Since 10/07/23, most Western governments have assisted Israel’s “war against Hamas” with logistical support or diplomatic cover. What is the mental conditioning that governs perpetrators and enablers of a genocide?

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Introduction

When a femicide is perpetrated, the murderer’s heartfelt excuse is always something to the effect of “She made me do it!” Glossing over his relentless abuse and harassment, he is totally dishonest and entirely sincere at the same time. In his mind, he is the victim. The self-reinforcing pattern of reactive emotions he has regularly indulged in has shaped the reality of his life, or what seems like it to him.

All war propaganda efforts in history rely on this powerful capacity for self-delusion. If people are convinced of their righteousness or victimhood, the most brutal violence will easily appear legitimate. This is why a country’s alleged right to defend itself must respond to a clear act of aggression and strictly comply with the distinction between military targets and civilians. If a government does not conform to this bare minimum, its behavior is akin to that of a psychopath unable to relate to anyone but himself.

Israel’s supporters and allies argue that since it is a democracy, the country necessarily fights the good fight and merely defends itself against its aggressors. This is forgetting that Zionism—Israel’s foundational principle—runs at the exact opposite of the democratic ideal. Settlers logically enjoy full citizenship from the state that represents them, but natives are either second-class citizens or live under apartheid while their land is continuously stolen from them. Whether at a low or high level of intensity, war is thus inherent to Zionism’s colonial endeavor, whose violent history did not start with the massacre perpetrated by Hamas on October 7th, 2023.

Since that fateful day, however, the genuine perspective of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has revealed itself in a crude light. Not only have Gazans been the target of an avowed genocidal intent, but in the West Bank, Israeli settlers, backed by the army, feel emboldened to harass, kill, and steal Palestinian properties at an unprecedented rate and are just waiting for the full annexation of the whole territory. And yet, Israel is the innocent one, allegedly perpetrating all of the above for its very survival.

But its survival as what? Democracy is founded upon universal and unconditional moral principles; how could it prevail through the indefinite and exclusive use of violence? If it really were about Israel’s security, peace would have been built long ago to ensure it. In the story that has unfolded for more than a hundred years, on the contrary, Zionists eerily look like the crazed psychopath alluded to, claiming, for the sake of their own endeavors, that there can be no goodwill on the other side.

Israel’s “allies,” for their part, behave like the helpless psychopath’s partner, accepting to be bullied into ever more destruction and suffering for a vast majority of innocent people. Nothing forces them to, but the fact of the matter is that moral norms and principles have no practical incidence on these governments’ decision-making process. This politically results in an Orwellian mental background where “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.” We owe the children of Gaza—and ourselves—the courage of lucidity.

Perpetrators

a. Forging the narrative

“Human animals”

Given the little chance most of them had to come back alive, the Hamas militants who committed the slaughter of hundreds of Israelis and abducted 251 people from Israel to the Gaza Strip on 10/07/23 likely were unmarried young men. This means that they had spent almost all of their lives in what some Israeli officials themselves called a “concentration camp,” referring to the blockade put in place by Israel after Hamas was elected as the governing body of the Gaza Strip in 2006. 10/07/23 did not happen in a vacuum, and the fact that Gazans have lived for years on end in an open-air prison gives the event of that day its definite context.

To understand more precisely how, let’s remember that a blockade is aimed at creating a state of deprivation, obstructing all opportunities for economic development, and barring people from moving outside of the blocked area. Concerning the Gaza Strip, moreover, it had constantly been maintained at the highest level of severity possible, to the point that the Israeli administration used to joke about putting Gazans “on a diet” by periodically restricting food aid to the least amount of calories humanly viable.

Another aspect is as crucial. Since Gazans were trapped in an open-air prison, they were also left at the mercy of their wardens. “Mowing the lawn” was another amusing way for the Israeli administration to label what it saw as a duty: the collective punishment of Gazans in retaliation for Hamas’ sporadic attacks on Israeli citizens. These killing sprees resulted in thousands of Palestinian deaths between 2008 and 2022. The blueprint of savagery had thus been handed down to the perpetrators of the 10/07/23 massacre. Deprived of a decent future and with no choice other than a slow or quick death under Israeli rule, what did they have to lose?

This context explains what happened; it does not justify it. Nothing can. Strangely, however, the Israeli government holds that this self-evident moral principle can work in reverse, depending on who it is applied to. Nothing can justify the October 7th, 2023, massacre, yet the event of that day justifies everything in Gaza.

How can the universality of moral values be enforced in polar opposite ways? Quite simply because, as the then Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, said at the outset of Gaza’s destruction, Israelis are facing “human animals.” The classic excuse for genocide indeed, which in the present occurrence leads to coordinating the shelling of an entire civilian population (including in designated “safe zones”) with their deprivation of food, fuel, water, and electricity. More than direct killings, starvation, added to the spread of diseases due to the destruction of all sanitary infrastructure, will surely “finish the job.” Used by the present Israeli government, this expression refers to the ethnic cleansing of approximately 750,000 Palestinians that took place following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. When watching the sick videos casually shared on social media by Israeli soldiers today, there is no doubt that the enthusiasm for the job is as high as ever.

Likely caused by deep ideological brainwashing, the moral depravity displayed by Israeli officials trying to justify the unjustifiable when it comes to Palestinian lives ignores even the bounds of logic. If the assumption is that there are no innocent Palestinians, as President Herzog sternly stated, why should there be innocent Israelis in the eyes of Palestinians? Wouldn’t the same type of hallucinated conclusion find even more apparent legitimacy in what has been done to them for decades in the Israelis’ name? As for Hamas, how can one lament after 10/07/2023 that the organization failed the most basic principles of morality when the Israeli government had maintained an entire population of 2.3 million people for 17 years, by then, at the mercy of its wrath under a state of humiliating deprivation? Logic does not take sides.

