Sometimes, in the depths of a despairing soliloquy, I ask myself how the world can stand by and allow the live-streamed mass slaughter of fellow human beings to continue. With the genocide in Gaza now well into its second year, it is reasonable to question why a world that declared “Never Again” after the Holocaust can stand by while another one unfolds, live-streamed no less, in front of its very eyes?

The reasons for this are manifold. But one of the key ones is the success with which the powers that are prosecuting, aiding and abetting the genocide have generated narratives for public consumption that seek to justify their barbarity. From the very outset, Israel and its accomplices have sought legitimacy from their own populations as well as those outside by presenting Palestinians as sub-human and therefore not worthy of being treated by human standards. Alongside these run the stock denials, obfuscations and misrepresentations that have become a familiar occurrence in the unending catalogue of atrocities committed by the collective West.

The first essay in this issue of the Long View by Denijal Jegić lays out the various ways that these justifications are now also being applied to Lebanon following the Zionist state’s invasion of that country. Using their trusty handmaiden, the mainstream mass media, Jegić shows how the genocidaires and their accomplices are utilizing various devices to make palatable the disproportionate and indiscriminate bombing of schools, hospitals, mosques and residential premises. From tailoring of language, omission, blaming the victim, to dehumanizing and misrepresenting them, he shows how the media is playing an indispensable role in shaping public opinion to stomach the unconscionable. 

Of course, not everyone buys the official line and for those who see through the façade and seek to answer the call of their conscience to challenge the genocide another layer of repression is necessary. So we find genocidaire states resorting to ever more repressive measures against protestors and activists in order to prevent their complicity from being exposed and opposed,

In our second piece Arzu Merali sets out how Germany has been the biggest culprit, imposing a near zero-tolerance approach to anti-Israel activities. In fact, nowhere has the emptiness of the Western claim to being the exemplar of the fundamental human right of freedom of expression been more exposed than in the land of the Nazi Holocaust. Here, protestors and activists have been demonised and brutalised to a degree unseen in recent times in the West, mainly because an Islamophobia riddled political system views Palestinian rights as a Muslim, and thereby, illegitimate cause.

Berlin’s authoritarian slide has been mirrored to a lesser degree by Britain where the political establishment is just as Islamophobic and immovably invested in Israel’s survival as the West’s strongman in the Middle East but where also the anti-Israel movement has internalised the red lines set by its rivals.

One of those red lines is the relative immunity that has hitherto been extended to Zionism as an ideology by large sections of the left, either because they still believe in the fiction of a socialism driven non-violent settlement of Israel or because they do not want to alienate Zionists and centrists inside the wider anti-racism movement.

The genocide in Gaza has blown open the contradiction that exists in this marriage of convenience. Accommodating Zionism is counterproductive. It legitimises Zionism by admitting that what is at root a colonial racist project contains some redeeming features. More and more voices calling for a clean break with all Zionists and beyond that the DeZionisation of politics, economy and society.

Foremost among these is Prof. David Miller who set a free speech precedent in February 2024 when he won an employment tribunal against Bristol University which had fired him following bogus complaints of anti-Semitism from Zionist organisations and students. The tribunal judgment established that anti-Zionism was a legitimate and therefore protected belief, giving a boost to pro-Palestine justice campaigners who have shied away from confronting Zionism head on for fear of being accused of Jew hate. In his piece for the Long View, Prof. Miller proposes how we might go about De-Zionising British schools which he considers to be a breeding ground for genocidal and racist pro-Israeli views.

If challenging the foundational beliefs of Zionism is key to challenging Israel, then so we must also confront the ideas that bind Zionists to the very concept of Israel, argues João Silva Jordão in the final essay in this edition. According to Jordão, Israel has been sold to world Jewry as “simultaneously a home, a representative and a vehicle for Jewish people and Jewish values.”

But as the Zionist state is attacked on multiple fronts, military, economic, political and legal, and continues to wage a genocide in the name of Judaism, this narrative is increasingly being questioned by Jews themselves. And, “if Israel is no longer seen as being supported by Jews, nor of representing Judaism, nor much less of providing a safe haven for Jews, then it could face a more humiliating future than military defeat – it could very well be ousted as a fraud about to crumble under the weight of its own underlying contradictions,” says Jordão.

Whilst carrying on our different struggles to end the genocide must continue at full power and pace, planning for the after-effects once this is over is also a must.  To do so, we must learn some hard lessons by recognising the repeated mistakes made in solidarity and advocacy movements.  We must plan for de-Zionisation, just as Europe (with what appears not to be faint success) planned de-Nazification.  These essays are a small contribution to that future.  Please help spread the word.