One distinct feature of Zionism is not only its supremacist-racist underpinnings, but its consummate ability to turn lies into perceived truths. As the malign Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels proclaimed, if you repeat a lie often enough people will believe it.
Zionists have successfully mastered this dark art, filtering their lies via various efficient means into the public consciousness. The most notorious and pernicious of these lies is the slogan “a land without a people for a people without a land”, denying Palestinian existence as part of Zionism’s attempt to erase them. Aside from much scholarly work disproving this lie, a very accessible, powerful exposure and rebuttal is to be found in the courageous testimonies and analysis by a number of Jews and Palestinians in the book A Land With a People: Palestinians and Jews Confront Zionism.
Fortunately, as with all anti-human and inhumane ideologies, Zionism contains the seeds of its own destruction. Zionism’s first and principal crime is the slow genocide and ethnic cleansing mercilessly conducted against the Palestinians. But Zionism’s second, less known, though no less abhorrent crime is the sullying of the reputation of Jews as a collective, many of whom stand with Palestinians in their struggle for justice. In a chilling and sinister reality, Zionism has unwittingly brought apparent truth to the lies of antisemites. That is what antisemites can now exploit, correctly comparing Israel to a fascist entity but wrongly and maliciously exploiting this to attack Jews, claiming they were right all along in their distrust and loathing for Jews. In the antisemite’s distorted vision, Jews are a merciless, hateful people whose ultimate aim is world domination, towards which Israel was the first step. What they have done to the Palestinians is what they will eventually do to others who stand in their way.
The persecution and genocide we witness in Gaza since October 7, and the ethnic cleansing being planned by the neo-Nazi ministers in control of Israel – who are so confident in their power as to state their genocidal aims openly – is the wake-up call for Jews. In the face of such crimes against humanity, happening now and being planned for the future, it can only be a question of time before more Jews – and there are many already, though not nearly enough – will realise the grievous harm done to both them and Palestinians by the violent, supremacist ideology of Zionism.
As the renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappe clearly explains, we are witnessing the beginning of the end, and it can really only be a question of time before Israel ceases to be. Its demise not at the hands of a subjugate people who lack even a fraction of the might necessary for the task, but by its own internal contradictions that place land before people, Jewishness before democracy, and Jews before and above Palestinians.