Israeli Scholars Provide Insights into Zionist Psyche

Zionists are "secular" but they use God as their "land agent" who gave them the "promised land", says Professor Avi Shlaim of Oxford University. Jews are God's "chosen people" who are exempt from the rules that apply to non-Jews, according to Israeli author and journalist Gideon Levy. Israel is carrying out "ethnic cleansing … and that may become genocide”, adds Israeli American scholar Omer Bartov. "No, Palestinians did not commit acts of terrorism, Israel did", tweets Miko Peled, an ex IDF soldier and son of a former Israeli general. These few quotes summarize current thoughts of some of the former Zionists.  

Israel Turns Gaza into Rubble

Israeli author and journalist Gideon Levy:

The core of Zionism is the "feeling of being chosen people" that is "deep rooted" in Israel. A consequence of it is that the rules and laws that apply to others do not apply to Israelis. Here's a quote from one of his speeches:   

"This is the core of Zionism. This feeling of chosen people is still very deep rooted in Israel. The consequence is that everything which refers to any other country in the world does not refer to Israel. That we are a special case. That international law should be implemented everywhere, but we are a different case. That a Molotov bottle against a Jewish soldier is not like a Molotov bottle against a Russian soldier because we are different, because we are chosen, because of this damned Jewish supremacy". 

On Israel's campaign of dehumanizing Palestinians, Levy says:

“My biggest struggle is to rehumanize the Palestinians. There’s a whole machinery of brainwashing in Israel which really accompanies each of us from early childhood, and I’m a product of this machinery as much as anyone else. [We are taught] a few narratives that it’s very hard to break. That we Israelis are the ultimate and only victims. That the Palestinians are born to kill, and their hatred is irrational. That the Palestinians are not human beings like us… So you get a society without any moral doubts, without any questions marks, with hardly public debate. To raise your voice against all this is very hard.”

Levy believes that the talk of the peace process and two-state solution is a scam perpetrated by Zionists. Here's Levy in his own words:   

"Now the real turning point should be, for us, the moment that each of us realize that the Israeli occupation is not a temporary phenomenon. I think that most of the people, if not all of them, understand that the occupation is there to stay. And Israel never had the slightest intention to put an end to it. All the efforts were only to mislead the West and to maintain the occupation. All this longest peace process in history, which never led to anywhere, was never aimed to lead to anywhere. All those efforts were only in order to mislead you and enable the occupation to grow, including Oslo". 

Professor Avi Shlaim:

Oxford Professor Avi Shlaim believes that Israel "prefers land to peace", adding that "land grabbing and peacemaking don't go together". Here's his exact quote:

"Land grabbing and peacemaking don’t go together, it’s one or the other, and by constantly expanding settlements, Israel showed that it prefers land to peace....Israel by its actions has shown that it is not interested in having a Palestinian partner for peace because it wants to maintain its control over the territory. Israel refuses to accept Hamas as a negotiating partner. Israel’s position is that Hamas is a terrorist organisation – pure and simple. It will never negotiate with it. Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy has been to let Hamas rule the Gaza Strip, but to contain the Gaza Strip, and this policy collapsed, because Gaza could not be contained."

Professor Omer Bartov:

Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov has warned of "genocide" in Gaza. He has talked about "clear intention of ethnic cleansing" in the narrow strip of two million Palestinians under heavy bombardment by Israeli forces since the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas in Israel. Here's a quote from him:

"So, my sense is the following. Israeli political leaders and military leaders have made very startling and frightening statements about Gaza, speaking about flattening Gaza, speaking about Hamas, but by sort of extending it also, by extension, also Gazans, in general, as human animals, speaking about moving the entire population of Gaza out of Gaza. That is a clear intention of ethnic cleansing. So, those statements show intent. And that’s a genocidal intent, which is often very difficult to prove in genocide. People who carry out genocide don’t always want to say that they’re doing it". 

