Israel at a Crossroads: Occupation, Genocide, and the Death of a Vision

The state that rose from the ashes of millions of Jews who perished in the Holocaust will not continue to exist on the ashes of the Palestinians.

Israel is the realization of a thousand-year-old dream: to be free, to live in peace, to prosper, and to grow in a sovereign homeland. The miracle of its creation, its achievements, and its limitless potential, guided by lofty moral values that left behind fear and dread of the future, are now being crushed before our eyes.

By what measure can Israel confront the death, destruction, cruelty, bloodshed, brutality, and atrocity that continues to rain down on Gaza and the West Bank? Dehumanization, disregard for human life, and cold-blooded revenge and retribution have collectively betrayed the vision of Israel's founders and robbed it of its moral foundation, something that will haunt Israel for generations to come. All Israeli political institutions and the public bear responsibility for the perpetuation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its dire consequences.

No Israeli prime minister has had a more negative impact on the lives and fates of Israelis than Netanyahu. He is a master liar and manipulator, an expert in the art of deception, a selfish narcissist, and corrupt to the core. He has put his own self-interest before the nation's for more than three decades, a fact he shamelessly demonstrated by prolonging the war in Gaza, just to save his ugly political skin.

Netanyahu, and no one else, is the one who brought Israel to the brink of an unprecedented catastrophe. For him, the senseless deaths of Israeli soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians, and the abandonment of hostages to their hellish fate, are worth the price, if only to maintain his grip on power.

Instead of seeking new ways to resolve the conflict, Netanyahu has intensified his efforts to serve his grand project of seizing more Palestinian land, something that cannot be achieved through peaceful negotiations and the expulsion of as many Palestinians as possible. He is now using the war in Gaza as a catalyst to achieve his ominous goal, oblivious to the fact that he is destroying Israel as we know it.

To achieve his abhorrent goal, Netanyahu formed the most extreme right-wing, messianic government in history, with many of its ministers calling for ethnic cleansing, including Finance Minister Smotrich, who confirmed the government's intentions by declaring on May 6 that "Gaza will be completely destroyed" and that Palestinians will begin "leaving in large numbers."

These criminal ministers demanded that the war continue, and Netanyahu, the happy warrior who still relishes the illusion of eliminating Hamas and releasing the hostages, was only too happy to comply. Last Sunday, the Israeli security cabinet unanimously approved the invasion of a large part of Gaza. The goal is to establish a permanent military rule and Jewish settlements, and to confine approximately 2.2 million Palestinians to the southern part of Gaza, which represents less than 25% of Gaza's total area.

The fact that such an operation would cause casualties among Israeli soldiers and possibly hostages and would create a catastrophic humanitarian crisis among the Palestinians, in addition to the horrific conditions in which they currently live, does not concern Netanyahu and his fascist government.

The notion articulated by Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz that the new operation will ultimately defeat Hamas and put irresistible pressure on it to release all the hostages is just another disastrous illusion for which Israel will pay a heavy price. Netanyahu and his government appear to have learned nothing from the horrific 57-year occupation of the West Bank, characterized by relentless violence that has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians and thousands of Israeli soldiers and civilians.

As the catastrophic war continues to unfold, the so-called religious party leaders who invoke God's name in every sentence, dress themselves in piety, and preach a gospel of care and compassion have never raised their voices in protest against the indiscriminate killing of Palestinians. Shas and United Torah Judaism, led by the hypocrites, shamelessly endorsed the new operation, regardless of the massive destruction and death it would inflict on the Palestinians.

They are largely emulating the bloodthirsty Zalel Smotrich, who declared in a speech in Paris in 2023: “There is no Palestinian nation. There is no Palestinian history. There is no Palestinian language,” which, in his view, justifies the destruction of the Palestinians as a people. They justify the slaughter of Palestinians as if it were blessed by their God. It is no surprise that these fraudsters—who feign fervent faith—allow such massacres of innocent Palestinian men, women, and children. They proudly wear their religious garb while committing crimes against humanity.

They have sacrificed Jewish values and morals in exchange for the government funding they need to run their religious institutions, while refusing to send their sons and daughters to serve in the army. It doesn't matter how many Israeli soldiers are killed, as long as they don't have to mourn the deaths of their children.

The opposition political parties continue to disagree, sometimes agreeing on foreign and domestic issues, but they have never once reached a consensus on how to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They have served Netanyahu well by failing miserably to challenge his strategy of crushing the Palestinians. Instead of rallying public opinion behind a two-state peace agreement that would provide ultimate national security, they have settled for empty criticism of Netanyahu's policies and personality, while the war continues to rage and the prospects for a solution fade, to Israel's detriment.

No one bears more responsibility for the tragic situation engulfing the country than the Israelis themselves, who, ironically, are both the perpetrators of the conflict and the victims, living under the constant threat of war. They have been lied to and misled into believing that the Palestinians cannot be reformed and can only be contained by brute force. They have recklessly swallowed Netanyahu's false argument that a Palestinian state poses an existential threat to them and must be prevented at all costs.

Unfortunately, for the vast majority of Israelis, the occupation has become a way of life. After all, 80% of Israelis were born after 1967. For them, the Palestinian slavery, suffering, deprivation, and humiliation under occupation have had little impact on their daily lives.

They demonstrated en masse for six months against so-called judicial reforms; they continued to demonstrate day after day, demanding the return of the hostages, but they never demonstrated en masse to demand an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To this day, they remain steadfastly committed to the false narrative of Netanyahu and his criminal gang that an independent Palestinian state poses an existential threat. They have never once demanded from their government an alternative, mutually acceptable peace agreement, at least based on a two-state solution, to end the most violent and longest conflict since World War II.

One might think that after the Hamas attack and the Israeli retaliatory war, the Israelis would pause and demand a solution to this devastating conflict. Instead, they have doubled down and resigned themselves to living with their weapons, convinced that there is no solution. They have forgotten, and overlooked, that 90% of living Palestinians were born under occupation, have little left to lose, and will not cease their violent resistance to Israel until the Day of Judgment.

When will the time come for Israelis to realize that Israel will never be able to control the Palestinians against their will? They must first recognize the terrifying demographic equation. Seven million Jews live in Israel alongside seven million Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and within Israel itself. They cannot enslave the Palestinians indefinitely, no matter how brutal the military rule is, and no matter how many Palestinians are imprisoned, killed, or expelled.

Second, unlike any previous violent conflict, the scale of death and destruction inflicted on Gaza and the West Bank has created a new generation of Palestinians who will live to avenge the loss of their people. For every Palestinian fighter killed, two will emerge to take their place.

Third, although Hamas has been destroyed, Israel will never eliminate it as an idea and a movement. Israel's genocidal military operation in Gaza and Netanyahu's plan to reoccupy it will only validate Hamas's claim that Israel is bent on destroying the Palestinians as a people, which will only intensify their violent resistance, no matter how long it takes.

Every Palestinian will remember that if the women, children, and elderly killed in this brutal war were to form a single line, it would be 15 miles long. Ninety percent of Gaza is destroyed, almost all of its population has been repeatedly displaced, deprived of food, medicine, and drinking water, and thousands are on the brink of starvation. This is a tragedy not only inflicted on the Palestinians, but also on Israel itself, which is destroying the very foundation upon which it stands.

Every Israeli must remember that his country, which rose from the ashes of millions of perished Jews, will not continue to exist on the ashes of the Palestinians. Only two independent states living in peace side by side will save Israel, the Jewish dream of thousands of years.