THE CONTRADICTION OF ZIONISM“Immigrants are unarmed; settlers come armed with both weapons and a nationalist agenda… for settlers, there can be no homeland without a state. For the immigrant, the homeland can be shared; for the settler, the state must be a nation-state, a preserve of the nation in which all others are at most tolerated guests.”
Mahmood Madani, Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities
“Some of our prosperous men may say that the pressure is not yet severe enough to justify emigration, and that every forcible expulsion shows how unwilling our people are to depart… But we are showing them the way to the Promised Land; and the splendid force of enthusiasm must fight against the terrible force of habit.”
Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State (Der Judenstaat)
“Go, peoples, take this land! Who owns it? No one! Take this land that is God’s land. God gives land to men. God offers Africa to Europe. Take it!”
Victor Hugo, quoted by Achile Mbembe in Critique of Black Reason
“The soil does not belong to those who possess land in excess but to those who do not possess any…And if such a big landowning nation resists which is perfectly natural — it must be made to comply by compulsion. Justice that is enforced does not cease to be justice.”
Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky, The Ethics of the Iron Wall
As Israel’s murderous war on Gaza enters the eighth month, it is nonetheless failing on three central metrics of any armed conflict: operational, diplomatic and politico-strategic.
Operationally, Israel fields a modern military with the advantage of sophisticated hardware and technology. It also possesses and has demonstrated impressive intelligence capabilities for targeted strikes, as witnessed against Hezbollah and Iran.
Hamas at best is akin to light infantry. It is inferior in the number of active fighters and has limited access to even basic equipment. Unlike Israel, which is supported by the United States and uses American weapons supplies to replenish its stocks, Hamas does not have a sustained supply of materiel and relies on innovation — jerry-rigging, cannibalisation, reverse-engineering and repurposing equipment.
So, why is the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) still unable to defeat Hamas?
Despite claims of having cleared Gaza city and northern Gaza, the IOF is back in Jabalia and Nusairat and fighting close-quarter battles with Hamas fighters. The world was told that the Rafah operation in the south was necessary to finish off the remaining four Hamas battalions. But the toughest battles are raging in northern Gaza.
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