The live broadcast of Israel's suicide

There are few “sensible” voices in the enemy state, as a hysterical state possesses the “neighbourhood bully” who assaulted a young boy he thought was little, defeated and incapable of doing anything, but the boy grabbed him by the neck, threw him to the ground and stomped on his head. It took the bully some time to wake up from the shock, but then he went mad and opened fire on anyone in front of him. With every bullet he fired, it would ricochet and hit one part of him, and he would kill and kill without stopping, looking for something to cure his anger but, instead, he became even more thirsty for blood.

A few people “sing a different tune” to the one sung by the killers and those calling for revenge and more blood in the enemy state. Instead of listening to them, those obsessed with blood accuse them of treason, negligence or short-sightedness. The bully’s friends have become embarrassed by him, as they have run out of ways to revive the lie of “self-defence”, which actually does originally exist in international law. The Occupation has duties but has no rights, and one of its duties is to provide livelihoods for the people it occupies, not to kill and displace them and destroy all elements of life in the environment in which they live.

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One of the most “successful” investigative journalists in the Occupation says, in a rare article in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper (21 February), “At one of the meetings in Munich, an important and well-known European leader, who is a major sympathiser with Israel, said to me, ‘I am really on your side, and it is very important that you defeat Hamas, but I have run out of excuses. How can I protect you when senior officials in your government want to return to the settlements in Gaza, is calling for mass annihilation and war crimes, the deletion of everything on the land of Gaza?’”

The writer is Ronen Bergman, the author of the book, Rise and Kill First, one of the most famous best-selling books in the West. He talks about “the Mossad’s heroics in the assassination war that it launched against Palestinian figures, leaders and even ordinary individuals”. The book’s title is inspired by a statement in the Talmud, “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.”

This instinct to take all measures, even the most aggressive, to defend the Jewish people – according to the book’s description – has been ingrained in Israel’s DNA since the beginning of the “establishment of the state” in 1948. The author of the book described, in explicit terms, how the entity has committed suicide on live broadcast. In his afore-mentioned article, he describes how the image of the Occupation state has been shattered, crushed and how it has become ostracised in an unprecedented manner.

He says, “An Israeli official, well-versed in the laws of the world that has already seen thing or two, and is always considered moderate in his reactions, knows that what appears to many as a serious crisis or an event of no return, will look different over the course of time, and will be eroded and forgotten. Look at what is happening this year at the Security Conference in Munich as far as Israel is concerned. The man was horrified and recalled a remark attributed to Finance Minister, Yehoshua Rabinovitz, that some attribute to the ruler of Zaire, Mobuto Sese Seko, the remark being ‘a year ago we stood on the edge of the abyss and, since then, we have taken a big step forward.’ The man said, after being deep in thought, ‘I am concerned because the processes we are seeing here are, of course, local manifestations in a series of events throughout the conference and across it, and the erosion in how we are perceived and the decline in our mental image.’ Standing on the edge of the abyss, in light of the decline in Israel’s international status, will make it a free fall. This is how it is with an abyss; you see the edge of the abyss and you make a lot of effort to stop or, at least, delay reaching it, holding on to every rock or pile of dirt, until you reach the final edge. However, if you cannot stop and you are pulled the entire way there, then the free fall from there will be downwards.”

With regards to the horrific crimes that we see daily in Gaza and the West Bank, whether in traditional or popular media, all or most of them reflect the image of a criminal entity that is reproducing the crimes of the Nazis, perhaps in a more brutal and horrific way, due to the presence of modern means that record every crime and broadcast it to the four corners of the world. There does not seem to be anything on the horizon that indicates that it will stop on its own, as the Occupation no longer has any brakes preventing it from descending into committing even more crimes, as most or all of the public and politicians are calling for revenge – and more of it. There does not appear to be any hope on the horizon of it reaching the point of “satiety”. The reason for this is the epic steadfastness of the Resistance, which deprived the killer of the “pleasure” of feeling a victory that had become impossible and, even if all its forms were achieved, the defeat has already occurred, not only on 7 October, but also in the series of “defeats” that followed on the level of the Occupation state’s image before the world and the shattering of the false image of unity within it.

Psychology says that self-harm is a disordered behavioural pattern in which someone intentionally and repeatedly harms themself, without intending to commit suicide. Some people resort to self-harm to release very strong feelings that they cannot deal with, such as: overwhelming anger, oppression, internal emptiness or a deep sense of loneliness, and it seems that what applies to ordinary individuals also applies to countries, and this is what the Occupation state is experiencing today.

Renowned researcher, Abdel Wahab El-Messiri, was asked: When will Israel end? He said: When the United States abandons it. It seems that the journey towards this moment has already begun, and it seems that the entity itself – in its journey towards suicide – is accelerating reaching this moment at an insane speed, under the influence of feeling humiliated, angry and imminently falling into that abyss that Ronen Bergman talked about. However, it seems that he is not finding anyone who will listen to him.

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This article first appeared in Arabic in Arabi21 on 3 March, 2024.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.