In the USA’s Jim Crow era, a large majority of white citizens supported the racist status quo and either actively supported or failed to oppose the acts of terror – carried out by racist vigilantes and on occasion, the state – that were aimed at maintaining the economic and socio-political subjugation of black Americans.
In South Africa, the repressive apartheid apparatus and the racist lies on which it was built were also aimed at maintaining white economic and socio-political hegemony.
The colonialist ideologies underpinning both Jim Crow and South African apartheid were far-right and white supremacist, and the tactics used to oppress the target populations were terroristic and brutal in the extreme but the aim was not genocide or expulsion.
The flimsy leash on the genocidal potential of Israel’s form of apartheid was weakened with the current coalition of right and far-right parties under Netanyahu’s leadership.
It was wholly removed when the Hamas attack gave the Israeli right the excuse to carry out mass ethnic cleansing of Gaza and destruction of infrastructure, moving rapidly towards military occupation of the whole of “Greater Israel” including parts of Syria, bombing other sovereign states, and even killing heads of state.
Israeli terror tactics in Gaza have included massive bombardment aimed at the obliteration of all civil infrastructure, the use of drones, boobytrapping, and sniping in the targeting of non-combatants such as medics, journalists and aid workers, and the killing of children; the use of starvation and access to water as weapons.
In the 1930s, the Nazis created a vicious paramilitary, routed the left, cowed the centre, and took control of the entire state apparatus. The political architects and administrators of the Nazi concentration and death camps and the high command of the uniformed death squads went to great lengths to hide their crimes, (albeit also meticulously recording them).
Ordinary German citizens had the excuses of genuinely not knowing the full extent of what was being done by the Nazis and collaborators, and/or the fear of the fascistic apparatus being turned on them.
There’s no get-out-of-genocide-jail-free card for Israelis.
As so much of what the Israeli military has done has been captured on camera and broadcast hourly to the world, ordinary Israelis cannot claim ignorance of what their government is doing.
Nor can they claim they’re silent out of fear of state reprisals given they claim to live in the only democratic, liberal society in the Middle East.
A large majority of Israelis and their global supporters (real and opportunist) have either: steadfastly denied the Palestinian genocide by claiming that documentary evidence of it is Hamas propaganda, either staged, or produced by AI; or, they have claimed what the IDF has done is justifiable and wholly proportionate to the existential threat Israel faces from Palestine as an Iranian proxy.
Increasingly, the sheer weight of incontrovertible documentary evidence of Israeli atrocities means the latter argument now dominates.
The slaughter of non-combatants, the obliteration of infrastructure, and the proposed expulsion of all or most Palestinians are deemed to be politically, militarily and morally justifiable because October 7th proved the entire Palestinian people – even babies, small children, the elderly and the disabled – to be actual or potential enemy combatants who have to be killed or dispersed in order to ensure Israel’s security.
Both denial and justification demonstrate that a scarily high percentage of Israelis are in the grip of a moral panic of such scope and intensity it has incinerated common sense and empathy leaving a political and moral void in which anti-Palestinian atrocities are not only excused or condoned, but openly celebrated.
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