Genocide ‘morally justifiable’ offers another stage towards the abyss

Soon the far right and orthodox draft dodgers will be the bigger security threat to Israel than any Palestinians, assuming that some Palestinians will be left, with Smotrich and Ben Gvir in the government. Genocides start with words and are legally identified by the murderous intent of the perpetrator. The intent of the Palestinian terror groups has always been clear. Now, for the first time, leading Israeli politicians are calling genocide “morally justifiable.”

Smotrich is expressing the sad truth about the mindset and intent of the far right in stating the fact that the only power preventing genocidal escalation is global community pressure. At the same time, he is subconsciously moving the limits of what is a tolerated solution for his own hard-line electorate.  The voice of this global community is weakening, and beginning to normalize the daily body count in the region. Hundreds of global human rights and genocide prevention centers have become numbed by the regional political complexity, losing funding sources, and attracting hatred if they utter any statement. Thus they dodge leadership and sell their ideas cheap for a bit of corporate stability.

Netanyahu is on a political and narcissistic path of no return and his only option to cling to power and dodge imprisonment is to escalate. In this way he’s taken the Israelis hostage in order to cynically gain political traction with the “besieged fortress” syndrome. He’s done so first politically, and now security wise. His government, the same one which displayed shocking security impotence on October 7th, is now about to escalate into a major regional war which has little chance to finish with an Israeli strategic victory. This has the potential to become another war of attrition. Long term, it will be lethal to Israeli economy and devastating to the population.

Netanyahu, Trump, and Putin are the 3 leaders in this world for whom this war is needed now. For Netanyahu it makes the only guarantee of freedom and not going down in disgrace. For Trump this may win the elections by holding the Democrats responsible for another war and in such a way preventing Americans to enter the promised land of MAGA. For Putin, who with the Iranian proxies procured October 7th, it means engaging global attention and the US military in the Middle East, which gives a free hand to strangle Ukraine.

It took 50 years of the Zionist dream and close to 80 years to build the country amidst at times impossible compromises. The country is a miracle created against the German Nazi will of final solution and it must never succumb to calling genocide “morally justifiable”.