by Ayman Ahmed (Main Stories, Crescent International Vol. 54, No. 12, Sha'ban, 1446)
Zionist policymakers and thinkers are gripped by a strong fear that the state may not survive to see its eightieth year of existence. This is not because of external threats. In fact, some zionists are living under the illusion that following their genocidal war on Gaza and the rest of Palestine, Israel’s external fronts have been neutralized.
These included assassination of top leaders of Hamas and Hizbullah as well as several Iranian generals. More recently, Syria has also been taken out of the Resistance Axis. So, external threat is not seen as a serious issue by Israel at present.
It is Israel’s internal divisions that are causing sleepless nights among the elite. Menachem Rahat, a leading Israeli journalist and commentator, who used to write for Ma‘ariv newspaper, published a piece titled: “The Curse of the Eighth Decade”.
He wrote: “Far more threatening and dangerous to our future is the division and polarization within Israeli society.
“The same brotherly hatred that came down to the world in the days of Kayin and Hevel, which was repeated in the lives of Yitzchak and Yishmael and Ya’akov and Esav, and exploded again with the brothers’ hatred for Yosef – this is the hatred that burns among us and threatens to overwhelm the zionist enterprise.
“The State of Israel, now in its eighth decade of life and about to celebrate its 75th birthday, is today closer than ever before to the danger of a fratricidal war, each man against his brother. This is the moment to learn from history, before we destroy ourselves through the fire of hate.”
The former defence minister and prime minister, Ehud Barak, has expressed similar concerns. He has framed his concern differently arguing that Israel can either be a ‘Jewish state’ or a ‘democratic state’, but not both.
The 15-month-long genocidal war on Gaza has merely exacerbated its internal divisions. Within Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet—essentially a bunch of genocidal maniacs—opinion is sharply divided about the just concluded ceasefire. It may not last long.
An odd assortment of parties, all of them neo-Nazi in ideology, compete for influence to push their extremist agenda. The police and security minister in Netanyahu’s cabinet, Itamar Ben Gvir resigned from the coalition regime because he did not want a ceasefire in Gaza.
Neither did Netanyahu but he was forced to accept it because the Israeli army failed to achieve any of the objectives set out by the regime. Hamas has not been eliminated, northern Gaza has not been emptied out of the Palestinians and Israeli prisoners were not released through military force.
Hamas has emerged stronger. Palestinians are returning to their homes even if they are completely destroyed, and the prisoners were released through negotiations.
Israeli army chief Herzi Halevi announced his resignation on January 21. He acknowledged that the army had failed to protect Israeli citizens on October 7, 2023. He will relinquish his post on March 6. Israeli media outlets have admitted that Israel not only lost the war but the army was badly mauled and has suffered major losses. Halevi is leaving it in tatters.
Netanyahu is also running scared because he faces criminal charges for fraud. This is compounded by demands that he resign over his failure to protect Israelis during the October 7, 2023 operation launched by Hamas. It was the biggest humiliation the Israeli regime and army suffered in its entire tortuous existence.
Zionist Israel’s only weapon throughout these years has been its military might. It has used it indiscriminately to terrorize its neighbours, but more particularly the Palestinians under occupation.
The US maintains a pipeline of endless supply of weapons to keep the zionist entity fully stocked. It is better equipped than all the neighbours’ armies combined. The zionist genocidal war on Gaza that inflicted immense death and destruction on the Palestinians, however, failed to subdue much less defeat them. The myth of zionist invincibility lies buried in the rubble of Gaza.
Evidence for this can be found in the casualties inflicted on Israeli forces despite their hi-tech weaponary. Hamas’ Islamic fighters more than matched the invading zionist forces. After 15 months of war, the zionist army is not only exhausted but also demoralized.
Most soldiers and reservists refuse to report for duty. Others seek treatment for mental issues or commit suicide. The length of war has also resulted in Israeli military equipment being degraded due to lack of proper maintenance. True, the US continues to supply it endless amounts of weapons—bombs, missiles and the like—but it cannot rebuild the Israeli army’s morale.
The war has resulted in other problems for the zionist entity. At least 60,000 businesses have shut down including the Port of Eilat, thanks to Ansarallah’s daring attacks on ships in the Red Sea. Israeli bound ships have been intercepted and prevented from going to Israel.
Israel’s financial losses as a result of the war amount to some $70 billion. This is compounded by the fact that the most qualified and productive Israelis have fled the country. They are unlikely to return. When there is no certainty about the future, most Israelis prefer their personal well-being over ideology. Life based and propped on the theft of others’ land and perpetual oppression and killings cannot be sustained forever. There are also strong divisions between Heradim and secular Jews.
Further, the Palestinians cannot be wished away regardless of the scale of barbarism inflicted on them. The zionists have indulged in state terrorism for more than 75 years. The Palestinian resistance has only become stronger and more determined. And it will continue to grow. Time is on the side of the resistance.
The Palestinians are prepared to struggle for as long as it takes to achieve their goal of an independent state free from zionist occupation. The will to achieve freedom is always stronger than the occupiers’ capacity to oppress.
The occupied are willing to make every sacrifice. Palestinian leaders from Sheikh Ahmed Yasin, Dr Abdul Aziz Rantisi, Yahya Ayyash, Salah Arour to Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar, sacrificed their lives in the struggle to achieve freedom. Ismail Haniyeh lost 66 members of his family, including three sons, four grandchildren and a sister, in the struggle.
How many zionist leaders—political or military—are prepared to offer such sacrifices? On rare occasions when a few missiles were fired at Tel Aviv, Netanyahu would rush to hide in his underground bunker like a rat. Rats do not revolutionaries or leaders make.
The US is the underwriter and finacier of zionist crimes. Recent polls in the US, however, show a worrying trend. More than one-third of American Jewish teenagers sympathise with Hamas, 42 percent believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and 66 percent sympathise with the Palestinian people as a whole. This only adds to the zionists’ discomfort.
It is, however, the curse of the eighth decade that truly haunts the zionists. They are psychologically defeated. Physical defeat cannot be far off. The West Asian region, indeed the entire world would be a far better place without the racist zionist entity.