Said or Unsaid, Palestine is Here to Stay: The Truth Will Not Be Buried
By Dr. M. Reza Behnam
Since its forced birth, Israel has, with Washington’s support, been attempting to create a Zionist empire in the Middle East, writes Dr Reza Behnam.
The Talmud contends that “Whosoever saves a single life is as if he had saved the whole world; whosoever destroys a single life is as if he had destroyed the whole world.”
How would this central text of Judaism acquit the reported more than 69,000 Palestinian lives destroyed by Israel since 7 October 2023? How might it apply Torah theology and law to Israel’s land theft, massacres and brutal military occupation of Palestine? And what of the collective conscience of Jewish Israelis who favor and buttress a regime committed to genocide.
Some answers lie within the recent remarks of the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric: “Humanity is failing in Gaza…It’s surpassing any acceptable legal, moral and humane stance—the level of destruction, the level of suffering. But more importantly, the fact that we are watching a people being entirely stripped of its human dignity should really shock our collective conscience.”
In making Gaza “worse than hell on earth,” Israel, by its deeds, has also been destroying the international legal system, the so-called global order that has largely privileged the United States and its Western allies since the end of the Second World War.
Since its forced birth, Israel has, with Washington’s support, been attempting to create a Zionist empire in the Middle East, leaving a path of destruction and instability throughout the region, destroying or attempting to weaken any who get in the way: Palestinian resistance movements, Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen.
The truth of US-Israel intentions in the region has been hidden for decades behind an abundance of canards: “land without people; people without land;” “making the desert bloom;” and “the only democracy in the Middle East,” as well as with familiar euphemisms: peace process, peace accords, two-state solution, settlers and settlements.
In addition to American politicians and punditry, Tel Aviv has had a number of other accomplices along the way, particularly in the corporate media who have remained silent, or who have sanitized and misrepresented the truth.
That which has been unsaid or buried for too long, however, must be revived, reiterated and emphatically said:
First, Israel’s violence against Palestinians began long before October 7, 2023. It began with the illegal establishment of the Jewish state in 1948.
For early Zionists, a Jewish state was seen as the only means by which the Jews of Europe could escape their centuries-old persecution. The achievement of their goal demanded that Jews worldwide accept the argument of their oppressors that they were unassimilable, that they discard their respective nationalities and adopt a Jewish one instead. Religion would be the sole criterion of eligibility for citizenship.
To advance legitimacy, Zionists have claimed that Almighty God—acting as a real estate broker, a racist one at that—gave the Jewish people a biblical deed to Palestine and with it the right to orchestrate the gradual extermination of the existing population.
Many empires and conquerors in times past—Persians, Romans, Ottomans, Egyptians and the British—have laid claim to Palestine. Unlike Israel, however, none justified their conquest as a “gift” from God.
The genocide currently unfolding in occupied Gaza and the West Bank is Israel “finishing the job” that it began in 1947 of forcibly removing indigenous Palestinians from their homeland. In 2023, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), Palestinian Islamic Jihad, joined by other groups, reacted to over 80 years of dispossession, oppression, and violence.
Second, Israel and the United States have never really been committed to a relevant peace process that would lead to Palestinian statehood. The political and physical erasure of the Palestinians has always been Israel’s goal. Tel Aviv has no interest in ending the killing, especially with the United States and its allies revealing the same indifferent attitude.
During a recent interview, US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, a Christian Zionist, dropped the pretense, stating that the United States has no interest in pursuing peace. The so-called two-state solution, the cornerstone of US policy, was merely smoke and mirrors.
Yousef Munayyer, head of the Palestine/Israel Program at the Arab Center in Washington, DC summarized US actions well: “Whatever commitments have been made in statements about a Palestinian state over time, [and across administrations], U.S. policy has never matched those stated commitments and only undercut them.”
Third, based on international law, control of territory taken during an armed conflict must be temporary. Eighty years of Israeli military occupation of Palestinian land is not temporary.
It is the colonized Palestinians who have the “right to self-defense.” As stated in international rules, “As long as illegal occupation persists, it constitutes…a continuous wrongful act, thus preserving the continuous right to self-defense for the occupied state/people.”
In December 1990, the UN General Assembly reaffirmed the legitimacy of the Palestinian fight against colonial domination by all available means, including armed struggle.
Defense of the homeland is not terrorism. The labeling and vilification of Palestinian resistance as “terrorism” has effectively suppressed support for their cause and made discussion of the validity of their armed struggle next to impossible.
Resistance to occupation and the struggle for freedom, liberation, and self-determination serve as an eloquent reminder of the devotion of Palestinians to return home.
Fourth, the United States has wrongly designated Hamas a foreign terrorist group.
