[News] Europe's monster, Palestine's nightmare

[Anti-Imperialist News]

english.almayadeen.net
<https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/opinion/europe-s-monster--palestine-s-nightmare>
Europe's monster, Palestine's nightmare
Tariq Marzbaan
June 28, 2026
------------------------------

"Israel": The colonial project, the victim narrative and the
instrumentalisation of language

   - [image: Today, the meaning of this phrase is clearer than ever:]
   <https://alpha-en-media.almayadeen.net/media/image/2026/6/28/28602a0f-6d1d-4872-943e-7b7fa7aab947.png?width=1000>
   Today, the meaning of this phrase is clearer than ever: "Never again"
   applies only to Zionist Jews. All others can be massacred and exterminated
   with impunity. (Al Mayadeen English; Illustrated by Fatima Attieh)

Virtually everything that needs to be said, written and shown to understand
the origins of "Israel" and the suffering of the Palestinians has already
been covered. Yet many still ask: How did it come to this? What went wrong?

The answer: *Nothing went wrong* – from the start, everything proceeded
according to the Zionists' plan and worldview.
The Holocaust as a founding myth

After the Second World War, the full extent of the European genocide
against the Jews gradually came to light. When "Israel" was founded in
1948, its founders elevated the Holocaust to the founding myth of the
"Jewish state": "Israel" was to be the place where Jews would be protected
from future persecution.

Yet this myth did not merely serve as a moral façade to conceal and justify
the colonial, land-grabbing nature of European-Ashkenazi Zionism. It also
became a source of identity-forming indoctrination and a propaganda tool
for combating any criticism of "Israel" – Norman Finkelstein aptly calls
this the "Holocaust Industry."
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_Industry>

The Zionist movement's willingness to cooperate with so-called "
*anti-Semites*" when it suited its purposes was evident even before the
state's founding. The "Haavara Agreement" (1933–1939) between the Jewish
Agency and the Nazi regime enabled 60,000 German Jews to emigrate
<https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/refugees> to Palestine –
with parts of their assets – while Jewish organisations worldwide
<https://wwv.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206190.pdf> called
for a boycott of Nazi Germany.
Zionist ideology and its roots

The first generation of Zionists were mostly secular people of various
political stripes. Their era – the late 19th and early 20th centuries – was
the age of rising nationalisms, which fuelled anti-colonial wars in
colonised regions and culminated in Western fascism and industrialised mass
murder. The Zionist founding figures were deeply influenced by these racist
ideologies – and the long-standing religious belief in Jewish supremacy
made it all the easier for them to adopt such ways of thinking.

Although Theodor Herzl and other Zionist thinkers invoke European
"anti-Semites", pogroms, and centuries of suffering, they adopt the very
same racist mindset of their persecutors as a model for their own agenda.
The difference is that their racism is directed not against Jews, but
against Arabs and especially against Muslim and Christian Palestinians –
those amongst whom Jews had lived in peace for centuries. They want a state
for Jews, but see themselves as white Europeans, their allies and an
extension of their power.

Only against this backdrop can one understand a remark such as that made by
CDU leader Friedrich Merz (now German Chancellor): "*They *[the Israelis]*
are doing the dirty work for us."* This also explains the racism directed
in "Israel" to this day against Jewish immigrants from Africa and
non-Western regions – against Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews.

That "Israel" was a colonial project became apparent immediately upon its
founding. "Plan Dalet" (March 1948)
<https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Ethnic-Cleansing-of-Palestine/Ilan-Pappe/9781851685554>,
approved by David Ben-Gurion, was a military plan for the systematic
expulsion of Palestinians from strategic areas. Between December 1947 and
autumn 1948, 531 Palestinian villages and towns were destroyed or
depopulated <https://www.zochrot.org/>. From the outset, "Israel" was
planned as a Western colony – but sold externally as a "secular state," the
region's "only democracy," and "the only safe place for Jews".

Perceptive Jewish intellectuals saw through this early on. In a 1948 open
letter signed by Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein and others
<https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948/mode/2up>,
published in the *New York Times*, they warned of "fascism" within the
Zionist movement and described Menachem Begin's Cherut party as "terrorist"
and "Nazi-like in its structure."
'Israel's' function for the West

For the declining colonial powers, Britain and France, the establishment of
"Israel" provided an opportunity to withdraw from the region without losing
power or influence. For the heirs to the British Empire, the USA, "Israel"
is their extended arm and the largest military base in the region – or, as
US officials have repeatedly emphasised, "America's unsinkable aircraft
carrier in the Middle East".

