Since its founding to the modern day, Israel has been shaped by a ‘gang state’ mentality, marked by unhinged violence and oppression that only deepens its cycle of instability – a history it seems unwilling to escape.
The Cradle
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This fact sums up the occupation state’s very essence today, offering a stark illustration of the indiscriminately violent roots upon which the state and its army were built. Today, Israeli military operations continue in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, where tanks crush the bodies of the dead and wounded and where residents are thrown from rooftops or sniped in their homes.
“Causing death or serious bodily harm to civilians for the purpose of intimidating a population” is the very definition of terrorism, in the words of the United Nations General Assembly.
Entire residential buildings are reduced to rubble in the name of “assassinating” resistance fighters, whether in Gaza, the West Bank, or even Beirut. The Israeli government has normalized bloody attacks on hospitals, churches, and mosques and weaponized communications technology to annihilate people in homes, offices, and streets en masse – to strike fear into civilians and force them into submission.
The gang state
If there is a single word that best defines Israel’s modus operandi, it is terrorism. From its inception as a political entity through its early campaigns of ethnic cleansing to its ongoing military impositions on Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Yemen – not to mention its previous actions in Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, and Sudan – Israel’s history is marked by a blatant disregard for international law and moral principles.
Terrorism is the most powerful weapon for Israel, the ‘gang state’ that is now nicknamed ‘Netanyahu’s gang,’ and its security and military apparatuses. This gang mentality has long been part of the Zionist ideology, which cloaks its goals in lofty religious rhetoric while simultaneously unleashing depraved acts of violence and domination.
Almost a century later, Israel still struggles to attain legitimate standing, its existence perpetually marred by its violent birth and sustained oppression of the Palestinians.
Forget all the western deception used to convince public opinion that the occupation state is the “only democracy in the Middle East.” As the Arabic proverb says: “What is built on falsehood is falsehood.”
The Polish “founding father” of this state, Ben Gurion, himself was immersed in campaigns of criminal ethnic cleansing and displacement, much like the Zionist terror gangs that founded the occupation state based on the ideas of Ukrainian Ze’ev Jabotinsky. The latter was the first to call for militarizing Zionism to confront the indigenous Palestinians and establish the colonial project in the Levant.
A legacy of terrorism
The early Zionists who fought alongside the British forces in World War I within what was known as the Jewish Legion, which Jabotinsky co-founded, strongly contributed to the gradual formation of the Zionist state. Many historians believe that in exchange for the services of this legion, these western Jews were gifted the British Balfour Declaration, which pledged to establish a state for them in Palestine.
Israel is, therefore, the product of an illegitimate marriage between a colonial power in decline and an emerging occupying power. It is natural for the illegitimate “bad boy” born from this dubious marriage to bear many of the characteristics of colonists, occupiers, thugs, and terror gangs.
Take, for example, an incident that took place before the establishment of the occupation state. In July 1938, the Irgun terror gang detonated two car bombs in the Haifa market, martyring and injuring 70 Palestinians.
The Irgun’s violent reach extended beyond Palestine, as in 1946, when Jewish terrorists bombed the British embassy in Rome, frustrated by what they saw as British hesitation to expedite Jewish immigration to Palestine.
This attack helped stoke anti-Jewish sentiment in Britain and encouraged further Jewish immigration to Palestine, a tactic reminiscent of Zionist plots in Egypt, Iraq, and Syria to target and terrorize Jewish minorities, inciting violence and societal strife that would ultimately force them into fleeing to Palestine.
The term “Zionist terrorism” was common in the official British discourse, including in the rhetoric and correspondence of the mandate authority in Palestine. This was especially the case in the 1930s, before World War II, and after the outbreak of the 1936–1939 Great Palestinian Revolt, when the indigenous Arab population rose against the British occupation authorities and the unchecked inflow of foreign Jewish settlers.
Take, for example, the Zionist Lehi gang, also known as Stern, that assassinated British minister Lord Moyne in Cairo in 1944. The Irgun gang, led by the militant Menachem Begin – another future Israeli prime minister – blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946 when it housed the headquarters of the British Mandate government, killing and wounding about 150 people, including dozens of Britons, Palestinians, and even Jews.
