By Seevali Abeysekera*
LONDON | 14 December 2023 (IDN) — When on 7 October, Hamas fighters broke out of the open-air prison called Gaza and breached the previously impregnable border that Israel had built in order to suffocate the Palestinians, little did the world realise that within a few short weeks, Israel would finally reveal its true self.
The narrative the world has heard since the creation of Israel was one that was a very passionate, persuasive description of a state created primarily due to the Holocaust, where Jews, the victims of the evil perpetrated by the 3rd Reich, could finally find sanctuary and safety. Israel, according to the narrative, was a secular democracy, no different to other democracies, albeit one that described itself as “the world’s only Jewish state”.
The world, so shocked at the horrors inflicted upon Jews by the Nazis, was eager to accept the narrative that a state whose existence was on the premise that it was inclusive to any Jew from anywhere in the world was also a secular democracy.
The world chose to ignore the obvious contradiction in how “the world’s only Jewish state” could also be a secular democracy. By definition, a secular democracy cannot be exclusive to a particular ethno-religious race.
The Zionist narrative was that Israel is a paragon of virtue in a very hostile, violent part of the world where the Arabs were scoundrels at best and evildoers at worst—a David facing a despicable Goliath. This narrative was not only persuasive but was also amplified by Zionist lobby groups, primarily in America and the UK, with enormous resources and wealth at their disposal to propagate the message of good versus evil.
Until recently, there was no persuasive counter-narrative to disprove the outright lies that the world was fed about the virtuous qualities of Israel, primarily due to the fragmented nature of the Arab world and the Palestinians themselves. Those who did attempt to counter the narrative were either incapable of articulating themselves to a global audience or had the ability to counter the pro-Israel narrative.
There is also a sham narrative that is promoted by the liberal left within the West of the so-called “two-state solution”. This is one of the bigger lies propagated by those in the West who call themselves left-wing liberals because promoting a “two-state solution” gave them a veneer of neutrality in terms of their position. This solution, however, was never going to be accepted by Israel.
The “two-state solution” narrative was the cover that gave Israel the opportunity to occupy and steal even more Palestinian lands and import American and European Jews into even more of the West Bank, thereby making a Palestinian state within the West Bank an impossibility.
Palestinian rights are never considered to be the same as Israeli rights
The narrative that Israel, a state where the majority of citizens are either Caucasian American or European Jewry, was a place where the halcyon days of purity was still a reality, where the frontier spirit in terms of enterprise and endeavour was in vogue and where any Jew from anywhere in the world has a right to citizenship, is very intoxicating and persuasive, especially to the older generations in the west.
Even those whose politics are left-wing and assumed to be more neutral find themselves on the Israeli side as they see Israel as a country which promotes an extension of their own values.
Christian Zionism is a strong belief system amongst many non-Jewish Caucasians and Christians around the world. Israel is also seen as the last of the frontier settler nations, especially by white Americans and Europeans. These views are particularly prevalent amongst the older generations in the West and amongst Christians worldwide—even those whose politics are left-wing.
Against this backdrop, the Palestinians were perceived by the majority in the West as being an irritant at best or inimical to the interests of Israel at worst. Palestinian rights are never considered to be the same as Israeli rights because the narrative has always been that Israelis are like “us” and Palestinians are just Arabs who like to live in densely populated ghettos and deliberately keep themselves poor in order to harm Israel.
Even worse is the narrative that is deliberately perpetuated by Israel and the Zionist lobby that portrays Palestinians as reprehensible human beings who are even capable of sacrificing their own children in order to harm Jews.
This narrative, whose original source is the warped Zionist beliefs that have twisted Judaism, which is the way religious Jews maintain the Mosaic Covenant with God, into a political ideology that demands that the land of Palestine, “from the river to the sea”, —belongs exclusively to Jews.
For what it’s worth, the slogan “from the river to the sea”, which is considered to be antisemitic by ignorant Western leaders and mainstream media, was originally coined by the Likud Party in Israel, whose leader is Benjamin Netanyahu!
