[News] The "zombie stage" of Israel

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/eli-gerzon/livestream-zombie-stage-israel>
Livestream: The "zombie stage" of Israel

Eli Gerzon <https://electronicintifada.net/people/eli-gerzon> The
Electronic Intifada Podcast
<https://electronicintifada.net/blog/electronic-intifada-podcast> 14 July
2025
------------------------------

“It’s not relevant to talk about whether the Israeli economy is going to
collapse because it has already collapsed,” said Shir Hever on The
Electronic Intifada Livestream <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1QtqzR3dqE>
for 10 July.

“It’s just acting with struts that are imposed by external forces that
enable it to continue to exist,” he added.

Hever, author of *The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation*, says he
faced criticism for prematurely saying the Israel economy was collapsing a
year ago <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly7qO9fGYZA> on The Electronic
Intifada Livestream.

He admits he didn’t expect the Israeli economy or its genocide to last this
long: “Because I didn’t anticipate the level of complicity from the West.”

Israel’s “complete lack of control over [its] own destiny” and its
dependence on external support are two reasons why Hever says we are in
“the zombie stage of the Israeli economy and society.”

Also, Israel’s budget was passed on 17 March with plans to transition funds
away from war to urgent social and economic needs. But the next day Israel
broke the ceasefire and so “The budget was a sham from the beginning,” said
Hever.

We also covered Israel’s ongoing murders of Palestinians at the Gaza
Humanitarian Foundation’s so-called aid sites – nearly 800 have been killed
and over 5,000 injured in the past six weeks.

Israel is also trying to revive its discredited 7 October mass rapes
narrative, this time with British funding, as executive director Ali
Abunimah and associate editor Asa Winstanley reported
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8TcdwUb_z0>.

And after heavy losses in June, the Israeli military continued to lose
soldiers amid stepped up resistance operations in Gaza, contributing editor
Jon Elmer revealed in his report
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ipJjZzBHM>.

You can watch the whole program in the video at the top of this article.
Concentration camps for Gaza

Israel’s plans to force Palestinians into confined areas in the south of
Gaza have drawn widespread condemnation, with Ehud Olmert, a former Israeli
prime minister, likening
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-said-to-warn-against-gaza-humanitarian-city-ex-pm-brands-it-concentration-camp/>
it to Nazi concentration camps.

An official described the planned camp as “large tent city in Rafah where
they will have hospitals and plenty of food” according
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-07-08/ty-article/.premium/israeli-official-netanyahu-supports-plan-to-concentrate-gazans-into-humanitarian-city/00000197-eb03-d0a0-a1df-efffa1bb0000>
to *Haaretz*.

The Boston Consulting Group “helped establish” the Gaza Humanitarian
Foundation. The US firm “modeled the costs of ‘relocating’ Palestinians
from Gaza and entered into a multimillion-dollar contract to help launch an
aid scheme for the shattered enclave,” according to a report
<https://www.ft.com/content/c0e661cc-55db-4e2a-b17b-a656e0cf6c14> by *The
Financial Times*.

Save the Children called
<https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2025/07/08/save-children-suspends-work-bcg-over-utterly-unacceptable-gaza-role>
the work that Boston Consulting Group has done with the GHF “utterly
unacceptable.”

Watch <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0uoKFNW3qw> or read
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/israel-accelerates-gaza-attacks-amid-plans-concentration-camps-rafah>
associate editor Nora Barrows-Friedman’s Livestream news brief.
“Regime change” in Israel?

“We should not let ourselves be distracted,” by Israel’s war with Iran,
Hever said. He emphasized that what really matters to Israel and Zionism is
Palestine. “Because it’s a settler colony in the process of being
decolonized,” he said.

According to Hever the timing of Netanyahu’s attack on Iran was driven by
domestic political considerations.

In April, newly appointed Israeli army chief Eyal Zamir reportedly told
<https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-850080> the cabinet
that they should abandon their “fantasies” about what they want to achieve
in Gaza, because the military does not have enough soldiers to control the
territory.

This increased pressure in Israel, including from soldiers, for the
Ultra-Orthodox community, who are exempt from compulsory service, to be
drafted into the army.

Ultra-Orthodox ministers called a no-confidence vote over the issue,
threatening to bring down Netanyahu’s coalition government.

Hever says Netanyahu told them he was going to attack Iran and the
Ultra-Orthodox would be called traitors and hunted in the streets if they
voted against him.

According
<https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/magazine/benjamin-netanyahu-gaza-war.html>
to *The New York Times*, Netanyahu leaked information about the top secret
attack on Iran to Moshe Gafni, one of the Ultra-Orthodox party leaders, in
order to dissuade him from proceeding with the no-confidence vote.

In the end, Netanyahu survived that vote
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israels-coalition-survives-vote-dissolve-parliament-over-army-draft-tensions>
on 12 June. Early in the morning of 13 June, Netanyahu started bombing Iran.

After the 12-day war, “You saw the biggest critics of Netanyahu writing
articles that said: he’s our amazing strategic leader and he has saved us
all,” according to Hever.

“And I think we’ve now entered a different stage in the Israeli system of
government. Now the supreme leader of Israel rules like never before.”

