We as a species recognise the horrors of the Holocaust and the unjustifiable and brutal attack which resulted in the killing of 1200 Israeli people on October 7th, 2023. I grew up in a family where my father agreed with the setup of the Jewish state of Israel but questioned Israel’s ethnic cleansing in what has come to be known as the Nakba and its impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians scattered throughout the region. My father explained and talked about the 1967 6-day War. He also talked about Golda Meir and the 1973 Yom Kippur War, a surprise attack by Egypt, a military dictatorship and Syria run by a brutal dictator, Hafez al-Assad. We, as a family, understood that Israel, a democracy, was living in a neighbourhood full of autocracies and admired Israel’s and Moshe Dayan’s military prowess. We also talked about Yasser Arafat and Rabin and the Oslo Accords, which showed a chink of light that was quickly put out by the assassination of the Israeli Prime Minister.
I will start by saying the Israeli people have allowed the 4 horseman of the apocalypse in the form of Netanyahu, Gvir, Smotrich and Katz to undermine your democracy. One, being Netanyahu, an indicted war criminal by the International Criminal Court, the second Katz, who wants to reduce Gaza to rubble, which he has successfully done and used humanitarian aid and famine as a weapon of war. Katz, who also said, All the civilian population of Gaza is ordered to leave immediately. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world” This type of language and actions are of a playbook from a very dark past.
The third is Ben Gvir, the national security minister, who is encouraging and arming settlers to illegally encroach, murder, terrorise, occupy, and annex the West Bank.
Fourth and not least is Bezalel Smotrich, who has shamelessly said that he wants to see Gaza uninhabitable for Palestinians and in addition to the core goal of Gaza being ethnically cleansed of Palestinians.
These breaches of international humanitarian law are hardly mentioned, let alone the genocide in Gaza; the Jewish State just gets a slap on the wrist by our complicit democracies, who still suffer from “Post Holocaust Guilt Syndrome.”
Nearly 75,000 Palestinians have been killed by the IDF, of whom 25,000 have been women and children. The IDF has targeted and killed 250 journalists, in itself a war crime, and have also killed almost 2000 aid workers. No European leader other than Spain’s Pedro Sanchez has described Israel’s actions as genocide. In Israel, the Israeli Human Rights Organisation B’Tselem issued a report on the war called “Our Genocide.” Their conclusion was “the recognition that the Israeli regime is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and the deep concern that it may expand to other areas where Palestinians live under Israeli rule, demand urgent and unequivocal action from both Israeli society and the international community, and use of every means available under international law to stop Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people”. Ehud Olmert’s piece in Haaretz in June 2025 accused the IDF of committing war crimes, calls Netanyahu’s government a criminal gang, describes the war in Gaza as a war of devastation, indiscriminate, limitless, cruel, and criminal killing of civilians and now refers to Netanyahu and his thugs as the enemy within. Former Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon has said that Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing.
Consistently, 85% of the Israeli people supported the Gaza war even as late as July 2025. A poll by the Israeli Democracy Institute in July 2025 showed that, despite widespread coverage, a majority of Israelis described themselves as “not at all troubled” by “reports of famine and suffering among the Palestinian population in Gaza”. This flies in the face of the phrase “Never Again,” said by those liberated from the Buchenwald concentration camp.
The Israeli people have been led down a blind alley by their current leaders, when in reality, there is a solution. Still, the zealots who refer to the West Bank and Gaza as Judea and Samaria have no interest in building a safe future for your children, but simply to ethnically cleanse their understanding of the “Promised Land” as they are the “Chosen People”, whatever that means. I am angry, annoyed and saddened by the position that the majority of Israeli’s have taken and how immune they have become to the slaughter of innocents in Gaza.
The future for the Israeli people is to first elect a government that is really interested in providing a safe future for the coming generations, and understand that a safe Israel means a safe and viable home for Palestinians, either as a separate democratic state or a single secular state on a piece of land that both Jews and Palestinians can call home. Sounds like a tall order, and it is, and it would mean “from the river to the sea we would all be free.” The Oyneg Shabes about the Warsaw Ghetto was collated by Emanuel Ringelblum, a secular Marxist Zionist, who also wanted to create a Palestine shared with Arab citizens. The foresight of people like Ringelblum and today by people like Peter Beinhart in his book “Being Jewish after the destruction of Gaza,” can surely not continue to be ignored by the Israeli people.
Beinart is now arguing against the idea of a state that privileges one ethno-religious group. He unequivocally expressed that Zionism’s focus on a Jewish state has led to the subjugation of Palestinians, and on that basis alone, he no longer supports the necessity of an ethnonational Jewish state. The star of David belongs to you, but currently this star emits not light but darkness.
Finally, just before I’m called an antisemite, I’m not.
Suneil Sharma
22nd April 2026
The Gob 
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