Afterword: The Israeli Genocide of Palestinians, the Ukraine War, and Dangers Ahead

By Paul Zarembka, July 10, 2024

The Israeli genocide of Palestinians is the most open, widely exposed genocide ever occurring as it is unfolding. You can read some of the evidence even in mainstream media, while the appropriate noun is avoided, armaments to Israel continue, and any humanity of Palestinians a minor footnote to the ‘Enlightenment’ we are supposed to be living through.

Could, perhaps, the leaders of the countries sponsoring and engaging in the colonialisms we all know about have simply made a mistake regarding Israel – relative to their own interests? Had they not understood or did not sufficiently care – in their own interests – what they had created under the slogan, ‘a country for a people without a country’? Even so, do they know how to get out of the box?

Israel has been important because the United Kingdom and the United States make it important. Back in 1948, the alternative to a religious state was a secular one, an alternative that had been on the agenda of the United Nations. This would have been more consistent with the claimed ideals of the secular republics that were determining the outcome. Furthermore, one did not need to be an Einstein to realize the danger, needing only to be able to think independently and with integrity.¹

The state of Israel has lost whatever credibility it may have had. Continuing to support it undermines the credibility of those states continuing their support in 2024. On the other hand, major countries like South Africa, Brazil and China benefit with their objections towards the Israeli genocide.

The Palestine resistance is not being defeated. Therefore, under its stated agenda, Israel is losing. Is there any scenario for it to claim ‘victory’? Can Israel accept defeat? Or, will it only accept defeat when all come down, including itself, perhaps even with the use of nuclear options?

Consider October 7, 2023. There is plenty of evidence that Israel knew of the plans of the Palestinian resistance to launch an attack on Israel.² Rather than prepare to stop it in its tracks, Israeli authorities did the opposite, weakening its own border with Gaza ahead of the event, and failing to respond immediately once it had begun. The border became wide open in several places, and incursions into Israel were almost unobstructed for a significant period of time, including into an Israeli military base. It took three days to restore Israeli control over the penetrated territory. Apart from resistance groups, it is difficult to know exactly who had crossed the border from Gaza, and there were certainly elements that were unconnected to any group. Deaths and injuries among those on the Israeli side surely did include non-combatants, but accurately ascribing causes are difficult, particularly as Israel also had a tactic of unconcern whether its military response would be killing some of their own. The numbers of those killed that were not soldiers or security personnel were identified in December to be 695 Israel civilians and 71 foreigners (most Thai), without being able to precise who engaged in the killing.³ In any case, the context of the conflict is important: For the decade and a half beforehand, i.e., between January 24, 2008 and October 6, 2023, the United Nations reports that Palestinian fatalities had been 6,336, 20 times the Israeli fatalities of 310.⁴

October 7 was not a ‘false flag’ on the part of Israel. A ‘false flag’ would involve Israeli combatants wearing identities of the opposite and attacking Israel.⁵ Nevertheless, Israel's behaviour into October 7, 2023, can certainly be described as Machiavellian. And I have not seen a claim that Israel's reduction of its defenses into October 7 went beyond Israel's own internal decisions. In other words, Israeli political leaders operated with their anticipations of what major supporters like the United Stated and the United Kingdom would do after October 7, anticipating the product of prior reactions by such powers to events in the Middle East, particularly those connected to Israel. They were not wrong, even after the Israeli continuing attacks on Gaza, militarily and anti-humanitarian, were decided by the International Court of Justice to plausibly be a genocide – with a US-appointed judge presiding no less. Later it ruled – however, with no effect – that the attack on Rafah stop immediately, and needed humanitarian aid be allowed into Gaza.

Since October 8, 2023, Israeli civilian fatalities have involved some hostages, but, on the Palestinian side, tens of thousands of non-combatants have suffered death from the Israeli assaults, mostly in Gaza but also expanding into the West Bank. Many more tens of thousands have suffered injuries, while starvation is rampant and there is scarcely a Palestinian not tragically traumatized. After a long wait, the International Criminal Court finally moved towards arrest warrants against two Israeli principals, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant (along with three resistance leaders). As of this writing, those warrants are yet to be approved.

Turn to the US Government and its material aid of this genocide. Can it allow – in its own interests – Israel to engage in the complete destruction of Gaza and the West Bank, whoever forms the Israeli Government? Can it cut its losses? For myself, I could see this as possible. The propaganda around the necessity to defeat communism in Vietnam was no less powerful, yet the nuclear option was not deployed to try to avoid that defeat. Nonetheless, the world configuration has moved greatly in the half century, including the end of apartheid in South Africa, the fall of the Soviet empire but eventual restoration of Russian power, the rise of Chinese power, the Modi repression of Muslims in India, increased ties of most European governments to US hegemony, …

The depravity of the Israeli behaviour is so beyond cruel and outlandish that even some of the strongest critics of Zionism were rather unprepared for how far it has already gone. I can make the case that the commoditisation of people by capitalism, described by Marx, is the fountain of this genocide. And it is unmasked. It is even clearer than the nuclear bombing by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki since the genocide in Gaza is seen in detail by hundreds of millions worldwide on an hourly basis. The Western powers, led by the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany in their full-throated support of Israel, don't care in the slightest and publicly accept Israeli officials lying without bothering to check the evidence.

Thus, the commoditisation of Palestinians is openly presented. Humanity of Palestinians is ignored. We have leading capitalist governments exposed naked, the essence of capitalism shining brightly. A half millennium of historical development is illuminated, within this interconnected world of news being transmitted anywhere in mere seconds.

While the powers behind Israel are weakened, they will not accept their decline in a quiet vote at the United Nations, with a ‘thanks for the good times.’ Still, Israel itself is out of control, and nothing it might do is off the table. It could happen at any time. How powers behind Israel would react is too speculative for this short piece.

We might more creditably consider the Ukraine war. One perspective, offering attention to the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, argues:

The point is clear enough if we understand Diesen to mean that the initial Peace of Westphalia was within Europe, later encompassing North America, that was to dominate the world. The new order would refer a projected Westphalian world order to include Asia, particularly China, also including the importance of BRICS, as a counterweight to the West.

Diesen points to argumentation by Henry Kissinger as a background for his own argument, a type not uncommon among bourgeois historians critical of the Western drive for the war, but who also exhibit no concern for class exploitation and oppression. I can also think of John Mearsheimer's promotion of his concept of real politics in commentaries on the Ukraine war and on Israel, although he does give some attention to morality. The interventions by Jeffery Sachs who has direct, personal knowledge of the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and of Ukraine in particular, does exhibit concern for the lives of workers, albeit limited by a ‘developmentalist’ perspective.

There seems to be little reason to object to such attentions to the high level of danger we are in, even recognizing their bourgeois perspectives. We cannot skip over the possibility of nuclear war. Our current danger seems similar to the Cuban missile crisis for which a nuclear annihilation was avoided partly by the particular individuals leading the Soviet Union and the United States at the time, and partly (sorry to say) by ‘luck,’ namely, one naval officer who happened to have a command on one Soviet submarine that had lost all communications and otherwise was on a ‘go’ by two other officers for a nuclear attack on the United States.

I want to conclude with the uncomfortable: Our theory is not comprehensive enough to direct us precisely in the present conjuncture. We are too ignorant. Still, we do have pointers: We do have our studies of history and of the working classes; we do have certain guides, often before the nuclear age (‘combined and uneven development’ being one example⁶); we do know the need to contest the exploiters; and we do know what we don't want. But the people are not in power. And those that are in power are extremely dangerous, inclusive of nuclear blackmail or use.