Europe’s Monster, Palestine’s Nightmare
“Israel”: The Colonial Project, the Victim Narrative and the Instrumentalisation of Language
by Tariq Marzbaan – Al Mayadeen English
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 the State of “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.”[1]
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 to Palestine – with parts of their assets – while Jewish organisations worldwide called for a boycott of Nazi Germany.[2]
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), 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.[3] 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, 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.”[4]
“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. The USA and France helped build this arsenal.[5] 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 – in the midst of the Gaza war.[6]
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”[7] – 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.[8] 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” 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”.[9] Over 65 Israeli laws directly or indirectly discriminate against Palestinian citizens.[10]
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” 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” and suppresses pro-Palestinian expression.[11]
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; in Germany, he was defamed as an “anti-Semite.”[12]
“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 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 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.
Sources:
[1]: Norman Finkelstein: The Holocaust Industry (2000)
[2]: Yad Vashem: The Haavara Agreement; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: The Haavara Agreement https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206190.pdf +
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-haavara-agreement
[3]: Ilan Pappé: The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006) https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Ethnic-Cleansing-of-Palestine/Ilan-Pappe/9781851685554; Zochrot: Documentation of Destroyed Palestinian Villages https://www.zochrot.org/en/site/index
[4]: New York Times, December 4, 1948: Letter to the Editor, signed by Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, et al https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/17/specials/arendt-letter.html
discussion of the Letter: https://www.history.com/news/albert-einstein-letter-israel-fascism
[5]: Nuclear Threat Initiative: Israel – Nuclear https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/israel-nuclear/; Federation of American Scientists: Israeli Nuclear Weapons Program https://nuke.fas.org/guide/israel/nuke/
[6]: Tagesschau / Deutsche Welle: Reports on German arms exports to Israel and Dolphin-class submarines (2023/2024) https://www.tagesschau.de/investigativ/dolphin-u-boote-israel-deutschland-101.html
[7]: infamous quote of Golda Meir
[8]: Nurit Peled-Elhanan: Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education (2012) https://www.academia.edu/76499683/Palestine_in_Israeli_School_Books_Ideology_and_Propaganda_in_Education;
Adalah: Schulbuchstudie (2017)
https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/8772 Adalah: Textbook study (2017).
[9]: Knesset: Basic Law: Israel – The Nation State of the Jewish People (2018) https://knesset.gov.il/laws/special/eng/BasicLawNationState.pdf
[10]: Adalah: Discriminatory Laws Database https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/7771
[11]: IHRA: Working Definition of Anti-Semitism https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definitions-charters/working-definition-antisemitism; Geoffrey Bindman: “Legal Opinion on the IHRA Definition” (2018) https://pij.org/articles/1831/the-ihra-working-definition-of-antisemitism-a-legal-perspective; The Guardian: “EU urged to drop IHRA anti-Semitism definition over free speech concerns” (2020) https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/dec/14/eu-urged-to-drop-ihra-antisemitism-definition-over-free-speech-concerns
[12]: Spiegel (2012): “Israel erklärt Günter Grass zur Persona non grata” https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/israel-erklaert-guenter-grass-zur-persona-non-grata-a-826467.html; BBC (2012): “Israel bars German Nobel laureate Günter Grass” https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17656276
[13]: Angela Merkel: Speech before the Knesset, March 18, 2008 https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/service/newsletter-und-abos/bulletin/rede-von-bundeskanzlerin-dr-angela-merkel-796170; Olaf Scholz: Government statement, October 12, 2023 https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/suche/regierungserklaerung-von-bundeskanzler-olaf-scholz-2230150