[News] The Palestinian Resistance is Winning: the Movement Must Expose and Defeat Netanyahu’s “Final Solution” to the Palestinian Question

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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The Palestinian Resistance is Winning: the Movement Must Expose and Defeat
Netanyahu’s “Final Solution” to the Palestinian Question
Eric Mann
February 21, 2024
------------------------------

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, facing worldwide condemnation,
desperately tells his isolated supporters that Israel needs “absolute
victory.” On Christmas Day 2023, the Wall Street Journal gave the Prime
Minister a worldwide platform to assert his manifesto—“Our Three
Prerequisites for Peace: We Must Destroy Hamas, Demilitarize Gaza, and
De-radicalize the Whole of Palestinian Society.” Netanyahu makes his
objectives clear. He wants a “final solution” to the Palestinian
problem—the mass annihilation of the Palestinian people. His goal is a
Palestine without any Palestinians so Israel can completely occupy all of
Palestine once and for all.

The Israel ruling class’ direct application of Hitler’s “Final Solution to
the Jewish Question” warrants a brief historical reconstruction. By 1939,
Adolph Hitler gave a speech calling for the “mass extermination of all the
Jews in Europe.” The very term “extermination” is based on the
dehumanization and vilification of the Jewish people. The “Final Solution
to the Jewish Question” was the official code name for the murder of every
Jew the Nazis could reach. This policy of deliberate and systematic mass
murder in Germany and German-occupied Europe was formulated in procedural
and geopolitical terms by Nazi leadership in January 1942 at the Wannsee
Conference held near Berlin. It culminated in the Holocaust, which saw the
murder of 90 percent of Polish Jews, and two-thirds of the Jewish
population of Europe. Raul Hilberg, author of *The Destruction of the
European Jews*, wrote that in 1941 the first phase of the mass-murder of
Jews, the mobile killing units began to pursue their victims across
occupied eastern territories; in the second phase, stretching across all of
German-occupied Europe, the Jewish victims were sent on death trains to
centralized killing camps built for the purpose of systematic murder of
Jews.

But why did the Nazis call it the “final solution?” Because every other
form of oppression of the Jews did not solve the problem. Nazi Germany had
so much hatred for the Jews that only their mass annihilation was the
“solution” to their question—what can we do to eradicate the Jews as a
people. The Nazis began with verbal abuse and physical beating. Then
forcing Jews to wear a yellow star of David as they screamed epithets and
threw rocks. Then the forced imprisonment in ghettos. Then widespread
murder. Then a thought that perhaps the Jews could be dispersed. But to
where?—as Germany wanted to control the world and the U.S., British and
French sure didn’t want the Jews. Then, finally, the Final Solution.

>From the conceptual and strategic formulation of Zionism in the 1880s to
the Israeli mass slaughter and dispersal of more than 700,000 indigenous
Palestinian people in 1947—that the Palestinians call The Nakba-the
Catastrophe—Israel’s very existence was based on genocide. Genocide, the
removal and mass murder of indigenous inhabitants is the central tactical
imperative of white, European, settler imperialism. The UN Convention on
Genocide of 1948 defines genocide as “any of five acts committed with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or
religious group. These five acts include killing members of the group,
causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions
intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring
children out of the group.”

In the folklore of the white, Christian, European and now Jewish
imperialist settlers, the land is always assumed to be vacant—or in their
minds—pre-vacant. However, the proponents of Zionism in the 1880s well
understood that the entire world was inhabited. As such, they required the
support of the Imperialist Powers, in this case England, to displace the
Palestinians over which the British had colonial control. That would be the
land base of a new settler state run by Zionist Jews. In return, Israel
promised to be a loyal agent of British, and later U.S. imperialism in the
middle east—supporting anti-communism, counterrevolution, and the expansion
of the colonial racist agenda. This was most grotesquely apparent in
Israel’s deep strategic, ideological, and cultural alliance with the South
African apartheid regime.

*The Israeli tactical plan to carry out its genocide has proceeded
methodically*

It began with the systematic invasion of Jewish settlers into Palestine, as
early as the 1880s, as conscious infiltrators and future conquerors.