It is, in reality, a Palestinian political movement and organization with a guerrilla army struggling for national liberation. Israel, with one of the most advanced militaries in the world—ranked 15 among 145 top global military powers—has cast Hamas as a threat.
Tel Aviv has also depicted Hamas as an obstacle to peace. Although the group has stated its commitment to the positions it enunciated in the revised 2017 policy document, Israel, without exception, inevitably cites the ideas set out in Hamas’s more ideological 1988 Covenant.
In the 2017 charter, Hamas said it would accept the establishment of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders and affirmed that the struggle is not against Jews, but with the Zionist occupiers.
To legitimize their killing field in Gaza, Israel insists its war is with Hamas.
Satellite images, however, expose its true intentions; as The Guardian (May 29, 2025) noted : “This isn’t an operation—it’s a cremation: one with the ultimate goal of eradicating Palestinian life in Gaza, but Palestinian identity altogether.”
Israel’s shameless plans were plainly described by Major General Giora Eiland: “Creating a severe humanitarian crisis [euphemism for genocide] is a necessary means to achieve the goal. Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.
Tel Aviv has also “dictated” that Hamas cannot be allowed to govern in post-war Gaza. They brush aside the fact that Hamas has stated its willingness to concede direct governance of Gaza. With other Palestinian groups, they signed the July 2024 Beijing Declaration. The agreement, brokered by China, calls for a post-war independent Palestinian state to be governed by a national unity government.
Members of Hamas are Palestinian. They are deeply rooted within their community. And, like their fellow Gazans, they have lost family members to Israeli bombs. Reporting by the corporate media has made it seem otherwise.
Fifth, Israel unabashedly uses Jewish suffering of the Second World War and the threat of antisemitism to whitewash its criminality.
To preserve support for its ethnonationalist state, Tel Aviv has made certain to conflate Judaism—the religion of the Jewish people—with Zionism, the political ideology of the Israeli state. On this basis, Israel and its advocates claim that criticism of Zionism or Israel is essentially tantamount to an attack on Judaism and Jews and thereby antisemitic.
Anti-Zionism is, therefore, not antisemitism. To call for a “free Palestine” and an end to Israel’s war mongering are also not antisemitic. They are, in fact, the judgment of most people around the world.
Israel purposefully portrays the Jewish community as a monolith. This incongruity masks the reality that many in the pro-Palestinian movement and protests are Jewish and that they reject the notion that Israel represents or speaks for all Jews.
The Zionist experiment of the early 20th century, intended as a solution to European antisemitism, has proven to be no solution at all. It has not brought the Jews living in Israel any measure of security and has undermined the position and safety of Jews who have chosen to remain in their native countries. Most importantly, the once oppressed Jews of Europe have evolved into the racist oppressors of today.
Finally, Israeli politicians and public figures, including American Zionists, have used dehumanizing, derogatory and racist language towards Palestinians for years.
Following the October insurrection, pretenses that did exist were dropped, and words to normalize the forthcoming violence in Gaza escalated. Statements, like the following, fueled the genocide:
October 9, 2023, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, “We are fighting human animals.”
October 16, 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, stated that the war was “a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.”
October 25, 2023, former Israeli ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, called the Palestinians “horrible, inhuman animals.”
November 5, 2023, Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu, suggesting that nuking Gaza was an option, stated that “they [Palestinians] can go to Ireland or deserts, the monsters in Gaza should find a solution by themselves…. anyone waving a Palestinian or Hamas flag shouldn’t continue living on the face of the earth.”
December 2023, Israel “Defense” Forces social media Telegram channel posts included statements about “exterminating the roaches” of Gaza and hearing the “crunch of their bones.”
January 10, 2024, Likud Knesset member, Nissim Vaturi, “Gaza and its people must be burned; I have no pity for them.”
February 22, 2024, Minister of Social Equality May Golan, a self-proclaimed racist, said she was “personally proud of the ruins of Gaza.”
Israel has not allowed foreign journalists to enter Gaza. The war could have possibly gone differently if the media had given the genocidal and racist remarks of Israeli officials the attention they required.
The “iron fist” ideology of Zionism, not the sanctity of life principle specified in the Talmud, lives on as the animating force of the Jewish state.
Meanwhile, Israel continues to kill Palestinians, and the United States finances it.
The United States also vetoes the anger and disbelief of the international community at the United Nations. Against this background, Palestine survives: it survived the marauders of the past; it is surviving the marauders of the present; and as for the marauders of the future—Inshallah.
– Dr. M. Reza Behnam is a political scientist specializing in the history, politics and governments of the Middle East. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
The views expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Palestine Chronicle.
Yep. Palestine 🇵🇸 is here to stay. Israel is a colonial outpost of the West…
the west is complicit in this ongoing genocide (in Gaza)
And it’s also responsible for destabilizing the Middle East