As for facts, the table below shows how the numbers stack up for Palestinians in the four military assaults on Gaza that Israel had previously launched.

	Fatalities	Injuries
2008-9 (lasted 23 days)	1,385	5,300
2012 (lasted 8 days)	168	1,046
2014 (lasted 50 days)	2,251	11,231
2021 (lasted 11 days)	261	2,211

Data are from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs (OCHA).¹ The total number of Israeli fatalities in the West Bank and Israel for the same period (2008-2021) is 344, compared to 7,118 Palestinian deaths with Gaza included (both numbers include civilians and fighters). If only for coherence’s sake, there again, when the most potent contender kills 20 times more on average,² it cannot feign surprise that its lesson will be duly taken.

What is the point, then, of using violence far beyond the practical necessity of self-defense? The answer lies in the fact, as we all know from experience, that violence can easily acquire the symbolic value of “teaching a lesson.” With a 20/1 rate of fatalities over the years, it is obvious that the second dimension plays itself out for Israel, indicating that the purpose of the use of violence is not about something that could ultimately be rationally defended, but something that bears no questioning. Violence becomes speech, symbolically telling Palestinians that there is nothing they are morally entitled to argue about. In that sense, the more bullets and missiles fired at them, the clearer the subliminal message that “human animals” should know their place.

In the context of the open colonial war led since 1948 by an Israeli state that never found the resources to think of itself as anything other than Zionist, the phrase “human animals” is not an unfortunate slip of the tongue; it directly echoes the old European colonialist rationale. Natives on “uncivilized” conquered land were assumed to be inapt to self-determination because they could only be brought to reason, not reason by themselves. Thus, coercing them was legitimate, and using violence was a necessary evil against unruly savages prone to it.

The moral framing behind that view was that those sitting at the height of humanity’s achievements did a favor to those who, by contrast, were devoid of technology, written knowledge, as well as modern legal and political institutions. If it weren’t for the white man, they would scrape by indefinitely in their ancestral way. It was only in the second half of the twentieth century that this heavily biased and far too narrow concept of civilization, purporting to legitimize European colonization, was scientifically debunked. Yet, even though Palestinians inherited the cultural brilliance of an Arabic civilization that easily compared with Europe for centuries, they are never pictured too far away from a camel or some other sign of a backward way in Israeli schoolbooks.

In reality, self-justified by a mere sense of entitlement, the mental scheme of colonization uses logic and morality in reverse. Starting with the sought-after result or gain in mind, it works its way back from the flawed premise of the unquestionable colonizer’s intellectual and moral superiority. And since this premise is beyond rational justification, a creative stream of excuses, pretexts, and false reasoning will readily come to the rescue whenever it is challenged. The point is not to be intellectually correct but to look good in one’s eyes. Unfortunately, as words cannot make sense in what amounts to nothing more than an incantatory process, the more colonial claims are questioned and opposed, the more violently colonizers will defend them.

The “Terrorist” card

It is no surprise, therefore, that despite all its posturing about being the innocent victim of retarded savages who just “hate us,” Israel has a coherence issue when it comes to the universality of moral principles. To avoid openly self-contradicting itself by trying to explain why its citizens can enjoy peace, security, and freedom only if these fundamental human rights are simultaneously denied to Palestinians, the Israeli government must resort to the trick used by dictatorships and warmongers of all stripes: playing the “terrorist” card.

Labeled as such, opponents a government does not want people to hear or question about are upfront denied any legitimacy. All there is to know about them is that they are “terrorists,” which means that they simply need to be eliminated. Because it is purposely vague but emotionally powerful, the “terrorist” label can moreover be used pretty extensively. After all, Nelson Mandela stayed in jail for 27 years because he allegedly was a terrorist.

Still, even though this name-calling can prove surprisingly efficient in masking genuine political issues, it necessarily leads to patent inconsistencies. Let’s look at three main ones.

First, all resistance movements anywhere in the world have, at one point or another, been designated as terrorists. Whether innocent people are killed or not, if you bear arms to fight for your cause, you are prone to end up as a terrorist for anyone who does not share your views.

The second inconsistency is forgetting that the definition of terrorism is to inflict terror, namely on civilian populations. In this regard, state terrorism can turn out to be immensely more destructive than strikes from loose networks of fanaticized individuals. A state has institutional legitimacy, which, for many citizens, grants free rein regarding the means used to subdue an alleged enemy. A state has the firepower of an army at its disposal. And when its objectives are deemed of national interest, it also has time on its side.

At first glance, therefore, the contrast could not be sharper between a bunch of lunatics hiding away from sight to kill random people when they can and a political state that is, by definition, in charge of protecting its citizens. But when government officials decide to bomb entire populations elsewhere for weeks, months, or years on end, what can this indiscriminate use of the most brutal violence be characterized by, other than state terrorism? This is blatant in Gaza, where inhabitants are trapped under total siege while being methodically slaughtered wherever they seek shelter.

The third inconsistency is that since the “terrorist” label is supposed to say it all and can be applied to virtually anyone, a state with criminal intent has every interest in killing “terrorists” left and right until the level of their physical elimination is judged satisfying. In its course, such a strategy provides the double benefit of triggering acts of desperation—further justifying the continuation of the state’s killing policy—and the eventual extinction of all competent voices to defend their people’s rights. This is the plan applied by the Israeli state since its creation, eventually turning its use of the terrorist bogeyman into a clear illustration of might making right.

