Israel's slow motion genocide in West Bank

Israel is laughing in the faces of European powers

“We will bury the Palestinian state, Europe will have nothing left to recognise.”

These are the words of Bezalel Smotrich. He’s the Finance Minister of Israel, who is sometimes dismissed as some fringe far-right character, when it is abundantly clear to anyone who is paying attention and who is honest, that what he has been pushing has been the mainstream position of the Israeli government all along.

He wanted to wipe Gaza off the face of earth: the Israeli state did it. He treated Palestinians as a whole as the enemy, and so did the Israeli military. He wanted to starve Gaza, which is what the Israeli state did. He wants to annex Gaza, which Israel is moving to do. And he also wants to complete Israel’s colonisation of the West Bank, which is already illegally occupied by Israel, and colonised by hundreds of thousands of illegal Israeli settlers.

Smotrich in practise is the governor of the West Bank, which he and the Israeli state call by its biblical name, Judea and Samaria, as theological justification for stealing its land from its rightful people. A few days ago, he posed in front of graffiti which read ‘Death to Arabs’.

In his latest speech, he makes clear Israel’s intent to destroy Palestine. He announced his approval for construction plans for settlements which would cut off the north of the West Bank from its south. He talks of creating a “reality that buries the idea of a Palestinian state – because there's nothing to recognize and no one to recognize it”. And he also thanked the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is subject to an ICC arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, saying "as far as Judea and Samaria are concerned, he supported and enabled me to carry out this revolution over the past two and a half years."

The plan is to create 3,412 housing units to begin with, which would mean many thousands in total new illegal settlements, designed to make impossible any future Palestinian state.

The horrors of the West Bank are neglected given the genocidal depravity in Gaza. But hundreds of Palestinian were murdered in the West Bank in the years running up to 7th October - including around 40 children in 2023 pre-7/10. Hundreds have been killed since. Since the beginning of this year, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been displaced there, the largest forced displacement since Israel’s occupation began in 1967.

There’s an important point here. The Israeli state is calling the bluff of European powers. Recognising Palestinian statehood is important but it is the most symbolic thing that a country can do. Western states continue to arm Israel and trade with Israel. They refuse to impose any meaningful sanctions on Israel.

So the Israeli state knows that it is up against empty rhetoric, rather than actual concrete action. It is laughing in the face of these powers.

For years, Western countries have spoken about the need for a two state solution, knowing full well that the Israeli state has no interest in it whatsoever.

Indeed, here’s what’s so despicable. In Britain, you get government ministers who sometimes get questioned about Israel’s murderous actions in Gaza. The journalists usually do a dire job, don’t put them under any pressure whatsoever, often clearly are deeply ignorant about the topic. But what happens is British ministers use the so-called two state solution as a crutch. Instead of answering what they’re going to do now, about arming Israel while it conducts genocide, about the specific crimes Israel is committing, they simply utter some platitude about the need for a two state solution, knowing it’s a total fantasy which Israel in no way will countenance, and which in any case they’re not putting any pressure on Israel to achieve.

Now, a colleague of Bezalel Smotrich is Itamar Ben-Gvir, also a genocidal maniac, who is Minister of National Security, and thus in charge of Israel’s police and prison service. A video was posted of him entering the cell of Marwan Barghouti, who is often described as the Palestinian Nelson Mandela. I had the privilege of meeting his son earlier this year in London.

Marwan Barghouti has been imprisoned by the Israeli state for over two decades, with independent international studies finding he did not have a fair trial with flimsy evidence presented. Barghouti is in solitary confinement.

The translation goes:

You won’t win. Whoever messes with the Nation of Israel, whoever murders our children and women — we will wipe them out. You should know this, [this happened] throughout history.

This is of course openly genocidal: there isn’t even a pretence. It’s also noteworthy just how frail Barghouti looks. The comparison with how he once looked is frankly absolutely shocking.

Now the brilliant Palestinian analyst Muhammed Shehada - who I’ve just come back from Copenhagen after meeting - writes:

Imagine a chubby Hamas leader towering over an emaciated, frail & tortured Israeli hostage & yelling at him "we will wipe you out".

You'd never see the end of global outrage.

Compare to the radio silence about Ben Gvir humiliating Barghouti

He adds:

There's only one goal to Ben Gvir's sadistic stunt with Marwan Barghouti today:

Provoke Palestinians so strongly that some would retaliate & exploit that to ravage entire cities in the West Bank (like Jenin & Tulkarm)

Israel's ex-Defence Minister Yaalon warned about this tactic in 2023: that they'll keep violently provoking Palestinians over & over & over again until someone fights back, then cry to the world "look, we're the victims" & launch campaigns of ethnic cleansing, mass killing & mass destruction

There’s something else I want to mention. After multiple Palestinian footballers have been murdered by the Israeli state, the UEFA - the European football association - finally said something, they unfurled a banner at Supercup declaring: STOP KILLING CHILDREN, STOP KILLING CIVILIANS

We should note the cowardice, the failure to name the perpetrator. But their cowardice did not save them from being dogpiled by Israel’s champions.

Stephen Pollard is the former editor of the Jewish Chronicle in the UK. And he posted the following on Twitter:

#uefa statement on the pitch for #supercup

They might as well have gone the whole way and written "Fuck you, Jews"

What do you even say? Imagine looking at a banner with STOP KILLING CHILDREN, STOP KILLING CIVILIANS, and interpreting this as ‘Fuck you, Jews’. I am personally struggling to think of statements which are inherently more antisemitic than that, than interpreting slogans objecting to the murder of children and civilians as being an attack on Jewish people.

It’s really fascinating and disturbing how since this genocide began, there hasn’t even been a pretence by Israel’s cheerleaders to respect any demarcation between the State of Israel and the Jewish people as a whole. They’ve done all they can make Israel and its genocidal actions synonymous with the Jewish people.

It is insane - and so irresponsible when antisemitism is real and rising. So many Jewish people have been speaking out so loudly and so vocally against Israel’s genocide. It is an outrage that apologists for this monstrosity smear those people defined as they are by their humanity.

NB: I’m currently finishing my book, ‘THE FALL OF THE WEST’, so apologies for less frequent posting: normal service will resume when it’s done.