Then there was the Nakba in 1947—a punitive Israeli military invasion of
Palestine resulting in the forced removal of more than 700,000 Palestinians.

Then there was the Israeli occupation of Gaza in 1967—the arrests of 1
million Palestinians and the Israeli creation of a 2-million-person
open-air concentration camp in Gaza— blocked from any humanitarian aid or
the right to travel by land, water, and air.  Then, with the people of Gaza
encircled, the Israelis inflicted a systematic reign of terror against them
using the tactics of imprisonment, torture, kidnapping, and murder. The
Israeli brutality and constant cultural abuse led to infant mortality,
despair, depression, PTSD, and suicide among the indigenous Palestinians.
This was a conscious plan by Israel to destroy the culture, integrity, and
national identity of the Palestinian people.

Then, on October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a bold and effective tactical
initiative for Palestinian national liberation. Imagine, that the
Palestinian people and Hamas sought revenge, insurgency, and liberation
against fascist occupation. The simple assertion of the humanity of the
Palestinian people and their right, by any means necessary, to fight back
has forced every nation in the world to pay great attention to the
Palestinian cause and take a stand—which side are you on? While many of
Israel’s traditional allies profess support, many are already formulating
an exit strategy.

In response to the tactical initiatives of Hamas, Israel has formulated the
most brutal of all responses—to destroy the Palestinian people as a people
once and for all. What Netanyahu calls, “Total victory.” This was always
the plan but it had to be implemented in steps. The concept of an armed
Palestinian resistance movement is inconceivable and unacceptable to the
Zionists—but inspiring, exhilarating, and liberating for the Palestinian
people. The mass resistance of the oppressed, as Franz Fanon pointed out,
is the great anti-depressant.

*Netanyahu’s First Prerequisite:  Hamas must be destroyed.*

Netanyahu begins his manifesto:

First, Hamas, a key Iranian proxy, must be destroyed. The U.S., U.K.,
France, Germany and many other countries support Israel’s intention to
demolish the terror group. To achieve that goal, its military capabilities
must be dismantled and its political rule over Gaza must end. Hamas’s
leaders have vowed to repeat the Oct. 7 massacre “again and again.” That is
why their destruction is the only proportional response to prevent the
repeat of such horrific atrocities. Anything less guarantees more war and
more bloodshed. In destroying Hamas, Israel will continue to act in full
compliance with international law.

*Note that Netanyahu concedes “Hamas’ political rule over Gaza”—an
acknowledgment of its overwhelming political support among the Palestinian
people in Gaza.*

Hamas is a popular political organization, with support throughout all of
Palestine—with its strongest base in Gaza. Its goal is the national
liberation of the Palestinian people. It is a guerrilla movement. In
January 2006 when the Palestinian territories held what turned out to be
their last parliamentary elections, Hamas, running as the Change and Reform
Party, won the largest popular vote— 44 of the  total. This was compared to
41% for Fatah, the more moderate  Palestinian Authority. Under the
parliamentary system Hamas won a strong majority of seats—74 for Hamas and
45 for Fatah.

This vote was an amazing upset since Israel detained 50 members of Hamas
who were involved the elections as well as capturing and imprisoning 15 of
its leaders. If that was not enough, the U.S. and Europe provided half of
Fatah’s election budget with the U.S. contributing $2.3 million. Without
Israeli, European, and U.S. intervention and aid, Hamas would have won in a
landslide. But through this process, Hamas gained even greater political
support and Fatah was discredited in the eyes of many in Gaza. So,
Netanyahu and the vast majority of the Israeli political forces who agree
with or concede to him,  have decided that  “the political rule” of Hamas
must be destroyed. In practice, this means all Palestinians active in
Hamas, friendly to Hamas, or even not opposed to Hamas must be destroyed.

*Netanyahu’s use of the world “destroy” is an explicit call for the mass
murder of Hamas and all Palestinians. *The U.S., Europe, and Israel only
use the term “destroy” in their war against Third World people. Note that
during World War II, in U.S., English and Third World communists war
against German, Italian, and Japanese fascists, the U.S. leaders never used
the word “destroy.” While the U.S. realized that most German and Japanese
people were enthusiastic Nazis and fascists, the U.S. had plans to
re-integrate and “rehabilitate” them after World War II into its
imperialist, anti-communist plan for world domination.  Thus, the U.S.
wanted to create the myth that only a small number of Nazis leaders forced
their people into unbearable crimes against humanity. Then, upon victory,
the U.S. could  humanize the Nazis and fascists they intended to recruit to
its cause. Even in the face of German genocide against the Jewish people,
Roma people, and communists, “destroy” was never in the U.S. lexicon.

