An Excellent Solution to a Pressing Problem

All but two governments in the world agree that the slaughter of Gazans and decimation of Gaza must stop. None – but these two governments – fund it openly, and applaud it behind closed doors. The strip has been buried, along with many of its men, women and children, their belongings, their pets and livestock, in the dust and rubble of what was before. Those living are now being starved and chased in circles by the truly pathetic IDF, stupidly sharing proof of their criminality on social media, oddly expecting that there will be no trials, punishment, or retaliation.

The spiraling fear and narcissistic rage of 7 million Israelis has been created, not calmed, by a state experiment – political Zionism – gone horribly wrong. Last century’s racialist colonialism, clothed in a flawed mythology, veiled by a false religiosity, shaded by a hatred of stateless tribes by a people who themselves traded badly, tribe for state. This admixture of chaos is today evident on every dubious and shifting border of Israel.

The world begs that the genocide stop, that the perpetrators of genocide be brought to justice. But global begging has not worked. Neither has the growing sense of global guilt, or even late-stage panicked reaction to the imminent Zionist-required starvation of two million people for the collective crime of not being European or Jewish in Palestine.

The IDF tsunami in Gaza has never been a military conflict, nor a defensive operation. Instead, it is the defining symptom of a diseased and defective state that, in its ache to politically survive, is itself committing committing political suicide. It is time for triage, not only for Gaza, but for Israel itself.

The proposal that follows is offered as a kinder and more lasting solution for Israeli security in Palestine. It is inspired by the latest Israeli plan for the land they ruined, and the people they are trying to exterminate, but unlike that one, will serve both sides in this conflict for centuries to come, rather than creating even more fear, more war, and more destruction.

In designing the self-governing religious state to be constructed in Palestine, Zionists ignored proven contemporary cases. The world already had a successful model of a small, religiously-defined, self-governed state, supported grandly by a diaspora, one that influences widely and has few security concerns: the Vatican, the influential and unifying hub of world Catholicism.

Zionists harnessed two mythologies to drag and drive European Jews to Palestine. Atrocity narratives of World War II and biblical narratives of a promised land of milk and honey served as stick and carrot for urban Jews reporting for socialist agricultural duty in Palestine. To deal with the fact that the land was already populated and owned, a kind of Zionist warrior ethos was coaxed into being, an apotheotic murder ethos written in the Talmud as “Rise and Kill First.” Christians celebrating this aspect of political Zionism – and many Christian Zionists do celebrate it – reveal their deep ignorance of the words and example of Jesus Christ, among other things.

European-derived Israelis can claim no affinity for the land in practical terms, and Palestine under Israeli occupation has become literally unnatural, opposed to nature. It is polluted by concrete and unnecessary construction of roads and fences – to ensure the strict apartheid and “safety” of God’s chosen people. The topsoil been scraped and mounded as Israel destroys all living things, as they prepare for the construction of Soviet-looking settler compounds – complete with more isolating walls, fences, and concrete.

It is as if Israelis covet not the land they destroy and sanitize, but the fences, the walls, lights on all night, never-ending patrols, as ghosts surely gather in the shadows.

The State of Israel’s disconnection from the land, its fear of wildness, its grating at the sounds and smells of the natural world, is captured in the performance art of killing and bulldozing ancient Palestinian olive trees, the sneers, slurs and curses hurled by settlers and soldiers providing the musical accompaniment. The utter pollution and pulverization of every square inch of Gaza, the size of Manhattan, the Bronx, and Hoboken all together, burying man and nature not once but dozens of time, has rendered what God made unidentifiable. This Israeli hellscape, one they intend to later mold in their own image, confirms God clearly failed the Zionists, and they are on their own.

Zionism should have offered its European first men and women something very different. It should have offered a city-state, not a Jewish empire. It should have petitioned the British overlords for a small spot on the Mediterranean Sea, to construct and settle, for purposes of trade, religious study, banking, scholarship, and technology – for peace.

Just as we have a working model of an independent self-governing religious state, serving a global congregation, we also have a wide variety of successful secular models of economically brilliant independent city-states. The world could surely benefit from another Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, or Macau, even a Monaco or a Liechtenstein. In a future age of decentralization and peace, many more self-governing city-states will be welcomed, each a new and different jewel to be treasured by its residents, and the world.

States — and state-like institutions — that expand through conquest, force, and subterfuge are passé on a nuclear planet. States that insist on old world games will find the carrying costs too high, their populations disinterested, their wars irrational and immoral failures. NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine is certain testimony of this. Technology offers humanity all the benefits of great states – security, wealth, opportunity, identity — without the need for ruling juntas and elite planners advising overdone and generally corrupt governments. We don’t need great states anymore, and billions of people know this and are living their lives accordingly.

