“As American as apple pie” is an expression that’s been around for over 100 years. Who hasn’t heard it? This cultural phenomenon is so ubiquitous that it is ingrained into American culture, so much so that a 2013 poll found 81% of Americans had a favourable opinion of apple pie.
Exceeding 81% of people in a society agreeing on anything is nearly impossible, even for something as inoffensive and beloved as apple pie. And yet, in Israeli society, 82% of Jewish Israelis support the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza. In the same poll, a full half of Jewish Israelis supported killing every single Palestinian person in any city the Israeli Army conquered in Gaza.
The survey is distressing in and of itself, but more importantly, it signals how foundational ethnic cleansing is to Zionism (and therefore the state of Israel’s existence). The genocide in Gaza is no accident. It is the realization of what Zionism stands for: the annihilation of Palestinians to create an ethnostate on their land.
A genocidal society from the bottom-up
One reason the Gaza Holocaust is unique is how openly the perpetrators are in describing their intentions. In just the month of May 2025, Israeli politicians have said the following:
“No one is innocent in Gaza. Yes, children should be killed too. There is no other way.”
-Michal Waldiger
“Who is innocent in Gaza? … We need to separate the children and women and kill the adults in Gaza, we are being too considerate.”
-Nissim Vaturi, Israel’s deputy speaker
“They should starve”
-Amichai Eliyahu, Israeli politician
“This is our duty – exile the Gazans… I am interested in starving the Gazans.”
-Moshe Sa’ada, Israeli politician
“We are heading for a major event of vanquishment, annihilation, and emigration from Gaza.”
-Moshe Sa’ada, Israeli politician
“The army intends to crush their [Gazan] bones… Let a thousand of their mothers weep, but not a single one of ours.”
-Almog Cohen, Israeli politician
“Every child, every baby in Gaza is an enemy. The enemy is not Hamas… We need to conquer Gaza and colonize it and not leave a single Gazan child there. There is no other victory.”
-Moshe Feiglin, Israeli politician
“We will defeat them! We will wipe them out! They will not remain!”
-Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister
The intention — that of genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust, extermination, annihilation — could not be clearer. Israeli politicians are openly describing infants as enemies. The bloodlust, far from being an aberration, is a feature of Israeli society. What becomes clear from a single month in which at least seven Israeli politicians at the highest level of government are openly espousing their violent zeal is that Israeli society not just tolerates but demands – craves – such violence. These politicians are not speaking independently; they are speaking directly to the demands of their constituents.
How did we get here?
Zionism posits that Jews of the world are more entitled to live in Palestine than Palestinian people. Such a belief cannot possibly exist without a supremacist worldview, one where Zionists position themselves above the “Arabs.” If Palestinian people were seen as equals, there would be no justification for the Nakba, forethnic cleansing, murder, genocide, for literally stealing Palestinian homes so Zionist settlers can live in them.
The crimes of Zionism – the Nakba, the Naksa, the dozens of wars and thousands of war crimes before the Gaza Holocaust even began – need to be justified after the fact. Each successive crime Zionists have committed has reinforced this dehumanization in a genocidal vicious circle.
This dehumanization is a part of the education system, where even Israeli children’s books teach hate. Israeli scholar Adir Cohen analysed roughly 1,700 Hebrew-language children’s books published in the state of Israel between 1967 and 1985. He found over thirty percent contained negative descriptions of Palestinian people. Of those 520 books, 66% refer to Arabs as violent, 52% as evil, and a significant portion described Arabs as greedy, liars, two-faced, and/or traitors.
In 2014, Israeli sociologist Dr. Yaron went to “the most average school” he could find in the state of Israel to interview students. Students openly said in class to the sociologist:
“I’m ready to kill someone with my hands, and it’s an Arab. In my education I learned that … their education is to be terrorists, and there is no belief in them…I wish them death.”
“Racism is part of our life, no matter how much people say it’s bad.”
“Arabs are something I can’t look at and can’t stand… I am tremendously racist. I come from a racist home. If I get the chance in the army to shoot one of them, I won’t think twice.”
The dehumanization of Palestinian people does not stop there. The racist and ahistoric idea that “there was no such thing as Palestinians” was popularized by Golda Meir in 1969. Actual historical evidence suggests the origin of the term Palestine to be 3,200 years old, and is confirmed to have been used at least 2,500 years ago when Herodotus, an ancient Greek historian, wrote of a “district of Syria, called Palaistinê” between Phoenicia and Egypt. The radical idea that Palestinian people never existed is now a common Zionist talking point that flattens the entire Arab people to a single identity. The Zionist demand that Palestinian people should accept being ethnically cleansed and displaced to another Arab country would be analogous to a British colonizer suggesting the Irish should simply move to another Aryan country such as Greece, Italy, or Germany, and that in doing so they would lose no sense of sense, of home, of culture.
Israelis exceed even 1940s German support for genocide
In writing this piece, I have struggled to convey just how impossibly difficult it is to have 82% of people in a society agree on anything. For comparison, just 66% of millennial Americans firmly believe the Earth isn’t flat.
In a poll of Germans conducted after World War 2, 37% felt that extermination of Jews, Poles, and other non-Aryans was necessary for the security of Germans. 52% agreed that territories such as Danzig, Sudetenland, and Austria should be part of “Germany proper.”
In the modern day state of Israel, 49% of Jewish Israelis feel that extermination of Palestinians in Gaza is necessary for the security of the state of Israel. 82% agreed that territories such as the Gaza Strip should be part of “Greater Israel.” Israeli public support for extermination and ethnic cleansing quite literally exceeds 1940’s German support for Nazism.
Speaking as a Jewish person, no society so violent “deserves” to exist. No, there shouldn’t be a “Jewish state,” just like there shouldn’t have been an “Aryan German” state, just like there shouldn’t be any ethnostates or theocracies. No, the state of Israel does not have a right to exist, and as UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese points out, there is no such thing as a state’s “right to exist” in international law. People have the right to exist, not countries. And the state of Israel certainly doesn’t have the right to “defend” itself from the very people it occupies under one of history’s ugliest and longest sieges in what is the world’s largest concentration camp in history.
Our goal is clear—the complete eradication of all systems of oppression. And what better starting point than Zionism as it is in the midst of a Holocaust?
These words are merely arguments meant to better our understanding of this political moment. But they have little value unless we use this understanding to dismantle the oppressive systems that we all too often merely academize, endlessly fretting over the perfect words to use in an essay all while people are starving to death. We must do everything in our power to organize, to join movements, to attend protests, to leaflet, to poster, to shut down weapons factories and logistics, to simply talk to people. We must constantly ask ourselves how we can expand our movement and escalate our tactics while knowing there is no singular right answer.
There is no shortage of work to be done to build a better world, and that work needs people of all skill sets and abilities. My promise to you is that putting your time and energy into organizing will be something you never regret, will be something that benefits you as well, and will make the world a better place for everyone.
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