"Israel" is the only nuclear power in the region, with an estimated 90 to
400 nuclear warheads <https://www.nti.org/countries/israel/>. The USA and
France helped build this arsenal <https://nuke.fas.org/guide/israel/nuke/>.
Germany supplied Dolphin-class submarines, allegedly capable of carrying
nuclear-capable cruise missiles – a direct German involvement in Israeli
nuclear deterrence. In 2024 alone, the German government approved arms
exports to "Israel" worth over 300 million euros
<https://corruption-tracker.org/case/german-submarine-sales-to-israel>– in
the midst of the Gaza war.

 For the Germans and all other Western nations that actively participated
in Judeophobia, persecution, and ultimately the systematic slaughter of
Jews under German leadership, "Israel" was a moral relief – for the
Germans, the best detergent for their soiled conscience.

For the surrounding states, "Israel" became a Damocles sword. For the
Palestinians, it became the Nakba – the catastrophe that has continued
unabated since the arrival of the first European Zionists and continues to
this day. We are all currently witnessing its ongoing climax: the Genocide
in Gaza.
The narrative of self-defence and religious legitimation

Given the atrocities suffered during the racist pogroms in Christian Europe
– particularly the crimes of the German Nazis and their fascist allies – it
is understandable that the survivors were traumatised and distrustful. This
applies also to those who went to Palestine to establish what they believed
to be a safe homeland.

>From this trauma arose the legend: anything Israelis do is their natural
right to self-defence. This narrative has been successfully conveyed to the
world's population, and most people have accepted it to this day.

Added to this is the religious narrative: God chose the Jews and promised
them that land. Thus, "Israel" possesses not only secular, legal,
historical, and moral legitimacy – derived from "anti-Semitism" and the
Holocaust – but also divine legitimacy. The framework of this thinking is
comparable to the "blood and soil" ideology, the "Aryan superman," and
Hitler's belief that he was chosen by "Providence" – the Nazis' substitute
for God.

This may sound crude and naïve. Yet that is exactly how Zionists portray
"Israel": recall Netanyahu at the UN, using a comic-book drawing of an
old-fashioned bomb to illustrate the alleged Iranian nuclear threat; recall
former Chancellor Scholz, who, even when confronted with the genocidal
massacre in Gaza, still invoked "*Israel's right to self-defence"*. On
Holocaust Remembrance Day 2023, he wrote in *Die Zeit* that "*'Never again'
is every day*", even as the Israelis continued their Holocaust in Gaza.
This phrase is trotted out by German politicians whenever "Israel" is
concerned; when confronted with the Genocide in Gaza, they either remain
silent or resort to the cliché of "self-defence" – laying bare their
dishonesty, hypocrisy and double standards.
>From victim to perpetrator

It is understandable that Holocaust survivors identified as victims and
were seen as such by others. Distrust, victimhood, and even paranoia can be
understood as psychological consequences of a Holocaust. However, another
equally logical consequence would have been the rejection of all violence,
persecution and oppression against all people – expressed in a sincere "*Never
again*", as some survivors and genuine anti-fascists have always advocated.
But for "Israel", the first option was exploited.

How could a people who had suffered so much transform, within such a short
time, into a state that adopts and practises the ideology and methods of
its tormentors? Even former Zionists now ask: *"What went wrong?"*

The answer: *Nothing*. The founding fathers and mothers saw themselves from
the very beginning as colonialist occupiers in foreign territory. *"A land
without a people for a people without a land"* and "There is no such thing
as Palestinians"
<https://www.academia.edu/76499683/Palestine_in_Israeli_School_Books_Ideology_and_Propaganda_in_Education>
– these were their guiding principles.

The expulsion, disenfranchisement and physical extermination of the local
population were taken for granted. To carry this out, their own people had
to be indoctrinated into hardened fascists, while Palestinians were
declared subhuman. Any mention of Palestinians was largely taboo; if they
were spoken of, it was as Arabs, terrorists, or since October 2023,
"human-like animals" and *Amalek*.
Indoctrination and racism – in society and in law

The image that the Israeli state conveys of Palestinians in its school
textbooks differs little from what the Nazis taught Germans about Jews. The
Israeli scholar Nurit Peled-Elhanan has documented how Palestinians are
systematically portrayed as "primitive," "hostile," and "culturally
inferior" – if they are acknowledged as existing at all and not depicted
exclusively as a terrorist threat
<https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/8772>. The victims of yesteryear
always had a sinister affinity for their racist tormentors.

