The crime of ignorance

or why refusing to know what it is we support makes us complicit in its crimes

Let us be clear. Israel exists because Zionists invaded Palestine in 1947 in a genocidal frenzy of colonial ethnic cleansing to set up a state for Jews.

And for those who believe that they had a right to Palestine because of the UN Mandate, remember, the UN had no right to partition any country on earth, including Palestine and all it did was make a recommendation which had no legal veracity. Israel was founded in colonial slaughter and dispossession. Also to be noted is that the UN Recommendation specified fair and just treatment of the Palestinians and their right to what was left of their homeland, a ridiculously small amount given the trivial number of Jews who lived in Palestine. The Israelis reneged on that so one presumes the UN Mandate was rendered null and void long ago. More so because Israel has never paid reparation or compensation, nor declared its borders and so strictly speaking it does not exist.


The policy, as articulated by the Zionists from the time they invented themselves in 1897, and then stated by Israel, was to rid Palestine of non-Jews, Muslims, and Christians. The goal was always for Palestine to be inhabited only by Jews. The state was founded on racist bigotry.

It was also founded on murder, rape, torture, and theft. In 1947 the Zionist forces murdered thousands of Palestinians, drove out close to a million and wiped from the face of the earth 530 Palestinian towns and villages. The Israelis have built and planted over them but we know where they were from earlier maps, including those from the British Mandate.

For nearly 80 years Israel has not only refused reparation or compensation to the Palestinians, it has refused their right of return which is clearly stated under international law. Worse, Israel has continued to dispossess, murder, torture, rape and steal from those Palestinians who remain.

All of this is well documented by Israeli and international human rights groups and international historians and some Israeli historians. The history of Israel’s treatment of the native people whose land it has stolen is one of bestial savagery and sadistic cruelty. No-one has been spared, man, women, child, toddler, baby, the old, the sick, the crippled the helpless. All have been subjected to what amounts to the longest holocaust in modern history and one of the most evil and brutal military colonial occupations in history fullstop.

Israel holds 6 million Palestinians under military colonial occupation rule and denies them human and civil rights, justice, and freedom. Under international law Israel is responsible for the wellbeing of every single Palestinian and it abuses them every hour of every day.

The torment and torture of the Palestinians ranks as pure evil. Yes, it has been worse in the Gaza concentration camp which Israel created nearly 20 years ago. They have been bombed mercilessly every couple of years in a process the Israelis call, Mowing the Grass, and which they use to test their weapons and, as they admit, to cull younger generations. The treatment of those in the rest of Occupied Palestine has not been as savage because there are too many illegal Jewish settlers who might get hurt, but it has been cruel and brutal also. In the rest of Occupied Palestine, the native people live under what amounts to virtual house arrest. On Jewish Holy Days they are under strict house arrest so Jews in the illegal settlements can travel on the Jew-only roads with greater convenience.

While Israel dictates the amount of food and medicine which those in the Gaza concentration camp receive, it has pushed the Palestinians elsewhere into prison cantons which require processing through cages by the Israeli military if the Palestinians wish to move from one place to another. Often, they are denied such freedom. At these checkpoints, men, women, children, babies, the old, the young, the sick, the crippled are locked in cages for hours as the Israeli soldiers mock and torment them. Babies are born in these cages and people die in the fetid crush against iron bars, trapped like the animals the Israelis deem them to be.

The Israelis have built an Apartheid Wall throughout Occupied Palestine, which involved the theft of more land and which divides Palestinians from family, jobs, schools, farms, churches and mosques. Israeli soldiers roam along these ghastly concrete monsters filming, watching, recording and sometimes shooting the Palestinians below like someone managing rabid farmstock. Which is just what they believe them to be.

Israeli soldiers regularly break into Palestinian homes in the middle of the night, terrorising everyone and frequently kidnapping their children and imprisoning them. Israel holds thousands of men, women, and children in its prisons without charge or trial and it tortures them, children included. The goal is to terrify and subjugate and they also use rape as a weapon as Israeli and international human rights groups have attested. Read the Testimonies of ex Israeli soldiers sickened by what they have been ordered to do in Breaking The Silence.

In the Gaza concentration camp, the Israeli army decapitates babies, disembowels toddlers, exterminates entire families, and destroys any chance of a normal life. It has done that for two decades. Now it is worse but it is more of the same.

In the rest of Occupied Palestine, the Israeli army has always continued to dispossess Palestinians, drive them out of their homes and either destroy those homes or hand them over to Jews as happened during 1947/48 and all the other wars Israel created to take more of Palestine.

The litany of massacres goes back a century.