Unsurprisingly, this is also the exact narrative and strategy used by Putin in his aggression against Ukraine, as it was by Nazi Germany in territories it occupied, or the US in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent history. From an aggressor’s standpoint, peace is defeat. Why would you go to war if you admit that there are serious interlocutors on the other side? The point is to fabricate an “enemy,” a formless entity whose defining characteristic is to live in a parallel universe from yours. This is how, in the case of Israel, actual terrorist attacks serve as a pretext to terrorize an entire population that the Israeli government has always considered did not belong to the land anyway. Let’s have them gone, or placed under total submission, or dead for what one cares in Israel.

Indeed, even though the present administration is undoubtedly more open and brutal about its end game than others in the past, one must recognize that all Israeli governments have tackled the Palestinian issue, first and foremost, as a terrorist one. This has not only been the alleged reason for constantly refusing direct negotiations with Palestinian representatives but has also shaped the optics of what is to be discussed. Officially considering Palestinians as irrational actors always susceptible to fits of terrorism implies that their claims are likely as unfounded as their actions and that, by contrast, Israeli concessions stem from pure goodwill and generosity. Despite its often fervent and solemn demeanor, colonization is nothing more than bullying practiced by grown-ups. The name of the game is to dishonestly assert the terms of the debate and rip the practical benefits initially sought.

The terrorist card has, therefore, deep historical roots, and it could be said that its extensive use follows the same logic that relegated “savages” to the fringe of humanity in earlier times, all to better dispossess them. As per the definition given by the US National Institute of Justice, “Terrorists are those who support or commit ideologically motivated violence to further political, social, or religious goals.”³ This squarely applies both to Hamas and to religious zealots such as Ben G’vir in Israel. This does not apply, however, to the overwhelming majority of Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank, who long for peace, and definitely not to children. But the logic of colonialism has reasons that reason itself cannot fathom.

Once put in motion by Victor Herzl, Zionism could not escape the human, moral, and political dead-end it has found itself into since the creation of the Israeli state. Following the supremacist colonial logic largely shared in the nineteenth century by people of European extraction, Victor Herzl was of the idea that a country can be decreed regardless of the cultural and historical heritage of existing populations, Zionism logically overlooked the reality of what was then called Palestine. In his fascination with the concept of a nation-state, he forgot that there is much more to a country than a formal government.⁴ This view, again, was broadly shared among European powers at the time, who were delineating the rest of the world into a flurry of new “countries” to settle their respective colonial interests under the moral edges of civilization. In the case of Israel, colonialism took the more vindictive form of settler colonialism since Jews had no country of their own. It was not just about exploiting resources for one’s exclusive benefit, but also about replacing the native populations, as was successfully done in North America, New Zealand, and Australia.

It is so good to feel right. If the European colonization of the world was ever possible in all its injustice and subsequent violence, it was because it functioned in a self-serving, closed mental loop. Based on a mere sense of entitlement, its supremacist logic crumbles as soon as it is confronted with the universality of the human genius. This is why it must function in absolute terms. The colonial mindset is that of a mythological fight between human progress and the whims of an indistinct crowd who never bothered to be a country, according, of course, to the European standard of the nation-state. It naturally followed that, for lack of one or all of the defining traits of “civilization”—technology, formal political institutions, or a written culture—, the natives’ voice could only come second, if at all. Their cultural, social, and genuine political legacy had no bearing, and natives could only be grateful for the benevolence of civilization coming on their shores to steal and kill them.

“Precise targeting”

In a contemporary echo to this same colonial mentality inherited by Herzl, we were told after October 7th, 2023, that there is no “moral equivalence” between terrorists massacring innocents on Israeli soil and the IDF preparing to do the same to a much broader extent in Gaza. When Hamas kills, it is terrorism, when we do, it is self-defense. Why? Because on one side is the enraged violence of savages; on the other, the innocence of civilization bearers. How could anyone miss that?

True to the image of the civilized ones, when the Netanyahu cabinet announced to the world Israel’s imminent retaliation in the aftermath of 10/07/2023, it specifically said that Hamas and Hamas only was the target. Yet, like the broad use of “terrorists” when it comes to Palestinians, or “Hamas sympathizers” for those denouncing Israeli apartheid and voicing concerns about the obvious genocidal intent against the population of Gaza, the “defeating Hamas” talking point rings hollow. It suggests the presence of two forces with comparable means at their disposal, facing each other on the same battlefield. But Hamas comes undeniably nowhere close to Israel’s firepower with its tanks, bombs, and fighter jets.

Most of all, fighting terrorism is intelligence work. In opposition to heavy bombardments on infrastructures that seek to incapacitate the enemy in conventional wars, chasing terrorists is efficiently done on an individual basis. Though each type of war is led at an entirely different level than the other, Benjamin Netanyahu did his best to deny it, potentially assimilating all infrastructures sustaining cultural and physical life in Gaza to terrorist assets. If anything, this is how you sign a genocidal intent.

Spin doctors in Israeli headquarters know that. This is why they shamelessly used the phrase “precise targeting” at the beginning of the operations in Gaza while, at the same time, Daniel Hagari, the IDF’s spokesperson, was officially claiming that “the focus is on destruction, not accuracy.” The discrepancy only implied that since the “most moral army in the world” could not conceivably “focus” on anything other than defeating Hamas, the blame was to be put solely on that organization for what was to happen to women and children in Gaza.