*Proportional Response *

Here is a documentation of the mass suffering caused by Israel’s
“proportional response”:

In Gaza, according to Al Jazeera,

Killed: at least 27,947 people, including more than 12,150 children and
8,300 women

Injured: more than 67,459, including at least 8,663 children and 6,327 women

Missing: more than 7,000

More than half of Gaza’s homes – 360,000 residential units – have been
destroyed or damaged. Including 390 educational facilities, 13 out of 35
hospitals are partially functioning. 122 ambulances, 267 places of worship
destroyed by Israeli attacks.

Every hour in Gaza: 15 people are killed— six are children, 35 people are
injured, 42 bombs are dropped, and 12 buildings are destroyed.

Netanyahu, with the full support of President Biden and the vast majority
of the Democrats and Republicans made his plan for mass murder apparent. As
he stated on October 7 reported in Al Jazeera,

We will take mighty vengeance for this black day,” the Israeli leader said
in a televised address. “We will take revenge for all the young people who
lost their lives. We will target all of Hamas’s positions. *We will turn
Gaza into a deserted island.* To the citizens of Gaza, I say. You must
leave now. We will target each and every corner of the strip.

*Israel’s contempt for any international statutes and institutions that try
to protect human rights  *

Everyone in the world, or at least the Third World, knows that U.S, Europe,
and Israel have contempt for international law.

On January 26, 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled on
South Africa’s charges that Israel is committing acts of Genocide against
the Palestinian people. As could be expected, the U.S., Germany, and Israel
rejected the entire charge as “baseless.”  Nonetheless, under international
pressure, Israel had to accept the authority of the court to rule on the
charges because it decided it had to put forth a vigorous defense. The ICJ
ruled against Israel and demanded that Israel cease and desist from many of
its genocidal practices. Its decision stated,

In the court’s view, “at least some of the acts and omissions alleged by
South Africa to have been committed by Israel in Gaza appear to be capable
of falling within the provisions of the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Now, in a literal reading of this decision, it might appear that the Court
ruling was not very strong. But the court’s language— “at least” “alleged”
“”appear to be capable”— were carefully constructed to meet the legal
standards of its interim decision and prevent Israel from claiming animus
against it. But the main conclusion of the Court was that *Israel is
committing genocide against the Palestinian people. *This is a massive
political defeat for Israel and a tremendous victory for the South African
government and the people of Palestine.

Sadly, but not surprisingly one week after the decision *The Conversation*
documented Israel’s contempt of court.

More than a week has passed since the International Court of Justice (ICJ)
mandated provisional measures against Israel following South Africa’s
accusation of genocide. The court’s demands were clear: Israel must take
immediate steps to prevent genocidal actions in Gaza; prevent and punish
incitement to genocide; allow access to humanitarian aid; and prevent the
destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence of alleged crimes. It
must also report back to the court within a month on the implementation of
these measures. There’s little evidence Israel has changed course, despite
these clear orders. In fact, reports from Gaza suggest escalated violence
and increased civilian casualties each day.

Worse, as we read this, Israel, having driven the people of Gaza towards
the Rafa border, is now planning an imminent ground mass murder against one
million Gaza residents trapped by the IDF assault.

*Netanyahu’s Second Prerequisite:  Hamas must be demilitarized.*

Second, Gaza must be demilitarized.

Israel must ensure that the territory is never again used as a base to
attack it. Among other things, this will require establishing a temporary
security zone on the perimeter of Gaza and an inspection mechanism on the
border between Gaza and Egypt that meets Israel’s security needs and
prevents smuggling of weapons into the territory. The expectation that the
Palestinian Authority will demilitarize Gaza is a pipe dream. It currently
funds and glorifies terrorism in Judea and Samaria and educates Palestinian
children to seek the destruction of Israel. Not surprisingly it has shown
neither the capability nor the will to demilitarize Gaza. It failed to do
so before Hamas booted it out of the territory in 2007, and it has failed
to do so in the territories under its control today. For the foreseeable
future Israel will have to retain overriding security responsibility over
Gaza.