Judaism is a religion founded by Abraham, an Arab from a town called Harran in ancient Mesopotamia. Harran still being a village in Turkey. From Harran, Abraham migrated to Caraan in modern-day Lebanon. Thereafter, the Hebrew ancestors migrated to Egypt. They were a semi nomadic people who migrated and assimilated into other cultures. The land they left behind was always inhabited by local Arabs and Palestinians.
At present, there are some 15.2 million Jews worldwide, 46% in Israel, 42% in the US, and the majority of the remainder in Britain and Europe. Zionism, a political ideology, demands that the land called Palestine belongs exclusively to Jews and Palestinians who have inhabited the land for thousands of years have fewer or no rights than any Jew wherever in the world.
Palestinians are treated as lesser beings
This narrative of entitlement and of God’s omnipotence, inculcated into the minds of world Jewry from the cradle, has resulted in Palestinians being treated as lesser beings at best or at worst being categorised as:
“Palestinians did not exist”—ex-Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir, 1969.
“Palestinians are beasts walking on two legs”—ex-Prime Minister of Israel, Menachem Begin, 1982.
“Palestinians are human animals”—ex-prime Minister of Israel, Neftali Bennett, October 2023.
“Invoking Amalek”—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, October 2023.
“Amalek” being a biblical commandment that demands Israelites slay Amalekites without mercy, regardless of status or age.
These are the beliefs of the leaders of Israel, a country the West has put on a pedestal as a society that embraces secular values. Such despicable views of Palestinians, however, are not restricted to the leaders of Israel.
Political leaders in the West and most of the mainstream media also parrot this grotesque narrative, which dehumanizes Palestinians to the point where Palestinian lives are less important than swatting flies!
“What we think, we become” is a quote attributed to the Buddha. Words Israeli leaders have used to describe Palestinians for decades, words that the West ignored or perhaps even agreed with, have finally become deeds.
Gaza is reduced to a landscape that resembles something between Dresden after the thousand bomber raid and Hiroshima after the atomic bomb, and yet the sanctimonious leaders of the West refuse to call out Israel for what is—a de facto neo-Fascist state that is committing ethnic cleansing and genocide live-streamed into our living rooms.
At present, some 20,000 civilians have been slaughtered in Gaza, including 7,000 children, hundreds of babies in incubators, hospitals bombed and reduced to rubble, and ethnic cleansing on a near biblical scale. Despite all this, the leaders of the Western world can only make themselves say, “Israel has a right to defend itself”!
Israel, however, like all those who have gargantuan delusions of their own omnipotence, might have overestimated its ability to maintain the immunity and impunity it has always enjoyed from its sycophantic acolytes. Israel’s actions in Gaza, however, have finally enabled the world to see its core values, and the majority of the world, having witnessed its cruelty, has recoiled in horror.
Israel’s core values have finally been revealed to be exactly what many neutral observers who believe in equality and justice always knew. That of a nation whose foundations were built on apartheid, brutality, occupation, oppression, racism, and state terrorism.
To its ardent sycophantic acolytes, from left-wing liberals to neo-cons, Israel is a secular democracy no different to all those countries in the west whose societies are based on a universal law for all citizens and a justice system that is fit for purpose.
Many who pointed out Israel was an apartheid racist state masquerading as a secular democracy were deliberately portrayed as “antisemitic” in order to shut down any debate as the accusation of antisemitism is both emotive and inflammatory.
Worse still, anyone questioning the actions of Israel in its treatment of Palestinians potentially found themselves hounded out of a job or even loss of career. This continues to this day.
Ultimately, however, Israel, by its own actions – brutal, callous, inhumane, merciless, and murderous – has finally removed its own mask to reveal the true Medusa inside.
*Seevali Abeysekera is a retired UK businessman who scribes a blog on current affairs, as well as reflections and thoughts of his own life journey. seevaliabeysekera.wordpress.com [IDN-InDepthNews]
Photo: Annihilated Jabalia Palestine Refugee Camp. Source: UNRWA
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