Why should an army that labels itself as the most moral one in the world bother providing definite proof that it duly and exclusively targets Hamas’ bases or militants? As anyone could have predicted, it rarely did, if ever. “Terrorists” is the magic word that justifies and explains everything. To the IDF’s credit, however, aside from one-ton dumb bombs used to flatten out entire building blocks, precise targeting is nevertheless involved as well, albeit against ambulances, UN compounds, schools, mosques, and hospitals—all systematically aimed with precision-guided missiles. As for particular individuals who could have a voice, such as intellectuals, medical staff, and—expectedly so—journalists, they have also been methodically and precisely targeted. For ordinary people, finally, there seems to be no particular killing rules—satellites’ imagery of the Gaza Strip speaks for itself, though children seem a prized target of Israel’s most sophisticated weaponry. ⁵

Turning Gaza into a parking lot is the vivid image some officials in Israel and the US immediately used after 10/07/2023. Sadly, but predictably, it has become a reality today. Along with other rhetorical gimmicks, “precise targeting” was consequently soon discarded by Israeli spin doctors. As with any army in any conflict, the IDF’s talking points are not meant to tell the truth but to draw a line between what must and must not be said to characterize the situation on the ground. And as with any conflict, institutional idiots in the political and media world are eager to comply. This makes it all the more urgent and necessary to undo the public distraction mechanism at play.

Concurrently with “terrorists” and “precise targeting,” another talking point favored as an excuse for the massacre of entire families is “human shields.” This is, it is assumed, something that terrorists typically do. In reality, the British initiated the practice of human shields during the Palestinian revolts at the end of the 1930s. It then consisted of tying up someone on the hood of a military truck to minimize the risk of an attack. Hamas militants don’t do that, but it is enough for the Israeli government that they simply live among the population, shielding Israel, as it were, from its own moral obscenity of blaming others for the crimes it commits.⁶ The logic is that since Hamas nefariously hides among the population of Gaza, the rule of proportionality in military actions is almost inapplicable. Consequently, it is Hamas’ fault if women and children become fair game in the fight against terrorism. Per this “human shield” bogus logic, the weakening of Hamas’ capabilities thus becomes proportionate to the number of civilian deaths. And who could blame the IDF for piercing through as many shields as it takes in the battle for civilization against terrorism?

To assess the level of duplicity in this light-headed subversion of moral values, ask yourself a simple question. Suppose that a devastating strike happened on a military compound near Tel Aviv and that no regard at all was given to the surrounding population. How would Israelis take it if told that a staggering number of people were killed because of the sheer calculation of their government, which used them as “human shields”?

“War against Hamas”

Contrary to the formula Western mainstream media complacently hide behind, Israel is not waging war “against Hamas” but against the whole population of the Gaza Strip. It doesn’t take much journalistic scrutiny to see that the situation is nothing like a confrontation between tanks and fighter jets of warring parties, as the literal meaning of the word “war” implies in modern times. All Hamas can do is launch rockets and terror attacks—the 7th of October 2023 being its highest achievement in ignominy. Additionally, even if journalists are barred from entry in the Gaza Strip, it shouldn’t be that hard to note that the Israeli government makes its genocidal intent clear to everyone when cynically asserting that one in three people killed in Gaza is a Hamas fighter. Since men, women, and children are killed at the same rate, all males above fifteen years of age are terrorists by the IDF’s count.

Labelling what has been happening in Gaza as Israel’s war “against Hamas” shows at what depths of servility the Western establishment and mainstream media are ready to go to dodge their respective duties toward truth and justice. Arguing that Hamas started it all does not make the case of our elected officials and media pundits any stronger. Given the proclaimed intent of genocide by Israel on day one, such an argument is not only morally irreceivable, it also illustrates what war is fundamentally about from the standpoint of the aggressor: making believe. Rewriting history in people’s minds is where victory ultimately lies in a war of aggression. Especially when, as at present, the aggressor goes against all Geneva Conventions, viciously depriving an entire population of humanitarian aid and cutting off water on a whim, on top of, obviously, destroying civilian infrastructures and systematically targeting journalists and medical staff.

Indignantly expressing shock at the suggestion that Israel is the chief aggressor only proves that erasing history works. Forget the context; all one needs to know is that Hamas is a terrorist organization. But there was no peace before 10/07/2023, and in a historical perspective, there are always questions to be answered. Notably, who terrorizes whom most constantly? In what proportion? And who decided that the cause defended by Hamas, however blamable the recourse to violence might be, should be totally obfuscated under the label of terrorism?⁷

Moreover, after weeks and months of carnage in Gaza, how can our elites still miss that “defeating Hamas” was, from the start, a code word for ethnically cleansing the area? Seen at ground level, getting rid of Hamas is objectively not the main point for Israeli headquarters. Instead, emptying the area of its Palestinian presence, or at least most of it, imposes itself as the end goal.

b. Cheating interlocutors

Peace before Oct. 7th?

In the first weeks of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, a liberal female rabbi was asked on a French TV channel if a cease-fire should be in order, to which she wittingly replied that if there was concern for a ceasefire, that was because there had been “fire” in the first place. Even though the proportionality of the IDF’s retaliation after October 7th, 2023, could be called into question, there was no doubt in her mind that it was, in its nature, a legitimate answer to what had happened then. Unbeknownst to her, she was parroting an important propaganda talking point: October 7th was an unprovoked outburst of violence. Since the Israeli government did not directly provoke it, this particular incursion on its territory proves, or so it is assumed, that the Palestinians’ violent agitation is the only obstacle to peace.

