“I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart,” wrote 15-year old Anne Frank in her diary while hiding in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. If she were alive today, she would have been horrified to see that the inheritors of the nightmares of the Holocaust are themselves committing a genocide in Gaza and are gloating over it.
The bitter truth is that a majority of Israelis supported Israel’s actions in Gaza, despite all the international condemnations. Some have even called for the extermination or expulsion of all Palestinians from Gaza, fanatical views that will hopefully be toned down if Trump’s Gaza Plan succeeds. But no peace plan can erase the anti-Palestinian bigotry that has been inculcated in Israel’s youth, which has turned them into a racist and vengeful community with little capacity for human empathy. Today’s Israel belies Anne Frank’s faith in the inherent goodness of people.
That said, Prime Minister Netanyahu and his ministers have unintentionally mobilized millions of citizens around the globe to speak up for the Palestinian cause, many of them for the first time. The sheer numbers of protests, boycotts, teach-ins, etc. that are being organized bear witness to the precipitous drop in Israel’s reputation internationally.
The question now is whether people’s movements inside and outside Israel can carry forward the momentum to hold Netanyahu and his ministers accountable for war crimes and continue the genuine fight for the rights of Palestinians to live as equals in the land of their forefathers.
Zionism on the Brink
In the meantime, Zionists have sunk Israel to newer depths of depravity. Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza City and the forced march of hundreds of thousands of already starving, injured, grieving Gazans to the south, betrayed the extreme cruelty of Israeli leaders, who don’t seem to have a shred of humanity left in them.
Israel’s forced marches of Gazans should remind every decent American of our own mistreatment of the Cherokee people, who were “removed” from their ancestral homes in Georgia in the 1830’s and forced to march to Oklahoma. Thousands died from exposure, starvation, and disease, marking the Trail of Tears as one of the most horrendous events in the genocide of Native Americans.
Nearly 200 years later, the Palestinian “Trail of Tears” is being live-streamed to the world and many Israelis are applauding.
Netanyahu and his Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich are brazenly resurrecting the idea of Eretz Israel (Greater Israel), which was the dream of early Zionists, purportedly abandoned once the UN partition resolution was approved in 1947 — which Zionists have always falsely claimed that they had accepted.
But in reality, the first Prime Minister of Israel and an ardent Zionist, David Ben Gurion, had never abandoned the idea of “Zionism in its maximum scope.” Netanyahu and his ministers are merely pursuing Ben Gurion’s dream and are offering God and the Old Testament as their witnesses to justify and boast about their sadistic acts in pursuit of that dream.
It’s ironic that besides a handful of democrats led by Sen. Bernie Sanders who’re calling for an end to arms and aid to Israel, it is Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green who has been most outspoken about the issue, risking her own future.
The truth is that generations of Israelis born since 1948 have never learned the true history of Israel’s founding, including the disenfranchisement of over 750,000 Palestinians in the Nakba of 1948. Nurit Peled-Elhanan, an Israeli professor calls it Zionification of the education system: “Palestinians don’t exist in Israel’s consciousness or Israeli discourse.” Most younger Israelis, including those in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), think that the conflict started only on Oct 7, 2023 with the deadly attack by Hamas and that Israel is therefore justified in destroying Gaza and its inhabitants.
Jewish-American reporter and podcaster, Katie Halper, compares the current Israeli leadership to the Nazis and is greatly disturbed that: “…the IDF is documenting their own war crimes with glee and are comparing themselves to the Nazis.”
The World Pushes Back
“Criticizing Israel and Zionism are not antisemitic,” assert a growing number of prominent academics and acrtivists around the world, who’re slamming Israel’s war of annihilation against the Palestinians and the complicity of the U.S. in it.
Many lifelong Zionists are in shock as they watch their idea of community and nation-building morph into battle cries for complete destruction of Palestinian society. More and more Jews are also disowning Zionism, proclaiming that it’s counter to the human values of Judaism and is in fact racist, supremacist, cruel, and genocidal.
The TIME chronicles the unprecedented outpouring of solidarity with the Palestinians in videos and photos here.
SBS News, Australia has recorded an astounding 50,122 Gaza-related protests around the world since Oct 7, 2023.
No international conflict in recent memory has brought out so many people on the streets in numerous cities across the globe: People are watching a genocide in real time and are angry that their own governments are doing little to stop it. They have seen first-hand the violence and duplicity of Zionist leaders and are unlikely to buy their victimhood narrative. They are contrasting the behavior of Zionists with the dignity of the people of Gaza, even under heavy duress, and they now understand the insidiousness of Israel’s effort to demonize all Gazans as terrorists and “human animals.”