 In the logic of this indoctrination, the world outside "Israel" consists
entirely of "anti-Semites" waiting to annihilate the Jews. The main enemies
are not the historically entrenched "anti-Semites" of Christian Europe, but
primarily Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims.

Thus, over more than 70 years of brainwashing, a fascist society has been
moulded in which up to 80 per cent of the population advocates the total
extermination of Palestinians.

Racism is also legally institutionalised. The "Nation-State Law of 2018
<https://main.knesset.gov.il/EN/activity/documents/BasicLawsPDF/BasicLawNationState.pdf>"
declares "Israel" the "nation-state of the Jewish people," downgrades
Arabic from an official language to one of "special status," and declares
Jewish settlements a "national asset". Over 65 Israeli laws directly
or indirectly
discriminate against Palestinian citizens
<https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/7771>.

 Yet "Israel" and its Western protectors – the real anti-Semites! – do
everything to keep anti-Semitism alive in the world and even encourage it.
For no other means stifles criticism of "Israel" or pro-Palestinian
statements as reliably as the accusation of anti-Semitism wielded as a
weapon.
The distortion of the concept of anti-semitism

 How an already questionable term was further distorted and repurposed as a
weapon against criticism of "Israel".

 Herzl wrote in *The Jewish State*: "*The anti-Semites will be our closest
friends ... because we will form a bulwark against the barbarians [the
Arabs] with the Jewish state ..."* By *"anti-Semites"* he meant the true
ones: the Christian-European racists who, in his era, were shaping the
destiny of humanity. In this sense, Zionism can be understood as an
extension of Christian-European racism – and its proponents, from Herzl to
Netanyahu, as racists. They regard Palestinians in particular, and Arabs
and Muslims in general, as barbarians and inferior beings.

This thinking was moulded into a political tool. The IHRA's 2016 "Working
Definition of Anti-Semitism
<https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definition-antisemitism>"
lists 11 examples – 7 of which relate to "anti-Semitism" directed against
"Israel", including "questioning Israel's right to exist". Prominent Jewish
scholars, including Israeli historian Moshe Zimmermann, warned that this
definition criminalises legitimate criticism of "Israel"
<https://pij.org/articles/1831/the-ihra-working-definition-of-antisemitism-a-legal-perspective>
and suppresses pro-Palestinian expression.

 How this censorship works was shown in 2012, when the German writer Günter
Grass, in his poem "What Must Be Said," described "Israel" as a threat to
world peace. "Israel" immediately imposed an entry ban on the Nobel laureate
<https://www.bbc.com/news/world-17650548>; in Germany, he was defamed as an
"anti-Semite."
"*Never Again*" – A perverted phrase

The slogan "*Never again*" became established in post-war Germany as the
guiding principle of the "denazified" political class, its backers, and the
"liberated" population. With the student movement of 1968, it became a
political rallying cry and part of the damaged national identity of
post-war generations.

Whilst genuinely meant immediately after the German atrocities came to
light, over time it has been reinterpreted and transformed into a tool that
can be used at will. In 2008, Angela Merkel declared before the Knesset
<https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/service/newsletter-und-abos/bulletin/rede-von-bundeskanzlerin-dr-angela-merkel-796170>
that "Israel"'s security was "*part of Germany's raison d'état*" – a
formula never adopted by parliament or legally defined, yet which has ever
since bound German policy unconditionally to Israeli interests. In 2023, Olaf
Scholz reiterated this
<https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/suche/regierungserklaerung-von-bundeskanzler-olaf-scholz-2230150>
in the context of the Gaza War – whilst Israeli ministers spoke publicly of
the "voluntary resettlement" of Palestinians from Gaza.[13] As early as
1999, Green Party Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer had reduced the phrase
to absurdity when he abused it to justify the German invasion of Yugoslavia.

The German population, in particular, will at some point confront the
painful reality that they have been complicit in a genocide for the second
time within a century.

Today, in the face of the ongoing Genocide against Palestinians and
Lebanese, the meaning of this phrase is clearer than ever: "*Never again*"
applies only to Zionist Jews. All others can be massacred and exterminated
with impunity.
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