Every Israeli accusation is a confession

When Israel claims it has the "right to exist", does this mean that it is allowed to carry out war crimes to achieve this? Peoples have the "right to exist", but it should be obvious that regimes with so much blood on their hands do not have that same "right".

And what about Palestinians? Do they have a right to exist?

To Israel, it doesn't seem so. They generally even prefer not to refer to them as "Palestinians", instead stripping them of their nationality and indigeneity to Palestine by terming them simply "Arabs".

Here, it's important to circle back to one of Zionism's first and most egregious lies when, before it became a state, it referred to Palestine as "a land without a people for a people without a land."

While numerous countries recognise Israel's right to exist, far fewer recognise Palestinians' basic right to self-determination. And if they do acknowledge it, it often comes with caveats.

The "peace" process between Palestinians and Israel has gotten the former next to nothing since the Oslo Accords were signed 30 years ago. Since then, Israel has only expanded its illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

From the river to the sea

The use of the slogan "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" is strongly criticised by Israel and its supporters, likening it to a call for the genocide of the Jewish people.

Media pundits have been given ample air time to espouse these claims, but there is little to no pushback by so-called journalists who fail to remind their audience that a similar slogan has actually been adopted for a long time by Israel, as it is enshrined in the charter of the ruling Likud party.

Israel's building of illegal settlements and its current war on Gaza is living proof that Israel not only believes that the Jewish state should extend "from the river to the sea" but is establishing facts on the ground to ensure this becomes a reality.

The slogan is banned in various countries for Palestinians but is openly used by Israelis. They seem to be undeterred from their expansionist plans despite being accused by the world's highest court of plausible genocide. 

Read more: UN court hears South Africa genocide case against Israel

The irony is that Palestinians are often accused of wanting to drive the Israelis into the sea, while Israel, live on social media for the world to see, is currently trying to drive Palestinians into the Sinai desert.

The truth of the matter is that the Nakba of 1948 never ended. For more than 75 years, Israel has been killing Palestinians, demolishing their homes and pushing them further and further off their lands.

Read more: The Palestinian Nakba did not end in 1948

Anti-Semitic accusations

Israel also likes to deflect criticisms against it by throwing around the term 'anti-Semitic'. It's important to note here that while anti-Semitism exists, it is largely a European phenomenon.

Criticism of Israel and its crimes does not translate to a hatred of Jews, and many anti-Zionist Jews would be quick to emphasise this point. 

But Zionists — circling back to my earlier point — love to portray themselves as the victim and cannot stand it when anyone criticises their actions or accuses them of war crimes.

Israel's defence lawyers in the Hague went big on the Holocaust during their arguments. They tried to make the claim that Jews couldn't possibly be committing genocide, having been the victims of genocide in 1940s Europe.

However, to any person with basic critical thinking skills, it is clear that having Jewish ancestors who were murdered during the Holocaust does not give one a license to murder and commit war crimes against another people with impunity.

And while Holocaust denial is rightly banned, Israel itself tries to deny and obscure the Nakba of 1948, when it forcibly expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes to establish the State of Israel.

Identity erasure

Israel has also erased the traces of destroyed Palestinian villages. New Hebrew names replace original Arabic place names, and street names written in Arabic are often erased.

Hebrew is the official language of Israel, while the Arabic of the original inhabitants has now been relegated to a subordinate position. This amounts to a form of gradual linguicide — an attempt to kill the language.

Palestinian citizens of Israel are considered and treated as second-class citizens. They have never had the same rights as Israeli Jews. There is no real democracy for all citizens of Israel.

Israel has the strongest military power in the Middle East. It is a nuclear-armed state. But it claims to feel threatened by the Palestinians, who have little to no military power at all.

After oppressing Palestinians and committing war crimes against them, legitimate resistance against it has developed. After all, what people want to live under occupation forever?

But it is Israel that has frequently bombed the Palestinians and other Arab countries in the region, not the other way around.

So-called "peace-loving Israel" has bombed Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan and Tunisia, among others, and it still bombs Syria regularly. Lebanon's airspace has been violated by Israel almost daily for more than half a century.

Alternate reality

Israel and its supporters argue that the country has the right to "self-defence." But how this is presented is often misleading, with the occupier posing as the victim and claiming the world is upside-down when criticisms are levied against its crimes.

The truth is that occupiers do not have a right of self-defence against Palestinians in the territories occupied since 1967, where the Israeli presence is illegal. This right to self-defence applies to attacks on internationally recognised territory when made from outside.

Israel's failure to stop the Hamas attacks on 7 October shattered the public perception of Israeli invincibility. Through arrogance of power and negligence, Israel, which had been repeatedly warned of an imminent attack, shrugged off these warnings.

Embarrassed, it decided to take out its anger on the collective Palestinian population. It has killed close to 30,000 people and has left most of Gaza in ruins. 

Generational trauma

As a result, a solution now seems further away than ever. After all, Israel has created many more enemies than it had before with its genocidal and destructive actions, and the wounds and traumas caused will continue to exist for generations to come.

The main political result of the 7 October attack is that the question of the Palestinian state is now back on the table after decades of neglect.

But with Israel's brutal retaliation, the two sides couldn't be further apart, making a resolution to the 75-year conflict increasingly unlikely.

And yet, despite this brutality, it is the Palestinians who are called terrorists in the West, while Israel's barbaric assault is not given the same designation despite the magnitude of its crimes.

It's not complicated

Israel is a state based on terror, and anyone who disagrees needs to look back to its founding. In the run-up to establishing its state, Israel carried out terrorist attacks on the Palestinians, the British and the United Nations.

But sadly, Israel's slaughter of Palestinians is not that big of a deal in Western circles. It is not afforded the same space in the media. In fact, some media outlets go so far as to glorify and praise assassinations carried out by Israel.

People often claim the conflict to be complex. However, it's actually quite simple: If Israel wants to live in security, it must act in accordance with international law and afford Palestinians their basic rights.