Israel’s crimes in Gaza, driven by their long held objectives there, cry out for a solution that is humane, elegant and just. Can Zionism be preserved, absent its criminality, without its endless arrogation of land, life and spirit? If it cannot, then the experiment must be ended. The current condition of Israeli society, immersed and transfused with hatred, fear, arrogance, and false righteousness – most observers must agree that it cannot continue like this. The experiment must be halted. Halting it will require a kind of physical destruction of Zionist institutions, and a relocation of many Israelis, much as the Israeli government is currently demanding of others.

By Israel’s own admission, what is happening in Gaza is not war, but an AI-assisted land grab, punitive and permanent. The illegality of this, from every angle, through every lens of law and ethics, is clear. Punishment is overdue and necessary, reparations warranted, and the Israeli state itself made sane, reduced to its native essence, freshly and simply compliant with natural law and humanity. The ongoing and persistent genocide can only be stopped by a total transformation of the State of Israel.

Could we consider a new city-state, in a territory no larger than the city of Houston, with a comfortable population of 6 to 8 million people, be established along the Mediterranean coast? This proposed Zionist city-state would be demilitarized, politically neutral, and protected and defined by great walls, and its global neighbors. Its security confirmed, its ability to militarily strike and threaten its neighbors would end. This neutral and disarmed city-state would be self-governed, no longer needing to export and murder non-Jews for their inconvenient birth rates, while exhorting Jewish women to procreate. It will be safe, wealthy, more free than it ever was. It will be unburdened by a militarized society, no longer dependent on faithless allies, bad 19th century ideas, and mistaken 20th century assumptions.

The State of Israel and its single ally, the US government, both lawless thieves on their best day, would surely resist this proposal, for three reasons – each revealing a fundamental truth upon which the current experiment rests.

These counterarguments are: 1) the state of Israel serves US imperialism; 2) the US government serves Israeli imperialism; and 3) Israel’s governing construct is not derived from Judaism, but is based on traditional secular racism, and the description of a religious state for Jews simply propaganda. Each counterargument here is true, but these truths are not what the US, the government of Israel, or most Israelis commonly admit. Perhaps we should start dealing with reality, instead of lies and fantasy.

Regardless of our collective refusal to speak truth about the Zionist experiment, forming a disarmed and nuclear-free city-state for Jewish Israelis remains at the heart of the complex correction and massive reparation required in and for Palestine. Imperial dreams dashed, and religious establishment on shaky ground, a disarmed city-state to contain Israel, to end her imperialism, and guarantee her neutrality and security, is perhaps less elegant and less humane than hoped for, but it remains just.

Israel, already weakened and panicked, could in the future be conquered or destroyed, in which case, much as Zelensky has discovered, the winner of wars holds the cards, and calls the shots. As we saw recently with the US ending of hostilities with the Houthi, and calling it a victory, Israel’s one remaining partner is not only less reliable and less capable, but in a nod to “America First” also less controllable, and more realistic. Israel’s days – due to its habits of racism and violence, unreasonable objectives, and poor choice in allies – may not only continue to be bloody, but numbered as well.

When the Zionist experiment collapses under its own weight, via violence and war, the victors will not be much concerned about creating a safe place for Jews. Ironically, Zionism never delivered that either.

The current proposition for Gaza is this: an outside investment conglomerate will create a new city on the bones and homes of murdered Gazans, with their surviving relatives marched again into cages and slow death, out of sight. The settler cult will expand, never satisfied, itself incognizant of nature or justice, eventually embarrassing even their fellow Israelis who are hosting the new casinos, fine hotels, clean fresh factories, and a new Ben Gurion Canal.

A better solution, one that offers inconvenience instead of slaughter, requires the drawing back of the Zionist state, not just to the 1967 borders, not to the 1948 borders, but to a reduced cohesive area where Jews may have their ethno-religious state. Just as the ideology and planning for the Zionist state were incorrect, the legal assumptions of the 1948 “War of Independence” were also flawed. This is the same legal flaw we are reminded of today, when we hear about Israel’s “right to defend” what they stole and conquered “fair and square.” The end of empire, disarmament of the state, and a new-old return of the concept of neighborhoods is a humane path forward.

One might say that a smaller and disarmed city-state of Israel would be more vulnerable to attack, to starvation, to embargoes and siege. One might say those who have been brutally wronged by Zionism will seek their revenge. Instead, new investment – newly free of Israeli connived and funded security crises, conflicts, and groups like Hamas – would flow in. Unlike the apartheid practiced today, Jews willing to live as neighbors and citizens in a self-governed Palestine would be welcomed, much as Jews lived in Palestine for centuries, as they live in the US, in Iran, as they live on every continent, peacefully and cooperatively, without an Israeli Defense Force on hand to protect their every sin and misdeed.

We need to consider what comes next, not only for Gazans, but for Israel itself. Israel’s Zionist empire doesn’t work, and as designed, it cannot work. It’s long past time to imagine a peaceful and just alternative, that doesn’t involve mowing the grass, that doesn’t require defacing and destroying the land and its people, that doesn’t require ever-ratcheting war and the growing spiritual impoverishment of the Abrahamic faiths.

Photo by Alex Azabache on Unsplash