Western media have followed this abstract narrative for a very long time. Before it became impossible not to recognize Israel’s overt genocidal intent for what it is, the question “Do you condemn Hamas?” was the alpha and the omega of the conversation to be had with those concerned by the massacres perpetrated by the IDF in Gaza. As if detached from any historical context, October 7th had been a pivotal moment in a “complicated” conflict where Israel is, by default, the one seeking peace.

It depends on how pliable your definition of peace is. The organization Jewish Voice for Peace reminds us that “Gaza was created by Israel in 1948, as a refugee camp to contain Palestinians displaced in the Nakba. Since 2007, Israel has kept Gaza under an illegal military siege, counting calories allowed in and permitting the water in Gaza to become undrinkable, creating a humanitarian crisis widely condemned by the international community. In November 2022, the most right-wing government in Israeli history came to power, led by Benjamin Netanyahu and including far-right extremist politicians in its coalition. Ethnic cleansing of Palestinians has always been Israeli policy. Over the past year, under the leadership of the most right-wing government in Israeli history, the Israeli military and settlers have led an escalated campaign of displacement, dispossession, and violent repression against Palestinians across Israel and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”⁸

Israel is not the innocent one it portrays itself to be. Ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and all subsequent forms of violence, including regular murders in cold blood, have always been part of its “security” policy. As for the supposedly peaceful months preceding October 7th, Jewish Voice for Peace lays out a few of the main events that took place⁹ (all quotes are from the organization):

• March 1, 2023: “Hundreds of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are injured by mobs of armed Israeli settlers, who burn Palestinian homes to the ground and light vehicles on fire.”

• March 8, 2023: “A top official in the Israeli government, Bezalel Smotrich, calls for the destruction of the Palestinian village of Huwara. But Smotrich is simply saying out loud longstanding de-facto Israeli government policy: try to wipe Palestinians off of the map.”

• June 21, 2023: “The Israeli Cabinet gives Bezalel Smotrich sole power to construct 4,500 new illegal settlements on Palestinian land. The next day, the Israeli military murders six Palestinians. The timing is no coincidence.”

• June 28, 2023: “Gangs of armed settlers, encouraged by officials like Smotrich and shielded by the Israeli military, carry out five days of pogrom attacks on over a dozen Palestinian villages.”

• July 7, 2023: “The Israeli military launches the largest raid in a West Bank city in over 20 years. It raided Jenin hospital, bombed Jenin refugee camp, and shot at journalists—all war crimes.”

• August 23, 2023: “Following shootings in Huwara and Hebron that left three Israelis dead, Israeli forces conduct a campaign of collective punishment of Palestinians. The military launched raids on a number of Palestinian villages, injuring 112 Palestinians. Israeli settlers carried out a wave of revenge attacks.”

• September 13, 2023: “Netanyahu’s visit to the U.S. makes it clear that Israel’s extremist government is becoming increasingly isolated internationally—and that the longstanding alliance between the right wing in the U.S. and Israel is only getting stronger.”

This line of events shows that, contrary to what one is led to believe when listening to Western mainstream media, the Israeli government does not just commit excesses while exerting the legitimate right to defend itself—it practices a relentless war of aggression against Palestinian lives and interests wherever and whenever it chooses.

And yet, October 7th, 2023, stands in these Western mainstream media and chancelleries as an absolute beginning, oddly detached from any historical context. How, then, is one supposed to characterize the ramping up of illegal Israeli occupation and of settler violence in the West Bank before October 7th, 2023, as well as its amplification after? When looking at the facts reported by all humanitarian organizations, one would be hard-pressed to define the view of “peace” shared by Israel and its allies. Human Rights Watch reports that “Israeli forces in 2023 killed 492 Palestinians, including 120 children, in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). That figure is more than twice as many as in any other year since the UN began systematically documenting fatalities. About 300 were killed in the nearly three months following the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, though the increase in killings dates back to 2022. Between January 1 and March 31, 2024, Israeli forces killed 131 Palestinians in the West Bank.”¹⁰

Timeline of obstruction

Against all evidence to the contrary, Israel claims to be innocent of any wrongdoing before October 7th, 2023. In its colonial parallel world, this makes sense in some way. If illegal occupations in the West Bank stem from the country’s natural right to territorial expansion, those opposing it are necessarily terrorists, and the use of violence against them is justified. The same goes for Gaza, a small strip of land where the Israeli government forced many Palestinians to flee during the 1948 Nakba, and that has since then represented an anomaly on the map of Israel’s territorial continuity. If, moreover, Hamas claims a right to armed resistance, this necessarily makes them the ones undermining any attempt to put a halt to the use of violence. There is no need to look any further. Which is what Western mainstream media complacently did, echoing Israeli propaganda about the failure of the ceasefire negotiations after October 7th, 2023.

As reported by Al Jazeera, the effective timeline tells a different story (all quotes are from the news organization):¹¹

• November 22, 2023: “A brief breakthrough is achieved, during which Hamas releases 50 Israeli captives, mostly women and children, in exchange for 150 Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons. . . . But Netanyahu does not want a permanent ceasefire, insisting that Israel’s aim is to “dismantle” Hamas completely—a goal US and Israeli officials have since declared impossible.”

