday occurrence in Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank. All of this with the near indifference of much of the world, under total inaction of the United Nations and with active collaboration from Western Europe and the United States in particular. The year 2021, for example, a year without major conflicts in the area that reached international news, at least 200 Palestinians were killed in Gaza alone. The estimated total of Gazans murdered by zionist attacks and airstrikes alone since the imposition of the illegal blockade in 2007 runs up to 9,000. This does not include the people who died of starvation, lack of medication and proper healthcare, epidemic and preventable diseases and the general consequences of poverty resulting from the near-total chokehold that the zionist entity has imposed on the Gaza Strip since the Hamas electoral victory of 2007.
The escalation created by Al-Aqsa Storm has brought the struggle of Palestine back to the forefront of global consciousness where it belongs. Moreover, it has exposed the barbaric nature of zionism to the entire world, with nobody now still able to hide away and pretend they cannot see it. From Benjamin Netanyahu’s comparison of the Palestinian people with the “seed of Amalek” – thus invoking Jewish scriptural command to wipe out Amalek to the very last man, woman and child – to Minister of Agriculture Avi Dichter promising to “roll out Gaza’s Nakba” and Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu calling the use of nuclear weapons against Gaza “a possibility”, the utterly genocidal nature of zionism has become clear.
An ever growing anti-zionist movement in solidarity with Palestine has been growing, even in the west. This despite the mass hysterics of atrocity propaganda being spread across the mainstream media in the aftermath of October 7, accusing Hamas of the most far-fetched horrible crimes imaginable, all without any shred of evidence. Claims of massacres, organised rape and infanticide were omnipresent in the west, with the “forty beheaded babies” story standing out the most. The fact that the very same mainstream news pundits had to quietly backtrack just days later and admit that there was no proof for this claim, didn’t seem to faze the propaganda machine at all. But it sure does seem to have had an effect on the credibility of its reporting among the general public.
A YouGov survey carried out in late October found a significant “generational shift” in the public opinion on the Palestinian conflict in both the United States and Great Britain. Even in these two pillars of western imperialist hegemony, with governments that are about the strongest supporters of zionism in history, it is clear that the zionist media behemoth is no longer working as efficiently as it used to.
According to the study, there is already now a higher support base for Palestine than there is for “Israel” among American youngsters between the ages of 18 and 29. A total of 28% of surveyed citizens in this age category expressed support for Palestine when faced with the dichotomy, with 20% standing by “Israel”, 22% choosing “not sure” and the rest claiming to support or oppose both sides “about equally”.
True, this is not an earth-shattering victory for the Palestinian solidarity movement. Nevertheless, for a country as oversaturated with imperial propaganda as the United States, this is a very hopeful sign of the times. Especially bearing in mind that older generations that were brought up entirely on mainstream media have always expressed a far higher support rate for zionism (for example a 7% vs 48% support in favour of “Israel” among the 45-64 year olds).
In Britain, the results are even more positive. In the age category 18-24, 37% of responders sided squarely with Palestine, with only 13% choosing the zionists. In the category 25-49, support for Palestine lay at 21% and for “Israel” at 15%.
All this despite the 24/7 ongoing barrage of zionist propaganda that is being spewed by all mainstream media outlets on television, online press and newspapers. It is quite simply a new age of information. Despite the ongoing scaremongering campaign about “fake news” (read: every media that does not toe the line of the mainstream corporate media to the letter), many people simply don’t fall for the press campaigns of the establishment as easily as in previous generations.
It does not help, of course, that at the moment of this writing, the zionists still have not yet released any of the so-called “evidence of Hamas war crimes” footage that the IDF claims it has. While unfiltered footage of the carnage caused by zionist tanks and planes flows into social media applications like Telegram on a daily basis, all the zionist schemers have been able to do so far, is showcasing “the footage” to mainstream journalists and western politicians behind closed doors. As if on cue, these people then take to their own social media accounts to vent on how traumatizing it was to see, of course without actually sharing any of the footage with the public.
The zionist narrative is falling apart on all fronts, at a speed probably never seen before in the western world. European governments have responded in the only language still left to them: by force. Countries like France, the UK and Germany have resorted to blanket bans and crackdowns against even the mere uttering of vocal support for Palestine. Zionist lobby groups are working overtime to stifle any dissent in the cradle. Former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, notable for his pro-Palestinian stance, was bullied into submission by zionist agents on both the “left” and “right” side of the British political spectrum, merely for refusing to call Hamas a terrorist organisation. This following his de facto expulsion from his own party by current Labour chairman and notable zionist pawn Keir Starmer.
The omnipresent weight of the zionist lobbyists, business interests and fanatical supporters of Israel is often disheartening and demoralizing. The unholy trinity of US-Israeli geopolitical agents, zionist-dominated business lobbies and extremist religious support for zionist ideology among both Jewish and Evangelical Christian circles in particular, may often seem like an insurmountable juggernaut. And yet, when examined closely, it turns out that this power bloc is merely a giant with feet of clay. Or, to use a poetic Chinese phrasing: a paper tiger.