Former Israeli Soldier Miko Peled:

Miko Peled, whose father was a general in the IDF and who himself served in the Israeli military, says that Israel is the biggest obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Talking about the October 7 surprise attack by Hamas on Israel, he says that "Israel is behaving like a gangster who has been humiliated taking vengeance upon innocent civilians, killing thousands upon thousands". "It's not a question of self-defense, it's a question of brutality and revenge because Israel was humiliated", he adds in an interview on Al Jazeera English

Peled accuses Israel of lying about the October 7 attack. He said the testimony is now showing that most of the Israeli civilians on October 7 were killed by the Israeli helicopters firing indiscriminately.  He says the western governments who support Israel “are supporting the fight against justice, the fight against peace”.

Peled says that “liberal Zionism” is a myth and all forms of Zionism amount, in practice, to the denial of fundamental rights and freedoms for the Palestinian people. This process starts at a young age for Israeli children whose history textbooks claim that the Palestinians left their homes of their own free will, that they were not driven out by Jewish militias in the 1940s. These history books deny what the Palestinians call "Nakbah", meaning Great Catastrophe, that forced them to flee their homes as part of the Zionist plan to ethnically cleanse what is now Israel. 

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  • Riaz Haq

    An influential rabbi (Sharon Brous) with a fast-growing congregation in Los Angeles, Brous, 50, has spent much of her career advocating for human rights, including for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. This past September on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, she used her sermon to publicly warn that the future of “our beloved Israel” was under threat from within. She argued that by denying the “basic rights, dignities and dreams” of millions of Palestinians for decades, Israel’s increasingly “extremist” leaders were undermining the country’s Jewish and democratic ideals. “The existential threat to the state of Israel is internal,” she said. “The call is coming from inside the house.”

    https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/on-gaza-an-american-rabbi-dec...

    American rabbis often avoid criticizing Israel from the pulpit. Particularly at a time of uncertainty and threat for Israelis and Jews around the world, many spiritual leaders worry they will alienate congregants and empower antisemitism if their view of Israel’s policies sounds disloyal. Rabbi Sharon Brous understands such reticence, but she argues that staying silent is irresponsible.

    An influential rabbi with a fast-growing congregation in Los Angeles, Brous, 50, has spent much of her career advocating for human rights, including for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. This past September on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, she used her sermon to publicly warn that the future of “our beloved Israel” was under threat from within. She argued that by denying the “basic rights, dignities and dreams” of millions of Palestinians for decades, Israel’s increasingly “extremist” leaders were undermining the country’s Jewish and democratic ideals. “The existential threat to the state of Israel is internal,” she said. “The call is coming from inside the house.”

    Even after Hamas’s attack on Israel two weeks later on Oct. 7, in which more than 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 taken hostage, her sermons have expressed concern for both Jewish pain and Palestinian suffering. She has railed against Hamas’s campaign of “brutality and terror” against civilians, including many Israeli peace activists, but argues that the real fault line is not between Israelis and Palestinians but between those who embrace violence as an answer and those who don’t. “You either believe that every single person is an image of God, or you don’t actually care about human life,” she said on Oct. 28.

    Yet as someone who has lost friends and received death threats for calling for compassion across faiths and races, Brous admits that she has been horrified by efforts to defend Hamas among groups she had thought were allies. That a “retrograde, totalitarian, misogynistic terror regime” has become “a hero of the left” has rudely awakened her to the “very deep roots of antisemitism,” she says. She points to reports in October of protesters screaming “gas the Jews” in Sydney, Australia, and of rioters torching a synagogue in Tunisia. She has been alarmed by cases of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses that have threatened Jewish students, including at Columbia University, her alma mater.

    “Every time somebody finds themselves tongue-tied when asked to condemn the rape of Israelis on Oct. 7, I find myself thinking this is not hard,” she says over video from Los Angeles. “You should be able to simply say that under no circumstances do we condone acts of abduction, rape and murder of innocent civilians, and we must work toward a just future for Palestinians who suffer terribly under the status quo.” She adds that it is not possible to “build a society that is free of racism while holding on to one of the oldest racisms, which is against Jews.”

  • Riaz Haq

    Christiane Amanpour
    @amanpour
    “If we shall not end the occupation, we shall not have security,” warns Ami Ayalon, former head of Shin Bet, “and if we shall not end this occupation, we shall not have democracy.”

