For decades, Zionists prided themselves about the solidarity in their society in Palestine. “If you fall in the street in New York, no one will check if you are ok, unlike Tel Aviv”, was a common way Zionists tried to convince themselves about the benefits of our society. That myth is based on at least two fallacies. One is a misunderstanding of the role of material (and especially economic) conditions in social cohesiveness. I grew up in Jerusalem in the 80s, when we as young children played in the streets every day until the evening. Today, in the same neighborhoods in Jerusalem, or in Tel Aviv, I wouldn’t let my young daughters wander around in the streets alone or with friends. But in Jaffa, where they grew up, there are always neighbors in the street – because their houses are too small and/or warm. So we knew that if something happened to any of them, there would be someone to help them get home.
But this is only the minor misunderstanding. The second and larger one – with implications far wider than the afternoon activities of children – is the myth of a society where we are all Jews, so we are practically one family. For millennia, European Jews lived in small communities, where even when they were not facing persecution from the surrounding society, the threat was always there. In such a situation, social cohesion and Jewish solidarity were a necessity for survival in many aspects.
But in the modern Zionist state, all that is left is the facade of solidarity – that is being used to hide unbridled racism and discrimination within the Zionist society itself (not to mention what it means for the justifications of racism towards Palestinians and other “non-Jews” in the society). This is what enabled the Zionist society to develop into a highly complex pyramid of discrimination, where each section of society is in complex relations of “superiority” and “inferiority” to all the other sections, with male Ashkenazi Jews from the Zionist metropoles (mainly Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem) sitting at the top.
“We are all Jews. How can one Jew be racist to another” is the basic “solidarity” logic sustaining this complex discriminatory structure, unparalleled in its complexity by any other national society in the world today. While in fact, everyone is defined by the origins of his family from around the world and their family’s “record” in the Zionist history. “His grandfather was in the Palmach (the elite pre-48 Zionist militia in Palestine)” was for decades a badge of honor.
This pyramid of discrimination has been cracking in the past decades. The entire political career of Benyamin Netanyahu could be seen as both riding the anger this complex social structure created inside the Zionist society and as a rather successful attempt to break it down.
The 7/10 attacks sped up this disintegration process in many aspects. One of them is shattering the foundational Zionist myth of solidarity. On 7/10 itself, the army deliberately murdered a still hidden number of Israelis to prevent them from being kidnapped into Gaza. Since then, for 2 years, the Zionist society has prioritized the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza over solidarity with the Israeli hostages and captives there. They (deliberately?) bombed and killed the Bibas children and their mother, together with many other Israelis killed in the Zionist attack on Gaza, as a result of wanting more to kill and win than to keep the hostages safe. It is worth remembering that, now that the last bodies of hostages killed (by Zionist attacks?) are returned from Gaza.
Don’t be fooled. This isn’t “Netanyahu and his government”. A large enough part of the Zionist society publicly supports all those horrendous crimes against their own civilians (not to mention the support for murdering Palestinians). And even the so called “liberal Zionist” opposition camp is the one whose children lead the most lethal assaults against Gaza and the Israeli hostages and captives who were held there – as air force pilots and elite combat units, as well as the elite technological units enabling such mass killing.
To make things even worse – and this is where the Zionist actions become extremely antisemitic – the entire genocide in Gaza was and still is justified by this “Jewish solidarity”. The Zionist society practically chose, for two years, to sacrifice their own members for an unparalleled rampage of violence and murder in the name of those they themselves sacrifice – and in the name of the Jewish People.
And they are still at it. Don’t believe me? Search on social media for Zionists sharing or commenting to images of the death and destruction we wreaked in Gaza with variations of the same idea: “Now no one will dare mess with the Jewish People again”.
Photo: Kibbutz Beeri. The Israeli army fired on a house where hostages were being held on 7 October 2023 (Reuters)
