Israel’s hatred of the Palestinians is shaped
and driven by three basic sentiments.
By Marwan Bishara
August 12, 2022:
Information Clearing House
-- The Palestinians have
every reason to hate Israel; it is a
settler-colonial apartheid state erected on the
ruins of their homeland. But why does Israel
hate the Palestinians so much? It has
sadistically and systematically terrorised,
blockaded and imprisoned them after taking
control of their lives and livelihoods, denying
them fundamental rights and freedoms
The obvious answer may not be the right
answer. Yes, Israel abhors Palestinian violence
and terrorism that has touched more than a few
Israelis but it is nothing compared with the
wholesale violence and state-terror exacted by
Israel on the Palestinians, launching vengeful
and preemptive wars, as it has this past
weekend.
To my mind, Israel’s hatred of the
Palestinians is shaped and driven by three basic
sentiments: fear, envy and anger.
Fear is a major factor – it can be irrational
but also instrumental.
It should come as no surprise that Israel has
continued to fear the Palestinians well after it
occupied all their lands and became a mighty
regional and nuclear power. Because its fear of
the Palestinians is not merely physical or
material, it is existential.
Under the apt
title: Why all Israelis are cowards, an
Israeli columnist wondered in 2014 what kind of
a society produces cowardly soldiers who shoot
unarmed Palestinian youth from a long distance.
Some four years later, in 2018, it was indeed
surreal to watch Israeli soldiers hide behind
fortified defences as they shot hundreds of
unarmed protesters for days on end.
Israel basically fled Gaza in fear back in
2005, imposing an inhumane blockade on the two
million, mostly refugees, living there.
Israel fears all that is Palestinian
steadfastness, Palestinian unity, Palestinian
democracy, Palestinian poetry, and all
Palestinian national symbols, including
language, which it downgraded, and the flag,
which it is trying to ban. Israel especially
fears Palestinian mothers bearing new babies,
which it calls a “demographic threat”. Echoing
this national Israeli obsession with Palestinian
procreation, a historian warned 12 years ago
that demography is a threat to the survival of
the Jewish state much like a nuclear Iran, for
example, because in his view, Palestinians could
become a majority by 2040-2050.
Fear is also instrumental for a garrison
state like Israel, known as “an army with a
country attached”. In a book summarising his
decades-long experience in Israel, an American
journalist noted that: “Today’s government stirs
up fears, most of them imaginary or at least
wildly exaggerated, painting Israel as an
isolated, lonely, threatened, little country,
always on the defensive, always on the lookout
for the next sign of hate somewhere, eager to
overreact.”
In sum, fear generates hatred because, in the
words of another Israeli
observer, a state that is always afraid
cannot be free; a state that is shaped by
militant messianism and ugly racism, against the
indigenous people of the land, cannot be truly
independent either.
Israel is also angry, always angry at the
Palestinians for refusing to give up or give in,
for not going away; far away. Israel, for all
intents and purposes, has won all its wars since
1948, and become a regional superpower, forcing
Arab regimes to bow in humiliation. And yet the
Palestinians continue to deny the Israelis
victory, they will not submit; they will not
surrender, rather they continue to resist come
what may.
Israel has the world powers on its side, with
the United States in its pocket, Europe behind
it and the Arab regimes sucking up to it. But
the isolated – and even forgotten – Palestinians
still refuse to cede their basic rights, let
alone concede defeat. It must be infuriating for
Israel to have so much innocent blood on its
hands, to no avail. It kills, tortures, exploits
and robs the Palestinians of all that is dear,
but they will not acquiesce. It has imprisoned
more than a million of them over the years but
the Palestinians refuse to capitulate. They
continue to yearn and struggle for freedom and
independence, with many insisting on Israel’s
own demise as a colonial state.
Israel is also envious of Palestinian inner
power and outward pride. It is envious of their
strong beliefs and readiness to sacrifice, which
presumably reminds today’s Israelis of early
Zionists. Today’s Israeli
conscripts-turned-Robocops face off against
bare-chested Palestinian bravery from behind
their armoured vehicles, cowardly shooting with
vengeance.
Israel is most envious of the Palestinians’
historic and cultural belonging to Palestine; of
their attachment to the land, an attachment
Zionism has had to manufacture in order to
entice Jews into becoming colonial settlers.
Israel hates the Palestinians for being so
integral to the history, geography and nature of
the landscape it claims as its own. Israel has
long resorted to theology and mythology to
justify its existence, when the Palestinians
need no such justification; belonging so
effortlessly, so conveniently, so naturally.
Israel has tried to erase or bury all traces
of Palestinian existence, even changing the
names of streets, neighbourhoods and towns. In
the words of one Israeli historian, “to find
accurate parallels for the reconsecration of
places of worship by a conqueror, one must go
back to Spain or the Byzantine Empire in the
middle of the late 15th century.”
Israel hates the Palestinians for being the
living proof that the foundations of Zionism – a
people without a land settling in a land without
a people – is mythical at best and violent and
colonialist in reality. Israel hates them for
impeding the realisation of the Zionist dream
over all historical Palestine. And it especially
hates those living in Gaza, for turning the
dream into a nightmare.
Yet, it would be wrong to glorify any of
this. Love is always better than hate. Hatred is
destructive and feeds into more hatred. Hatred
is devastating to the hateful and the hated.
Israel could still turn all that hatred into
tolerance, envy into appreciation, and anger
into empathy, if only it has the courage to
atone for its violent past, apologise for its
crimes, compensate the Palestinians for their
suffering and start treating them with the
respect and honour they deserve as equals, even
privileged equals in their homeland. Israel’s
hatred will not drive the Palestinians out but
it may well drive the Jews out and away.
Marwan Bishara is an author who writes
extensively on global politics and is widely
regarded as a leading authority on US foreign
policy, the Middle East and international
strategic affairs. He was previously a professor
of International Relations at the American
University of Paris.
Views expressed in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
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