The terrible siege of Lenningrad (St. Petersburg) lasted 872-days as German and Finnish military forces encircled the city. It was only when the harsh winters froze Lake Ladoga that the Road of Life could be established. A lifeline of trucks and mules and makeshift rail brought food and ammunition to the besieged city. While half a million civilians left—walking over the treacherous frozen water and through a historically cold winter—German aircraft harassed and bombed those departing along with anyone bringing in supplies and reinforcements. It was a nightmare of human endurance and courage, a symbolic defiance to Adolf Hitler’s ambitions. Lenningrad has become synonymous with a long and enduring siege, as well as the indominable human spirit.
The Israeli siege and blockade of Gaza has gone past 1000-days. It is unlikely that history will record the genocide as anything other than an act of policy conducted by a nation-state defending itself from terrorism and it’s own annihilation. Since the October 7 attack on Israel from Hamas, the world has been unwilling or incapable of stopping the revenge and widespread expansion from Israel and the United States in the Middle East. It’s not just that Gaza, where Hamas is based, was punished. The West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran have all been invaded, bombed, or attacked as an ongoing means of Israeli and American exceptionalism. That enemies must be pushed back and exterminated to retain hegemonic dominance is a reason that many policy defenders openly express, despite the growing death toll.
If innocent people must suffer because a terror organization like Hamas extends some form of political control over them, does this not then validate most other forms of terror? When collective punishment is imposed against a population because some members of that population, even in government, committed a crime, that is known to be a moral wrong. Believing you’re above that universal standard is a privilege only afforded to the most powerful nations of the West and their allies, and is enshrined as part of the Israeli national identity and heritage. Every historic wrong inflicted on the Jewish people the world over has allowed the modern state of Israel to claim every action it takes is an act of survival. And the narrative is that any criticism of their bloodletting is classic antisemitism.
In contrast, some of the earliest and loudest criticis of Zionism have been religious Jews, secular members of the community, and even survivors of the Holocaust. Injustice committed is not a cover to do the same against others on any scale. But Israel receives aid, weapons, and political cover because its lobbying organizations pay well. And, especially among select parts of American Christianity, there is an ideological zealotry for Zionism. From Hollywood to Big Tech, adherence and submission to the Israeli line is given and ingrained. Any criticism within those circles is dangerous professionally, regardless of that country’s Apartheid or its intentional killing of innocent people, including children.
For many casual observers the world over, the response to October 7 has been reasonable, just as the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq and the wider Global War on Terror was “known” to be a reasonable response to the September 11 attack on the United States. The origins of the October and September attacks do not matter. The revenge of the terrorists and their motivations are understood to be criminal, vicious, and unjustified. The response and what inspired those attacks is always justified and credible. The cycle is a one-sided narrative which leads to further violence, an endless war and a clash of civilizations which ordinarily have and could get along if not for the ambitions of those who profit and the radicals who seem to arise whenever war is inflicted on a region.
The world is witnessing both an extermination of human beings and the harsh reality of settler colonialism but little has been done outside of condemnation and criticism. To criticize the state of Israel’s policies and the views of extreme Zionists is to be conflated with antisemitism. The power of pro-Israel lobbyists in many key government positions and numerous media outlets reveal an obvious hypocrisy in liberal democracy and these international organizations. Allied nations who supply Israel and support its flouting of international law remain silent or, when criticism is public, it is a token gesture to placate a thin thread of decency.
Many of the governments most fixated on reinforcing Israeli state policy are the same which brow beat other countries over their treatment of political prisoners and free speech violations. But among these Israeli allies, police officers arrest individuals for singing song lyrics, wearing the wrong words on their t-shirts, or any emblem which resembles a certain flag, even fruit! In many ways, the liberal West has declined into an illiberal conglomerate of insecure governments grasping at retaining global dominance and legitimacy (while growing their own police states at home).
Israel has expanded its occupation zone in Gaza with plans to take over the territory completely. The goal seems to be the creation of a Palestinian ghetto where inhabitants will be processed and exiled from the ruins of their homes. What remains of Gaza will, in turn, be claimed by settlers and investors. The rubble and the dead buried under it will be cleared so that real estate speculators, corporations, and colonists may move in. U.S. President Donald Trump speculated that Gaza could be turned into a new “Riviera,” igoring any legal implications or moral concerns—the real estate king who made millions from eminent domain is not concerned about that, and neither are his partners.
It is hard to gain accurate numbers on the dead. There are those whose bodies have been found underneath debris and indentified, and estimates of who is still missing. But we are left with independently confirmed reports of little girls being pulled in pieces from ruins, a disabled boy torn to pieces by IDF dogs, a man sodomized whose rapists were heralded on Israeli TV as heroes, aid workers massacred and the scene of the crime covered up, infants whose heads and hearts were targeted by snipers as part of a sick game of accuracy, and starving children rounded up and beaten. Each one is a human being condemned to suffer because of who they are and where they were born. The conclusions of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry have been unambiguous.
The unfortunate reality is that the Israeli government and its backers will achieve their goals. The scattered opposition to the genocide are thin and without political power or cohesion. In time, Gaza and perhaps the West Bank will be as historical as the Indian territories of North America or the Aboriginal lands in Australia: symbolically remembered but gone in practical autonomy. That’s even assuming future Israelis and their government will learn any empathy from the legacy they are leaving.
