This article is part of a series from the New Anticapitalist Party-Revolutionaries (NPA-R) in France, looking back at the situation in the Middle East over the past year. Originally published Oct. 4, 2024.
Close ranks and “let the army win”: this slogan, printed on the takeaway bags of a fast food chain in Israel, could sum up the majority mood in Israel after a year of genocidal massacres in Gaza, as Netanyahu’s warlike escalation spreads to the West Bank, and now to Lebanon. Tens of thousands of Gazan victims, including babies? Let the army win. Bombed schools and hospitals? Let the army win… until the outright annihilation of the Palestinians and other peoples of the region, on whose corpses a “Greater Israel” could be built?
Since October 7, the militarist propaganda, which was already in full force, has been stepped up in favor of the so-called “people’s army”, as it likes to call itself. Gone are the great demonstrations of 2023 against Netanyahu’s judicial reform, which sought to remove any semblance of counter-power that remained in the hands of judges. This protest has given way to a strong feeling of national unity behind the war “against Hamas”. This feeling was accompanied and strengthened by the formation, over several months, of a national unity cabinet that included opposition leader Benny Gantz. He declared: “Our position here, shoulder to shoulder, is a clear message to our enemies and, more importantly, a message to all the citizens of Israel: we are all together, we are all mobilizing… This is the moment when we come together and win.”
The result of this national unity has been to give an even freer hand to the army, but also to the most extremist bangs of the population. Shocking scenes have followed one another over the past year, from the destruction of scarce humanitarian aid destined for Gaza to the murder of Palestinians by zealous settlers in the West Bank. All encouraged by the belching of far-right politicians, including some in government, such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has declared that “the Palestinian people do not exist” or that starving the people of Gaza is justified.
Hostage Protests: a Hope?
Certainly, there have been demonstrations “for the hostages”, some of which brought together several hundred thousand people at the beginning of September, following the announcement of the death of six Israeli hostages in Gaza. These demonstrators seem less and less fooled by Netanyahu’s propaganda, which justifies his endless war in Gaza in the name of the hostages… to actually annihilate the Gazan population under the pretext of annihilating Hamas. For the time being, however, the protests remain more than limited, and take no account whatsoever of the plight of the Palestinian people. For months, these demonstrations have not been mixed with the much smaller ones calling for an end to the bombing and daring to defend the Palestinians’ right to live… let alone an end to the oppression of the Palestinian people!
If there is a gulf between the protests against Netanyahu and a real movement against the war, the reaction of the Israeli state shows that the aim is to cut short any possibility of the emergence of even the embryo of such a movement: several dozen demonstrators were arrested, and the call for a general strike launched by the Histadrut trade union center was declared “illegal” by the courts the very next day. Precisely because such a movement could finally give a larger audience to those who, in Israel today, are militating in a very small minority against this genocidal war and against the oppression of the Palestinian people as a whole. Like the handful of young people like Tal Mitnik and Sofia Orr who refused to serve in the army and were sentenced to several prison terms for doing so. Or the few intellectuals like Gideon Levy who dare to speak out against their state’s policies.
What Future for the Israeli People?
A total of 76 years of colonization, Zionist propaganda – from parties on both the left and the right – and endless wars against the Palestinian people have forged in Israel the dominant idea that “security” can only be guaranteed by an ever more pronounced security and military headlong rush. But how can we believe that any peace or security can be achieved in conditions where Israel is spreading war and terror? On the contrary, it condemns the Israeli population to live in a climate of perpetual fear, in an ultra
militarized society where children are taught to hide in bomb shelters and every young person performs a three-year military service. To live in a country where billions are spent on the army, even if it means cutting social budgets and leaving a fifth of the population below the poverty line. National unity against the Palestinian people is ultimately also achieved at the expense of Israeli workers, by disarming them politically in relation to their exploiters, their own bosses.
As long as the Palestinian people are oppressed, as long as colonization continues, as long as Israel behaves as the bloody gendarme of the great powers and even their military base in the region on the backs of the peoples, there will be no peace in return for the Israeli people. “A people that oppresses another cannot be free”, wrote Karl Marx. By failing to oppose the oppression of the Palestinian people, the vast majority of the Israeli population is effectively giving its leaders a license to kill and oppress. A trap that can only close in on them. Today, those Israelis who stand up against the ongoing genocide in Gaza and those, even more in the minority, who denounce Zionism, represent an ultra-minority, yet in Israel itself, they represent the only prospect for the Israeli population to live in anything other than an entrenched camp.