    In an extraordinarily candid interview, Israel’s former internal security chief condemns what he calls Prime Minister Netanyahu’s “toxic leadership,” and argues that as the war continues, “we are losing our identity as people, as Jews, and as human beings.”

    Watch our full conversation here.

    https://x.com/amanpour/status/1805295431355973645

    -------------

    In January 2024, Ami Ayalon, a former head of Israel's internal security force, the Shin Bet, said that Israel will not have security until Palestinians have their own state. Ayalon also called for Israeli authorities to release Marwan Barghouti, the jailed leader of the second intifada, to help negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state. Ayalon also said that Israel is not at war with the Palestinians.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/14/shin-bet-ami-ayalon-c...

    Ami Ayalon, a retired admiral who also commanded Israel’s navy and was wounded in battle and decorated for his service, also said destroying Hamas was not a realistic military goal, and the current operation in Gaza risked entrenching support for the group.

    “We Israelis will have security only when they, Palestinians, will have hope. This is the equation,” he said in an interview at his home. “To say the same in military language: you cannot deter anyone, a person or a group, if he believes he has nothing to lose.”

    He said Israel’s war in Gaza was a just one, after the horrors of the 7 October attack, in which Hamas slaughtered at least 1,200 people and took more than 240 others hostage. But too many Israelis could not accept that Hamas did not represent all Palestinians, or that they had a legitimate claim to their own state, he said.

    Ayalon said most Israelis believed that “all Palestinians are Hamas or supporters of Hamas”, and they did not accept the concept of a Palestinian identity. “We see them as people, not ‘a people’, a nation,” he said. “We cannot accept [the idea of a Palestinian people] because if we do, it creates a huge obstacle in the concept of the state of Israel.”

    He believes releasing Barghouti, a Palestinian who has been jailed since 2002, serving a life sentence for murder after leading the second intifada, would be a vital step towards meaningful negotiations. According to recent polls he would beat senior Hamas figure Ismail Haniyeh in open elections.

  • Riaz Haq

    Christiane Amanpour
    @amanpour
    “If we shall not end the occupation, we shall not have security,” warns Ami Ayalon, former head of Shin Bet, “and if we shall not end this occupation, we shall not have democracy.”

    In an extraordinarily candid interview, Israel’s former internal security chief condemns what he calls Prime Minister Netanyahu’s “toxic leadership,” and argues that as the war continues, “we are losing our identity as people, as Jews, and as human beings.”

    Watch our full conversation here.

    https://x.com/amanpour/status/1805295431355973645

    -------------

    In January 2024, Ami Ayalon, a former head of Israel's internal security force, the Shin Bet, said that Israel will not have security until Palestinians have their own state. Ayalon also called for Israeli authorities to release Marwan Barghouti, the jailed leader of the second intifada, to help negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state. Ayalon also said that Israel is not at war with the Palestinians.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/14/shin-bet-ami-ayalon-c...

    Ami Ayalon, a retired admiral who also commanded Israel’s navy and was wounded in battle and decorated for his service, also said destroying Hamas was not a realistic military goal, and the current operation in Gaza risked entrenching support for the group.

    “We Israelis will have security only when they, Palestinians, will have hope. This is the equation,” he said in an interview at his home. “To say the same in military language: you cannot deter anyone, a person or a group, if he believes he has nothing to lose.”

    He said Israel’s war in Gaza was a just one, after the horrors of the 7 October attack, in which Hamas slaughtered at least 1,200 people and took more than 240 others hostage. But too many Israelis could not accept that Hamas did not represent all Palestinians, or that they had a legitimate claim to their own state, he said.

    Ayalon said most Israelis believed that “all Palestinians are Hamas or supporters of Hamas”, and they did not accept the concept of a Palestinian identity. “We see them as people, not ‘a people’, a nation,” he said. “We cannot accept [the idea of a Palestinian people] because if we do, it creates a huge obstacle in the concept of the state of Israel.”

    He believes releasing Barghouti, a Palestinian who has been jailed since 2002, serving a life sentence for murder after leading the second intifada, would be a vital step towards meaningful negotiations. According to recent polls he would beat senior Hamas figure Ismail Haniyeh in open elections.