In response to the question as to whether Netanyahu attacked Iran to do
regime change, Hever said: “Yes, but not in Iran.”
BDS wins

Until recently Hever was coordinator of the military embargo campaign for
the Palestinian Boycott National Committee (BNC). He shared some good news.

In June, Irish publication *The Ditch*, revealed
<https://www.ontheditch.com/spanish-company-sent/> that Spanish firm
Sidenor had been selling steel to Elbit, Israel’s largest weapons
manufacturer.

Less than a month later, Sidenor announced
<https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/spain-sidenor-steel-shipment-to-israel-cancelled-amid-ongoing-war-on-gaza-following-protests-from-unions-palestinian-solidarity-movements/>
it was suspending steel sales to Israel through Barcelona port.

Also on 10 June, a report revealed
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/report-france-has-been-supplying-weapons-consistently-israel-beginning>
that France has been shipping weapons to Israel through Charles de Gaulle
airport in Paris, including parts for US-made F-35 warplanes.

Some of the military equipment was transported aboard an Air France flight.

The French union SUD Arien Solidaires announced
<https://www.sudaerien.fr/articles/2025-07-07-non-au-transport-de-materiel-militaire-a-destination-disrael>
its members’ refusal to handle military material destined for Israel.

In contrast with a few years ago, “we’re now at a stage where we don’t need
to start from the beginning and explain why it’s illegal to trade weapons
with Israel,” according to Hever. “Everyone knows it by now. it’s just a
question of exposing it.”
Israel tries to revive mass rapes hoax

Israel is trying to revive its discredited 7 October mass rapes hoax
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/mass-rape-accusation>.

A new report
<https://www.radiosefarad.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/The-Dinah-Project-full-report-A4-pages_web.pdf>
by the Dinah Project, a British-government funded Israeli organization,
claims to be “the most comprehensive assessment to date of the sexual
violence that occurred during and after the attack.”

But after reading it Abunimah and Winstanley found nothing to substantiate
the central claim of the report: that Hamas organized, ordered and
implemented a mass rape campaign on and after 7 October.

“It includes no firsthand testimony of any rape,” Abunimah said
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8TcdwUb_z0>.

Rather, it is a rehash of uncorroborated or already debunked accounts.

The few new elements include very little detail and no evidence. The report
relies on supposed witnesses, including members of the “first responder”
group ZAKA <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/zaka>, who are proven liars.

In contrast to this total lack of evidence, there are reports from UN
agencies and independent human rights organizations containing extensive
evidence of rape and other sexual violence by Israelis against Palestinians
in torture camps, including first-hand accounts.

“And that is given absolutely no airtime,” noted Barrows-Friedman.

The Israeli report suggests lowering legal standards in order to make up
for the lack of evidence, according to Winstanley.

That includes: transitioning “from a victim-centered evidentiary model to a
broader approach that accounts for the systematic silencing of victims.”

Winstanley called this “jargon” aimed at obscuring the fact that, to date,
Israel has still not identified a single victim, living or dead, of a 7
October 2023 rape.

The report also suggests that individual Palestinians should “bear
responsibility for the full range of atrocities committed as part of that
assault even if they did not personally commit each specific act” in other
words it attempts to legitimize the type of collective punishment and guilt
Israel already uses against Palestinians.

The Dinah Project is named after a Bible story where Jacob’s sons massacre
all the men and boys in Shechem – modern-day Nablus – and take all the
women and girls into slavery in retaliation for the rape of Jacob’s
daughter. Even secular Israelis “knowingly chose to name their project
after a genocidal Bible story,” said Winstanley.

“Israel’s feminists are treating the mass rape hoax as a warrant for
genocide,” Winstanley concluded.
Resistance surge

“Israel’s plans are often and continually thwarted by the resistance,” said
contributing editor Jon Elmer speaking on the Livestream
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ipJjZzBHM> about Israel’s plan to force
Palestinians south into Rafah.

June was one of the deadliest months for Israel in Gaza and July has
continued that trend according to Elmer. He counted 30 operations against
Israeli vehicles in Khan Younis in one week from 3 July to 10 July alone.

One complex deadly operation exposed to the Israeli public the Israeli
army’s lie that it controls that area of Gaza. “They clearly do not,” Elmer
said.

One of the resistance’s deadliest attacks also happened last week in the
northern town of Beit Hanoun: at least five Israeli soldiers were killed
and 14 wounded.

To comply with YouTube’s standards, The Electronic Intifada has to edit
resistance videos shown during the Livestream. You can watch the uncensored
videos on Elmer’s X account <https://x.com/jonelmer>.

You can watch the program on YouTube
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCWzluxvoRI>, Rumble
<https://rumble.com/v6vyir0-breaking-news-and-analysis-on-day-643-of-the-gaza-genocide-the-electronic-i.html?e9s=src_v1_cbl%2Csrc_v1_ucp_f>
or Twitter/X <https://x.com/intifada/status/1943339496591991022>, or you
can listen to it on your preferred podcast platform.

*Tamara Nassar produced and directed the program. Michael F. Brown
contributed pre-production assistance and this writer contributed
post-production assistance.*

*Past episodes of The Electronic Intifada Livestream can be viewed on our
YouTube channel <https://www.youtube.com/@TheElectronicIntifada/streams>.*

*Ali Abunimah contributed reporting for this article.*
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