• December 2, 2024: “Although the ceasefire was eventually extended to a week, with 110 captives freed from Gaza and 240 Palestinians freed from Israeli prisons, talks to extend the truce collapse. The dispute centers around whether Hamas should release women soldiers as part of the same deal, and Hamas’s insistence that all Palestinian prisoners be released. Israel outright refuses that demand.”

• December 10, 2023: “The US, Israel’s biggest ally, vetoes a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) proposal to stop the war. The deputy US ambassador to the UN says an immediate halt to hostilities would only “plant the seeds for the next war,” alleging Hamas’s refusal to accept a two-state solution. But Hamas has accepted a two-state solution for nearly 20 years. In 2017, its new charter officially stated that. Then-leader of Hamas’s political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, says he is reviewing a three-stage ceasefire proposal hammered out by Egyptian, Israeli, Qatari, and US negotiators in Paris. It has three phases. . . . Netanyahu’s right-wing allies in Israel’s government warn they will collapse the fragile coalition if a permanent ceasefire happens. Netanyahu rejects the proposal, saying Hamas’s conditions are ‘delusional.'”

• February 20, 2024: “For a third time, the US vetoes a UNSC resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The US ambassador to the UN says the veto was over concerns the resolution would jeopardise talks between the US, Egypt, Israel and Qatar. Netanyahu welcomes the US veto.”

• March 26, 2024: “The US finally abstains rather than vetoes a UNSC ceasefire proposal, which passes with 14 of the council’s 15 members in favour. However, the US later says the resolution is “nonbinding”, undermining the rules of the UN system and signalling its commitment to keep backing Israel’s war on Gaza.”

• May 7, 2024: “Hamas accepts a ceasefire proposed by Qatar and Egypt that follows the three-phase framework. . . . Two days later, Israel ignores mounting calls for a ceasefire and launches an offensive on Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, where 1.4 million displaced Palestinians are seeking refuge.”

• July 31, 2024: “Haniyeh is assassinated in Tehran while attending the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Iranian and US officials believe Israel is responsible. Israel neither officially confirms nor denies it. Fears rise that negotiations could stop after the assassination, not least because Haniyeh was Hamas’s main interlocutor.”

• August 15, 2024: “Netanyahu is still being accused of blocking a deal. He reportedly hardens his negotiating team’s position, insisting that Israeli forces must remain in control of Gaza’s southern border, a stipulation that was not included before. He also says security checkpoints be set up to search Palestinians hoping to return to their homes in northern Gaza, stipulations the negotiating team fears will torpedo a ceasefire as a new round of talks gets under way. Israel does send a team to attend ceasefire talks in Doha called for by the US, Egypt and Qatar. Reports suggest that Hamas will not send representatives, but has told mediators that it is willing to meet after the discussions to determine if the Israelis are serious about the truce proposals.”

• August 19, 2024: “Blinken meets with Netanyahu after latest round of talks end in Doha. He later says the Israeli prime minister has backed a ‘bridging proposal’, a shorthand for an agreement meant to overcome remaining impasses in the agreement. Netanyahu’s office says he supports the latest terms of the agreement, saying it ‘takes into account Israel’s security needs, which he strongly insists on.’ While the terms of the proposal were not officially released, Hamas says the latest plan includes new provisions that skew heavily in Israel’s favour. Those include Israel’s refusal of a full ceasefire and a complete troop withdrawal from Gaza. Israel has also reportedly insisted on keeping control of the Rafah border crossing, the Philadelphi Corridor that borders Egypt and the Netzarim Corridor, which separates the northern part of Gaza from the south. Hamas has accused Blinken of “buying time” for Netanyahu. Egypt also staunchly opposes Israeli control of the Philadelphi Corridor. Speaking to Al Jazeera amid the latest diplomatic flurry, Hussein Haridy, the country’s former assistant foreign minister, said that position remains unchanged.”

Playing field

The least that can be said is that the playing field has not been level between Hamas and Israel in the ceasefire talks. In its own time, President Biden’s administration systematically put on Hamas the responsibility for the perpetual delaying of a cease-fire agreement when, in reality, the Israeli government was making one excuse after the next to never reach it. This blatantly dishonest attitude from the United States baffled many external observers, who could not see what kind of interest it had in recklessly squandering its diplomatic and political leverage, let alone its moral standing in the world. And yet, the US administration did.

An agreement had seemed close in May 2024 when the US said it had a draft proposal approved by all parties, which was then endorsed by the UN Security Council on June 10. US Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood told reporters that this was “the best, most realistic opportunity to bring at least a temporary halt to this war.” Hamas effectively agreed to the proposal, emphasising that it meant the departure of the Israeli army from Gaza, the return of people to their north Gaza homes, an international engagement to rebuild Gaza, and the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel. Meanwhile, Israeli officials kept making statements indicating that the war on Gaza must continue, and the Israeli army invaded Rafah. New conditions were also added: that Israel remain in the Philadelphia Corridor abutting Egypt’s Sinai, that checkpoints be set up to “vet” people trying to go back to their homes in north Gaza, and that full lists be provided of all living captives Hamas intends to release.¹²

“We had a proposal that [US President Biden] laid out in late May which was fairly detailed and passed at the UN Security Council as a resolution [with] global support,” Matt Duss, the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC, said. “Yet, we’ve seen various rounds of new conditions added by Netanyahu who, despite Biden saying Israel supports it, made it very clear that he didn’t.” Yet, Anthony Blinken, the US secretary of state, put the blame on Hamas for the stalled negotiations. All the organization was doing was refusing any further conditions and sticking to the agreement President Biden had said Israel had agreed upon, and that had been endorsed by the UN Security Council on June 10, 2024.

