By Haidar Eid  

Is it “the time of monsters” that Antonio Gramsci alluded to, and therefore we should be expecting a “new world” after the death of the old one?

It has become clear that the Palestinian cause is passing through its most critical phase, in terms of the number of sacrifices made, particularly in the “genocided” Gaza Strip.

These sacrifices are the result of the Israeli war machine’s rampant implementation of an ideology based on the dehumanization of Palestinians, under a covert international conspiracy of silence that official Arab politics have played a significant role in consolidating.

Israeli political and military leaders have deliberately unleashed a genocidal war to wreak havoc on Gaza, making it unlivable. Israel has severely punished Gaza’s population, especially women, children, and the elderly for daring to challenge its colonial invincibility.

I am writing this while receiving breaking news that “a three-story home belonging to the Abu al-Kass family in the Tuffah area was targeted at dawn today. Approximately 30 people are still missing under the rubble.”

Two days earlier, like most decent human beings, I was shocked by the news of paediatrician Alaa Al-Najjar,’s horror upon learning that the bodies of nine of her 10 children had arrived at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis, where she was on duty! They had been burned to death following an Israeli airstrike on their home.

Their bodies, recovered by civil defense crews, were completely charred, while her husband, Dr. Hamdi Al-Najjar, sustained serious injuries.

Dr. Al-Najjar was in a state of complete collapse when the burnt bodies of her children, aged between two and 12 years old, arrived at the hospital where she works.

In the meantime, I came across the results of a poll conducted by a reputable Israeli foundation, which showed that 82% of Israeli Jews supported a complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza, while 47% believed that Israeli genocide forces should kill every resident of cities under Israeli control, whether men, women, or children.

Additionally, 65% of respondents said they believed in the existence of a modern incarnation of Israel’s historical enemy (Amalek), and most of these believed that the divine command to erase the memory of this enemy remained in effect today.

Then, I get to hear Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly expressing genocidal intent on May 29^th to a cheering crowd at Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva for the so-called ‘Jerusalem Day’: “This is a war of good against evil… It’s being fought against human animals, monsters… And we will defeat them! We will wipe them out! They will not remain.”

This escalating collective hysteria in Israel against everything Palestinian is a reflection of the ongoing racist implementation of Zionist ideology on the ground since 1948. The fact that Israel is a settler-colonial state essentially means that, like any settler-colonial state, it is based on either the total extermination of the Indigenous population and/or ethnic cleansing.

The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 necessarily required the elimination of the other, the Indigenous people of the land.

This was achieved through a process of creating a false consciousness among a broad segment of Jews and exploiting their suffering in a way that ultimately led to the elimination of the Palestinian presence from the collective Zionist consciousness, or, at the very least, the dehumanization of Palestinians in a way that did not burden the liberal and socialist “conscience” prevalent among the founding generation.

Due to the Palestinian “stubbornness” in refusing to accept this “reality,” Israel has attempted to subjugate the Palestinian collective consciousness in a classic colonialist manner, either through extreme forms of repression or by “convincing” Palestinians that “in the depths of their consciousness, they are a defeated people” and that they must accept a reality that is “impossible to change.”

zxdxw vIsrael possesses one of the most powerful armies in the world, hundreds of nuclear warheads, the most advanced American weapons, and a strategic alliance with the world’s sole superpower. Consequently, all of Israel’s war crimes against humanity cannot elicit practical condemnation from the colonial West because this would influence Israeli policies of blatant extermination of the Indigenous people of Palestine.

In other words, the Palestinian is unwanted, unpopular, weak, microscopic, unimportant, non-white, irrelevant, etc. S/he/they cannot rise to the level of a real competitor to the Ashkenazi, white, Western State of Israel — an “oasis of democracy” supported by an empire unlike any other in history, beloved by Western regimes and even some Arab regimes. The equation Israel is proposing is clear: You must accept whatever crumbs we throw at you because you have no other choice.

Is it too much to expect the international community to follow basic expectations of human rights in its dealings with genocidal Israel?

Have policies of occupation, colonization, apartheid AND genocide become acceptable in the post-WWII world? Or is it only because we Palestinians are the victims of Europe’s victims, as Edward Said would have rhetorically asked?

Or is it “the time of monsters” that Antonio Gramsci alluded to, and therefore we should be expecting a “new world” after the death of the old one?

The views expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Palestine Chronicle.