Every day the world wakes up to new footage of massacres—new stories of horror beyond comprehension shared by the victims of Israeli bombings in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Every day shows new levels of depravity previously unimaginable, not just real now but seemingly inevitable and broadcast directly to the phones of anyone who wants to bear witness. Every day for a year. And yet, a year into a genocide there’s reason to be optimistic for a free and liberated Palestine.
The state of the Zionist entity
Though not commonly shown in Canadian media, the state of Israel is in dire straits. Headlines coming out of Israeli media paint a dire picture of the outlook for the Zionist entity:
- Jerusalem Post – Moody’s downgrades Israel’s credit rating from A2 to Baa1, to lowest rating ever
- Haaretz – After months of bragging, Israel finally admits its failure in defeating Hamas
- Haaretz – Ignoring the High Court and Attorney General, Israel is racing toward a constitutional crisis
- Haaretz – Netanyahu government plows ahead with judicial coup, amid war and With Little Opposition
- Haaretz – Israel Will Collapse Within a Year if the War of Attrition Against Hamas and Hezbollah Continues
- Haaretz – ‘They’re Ashamed and Hurting, but They’re Leaving’: Doctors Are Moving Away From Israel on an Unprecedented Scale
- Haaretz – Money Has Dried Up, and Israeli Startups Are Folding One After Another
- Jerusalem Post – Next generation of Israelis will not be able to support first world economy, expert says
- Haaretz – Gaza’s Humanitarian Disaster Could Blow Up in Israel’s Face
The state of Israel’s economy is falling apart before our eyes and its citizens are fleeing in droves. The bulk of US aid to the state of Israel has been military aid, but no amount of military aid can sustain a crumbling economy with a dwindling population. Zionists will never accept even a fraction of the conditions they have daily subjected Palestinians to for generations. As the economy crumbles and military resistance against the state of Israel increases, more Israeli citizens will flee, exacerbating the state’s collapse. Israel has even slashed the tax on residential purchases to a tenth of what it was to encourage immigration.
Israel’s military defeats
In guerilla warfare, the guerilla merely needs to survive to win—the military power needs complete annihilation to win. As the headlines above showcase, the state of Israel is far from achieving its military objective of ‘eliminating Hamas.’ Concrete numbers and facts are difficult to determine, especially with the state of Israel’s media blackout on anything military related. Still, we can infer what’s happening on the ground with the policies enacted by the state.
The Israeli military is in dire straits. Even with all the military aid provided by the US they are running out of soldiers. In June 2024, the Israeli supreme court ended draft exemptions for ultra orthodox Jews. As of September 15, news broke of the state of Israel recruiting new soldiers by promising permanent legal status for African asylum seekers that fight in Gaza. Notably, the recruits would be deployed on a mere 2 weeks of training and there are no reports of any asylum seekers actually being granted this status.
Videos from Israel’s recently attempted ground invasion into Lebanon show missiles destroying Israeli tanks. A retired Israeli Army colonel on Twitter claimed the operation was a massive failure thus far, citing at least 300 Israeli soldiers killed or injured, extremely low soldier morale, insubordination, desertion, disillusionment and roughly 1400 soldiers unaccounted for having presumably fled the area. The number of dead soldiers tracks with the current call for blood drives in the state of Israel.
Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) and arms embargoes
Although there is a long way to go, BDS has made incredible strides in the past year. Even just in recent weeks, Ireland has restricted trade with the state of Israel, with Ireland’s Prime Minister saying they “will not wait for everybody in Europe to move on the issue of trade in the occupied Palestinian territories.” The accomplishments of BDS are far too long to summarize in this article but this article from the BDS movement shows massive gains in just a 6 month period from October 2023 – March 2024. Some highlights include:
- ‘Colombia fully suspends Israeli arms purchases’
- ‘Norway’s sovereign fund fully divested from Israel Bonds’
- ‘The Malaysian government has banned all ships owned by Israel’
- ‘Two major Japanese firms, Nippon Aircraft Supply and Itochu Corporation, ended relations with Israel’s largest private arms manufacturer, Elbit Systems’
Ending the supply of arms is the only way to ensure a ceasefire—it has become increasingly clear the state of Israel is entirely uninterested in anything but aggression. The need to remove their capacity for warring thus becomes the imperative. Arms embargoes, even just from one country, can be far more effective than people realize. Palestine Action UK managed to break into a clean room at weapons manufacturer Teledyne causing enough damage to put it out of commission for up to a year, per a senior manager. Clean rooms are hermetically sealed spaces made for producing highly specialized equipment, and at this facility Teledyne was producing components for F35 fighter jets, used by the state of Israel. The globalization of production means that complex production, such as for a fighter jet, gets subcontracted to specialty companies across the globe. That is why arms embargoes are so powerful—even one country with a full arms embargo has the potential to cripple the Israeli army’s capacity.
On October 6, French President Emmanuel Macron called for an Arms embargo. France is the third largest arms exporter in the world. On October 16, Italy imposed an arms embargo on all new weapons shipments and deals to the state of Israel. A full arms embargo to Israel could have serious consequences for the Israeli military’s capacity.
Macron did not speak up for an arms embargo out of a sudden feeling of goodwill or a moral imperative. Macron is a neoliberal all too happy to support Israel throughout a year of genocide on the people of Gaza. Macron’s actions are self-serving, fearing Israeli retaliation on Iran that would catastrophically affect the economy of the Western world as oil would stop flowing from Iran. This is the goal of resistance—to make people do the right thing even if for the wrong reason. As opposition grows against Israel and the situation becomes more precarious they are changing from an asset to the West to a liability.
This will be how we achieve victory: turning Israel into a liability.
Hope is a conscious (and revolutionary) choice
Without anything to be hopeful for, why keep fighting?.
Even if things seem hopeless now, that doesn’t mean they really are. Chattel slavery lasted 246 years in the USA, and the struggle against it must have felt hopeless at many points, but it did end. The Vietnam war in full lasted for nearly twenty years, but it too ended. In the Vietnam war, it took years for American labour unions to oppose the war and war effort. In the case of Israel’s genocide on Gaza it took mere months for major American unions to join the call for a ceasefire. As Robin D. G. Kelley explains, “…victory is never certain but if we don’t fight, we can only lose.”
When situations feel hopeless it’s too easy to give up — to become paralyzed by the feeling of hopelessness. There is no way to write this that doesn’t feel like it’s trivializing the thousands and thousands of martyred souls — entire universes killed by Israel. But historically similar movements have taken far longer to unfold. Israel won’t be the first empire to crumble, especially one headed by a self-serving short-sighted politician attacking too many enemies on too many fronts.
This isn’t to say victory is inevitable either. A liberated Palestine will only happen when mass movements put in the time and energy to mobilize and get institutions to boycott, divest and sanction the state of Israel, and the onus is on all of us to do that. The situation is inevitable, the Zionist entity will fall and Palestine will be free. The question is when. A lifetime? A decade? A year? The faster it happens, the faster we collectively organize for it to happen, the more lives will be spared.
In an interview published by Writers Against the War On Gaza in their newspaper the New York War Crimes, Nour Abdul Latif tells what her life has looked like in the past year of genocide. At the end of the interview she says “I knew that all of this would pass one day, and that Gaza will remain, we will remain, and I will remain!”
If Palestinians in Gaza can be optimistic for the future the very least we can do is be optimistic, too.
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