Mohamad Bazzi, director of Near Eastern Studies at New York University, told Al Jazeera during that time: “We’re in this surreal situation where both Hamas and Israeli security officials are saying Netanyahu is the one blocking Biden’s ceasefire proposal. We also see that Netanyahu publicly rejected key elements of the ceasefire as Blinken has described the deal, but at the same time, both Biden and Blinken insist that Netanyahu supports the current deal, and that Hamas is the stumbling block. So we end up with the US administration covering for Netanyahu for inexplicable reasons. There’s a very strong argument that Netanyahu doesn’t want a ceasefire at this point. In many ways, why should he when the US won’t impose any cost on him for being the biggest obstacle to a ceasefire?”¹³

Showing how seriously it took the negotiation process, Israel assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, on 31 July 2024 in the Iranian capital of Tehran. ¹⁴ On November 21, 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israel’s former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for committing alleged war crimes in Gaza. The organization also issued that same day an arrest warrant for Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, commonly known as ‘Deif’, the highest commander of the military wing of Hamas. On December 2, US President-elect Donald Trump posted to social media that there would be “hell to pay” if the captives in Gaza were not freed before he came to office. He repeated the demands later in December and again in early January. On January 15, 2025, negotiators reportedly reached a deal. Much like the deal proposed in May 2024, this ceasefire was set to roll out in three phases. It was constantly broken by the IDF in Gaza and went belly-up when Netanyahu decided on March 18 to restart his alleged “war on Hamas.” U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration backed Netanyahu’s decision to unilaterally walk away from the ceasefire it took credit for brokering.

What are the lessons to be taken from this prolonged Kabuki theater of ceasefire negotiations? By perpetrating the October 7th massacre, Hamas has fulfilled its role as the convenient devil that Netanyahu has always wanted to undermine the Palestinian cause. Trapped in a political dead-end—both internally by its dictatorial rule over the Gaza Strip and internationally by its avowed recourse to military force (only Israel has that right)—the organization nevertheless proved to be a reliable interlocutor in trying to find a solution to the ceaseless massacre perpetrated by Israel. Obviously, one would have hoped that Hamas did not give Netanyahu and his own bunch of terrorists in government a monumental excuse for it on October 7th, 2023. But by the same token, one cannot ignore that Hamas has offered multiple times to free all remaining hostages against a truce with Israel. The Netanyahu government flatly rejected all of these offers.¹⁵

Regarding the role played by the United States, all that can be said is that reliability was not one of its strong suits in the wake of October 7th. Biden never forced Netanyahu to effectively negotiate; rather, he encouraged the genocide in Gaza by giving it diplomatic cover and delivering insane amounts of weaponry to help conduct it.¹⁶ The only significant difference with Trump is that ethnic cleansing is now an official option for Gaza’s future. As for the Israeli government, it is on the path of a total war against Palestinians, both in Gaza and in the West Bank, wilfully ignoring the plea of the Israeli people for the liberation of the hostages detained by Hamas.

The plan

Netanyahu is notorious in diplomatic circles for his constant bullying and shameless lying, as if such an attitude were to be taken by his interlocutors as the trademark of a proud Zionist. Daniel Levy, the president of the U.S./Middle East Project and a former Israeli peace negotiator under Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak, said after Israel had resumed bombing Gaza on March 18th: “Israeli officials have claimed that the resumed strikes create leverage in getting Hamas to accept Israeli terms for a deal. Lies, pure and simple. Israeli war crimes failed to shift the terms of a deal for over a year. Hamas is negotiating in accordance with the parameters agreed in January, Netanyahu is not.”¹⁷ It is worth noting that on the very same March 18th, Hamas had declared that “any proposal based on negotiating the second stage and permanently ending the war will be welcomed.”¹⁸

In retrospect, this sounds like a hopeless call to reason. On March 3rd, in front of the Knesset, Netanyahu had committed to continued war even if the hostages were returned. At the beginning of his speech, he stated, “We are preparing for the next stages of the War of Revival,” adding, “We will not stop until we achieve all victory objectives—bringing back all our hostages, destroying Hamas’ power, and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel.”¹⁹ That is the plan; peace and ceasefires be damned. “Gaza” is the threat. Coming from a seasoned politician such as Netanyahu, speaking of war in deliberately vague and broad terms is a chilling reminder of the twisted logic behind it, as infamously expressed in her own time by Ayelet Shaked: You do not want “little snakes” to be raised in Gaza forever.²⁰

Following Trump’s announcement at the beginning of February 2025 that the US would “take over” the Palestinian enclave and resettle Palestinians elsewhere to develop Gaza as the “Riviera of the Middle East,” Netanyahu argued at the same March 3rd session at the Knesset that it was time to give Gaza’s residents “freedom to leave.” He praised U.S. President Donald Trump’s “visionary and innovative” plan to relocate Palestinians outside the Strip. “The president presented a visionary and innovative plan for free migration from Gaza, and I believe his plan should be supported,” Netanyahu said. “It’s time to give Gaza’s residents a real choice. It’s time to give them the freedom to leave.” Coming from two notorious crooks who made a career evading the law, all this means is that Palestinians are left with the kind of deal you cannot refuse. Either they comply with a second Nakba, or they die. That’s where their “freedom” begins and ends.

