As the different wings of Jewish supremacy come to blows, the Palestinian cause has a new opening to advance its goal of ending the settler state. The “progressive” and labor Zionists are likely to together gain a majority in the Zionist entity’s parliament, and the Netanyahu wing is reacting by trying to sabotage the vote; which puts our enemies at loggerheads, while giving us an opportunity to expose Palestine’s false allies. To do this effectively, we must not fulfill the “progressive” wing’s requests for us to act in solidarity with it. Our only allies in this are the Palestinians, and the forces assisting their struggle against the occupation.
These developments will benefit us, but not because the “progressives” have anything good to offer us of their own accord; even if they end up agreeing to a Palestinian state, we shouldn’t credit them with the achievement, as such a victory can only come from the same Palestinian armed resistance that these Zionists despise. When Palestine does get its own state, this will be because “Israel” was physically forced to retreat, not because of any phony “coexistence” agenda promoted by the Zionist “peace” groups.
It is this message that we must confront the liberal and “labor” Zionists with while they try to sell themselves as the antithesis to Netanyahu. Rather than supporting one wing of Zionism over another, like certain parts of imperialist media and politics will ask us to do, we need to intensify our campaign against the settler project as a whole. These “progressive” or “Marxist” forces will attempt to turn Palestine supporters away from the struggle, and give up critical activities like Boycott Divestment Sanctions. They’ll assert that the liberals and “Marxist” Zionists represent new hope for “Israel” to turn itself around; which is a lie that provides an excuse to be complacent, and shy away from any substantial actions for Palestine.
To defeat this lie, we must discredit the narratives that the perpetrators of the Gaza genocide are using to self-victimize. To assert that “Israeli people are also a victim” (as the labor Zionist KKE said in its now-deleted “On the war in the Middle East” statement). One tactic used by the colonizers within Palestine, and by their enablers around the world, is to portray the genocide as a hardship for the ones committing it. This is the manipulation that’s identified by Good Shepherd Collective’s Lara Kilani, who’s responded to the recent IDF apologia piece by The Economist’s Wendell Steavenson:
Steavenson ends her article with a discussion of Israeli forces’ experiences of PTSD, guilt, and consequences. She provides statistics on the number of Israeli soldiers who have attempted suicide and describes the increased experience of “moral injury” after participating in this genocidal aggression on Gaza — Steavenson defines moral injury as “when shame and disgust at one’s actions cause depression and anxiety”. She notes, though, that “The concept of moral injury is controversial, since it casts perpetrators as victims.”
Moral injury does not make a perpetrator into a victim, but rather, it makes a perpetrator human. People who take part in atrocities should feel ashamed. People who engage in genocide deserve consequences, including internal ones. It is a human reaction to feel bad for carrying out war crimes. More interesting than the number of attempted suicides by Israeli soldiers is how small the number is compared to the total soldiers participating in genocide (also notable that Steavenson decides to give us this specific number but not the number of Palestinians killed in the “war”).
This obsession with extending sympathy for those who’ve committed these crimes is part of the psychology driving the “progressive” Jewish supremacists. As long as they cling to this identification with war criminals, and the resulting romanticization of a colonial project, they will never escape the ethno-narcissism that pervades all levels of “Israeli” society.
This egocentrism is central to their upbringing, and can only be overcome by committing to a full rejection of being “Israeli” or treating the Jewish diaspora as indigenous to Palestine. In one of the op-eds promoting the liberal Zionist efforts to rehabilitate “Israel,” Ben Caspit of Ma’ariv showed insight into how these kinds of ethno-narcissists are thinking right now:
Once upon a time, millions of Israelis took to the streets every Saturday—and sometimes even midweek— … in the massive and defining civil protest that this nation has ever seen, over far less. So what happened? Where has it all gone? Have we been defeated? Have we come to terms with the loss of the original Israel, of the Jewish, democratic and liberal state that our forefathers established here? Has the systematic vilification of Ben-Gurion, Begin and Shamir by the Netanyahu–Nitai–Hon family and their ilk become completely normalised? The answer is no. Absolutely not … Yes, we are weary. Yes, we are worried. Yes, some of us are despondent. But no, we will not give up. We will never give up. There will be no other opportunity to establish a state like this. The Zionist dream will not turn into a messianic-Haredi-Bibist-Kahanist nightmare. Not on our watch. The reason this has passed with relative silence is that there are elections. They are just around the corner. We must save our energy for this event. And yes, there is also a war. Almost three years of a terrible, horrific war … a war that has worn many of us down, exhausted us and brought us back to our senses
If these actors get their way, and the resistance is defeated while “coexistence” wins the debate, all of the aggressions that the Netanyahu/Trump wing within Zionism is carrying out will result in expanded influence for the liberal Zionist wing. This is why these “progressive” types of Zionists are actually dependent on the openly Nazistic Zionists who they claim to be against: both factions of Jewish supremacy play off of each other, with the liberal wing sanitizing the entity’s crimes while the more unapologetic faction accelerates the colonization project.
We’re now seeing an example of how this process works in Washington’s successfully getting the new Colombian government to resume diplomatic relations with “Israel.” It was the Zionist right that facilitated this act of normalization, but the “progressive” and “labor” Zionists have no problem with it, even though it rewards the Netanyahu wing for all of its crimes. Their effort to co-opt the Palestinian cause and rehabilitate Zionism will only benefit from this pro-imperialist shift in the global balance of forces. The more normalization there is of the genocide and the occupation, the better positioned they are to sell their agenda of “peace” through appeasement.
As Masar Badil says about the ramifications of Colombia’s new policy, and how we should respond: “normalization with this entity does not mean establishing relations with a state like any other. Rather, it means integrating into a colonial project founded upon occupation, settlement, apartheid and genocide, directed against all peoples struggling for independence and sovereignty…the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement calls upon our Palestinian people, the forces of liberation throughout Latin America, popular movements, trade unions, progressive parties, and all free people around the world to reject this decision and confront it through every political and popular means available. The movement further calls for strengthening the international front of solidarity with Palestine, recognizing that the struggle of the Palestinian people is not merely a national cause but a shared battle against colonialism, imperialism and racism everywhere.”
If we hold the line against normalization, and redouble our efforts amid the growing fissures inside Jewish supremacy, we will bring the struggle for Palestine’s decolonization to a new phase. A phase where the recent advances by U.S. imperialism get interrupted, and ultimately reversed, by revolts that exploit the power structures internal contradictions.
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