We have to bear in mind that “Israel” and the wider zionist movement operates from a position of weakness. Their sense of self-preservation and realization of their own fundamental weaknesses are what spark this exceptionally vile and violent crackdown on all dissident voices.
Despite 75 years of constant war and occupation, they still have not broken the spirit of the Palestinian people. These people have suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties, entire generations that have known nothing but war and repression, and yet they refuse the humiliation of surrender. Over seven decades after the establishment of the zionist entity, they still don’t control Gaza or the entirety of the West Bank, let alone the wider areas that originally were claimed by zionist figures such as Ze’ev Jabotinsky. Despite zionist victories on the battlefield against Arab states such as Egypt and Syria in the past, they couldn’t hold on to Sinai, nor could they convince Syria to be bribed into accepting the existence of the zionist colony at its borders. Yemen has now joined the fray as well, seizing a zionist ship in the middle of the Red Sea and vowing all-out war against any future shipments from the colonial entity that pass anywhere near its coastline. This has already forced the Israelis to reroute some of its vessels, putting further pressure on its economy that is already affected by an increasing international boycott campaign.
In Palestine itself, there truly is no hope for “Israel” to ever be accepted as legitimate. The resilient people of the West Bank, growing tired of the inaction of the PA-led Ramallah puppet regime, have taken matters in their own hands in their struggle against the illegal settlements. In Gaza, suffering over 15,000 casualties has only further bolstered the resistance and resilience of the Palestinian people there.
And now, even within the west, that old bulwark of colonial zionist sympathy from which so many of the old pioneers of the colonization of Palestine came in the first place, support for the entity is waning too.
As strong in military prowess, financial wealth, technological advancement and support among the world’s elite the “Israeli” entity may be, this is but the final lashing out of a dying titan. A wild beast caught in a trap often attacks in its fiercest ways right before its own demise. Just like the US Empire has been wildly flailing around in bloodshed and violence for the past 20 years in order to mask its slow but steady decline. Just like the old imperialist superpowers of the European continent forced the world through two world wars before they finally were forced to accept that their time in the limelight of hegemony was over.
As Yuval Diskin, former chief of the zionist internal security service Shin Bet, said back in 2021, “Israel will not be able to survive the next generation.” A purely mathematical equation of demographics shows this clear as day. Using data from early 2022, the entire Jewish population of Israel, on whose shoulders the future of the zionist project rests, is fewer than 7 million. Barely half of the entire Jewish population of the world. Of this, around 1.2 million are Haredi Jews, meaning of a severe ultra-orthodox disposition. Traditionally, these highly conservative sections of society generally stay out of the rather secular civil society of Israel, and tend to be exempted from conscripted military service. In other words, over 1 in 7 Jews are not of immediate “use” to the zionist project even though they participate in the colonization itself. Note that Benjamin Netanyahu in particular has been doing his utmost to deal with this situation, as his close cooperation with religious, non-secular Jewish political parties has shown.
By contrast, the Palestinian population still living within the borders of pre-1967 Israel is approximately 2 million, or around 21% of the population. Add to this the 5.2 million Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem combined, and the equation suddenly becomes a whole lot more balanced. But it doesn’t end here. No fewer than 5.7 million Palestinians live as refugees abroad, be it in the wider Arab world or in other parts of the world. People with a very real and direct connection to the land and very often with an understandably keen desire to return. The situation has “escalated” to such an extent that Haifa University professor of geography has calculated that in the entirety of the area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river, Jews are currently already a minority, standing at 47% and slipping. Widely diverging birth rates that result in an increasing and ever growing percentage of respectively the Palestinian and Haredi communities within the entity will only further exacerbate this issue.
Faced with this, the zionists really only have two options, and they have always known this all along. Either accept the right of return and thus submit to a minority status within Palestine, even in the hypothetical situation that all zionist settlers would stay; or choose the path of extreme and excessive violence in an attempt to discourage and demoralize the Palestinian resistance and its support base. It is self-evident that the supporters of the fundamentally racist and genocidal ideology of zionism have chosen the latter option.
There is quite simply no short-to-middle-term solution from the zionist point of view aside from forcing out the Palestinians by the millions. Former Minister of Justice of the zionist entity, Ayelet Shaked, made this crystal clear when she recently called for the total expulsion of over two million Palestinians from Gaza, to be forcibly resettled as immigrants in countries across the world. Bearing in mind that the coalition partners of the Netanyahu regime meanwhile seek to further restrict the definition of what it means to “be Jewish”, the numerical disadvantage of the zionists in the grand scheme of things is not likely to improve.
The current campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide displayed by the Tel Aviv ruling administration, is a logical consequence of the fundamental contradictions found within the ideology of zionism. An ideology that was always fundamentally flawed, based on a dangerous mixture of Jewish supremacism and modern European race theories. It is this fundamental and deeply-rooted imbalance and lack of intellectual grounding that makes the zionist entity and its allies all the more dedicated to a fanatical propagation of their ideas and suppression of all dissent. Yet, at the end of the day, this hard-fought battle is simply the last struggle of a combatant that is hopelessly losing the fight.
Source: Crescent International