At the UN General Assembly meeting last week, 142 nations voted in support of the two-state solution, with the US being the only Western nation to vote against. Several countries also came forward with announcements of sanctions against Israel. Netanyahu’s address was met with a mass walk-out of delegates, underscoring the isolation of Israel in the world forum.
The BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) against Israel has also gained ground, and Israel faces boycotts in the field of entertainment, sports, and cultural events. CNN details these in: “From diplomacy to soccer, Israel is becoming a pariah on the global stage” (Sep 28, 2025).
But many feel that these gestures are merely symbolic and are coming late. They point to the fact that the same nations who voted for a Two-state Solution at the UN were quick to fall behind Trump’s Gaza Plan – which makes no promises of when and how Gazans will have a say in their own future and may in fact diminish the likelihood of a Two-state Solution.
The Pro-Israel Lobby
Widespread pushbacks from world citizens are posing new challenges to pro-Israel Zionist lobbies in the U.S. and elsewhere.
The AIPAC (American Israel Political Action Committee) funds the election campaigns of most lawmakers in Washington, and no act of congress can proceed without its blessings. It has been working hard for decades to spread a storybook version of Israel’s founding and “survival,” successfully weaponizing the Holocaust and victimhood to shut down any voice in favor of the Palestinians. The fact that two recent congressional resolutions to end weapon sales to Israel were defeated handily, despite the accusations of war crimes against Israel, speaks volumes about its power and influence. Historically, bipartisan support for Israel is virtually guaranteed in Washington, regardless of how murderous Israel behaves.
Of course, the pro-Israeli lobbies haven’t uttered a word about Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and continue to push the ‘Israel is the victim’ narrative. It’s ironic that besides a handful of democrats led by Sen. Bernie Sanders who’re calling for an end to arms and aid to Israel, it is Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green who has been most outspoken about the issue, risking her own future. Predictably, she’s already under intense attack by AIPAC.
However, AIPAC is on the backfoot these days after the true face of Zionism has been revealed in Gaza. They are beginning to worry about the rising power and unity of people’s movements around the world, which are determined to isolate and punish Israel and Zionism in international fora. So, their attention has now shifted to efforts to whitewash Israel’s war crimes and to blacken the reputations of trenchant critics of Israel.
One of those strategies is to get the US Congress to pass a legislation (H.R. 7921), which would make it much easier to label someone antisemitic for their criticism of Israel and Zionism. This, despite the voices of many Jewish leaders who’re shouting from the rooftops that anti-Zionism does not equate to antisemitism!
That such a law to favor one foreign nation and one community would blatantly run afoul of the First Amendment does not seem to bother our lawmakers. California, a democratic stronghold, has already passed such a law, AB 715, purportedly aimed at dealing with antisemitism in schools, but which has serious consequences for people’s right to criticize the actions of Israel. AB 715 is awaiting the governor’s signature.
Beginning of the End for Zionism?
There is no doubt that the post-Oct 7th 2023 period will be marked by history as the darkest chapter in the lives of Palestinians since 1948. But it’s also a dark chapter in Israel’s history, when a large majority of Israelis lost their humanity and Zionism damaged itself beyond repair. And a period in which the U.S., once described as a “beacon of democracy,” made a conscious decision to partner in the worst genocide since the Holocaust, violating all the democratic and human rights values that it preaches to the rest of the world.
But even a catastrophe opens up new opportunities:
The world is now better equipped to counter the relentless propaganda by pro-Israeli lobbies and to understand the true history of Israel’s creation and the disenfranchisement of the Palestinians.
Numerous outspoken Jewish scholars and historians have emerged to lead the resistance against Zionism and the Netanyahu government, also opening up more productive dialogue between Jews and non-Jews without the constant fear of being labelled antisemitic or Islamophobic.
The culpability of Zionist ideology with the Gaza genocide is a setback for other supremacist ideologies such as Hindutva, which have been diligently following in the footsteps of Zionism. They will now have to reassess their partnership choices, which could well weaken their clout in Washington.
Most importantly, the struggle of the last two years and the gain of new allies has finally liberated Palestinians from their decades of virtual embargo in the West to tell their own stories uncensored.
And the world is listening.
Republished from American Kahani.