*The Israeli objective to demilitarize Hamas is an explicit plan to create
 an unarmed, defenseless Palestinian people subject to every form of
Israeli barbarism without any hope, or capacity to retaliate.*

According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies
(IISS), Israel has 169,500 active military personnel, 465,000 reserve
forces, and 8,000 paramilitary personnel.  The entire apparatus is mandated
by Israel’s financial system, which counts on more than $3.8 Billion of
military aid a year from the U.S. The State of Israel has between 80 and
400 nuclear warheads. It can deliver them by aircraft, as
submarine-launched cruise missiles, and via the Jericho series of
intermediate to intercontinental range ballistic missiles.

By contrast, Haman’s armed forces are very small. But they are strategic,
disciplined, focused, and effective. Hamas has a well-developed military
structure with 15,000–16,000 potential combatants. The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam
Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, has an estimated 30,000–40,000 fighters.
Thank God they have a people’s army. Despite Hamas’ small force of armed
resistance, they are winning the war of ideas and the war of political
support in the world. The Palestinian people will never lay down their arms
and will always resist the Israeli Holocaust.

*Netanyahu’s Third Prerequisite: Gaza Must Be De-radicalized *

Third, Gaza will have to be deradicalized. Schools must teach children to
cherish life rather than death, and imams must cease to preach for the
murder of Jews. Palestinian civil society needs to be transformed so that
its people support fighting terrorism rather than funding it. That will
likely require courageous and moral leadership. Successful deradicalization
took place in Germany and Japan after the Allied victory in World War II.
Today, both nations are great allies of the U.S. and promote peace,
stability and prosperity in Europe and Asia. Such a cultural transformation
will be possible in Gaza only among Palestinians who don’t seek the
destruction of Israel.

*Deradicalization is code for the Jakarta Method, documented by Vincent
Bevins in which the U.S. and its allies use mass murder as the only
successful form of counter-insurgency*.

The Indigenous People of the America’s well understand that
“deradicalization” led the Spanish invaders, the Portuguese, and later the
English-Americans to murder more than 90 million indigenous people in one
century—and then systematically murder the leaders of those who remained.
The Black Panthers well understood that J. Edgar Hoover’s “COINTELPRO”
program was designed to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit and
otherwise neutralize” —that is, arrest, torture, and assassinate the
leaders of the Black Liberation and civil rights movement. The U.S. worked
to deradicalize the National Liberation Front of Vietnam my murdering 4
million Vietnamese people.

To apply the ideas of the great Martinican revolutionary Aimé Césaire in
his *Discourse on Colonialism*,  the U.S., Europe, and Israel are
indefensible.

*Netanyahu concludes his discourse on genocide*

Once Hamas is destroyed, Gaza is demilitarized and Palestinian society
begins a deradicalization process, Gaza can be rebuilt and the prospects of
a broader peace in the Middle East will become a reality.

It has become clear that Netanyahu’s brutal vision is shared by Israel’s
willing executioners.

*Two Israeli rappers have called for the murder of singer Dua Lipa, model
Bella Hadid, and ex-porn star Mia Khalifa in a chart-topping song that has
become an unofficial soundtrack for the Israel-Hamas war.*

The drill rap by Israeli duo, Ness and Stilla, has exploded since it was
released three months ago — with the music video since racking up a
whopping 18.5 million views on YouTube. The Hebrew track — titled “Harbu
Darbu” — features the rappers firing off an apparent kill list of those
they hold accountable for the October 7 bloodshed inflicted by Hamas
terrorists in southern Israel.

“Every dog will get what’s coming to them,” the duo sings in the clip after
listing off the three celebrity names. Dua Lipa, the British-Albanian
singer and Bella Hadid, the world-famous fashion model who is of
Palestinian descent, have both called for a cease-fire amid the ongoing
conflict in Gaza. Khalifa, meanwhile, sparked outrage after referring to
Hamas as “freedom fighters” on social media in the days after the war broke
out.

