Gaza genocide in modern history

Theo Horesh on Facebook

No genocide in modern history has been preceded by such a lengthy period of crimes against humanity committed against the victim population as in Gaza. No genocide in modern history has commanded such a high level of support among the perpetrator population, which saw 96 percent of Israeli Jews backing the opening, most murderous stage of the genocide. No genocide in human history has been so carefully documented and closely observed in real time as Gaza. And no state since Napoleonic France has stolen substantial tracts of land from each of their contiguous land based neighbors except Israel.

Each of these facts can be quickly demonstrated, and together they show that Israel’s persecution of Palestinians, along with its territorial expansion, is integral to its national identity; that support for its atrocities exists among a transgenerational, near consensus of Israeli Jews; that Israel virtually stands alone in possessing a historical national identity so profoundly shaped by its crimes against humanity; and that little is likely to change with the country short of severe isolation under a regime of sanctions and the complete dismantling of the state.

The idea of forming a Jewish state on Palestinian land virtually necessitated that Israel assume such an identity from the start. It was certainly present among Zionists as early as 1891, six years before Theodore Herzl held the conference calling for a Jewish state in Palestine, when the spiritual Zionist Ahad Ha’am expressed his disgust with the cruelty of Jewish settlers, who frequently beat native Palestinians. And it was routinely commented upon by curious Jews who traveled to Palestine in the twenties and thirties.

Thus, it might be said without exaggeration, and only the slightest rhetorical flourish, that Israel itself is a crime against humanity.

The fact that the genocide in Gaza has been both the most closely observed genocide in history and the most strongly supported by the population of perpetrators in modern history raises the biggest red flags. The highest level of support for a genocide that has been sustained by a modern perpetrator population was arguably in Rwanda, a savage affair that saw 800,000 people hacked to death with machetes by ethnic Hutus. But it was only a few percent of the Hutu population that participated in the killings. A significant portion of them resisted and were killed. And political alignments preceding the genocide suggest that support could not have exceeded 70 percent, while countless people likely found the killings too gruesome to support once they got started.

And who on earth would not jump at the chance to dismantle Hutu Power if they ever attained office again?

Perhaps the longest period of severe persecution experienced by the victims of a genocide prior to the extermination event was that of the Rohingya, who saw 35 years of total marginalization and disenfranchisement in Burma before the genocide of 2017.

But with their ethnic cleansing beginning in 1947, Palestinians saw twice this period of continual crimes against humanity before Israel sought to exterminate a large portion of them. And what they experienced over this period of time was arguably far worse than the Rohingya. Indeed, the Nakba of 1947 alone was almost an exact template for the Rohingya Genocide, with the number of people who were ethnically cleansed being almost exactly the same.

So, it is not as if Israelis have been whipped up into a frenzy for the genocide. They were like this when all of the main Zionist organizations still had Palestine in their names in the early twentieth century as well.

Several states compete for the claim of having stolen territory from each of their land-based neighbors. Nazi Germany stole land from every neighbor except Switzerland, Stalinist Russia stole land from every neighbor except Norway. Fascist Japan stole land from every state in the near vicinity of their island nation. But they didn’t steal land from all their contiguous neighbors. They didn’t steal land over and over again for generations. And they are exceptions that prove the rule. Given the opportunity, few would oppose dismantling these states if they appeared again.

The case against Israel only grows when we look to their global support for genocide. Israel has armed, trained, provided intelligence to, and/or directly participated in what reputable scholars have classed as genocides in Indonesia in 1965, East Timor in 1975, El Salvador in the late seventies, Lebanon in 1982, Guatemala in the early eighties, Bosnia in 1993, Rwanda in 1994, Burma in 2017, Tigray in 2022, Yemen in 2024, and, of course, Gaza. Just Google them one by one—the sources are clear.

Barring the native genocides of the early modern period, the only near competitors that committed this many genocides are Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia—along with the United States, whose military footprint is so extensive that its support for genocide often seems to occur in the midst of a dream, and besides which served as a virtual partner to Israel in most of these campaigns.

And now, after having attacked eight nations, stolen huge tracts of land from three, committed ethnic cleansing against two, and perpetrated genocide against one in just the last three years, Israel is in its most aggressive phase yet. Little surprise that polling shows them to be the most hated nation in the world, and protests against them suggest the most detested in generations.

Netanyahu may be an unusually capable sociopath, but Israel has been at this for generations, and there is a reason they would elect such a person no less than six times. Netanyahu is a reflection of the population that keeps electing him, and in the off years when he wasn’t elected, they have largely elected people who spent most of their careers to his right, like Ariel Sharon and Naftali Bennett.

In this way, more than any other nation in the world today, and more than any other state in the modern era, not simply the ruling regime, but Israel itself is the pariah. The very idea of the nation is the crime. Not only is Zionism racism; it always implied ethnic cleansing. And no state is so deserving of dismantlement. Raising the issue is far from radical; states that commit multiple crimes against humanity are routinely dismantled—see Hitler’s Germany, Fascist Japan, the Khmer Rouge, Milosevic’s Yugoslavia, and Apartheid South Africa. ( would add Ukrainian Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych in Volhynia sic.).

Given that Israel has taken aim at almost every single protective feature of the international order, from peacekeeping to humanitarian aid, international law to human rights, the case becomes overwhelming. Through these attacks, Israel is a threat to all of humanity, alive and yet to be born. And the attacks are integral to the conception of the nation; since the very idea of Israel is rooted in crimes against humanity, Israelis have long seen their survival as dependent on erasing international law and their nation as at war with the United Nations.

Now, Israel appears to see their survival as dependent on keeping the whole of the world in terror. The fact that there is literally no place on earth where you can be assured that your serious criticisms of Israel will not sooner or later result in your harm, either through political persecution or the suffering of your career, as governments come and go, and Israel extends its attacks on free speech across the internet, while extending its stranglehold over the global tech industry, only strengthens the case against Israel.

The facts place Israel in a category with Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany, however much any one of us may wish to deny it. But to forcefully declare it virtually anywhere in the world today is to put yourself at risk. And unlike these monstrosities of the past, Israel commands significant support from the most powerful state in history, the largest military coalition in history, and the most powerful business leaders in the most globalized economy in history.

In this way, Israel is the knife’s edge of an increasingly genocidal world order, and the only thing keeping them from cutting us to pieces is your vigilant commitment to humanity.

Theo Horesh, author of *The Holocausts We All Deny: The Crisis Before the Fascist Storm.

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