History's Graveyard is littered with the remains of 'chosen peoples'

By Janna Kadri 

Source: Al Mayadeen English

To say that Zionism is about to die is about the same thing as saying capitalism in its imperialist stage is about to die: that is something that we are witnessing with the rise of China and the multipolar world.

Of late, many have spoken of the beginning of the end of Zionism, but that is guessing what is almost certain. One may juxtapose such a remark with Mark Twain's quip that news of his death was greatly exaggerated; however, there is more to the story than vacuous hyperbole. With a planet already dogged down with excess pollution, socially-induced premature death, and about to be heated beyond repair, the creeping death of all communities is no longer an exaggeration. Unless of course global society takes it upon itself to reorganize the relationship of Man with Man, and Man with nature, which could only mean the restoration of the global commons and/or by the same measure the elimination of private property, the process is irreversible.

The 'long term' of 'in the long term we are all dead' has dawned upon us. Capital, the social relationship that commands the reproduction of society de-reproduces society by war, austerity, and pollution to make profits. To struggle against capital and its structures embodied in Western formations is to struggle for the elimination of private property, which is synonymous with capital since it excludes society from the fruit of its labor just as capital does. To put an end to the creeping disaster, working classes from around the world must pool resources to target by all means possible the military and ideological structures of imperialism, the social edifices that implement the desires of capital to make profits by any and all sorts of costs. 

However, capital gains strength the more it divides the working classes or labor. The deepest division that props up the capital relationship is when sections of the working classes adopt chauvinist ideological strands that justify the de-reproduction of Southern working classes at higher rates to meet rising profits. Settler colonial ideology, long dominant in Western reason, is a higher plateau of labor dividedness and, inversely, a boost to capital's strength.

Now Zionism is a settler colonial ideology, which is a progeny of colonial and, subsequently, imperialist ideology. It is therefore an ultimate form of capital represented in its Northern structures. To settle and exterminate the supposedly inferior natives is central to European thought. John Locke, a philosopher of liberalism, advocated an end to slavery, yet he himself owned slaves because he reasoned that unruly barbarians should be enslaved since they represent threats to the liberal and democratic-minded West.

Liberalism constitutes the bottom line of chauvinist politics. Its rationale for slavery, which lurks beneath a façade of individual liberty is as follows: profits cannot be made without exploitation and exploitation requires repressions whose final forms are structural and direct genocides justified by some social identity assumed superior to that of the 'genocided' masses. Liberalism reduces historical subjects and agency to abstract individuals rather than social classes and their forms of social organization. It does not ask why masses deprived of their common property and social products must fight to reclaim those assets, it simply starts from the notion that an individual owns property and that the state must protect property rights. After all, profits, which transmute into private property, do not rise because one buys cheap and sells dear. That happens on accounting books and in the time frame that capitalists concoct.

Profits rise because the North could beat upon the South, deprive it of sovereignty, and set the price of its labor and resources at very cheap levels. To make more profits, the South, used here as a cross-cutting class formation, must be exponentially beaten into submission for costs to fall and profits to rise. Cheap prices arise upon people too defeated to negotiate. The de-reproduction of the South ought to be measured against the possibilities of a better life in the North and relative to the scientific progress of the specific reference time. Time after all is the qualitative social time that is only comparable with the past, if and only if, many wildly restrictive assumptions are imposed upon the method of measurement. 

Framed as such, Zionism is quintessential to imperialism and the drain of wealth to the Northern Hemisphere. It is a power base within the Third World meant to disarm the masses of the Third World. To disarm someone or some nation is to render them into some degree of slavery. Such is a condition of being for capital or an ontological condition: to subjugate and enslave the third world to make profits is how the Northern Hemisphere with its constituent armies reproduces. To say that Zionism is about to die is about the same thing as saying capitalism in its imperialist stage is about to die. That is something that we are witnessing with the rise of China and the multipolar world.

The West with its military outposts, like Taiwan and "Israel", is dwindling. The desperate genocidal measure in Gaza exemplifies Israeli decline. The Lancet estimates that 8% of the population has been or will be wiped out, while UN data shows that more than half of Gaza's infrastructure lies in ruins. Despite legal cases brought against "Israel" in international courts, there is a growing trend among Israelis towards embracing and sympathizing with the act of genocide. This goes to show that these groups are simply embodiments of capital and not working classes with revolutionary potential, just like the Northern working classes whose potential lies in massacring the South. 

Despite the Israeli regime seemingly holding the upper hand in terms of casualties, the majority of martyred people in Gaza are civilians. Yet, the Resistance shows no signs of fatigue, as observed by Israeli experts themselves, who openly acknowledge the resistance's renewed capabilities. The fight of Palestinian Arabs is a fight for the right to return, which has been ongoing since 1948. Such persistence of struggle delegitimizes the notion that "Israel" is itself a state even over the partition lines of 1948. After all, a state must guarantee order over a designated territory, which "Israel" has not accomplished and cannot accomplish since the struggle for the liberation of Palestine coincides with the international proletariat for emancipation. 