1) Haifa Massacre 1937

2) Jerusalem Massacre 1937

3) Haifa Massacre 1938

4) Balad al-Sheikh Massacre 1939

5) Haifa Massacre 1939

6) Haifa Massacre 1947

7) Abbasiya Massacre 1947

8) Al-Khisas Massacre 1947

9) Bab al-Amud Massacre 1947

 10) Jerusalem Massacre 1947

11) Sheikh Bureik Massacre 1947

12) Jaffa Massacre 1948

13) Khan Yunis Massacre 1956

14) Jerusalem Massacre 1967

15) Sabra and Shatila Massacre 1982

16) Al-Aqsa Massacre 1990

17) Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre 1994

18) Jenin Refugee Camp April 2002

19) Gaza Massacre 2008-09

20) Gaza Massacre 2012

21) Gaza Massacre 2014

22) Gaza Massacre 2018-19

21) Gaza Massacre 2021

22) Gaza Genocide 2023 still ongoing

23) Palestine (West Bank) genocide, 2023 still ongoing

The suffering and cruelty have never stopped and it has continued to become more savage, more bestial, more sadistic and more evil. We can see that in the many videos and images put out by Israeli soldiers who, in that act, clearly remain in deep denial of the evils they commit. Although in their culture and society such abuse of the Palestinians cannot be evil for, they are not even human.  Although if Israelis did to dogs, cats, or cows what they do to the Palestinians there would be outrage no doubt.

When the Israeli Knesset decides that raping Palestinian prisoners with broomhandles, sticks and any desperate male organ is not just acceptable but to be encouraged, we know we are dealing with a very, very sick society indeed. When the majority of Israelis support bombing, shooting, torturing, starving Palestinians and denying them medical aid and water, knowing nearly half of them are children, then we know that this evil is cultural, social, and promoted by the State.

So, the horrors and atrocities committed by Israelis are a matter of historical fact. The ghastly and sadistic bestiality they have demonstrated since October 7 is also a matter of fact and often because it is Israelis who take and distribute the shocking images of their own crimes.

And with all of this, Israel still claims to speak and act for Judaism and Jews. It claims to represent the religion and every Jew on earth. While there have always been some Jews who rejected the Zionist Israeli State, not enough certainly, but some, and those numbers are increasing, the reality is that anyone who claims Israel does represent the religion and its followers is taking an antisemitic stance which ranks as one of the worst in history.

If Israel represents Judaism and Jews then it is saying that Judaism and its followers support and promote invasion, occupation, colonisation, genocide, ethnic cleansing, rape, torture, murder, theft, and sadistic cruelty at horrific levels.

I do not believe that is what Judaism is about and neither do I believe Jews should be tainted by Israel’s claims. But, one thing is certain, since Jews have allowed, encouraged, supported, and funded the Israeli State for most of its existence, they are the ones who now must separate from it and work to ensure it is dismantled. For the sake of their religion and themselves.  But I do know Israel must be stopped and if Jews care about their religion they must separate from the Zionist State completely.

I am not sure if those who have backed Israel in ignorance are better or worse than those who have backed Israel, knowing the atrocities it has always committed and continues to commit. In this age it is not difficult to do the research and gather the facts. To support a State which has committed atrocities from the time it invented itself without bothering to find out exactly what you are supporting, is criminal negligence.

And since the Germans were not allowed to say they did not know and therefore were blameless in regard to Nazi atrocities, neither can Israelis. More so because most Israelis have served in the military and therefore participated in the atrocities. If a German woman at the age of 99 can be tried and convicted in court for being associated with concentration camp crimes, where she worked as a secretary in her Twenties, then virtually every Israeli can be charged and tried for their active crimes against the Palestinians.

In this age of technology, anyone who does not know has chosen not to know and that is a decision which makes them complicit in the crimes committed. The Zionists may have exploited Jews but many Jews allowed it to happen. Too many for the part they have played in the horror that is Zionist Israel to be ignored.

Zionism is not on the side of Jews, only its own power dynamics. Zionism is a powerful antisemitic force. It needs to promote the idea that antisemitism is growing to encourage or frighten Jews into moving to what is called Israel.  An irony really given that Israel is the most dangerous place a Jew could live. Zionism wants and needs antisemitism. It has conflated valid condemnation of the Israeli atrocities with a hatred of Judaism and Jews and that will stick unless most Jews take a stand to reject the Zionist State.

Take Judaism out of the equation and Israel is no more than another fascist colonial entity. To continue to link it to Judaism and Jews is to taint the religion and its followers and to betray the best of their teachings. Zionist Israel has committed its crimes in the name of Jews and if Jews do not want to be tarnished by that, they need to act in the name of justice and ethics, and in defence of the noble principles their religion espouses.

There is no need for a State for followers of Judaism. There never was. Israel was founded on lies, has lived on lies and has no foundation but deception. Ironically it is Jews who are most deceived. If every Palestinian Christian and Muslim were exterminated or expelled, that is about 6 million of them, and they were replaced by Jews, it would still not be a safe place. There would still be 10 million Palestinians in the world, most in the Diaspora working and fighting to free Palestine, their ancient homeland.

Fear, racism, hatred can never make a safe place and any society, religion or culture which is sourced in such negativity will not survive. It is in justice for Palestine and its people that safety for Judaism and Jews will be found. It is in the destruction of Zionism that safety for everyone will be found.