These two mobsters’ fascist streak is a natural consequence of their tendency to consider that they can force their will on others regardless of any moral or legal principle. This is also why various others are all too happy to push their own racism and bigotry in their wake. Providing the ideological veneer necessary to justify in words the big guys’ lust for power, they regularly end up in the driver’s seat. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, for instance, made headlines when he said in a post on X/Twitter on January 14, 2025, that his party had prevented a hostage deal from being reached on numerous occasions. “In the past year, through our political power, we succeeded in preventing this deal from moving forward time and time again,” he wrote. Calling on Smotrich, the Israeli Minister of Finance since 2022, to join him, Ben-Gvir said in an earlier statement, “The emerging deal reflects a surrender to Hamas.”²¹

According to Ben-Gvir, the January 2025 ceasefire deal with Hamas was a defeat, not the fact that more hostages were at risk of dying due to their prolonged detention. That, in itself, is a testament to the power of an ideology on a human mind. More than an extreme and morally untenable position, what is significant is the total abstract nature of Ben-Gvir’s fundamental assumptions. To him, the circumstances of the war do not matter; rather than making concessions to gain some practical benefit toward peace and security, the aim is to wipe the enemy out of existence. This is also why he has proved “time and time again” that, to him, “Hamas” means all and any Palestinian in Gaza.

Accordingly, since bombings resumed in Gaza in mid-March 2025, all humanitarian aid is blocked too. After all medical infrastructures, buildings, and crop fields were systematically destroyed, this blockade forcibly and utterly deprives Gazans of food, drinkable water, medicine, fuel, and electricity. When adding to this the constant bombings that wipe out dozens of lives daily, it is clear that the Israeli administration is on the path to simply eliminating all of the Palestinian presence in Gaza if it can. Despite his earlier denials arguing that Hamas alone was targeted, it has now been made clear by Netanyahu himself that this had been the plan all along.²²

To be continued.

1. Data on casualties. This interactive map allows filtering the number of casualties by time, area, context, and affiliation.
2. Not so incidentally, disproportionate retaliation was formalized as the Dahiya doctrine by former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of General Staff Gadi Eizenkot during the 2006 Lebanon War
3. National Institute of Justice, Annual Report 2020.
4. It is worth noting, in this regard, that the necessity of claiming a cultural and historical lineage to the colonized land was not part of his original theory. The main idea was simply that a nation-state is the best form of protection one can live under and that its political formula distinguishes civilized people from primitives.
5. Surgeon breaks down in parliament explaining how IDF drones target children. Ex-NHS surgeon Nizam Mamode on YouTube.
6. As for the practice of “human shields,” this is exactly the kind of practice the IDF has resorted to for a long time. See, Israeli high court bans military use of Palestinians as human shields, The Guardian, Chris McGreal, Fri 7 Oct 2005; ‘I had hoped to be dead’: Palestinian man used as a ‘human shield’ by Israeli forces, Al Jazeera, Jun 23, 2024.
7. On that note: Why Israel’s Netanyahu encouraged suitcases of cash for Gaza, by Peter Weber, The Week US, published December 11, 2023; Netanyahu: Money to Hamas part of strategy to keep Palestinians divided, by Lahav Harkov, March 12, 2019, in The Jerusalem Post.
8. Countdown to genocide: the year before October 7, The Wire.
9. See article mentioned above for more details.
10. West Bank: Israeli Forces’ Unlawful Killings of Palestinians, Human Rights Watch, May 8, 2024. See also, ‘Tragedy foretold and stain on our collective humanity’: Special Rapporteur warns of mass ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, United Nations, by Francesca Albanese (Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967), 18 March 2025. See also the video from Middle East Eye, titled The West Bank Explained.
11. Israel-Hamas ceasefire talks: A timeline of obstruction, Al Jazeera, August 15, 2024.
12. See, Is the playing field level for Hamas, Israel in the ceasefire talks? By Justin Salhani, Al Jazeera, 24 Aug 2024.
13. Id.
14. Defense minister confirms Israel was behind killing of Hamas leader Haniyeh in Tehran, The Times of Israel. By Emanuel Fabian Follow, 24 December 2024.
15. Hamas says it is ready to free all hostages at once in phase two of Gaza truce, France 24, 19 February 2025. Hamas ready to free all hostages at once for end to war — Palestinian official, The Times of Israel, by Jacob Magid, 3 April 2025.
16. See, Biden Officials Admit They Never Pressured Israel for Ceasefire, by Kathryn Shihadah, Israel-Palestine News, April 30, 2025.
17. I Negotiated for Israeli Prime Ministers. Netanyahu Is Lying, Zeteo, by Daniel Levy, Mar 20, 2025
18. Id.
19. Netanyahu Vows to Continue War Until “Total Victory” Amid Heated Knesset Clash, Watan News, March 3, 2025
20. NY’s Center for Jewish History to host Ayelet ‘Little Snakes’ Shaked in conversation with Bret ‘Hiroshima’ Stephens, Mondoweiss, By Philip Weiss, August 30, 2015. Ayelet Shaked served as Minister of Interior from 2021 to 2022 and as Minister of Justice from 2015 to 2019.
21. Ben-Gvir boasts of blocking Gaza hostage deal ‘time and time again.’The Jerusalem Post, By Eliav Beuer, January 14, 2025.
22. How Israel’s ‘plan’ for Gaza could turbocharge ethnic cleansing. Al Jazeera. By Mat Nashed and Maram Humaid. Published on 7 May 2025. See also, Ex-IDF Leader Admits Military Is Committing ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ in Gaza, Accuses Netanyahu Leading Israel ‘to Nothing Less Than Destruction.’ International Business Times. By Taylor Odisho. Published 12/02/24.