While none of "Israel's" objectives in Gaza were met, its goal of decimating the region continues unabated. Insofar as existential threats go, the development and life expectancy in the region have fallen relative to potential because of the war "Israel" imposes over the region. One ought to look at the gap in life expectancy between Arabs and Israelis to see that Arabs have been losing their potential for a better existence and years of life. Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts for regional normalization have naturally failed, and the regime has severely damaged its moral standing on the global stage. The Saudi-Israeli normalization agreement is on hold out of embarrassment, no more no less, and more pertinently because in the regional class war, the reactionary Arab regimes are class partners of Zionism. Any political struggle in the Muslim world turns into a struggle that puts the Palestinian question in focus simply because the masses recognize that the reactionary classes are of the same power fabric as Zio-imperialism. A prolongation and enlargement of the war with "Israel" will demonstrate that "Israel", and the US are not invincible, while the image of the strength of reactionary regimes in power will be shattered leaving the gates open for popular revolts.  

Yet, "Israel" refuses to come to terms with its inevitable defeat. The West may even accede to a two-state solution where Palestine is governed by political groups that do not demand the abolition of capital. The current leadership of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, for instance, does not call upon the masses of the Arab world to organize in revolutionary cells and attack Western interests and Arab regimes in Islamic capitals, which shows that their ceiling is below expectations and acceptable to the West whose ultimate aim is to defeat 'pagan' China, which could be a common enemy to both.

Such, the coalescing of capitalist forces of various ideological/identity flavors that adhere to the diktat of the capital relation against China, is a possible result unless by dialectical inversion a prolonged struggle against Zio-imperialism synergizes with anti-systemic consciousness to overturn the pro-systemic identities erected by capital. 

Originally conceived as an advanced fortress of Empire, "Israel" has proven to be a strategic liability incapable of minimal self-defense. Its televised brutality, all the same, appears too much to stomach for the Western audiences who demand the extermination of the Arabs as a matter of survival, but do not want to see the meat they consume slaughtered before their eyes.

In previous wars, "Israel" tended to employ psychological warfare to subdue the resistance, but these scare tactics don't work anymore, and that element of fear appears to have shifted to the Israeli side – and rightly so. It is rather a historical imperative for "Israel" as a settler colonial formation to disappear since its existence is itself the existence of capitalism which has driven humanity to the point of no return.

It will evaporate not by the rising tide of anti-Zionist forces within "Israel", that is not possible since capital embodied in Zionists cannot turn against itself in an act of suicide. It will vanish as the global revolutionary tide forces it to become undone. The justification for "Israel" that it is a progressive force in an underdeveloped region is no more than a chimera. So far, when the progress borne by mission civilisatrice is a planet doomed to collapse by the laws of capital, the fig leaf that justifies the eradication of the noble savage can no longer hide the fact that Western civilization, that is, the civilization of capital opposing the rise of the South, is beyond barbaric.   

At this juncture, for "Israel" to capitulate and agree to implement a permanent ceasefire is tantamount to the attritive loss of all reactionary regimes. "Israel's" political turmoil reflects deep divisions among Western capitalist classes, particularly evident in the US where Democrats supportive of "Israel" are wiser strategically than Republicans who seek war with the resistance that may topple the US's achievements since the Arab Spring.

A broader and longer-term war is a certain loss for the empire in the Arab region, and to be sure, the losses will extend to all developing countries that view the weakness of the empire as an opportunity to ditch the wrath of insatiable Western barbarism. An idiotic Trump regime is way more beneficial to the South than the seasoned imperialists of the deep state, or rather, the capitalist class.

Racism is inherent to capital. US and Israeli politics are therefore inherently racist. Critical theorists may argue that the content of discourse reflects a deep-seated hatred towards Palestinians, but one – they say – must recall that under capital, identities are priced just like commodities. Subsequently, the consumption of Palestinian and Israeli lives fuels the war machine – just the same. However, such broad ideas conceal the class differences between Israelis and Palestinians. Israelis, like the Northern working classes, are not only forms of capital, but they are also the embodiment of capital. They are the physical shape of capital that reproduce by massacring the South. There can be no joint activity equating settler with native and no cohabitation with settlers since the former devours the latter. Critical theory is malicious because it evades the issue of imperialism wherein the capital-labor relation is truly a North-South relation. It is not an anomaly that Europeans support the war against Russia and ninety percent of Israelis support the genocide of the Arabs.

Just like capital, these classes know that they must retain power even if it involves intermittent economic pain to obtain longer-term profitability. Like capital, they put power first. The idea that Arabs and Israelis could live in peace is no more than a farce since such is a contradiction that must end in the dissolution of Zionism.