Gaza remains the specter of death and destruction wrought by Israeli colonial tyranny, reflecting how Zionism has germinated from utopian adventurism into the most destabilizing force of contemporary world order.

The fundamental nature of Zionism encapsulates fascism, white supremacy, imperialism and messianic Evangelism. This toxic cocktail of violent racism establishes Jewish supremacy by dehumanizing, humiliating and annihilating Palestinians. In order to conceal its fascist and imperial undertones, Zionism twists certain aspects of Judaism to advance its settler agenda under garb of religion.

The dangers of the Zionist movement are evident by its brutality in graveyard of children that is Gaza. Netanyahu’s exclusivist and expansionist designs are not limited to genocide of Palestinians as Israel-Lebanon front heats up. 

In his work “Israeli Exceptionalism”, M. Shahid Alam elucidates the destabilizing logic of Zionism. Alam says, “The Zionists wedged themselves between two historical adversaries, the West and Islam, and by harnessing the strength of first against second, they have produced a conflict that can only grow deeper over time. In this conflict, Israel’s triumphs are temporary, are indeed illusionary, since they evoke a deeper wider response from the societies that suffer the devastation of its triumphs”. 

Palestinians are enduring the final round of ethnic cleansing as Israel resumes unfinished business of 1948 in bloody campaign. The previous rounds of ethnic cleansing in 1948 and 1967 failed to extinguish fires of Palestinian resistance. The stated Israeli military goals have been fluctuating, cloaked in ridiculous lies, yet annihilation of entire Palestinian civilization remains constant. Israel has employed the playbook of its patron US empire which concocted WMD lie to invade Iraq, and now the Zionist Israeli regime invented story of beheaded babies to justify crimes against humanity. Ironically, relentless Israeli thunder and lightening over densely populated Gaza Strip indicates that goal was never erasure of Hamas but complete expulsion of indigenous population and rendering the land inhabitable for decades. These assertions can be testified by escalation of violence in the West Bank where there is no presence of Hamas and scores of Palestinians are arrested, murdered and pushed from their lands. 

Speaking to Democracy Now, Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov warned that Israeli political and military leaders terming Palestinians as human animals clearly indicate intent of genocide. Israeli historian Adam Raz discussed Israeli plan of absolute occupation in his book “The Kafr Qasim Massacre: A Political Biography” by stating that Israeli plan was finalized in 1950s to expel Palestinians to Jordan, Lebanon and Sinai in event of war. 

Besides occupation of the Palestinian land, the endgame of this genocidal war is theft of energy resources.

Israel is systematically targeting health sector, UN shelters, residential buildings and schools under US carte-blanche. Unsurprisingly, President Joe Biden's energy security adviser Amos Hochstein travelled to Israel as Zionist regime awarded 12 licenses to 6 companies for natural gas exploration. Thus, besides occupation of Palestinian land, the endgame of this genocidal war is theft of energy resources. Italian criminal lawyer Chantal Meloni in her work “Is there a court for Gaza?” sheds light on silence of international justice mechanisms over Israeli abuses in occupied Palestine citing “In the bleakest days of apartheid in South Africa one could always turn to the international community and its institutions for support. But it is not so with Palestine. Despite the fact that the violation of international legal norms is much clearer in the case of Israel’s relations with Palestine, the response of the international community’s institutions has been very different”. 

The most significant casualty amid Israel’s ferocious war on Gaza remains the West’s so-called moral standing. American diplomacy to ensure humanitarian relief for civilian concomitant with massive influx of lethal state-of-the-art weapons to Zionist Israeli regime reduces its efforts to mere circus. Western media miserably failed to obfuscate battlefield realities of war in an information age where citizen journalists exposed empty rhetoric of Western pundits through gory visuals of collective punishment. In advocating Israel’s right to self- defence and terror threat posed by Hamas, Western media distorted basic injunction of international law that Israel cannot exercise self-defence on the occupied land. The UN chief rightly reminded the attendees of Security Council that “It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation”. 

Aggression and expansion can never be justified response to historic generational trauma of Holocaust. The incumbent fundamentalist Israeli regime is acting contrary to pacifist Jewish ideals which view hardships as divine punishment for sins. This evil neo-Nazi political set-up neither represent Jews nor is Israel vanguard of Judaism. Thus, holding Netanyahu and cohorts accountable for appalling war crimes in occupied Palestine is not anti-Semitic. Zionist propagandists garner public support by fear-mongering, concocting fallacious fabrications without a shred of evidence.

Israel’s war on Palestinians is not a holy war to protect Jews but a settler colonial project to bolster white far-right Zionist elites. This war against nurses, doctors, journalists, infant babies and non-combatants inflicts debilitating blow to liberal world order cherished by ‘civilized world’. The humanitarian veneer from Western capitals came off and the world desperately looks forward for other credible actor to fill this vacuum. 

Sarah Khan works as anchorperson in state broadcaster of Pakistan PTV. She is NDU graduated International Relations scholar.