Israel’s need for genocide

Before Israel’s genocide in Gaza, human rights still bore a superficial semblance to what rights were supposed to entail. There was never any balance, of course. Colonialism had already set its precedents on what rights are and who should grant them. Including the word “universal” in the declaration of human rights was a mere embellishment.

Zionism had long extended the parameters of what constitutes a human rights violation, to the point that Israel managed to bring near unanimity within the international community about approving genocide in Gaza. The ultimate crime of genocide was justified through Israel’s security narrative. Genocide became Israel’s right to implement and by time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu no longer needed to justify the ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

While Israel’s actions in Gaza already confirm the intent and implementation of genocidal practices, the rhetoric continues to support the genocide. Leaked audio by Israel’s Channel 12 has former director of Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate and Israeli Major General Aharon Haliva stating that genocide is a necessity. “The fact that there are already 50,000 dead in Gaza is necessary and required for future generations,” Haliva stated. “There is no choice – every now and then they [the Palestinians] need a Nakba in order to feel the price.”

Palestinians do not need a Nakba. They do not need genocide. It is Israel that feels the need to inflict another Nakba, or a genocide, to maintain its settler-colonial presence in Palestine. What Israel needs, the UN grants. The 1947 Partition Plan, legitimising the Nakba and recognising Israel, purportedly opposing Israel’s settlement expansion since 1967 while ignoring the earlier settlement expansion that paved the way for the 1948 Nakba and its aftermath.

Colonialism is unsustainable and remains incomplete. That, however, does not mean that Israel is unable to protect its colonial process. It does so, with the help of the international community and at the expense of the Palestinian people, who are still being butchered in Gaza by the Israeli military. As Israel starts its aggression that will lead to military occupation of Gaza, where does the international community stand when it hears of an Israeli major general endorsing the “need for another Nakba”?

The international community should, of course, oppose and react by protecting Palestinians. However, that would also require the international community to make amends for the historic injustice it committed when it stayed silent as the first ethnic cleansing of Palestine was carried out by Zionist paramilitary gangs in 1948.

Instead the UN merely rehashed its usual warning of “grave breaches of international law”. Words never stopped Israel, therefore the international community is in tacit agreement with Israel’s need for another Nakba slaughtering tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.

The international community is recognising Israel’s need for genocide. Hence statements such as Haliva’s are quoted and elicit no furore. By legitimising the Nakba, the international community normalised genocide and all forms of incitement to genocide. It has allowed Israel to place the blame of genocide – the need – upon Palestinians, when it is Israel that needs to sustain its brutal continuity. The Palestinian people are merely asserting their right to live and to resist colonialism. But if Israel now has the unspoken “right” to commit genocide, what purpose is international law truly serving?

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250821-israels-need-for-genocide/