After the British exit from Palestine, Zionist terror gangs turned their attention to the United Nations. In September 1948, the Lehi gang assassinated UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte on accusations of supporting the Arabs.
But the primary focus of Zionist terrorists remained the indigenous Arab population of Palestine, who were Muslims, Christians, and Jews. Their violent campaigns targeted markets, mosques, public spaces, and entire villages, including horrifying attacks on places like Haifa, Deir Yassin, and Tantura, where locals were brutally murdered, raped, and tortured.
From terror gang to ‘conventional’ army
The establishment of Israel in 1948 did little to end this gang mentality. Instead, it became institutionalized within the newly formed “IDF,” which Ben Gurion helped shape. The massacres and oppression continued, now on a larger, more systematic scale.
Qibya in 1953 saw 200 Palestinians killed, Qalqilya in 1956 lost 70 lives, and Kafr Qasim in the same year witnessed 49 more dead. These are just a few examples of the atrocities, which have continued to expand over time.
The gang state operated in West Asia under international immunity and swiftly moved from British mentorship to an American one. The British paved the way with the promise of establishing the Zionist state and facilitated Jewish immigration, while the US was the first to recognize Israel as an ‘independent state’ on 14 May 1948.
Both the Democratic and Republican parties agreed not to touch relations with the state since its early days. In 1972, Washington used its veto power at the UN Security Council in favor of Israel for the first time to block a Lebanese complaint, a veto stick that Washington has used more than 50 times since.
According to data from the US Agency for International Development, Israel is the largest recipient of US aid, at more than $260 billion between 1948 and 2023, rising to $310 billion by March 2024. Two-thirds of this aid was military in nature, simply to enable it to kill at pleasure.
But the Zionist war machine has been running amok from the 1930s until today, trying to kill 4,000 people in one minute by bombing wireless devices and pagers in Beirut and chasing Palestinians to their deaths in areas that are supposed to be ‘safe zones.’ If brutality was a tactic to demonstrate Israel’s power and superiority, it has failed to bring the state either peace or stability.
Today, a growing sense of helplessness is creeping into Israeli discourse. The launch of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and subsequent clashes with all parts of West Asia’s Axis of Resistance have shaken the Israeli state. When Hezbollah bombed northern occupied Palestine, reaching as far as Haifa, Israeli media reported that over a million citizens were now within range of Hezbollah’s missiles.
Israel’s instability and the region’s resistance
Even Israeli generals and analysts have acknowledged the precariousness of Tel Aviv’s situation. Reserve General Itzhak Brik says, “Israel’s tactical achievements are unprecedented capabilities, but they do not change the dangerous reality around it.”
Uri Misgav writes in the Israeli Haaretz that “this is an endless war, without goals, plan, or benefit. The only goal, plan, and benefit is to continue the war in order to preserve Netanyahu’s rule. We must not go like a herd to the slaughter.”
Israeli military and security expert Yossi Melman writes about the “scary scenario,” saying:
The war against Hezbollah is not just a strike, but we need a broad military presence in Lebanon. This means a war of attrition like the army suffered in the south until the withdrawal in 2000. If we assume that the army and the home front will withstand a war on two fronts, there is no guarantee that the war will not move to the boiling West Bank. A multi-front war also means launching missiles from the fronts of Yemen, the Golan Heights, and Iraq.
Israel’s recent invasions of Palestinian villages and refugee camps in Jenin, Qabatiya, Tulkarem, and Gaza have been marked by shocking brutality, with reports of soldiers abusing wounded civilians, desecrating the bodies of martyrs, and targeting aid workers.
These acts, captured on camera, reveal the same terror-gang mentality that has persisted since Israel’s founding days. From executing wounded prisoners and raping detainees to destroying roads, homes, and shops without cause, the behavior of Israeli forces mirrors that of criminal syndicates rather than a modern state.
Palestinian journalist Hilmi Musa writes from the ruins of Gaza after the Lebanese resistance responded by bombing Haifa:
It is clear that the enemy’s joy at what was achieved in recent days did not last long, and there is great hope that it will see its disappointment much sooner than it expected. The aggression will be defeated and the occupation will end.
But despite all the warning signs, Israel, like the terrorist gangs that built it, seems incapable of understanding history’s lessons. Its cycle of violence continues, blind to the inevitable consequences of its actions.
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