Meanwhile, the rappers also take aim at Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’
Al-Qassam brigades; Hamas’ political wing chair, Ismail Haniyeh; and
Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah — chanting that the Israel Defense
Forces will “rain a storm down on them.” Other lyrics featured in the rap
translate to “we have brought the whole army against you and we swear there
will be no forgiveness” and “get your a-s ready” for the IDF. It also
featured heavily as background music on TikTok videos where young Israelis
and soldiers filmed themselves lip-syncing and dancing to the song.

The Israeli crimes are not the ramblings of a mad man. They are deep in the
heart and soul of the Israeli people. Young and old, reformed,
conservative, and orthodox, agnostic, atheist, religious  or secular,
square or hip—there is mass support among Israeli Jews for Netanyahu’s
final solution. A recent public opinion poll at Tel Aviv University found
that 40 percent of Jewish Israelis believed that the mass murders by the
IDF were the right level of force, while 58 percent felt they were not
brutal enough. One does not need to be a mathematician to see that among
Israeli Jews—until there is a courageous and militant Jewish anti-Zionist
resistance— there is a widespread and insatiable appetite for killing the
Palestinian people.

In the U.S. we have seen, and worked to create, a meteoric rise of the
Black, Jewish, and progressive support for the human rights of the
Palestinian people. The immediate popular demands are to call for an
immediate ceasefire, cutting of all aid to Israel, and a massive campaign
for humanitarian aid. Others go further—to oppose Netanyahu’s genocidal
plan, to save the lives of the Palestinian people as a prelude to the most
extensive reparations and to bring U.S. officials including U.S. President
Joe Biden up on charges of genocide in front of the International Criminal
Court.

The 2024 U.S. presidential elections are a tremendous historical
opportunity to bring international attention to the U.S. genocide against
Palestine, and its continued genocide against the Indigenous and Black
people trapped inside its territorial borders. The U.S. presidential
elections, starting now, offer the movement the chance to convince many
people of goodwill that the main “outcome of the election” is not which
candidate will win but how can we help deliver a victory for the people of
Palestine

The long history of the Black, civil rights, anti-war movements’ support
for Palestine and the prominent role of anti-Zionist Jews in those
movements offers hope for today.  In the summer of 1964, 60 years ago,
1,000 young white people came South at the request of the leadership of the
Black Freedom Movement. They came “to be of use” as they were asked to “put
their bodies on the line.” Of the 1000 white volunteers, 500 were Jews.
That is statistically astounding but historically explainable. The young
Jewish people, many of whom had family members who were Holocaust victims
and survivors, were fiercely anti-Zionist in the secular liberal, humanist,
socialist, and communist traditions of Jews all over the world. We saw the
struggle of the Jewish people against German genocide reflected in the
struggle of Black people against U.S. genocide. We saw the struggle of the
Palestinians against Zionist occupation as the cutting edge of the ongoing
anti-fascist united front.

 On June 21, 1964, the Ku Klux Klan, working with the Neshoba County
Police, murdered CORE civil rights workers James Chaney, a native
Mississippian, and Mickey Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, two Jews from New
York in Philadelphia, Mississippi. The Black/Jewish connection was critical
to the success of Freedom Summer and is an essential relationship in the
struggle for Palestinian and Black rights today.

 I am a Jew from Brooklyn who has been in the Civil Rights and
anti-imperialist movement for more than 50 years. In 1964, CORE, where I
worked as a field secretary, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee, and all of us in the civil rights movement saw the Black,
Palestinian, and Black South African anti-apartheid struggles as national
liberation movements against the U.S., Israeli and Afrikaner white settler
states. In 1967, SNCC, led by its courageous communications director Ethel
Minor, wrote *Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem*, based on the
work of the Palestine Research Center. SNCC concluded:

Comrades. It is clearly a question of right and wrong. In the Middle East,
America has worked with and used the powerful Zionist movement to take over
another people’s home and replace the Palestinian people with a partner
that has well served America’s purpose, a partner that can help the United
States and other white Western countries to exploit and control the nations
of Africa, the Middle East and Africa. We have no choice but to resist.
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