[News] Breaching the ‘Iron Wall’: How Palestinians crushed Jabotinsky’s century-old ideas

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 Breaching the ‘Iron Wall’: How Palestinians crushed Jabotinsky’s
century-old ideas
By Ramzy Baroud <https://english.palinfo.com/?p=250012>

Wednesday 7-February-2024 -
https://english.palinfo.com/opinion_articles/breaching-the-iron-wall-how-palestinians-crushed-jabotinskys-century-old-ideas/

It seemed strange, if not out of context, when Israeli politician Moshe
Feiglin told Arutz Sheva-Israel National News that “Muslims are not afraid
of us anymore”.

Feiglin’s comments were made on 25 October, less than three weeks following
the Palestinian Al-Aqsa Flood operation and the genocidal Israeli war which
followed.

The former Knesset member who, in 2012, challenged Israeli Prime Minister,
Benjamin Netanyahu, for the leadership of the Likud party, proposed, in the
same interview that, in order for the Muslims’ fear to be restored, the
Israeli military has to turn “Gaza to ashes immediately”.

Feiglin perceives Gaza as something much larger than the 365 km² of land
mass. He understood, rightly, that the war is not just about firepower but
perceptions, and not only those of Gazans, Palestinians and Arabs, but all
Muslims, as well.

The events of 7 October have exposed Israel as an essentially weak and
vulnerable State, thus conveying the idea to Arabs, Muslims – in fact, the
rest of the world – that the perceived power of Israel’s ‘invincible army’
is but an illusion.

Currently, the problem of perception is Israel’s greatest challenge.
Feiglin has expressed this dichotomy in his usual far-right extremist
language, but even the most ‘liberal’ of Israel’s leadership shares his
anxiety.

When Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, for example, declared on 16 October
that “there are no innocent civilians in Gaza”, he was not only preparing
his society and US-Western allies for one of the greatest acts of military
revenge known in history. He, too, wanted to restore fear in the hearts of
Israel’s perceived enemies.

In a more recent statement, on 1 February, former Shin Bet chief, Carmi
Gillon, asserted, in an interview with Channel 12, that Palestinians will
not be able to carry out another 7 October-like attack.

Gillon’s comments could easily be mistaken for a rational military
assessment. But this cannot be the case, simply because Israel has failed
miserably to prevent the Al-Aqsa Flood operation in the first place.

Gillon was speaking of psychology. In his mind, the war on Gaza has always
been a revenge war, one that aimed at extracting the very idea from the
collective mind of Palestinians that they can stand up to Israel.

To understand the relationship between Israel’s existence and the power –
or the perception of power – of its military, one must examine the early
political discourse of Zionism, Israel’s founding ideology.

Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party is the direct heir of the right-wing, in
fact fascist, ideology that was largely articulated by early Zionist
thinker, Vladimir Jabotinsky. Though Jabotinsky’s politics is deeply
nationalistic, his ideas ultimately branched into, or at least inspired,
the ideological school of religious Zionism.

Unlike more liberal leaning Zionists of that era, Jabotinsky was
straightforward regarding the Zionist intentions and ultimate objectives in
Palestine.

“A voluntary reconciliation with the Arabs is out of the question, either
now or in the future,” he wrote in his book, The Iron Wall, in 1923,
adding, “If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living,
you must provide a garrison on your behalf.”

For Jabotinsky, it all came down to this maxim: “Zionism is a colonizing
adventure and, therefore, it stands or falls by the question of armed
force.” Since then, Israel continues to invest in building ‘iron walls’,
real or imagined.

In fact, Jabotinsky’s iron wall was a symbolic one. His was an impenetrable
fortress of military power, cemented through violence, the relentless
subjugation of the natives, which is designed for the purpose of their
expulsion.

The fact that Israeli ministers and other leading politicians quickly began
advancing plans for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza immediately after 7
October, indicates that Zionism has never abandoned those early ideas.
Indeed, the genocidal language in Israel is older than the State itself.

But, if Jabotinsky was still alive, he would be utterly ashamed of his
descendants, who allowed their personal interests to trump their vigilance
in keeping the Palestinians caged in, crushed by an ever-expanding iron
wall. Instead, the wall has been breached, physically, on 7 October, and
psychologically, ever since. While physical damage can be easily repaired,
psychological damage is hard to fix.

The ongoing genocide in Gaza is a desperate Israeli attempt at raising the
costs for Palestinian resistance, so it may reach the future conclusion
that resistance is, indeed, futile. This is unlikely to work.

But can Israel re-implant the fear in the collective heart of the
Palestinian people? And why is such a fear a prerequisite for Israel’s
survival?

Peace “will only be achieved when the hope of the Arabs to establish an
Arab State on the ruins of the Jewish State is dashed,” Israel’s Finance
Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, tweeted on 1 February.

Even though the ‘Arabs’ are not calling for the destruction of anyone,
Smotrich believes that the very idea of a Palestinian State will
automatically lead to the destruction of the Zionist fantasy of racial
purity.

Note how the Israeli politician did not speak of the Arab political
discourse but rather of Arab ‘hope’. It is a different way of saying that
the problem is the collective perception of Palestinians and Arabs that
justice in Palestine is possible.

Again, this notion has nothing to do with 7 October. In fact, three months
before the war, precisely on 1 July, Netanyahu was even more blunt in his
description of the same idea, when he said that Palestinian hopes of
establishing a sovereign State “must be crushed”.

This ‘crushing’ has been underway in Gaza and the West Bank for several
months now.

This time around, Israel is adopting an even more extreme version of
Jabotinsky’s ‘iron wall’ strategy because Israel’s ruling classes truly
believe, in the words of Netanyahu, that “Israel is in the midst of a fight
for (its) existence”.

By existence, Netanyahu is referencing Israel’s ability to maintain its
status of Jewish racist supremacist, settler-colonial expansion and
monopoly over violence. Israel calls this deterrence. Many countries and
legal experts around the world refer to it as genocide.

In truth, even this genocide will hardly change the new perception that
Palestinians have the kind of agency that will allow them, not only to
fight back but, ultimately, win.

*-Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of the Palestine Chronicle.
He is the author of five books. His latest is ‘These Chains Will Be Broken:
Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons’. Baroud is
a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global
Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC).*
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