By John Pickard
The deliberate starvation of the population of Gaza – using the denial of food, water and medicines as a means of promoting ethnic cleansing – is clearly and openly displayed to the eyes of the world. Alongside these blatant war crimes, Israel is using the IDF and ‘irregular’ forces of armed settlers, with nods and winks from government ministers, to drive increasing numbers of Palestinian farmers and villagers from their lands in the West Bank.
To further cement the apartheid state that has been constructed across the West Bank, the Israeli Finance Minister and leader of the far-right Religious Zionism party, Bezalel Smotrich, has announced the building of more than two thousand new homes for Jewish settlers on formerly Palestinian land.
It is as a result of the genocide in Gaza and the legalised pogroms on the West Bank that we have witnessed the biggest global political movement on any single issue in the whole of world history. Since October 2023, hundreds of millions of workers and youth have participated in demonstrations, rallies, occupations and other forms of civil disobedience, all in the name of the same cause. It is to protest at the Gaza onslaught, which has killed more than 61,000 directly, and which threatens to kill thousands more by famine and neglect, and against the strangulation of all Palestinian rights.
Israel is now a pariah state
With the exception of mainstream politicians in the west – disgracefully including the Labour Party leadership – the majority of workers have been appalled at the merciless collective punishment meted out to Palestinians since October 7. In the eyes of the world’s population, with the exception of a narrow but important layer of powerful politicians, Israeli is now a pariah state, undeserving of any trading or commercial relations, much less a destination of arms exports. Even Israeli academics have called for “crippling sanctions” against their own country, for its war crimes.
So great has been the upsurge of global outrage at the Israeli government’s policy of deliberate starvation in Gaza, and so much anger has been aroused at government ministers cheering on the ethnic cleansing, that even erstwhile supporters of Israel have been forced to voice some ‘concern’.
It is significant that former cheer-leaders of Netanyahu are becoming worried about the collapse in international diplomatic and political support for Israel, fearing that it will undermine Israel – a zionist enterprise they support – permanently and irrevocably. In a remarkable open letter publicised in Haaretz – but widely ignored in the western mainstream media – thousands of prominent Jewish politicians and individuals have at long last come out to condemn the policies of Netanyahu.
Four thousand signatories to letter
The more than four thousand signatories have told the Israeli Prime Minister that his government’s policies and rhetoric “are causing ‘lasting damage’ to Israel and world Jewry”. The letter is signed by Jews in eighteen different countries, and it urges Netanyahu “to ensure the provision of food and humanitarian aid to Gaza, to end the war, bring home the Israeli hostages and declare that Israeli will not resettle Gaza”. It further calls on the Israeli government not to “pursue or advocate any policy of expulsion of Palestinians civilians under any guises.”
The letter also has a somewhat muted poke at the all-too-blatant ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. “If Israel’s military, when given the bold order by you, can send a missile through a window in Tehran to take out an Iranian general with unerring accuracy” the letter says, “it surely has the ability to maintain order in the West Bank, prevent Jewish extremist violence, protect Palestinian civilians and apply the law“.
It may not have been the intention of the authors of the letter, but they have eloquently described how the Netanyahu government is complicit in driving thousands of Arabs off their land in the West Bank, in the last year and a half. They could easily stop it, is the point being made.
We doubt very much that most of the signatories are really concerned about the fate of the Palestinian people, except in words. It has taken tens of thousands of deaths and untold war crimes – not to mention decades of creation of an apartheid state of Israel, before most of them have uttered a peep of protest.
The letter is notable for who has signed it, because it includes many who have been prominent advocates for Israel in the past. One of them is Malcolm Rifkind, the former British Foreign Secretary under Margaret Thatcher and John Major. Another is Sir Trevor Chinn, president of Britain’s United Jewish Israel Appeal, a man who apparently meets Foreign Office officials to promote arms sales to Israel, and who gives hundreds of thousands of pounds to the private offices of those MPs who support Israel.
The United Jewish Israel Appeal is registered in the UK as a charity and its aim, it says, is to build “meaningful connections between young Jews in the UK and the people of Israel”. Clearly, Sir Trevor is concerned that such connections are breaking down, thanks to Netanyahu’s policies.
The letter makes the obligatory criticism of Hamas, otherwise the omission would be seized upon by Netanyahu. But then it adds, “…we also cannot escape the fact that the policies and rhetoric of the government you lead are doing lasting damage to Israel, its standing in the world and the prospects of secure peace for all Israelis and Palestinians. This has severe consequences for Israel but also for the wellbeing, security and unity of Jewish communities around the world.”
Netanyahu probably hoping for an upsurge of antisemitism
Have the signatories abandoned the ideas of Zionism, that Jewish people have a right to Palestine because it was granted to them by God (whereas the Palestinians expelled in 1948 or their descendants have no such rights)? Probably not. But they believe that the whole enterprise of zionism, which they support, is now threatened by Netanyahu.
The Israeli Prime Minister, the letter says, “must stop giving free rein…to far-right members of his government”, who by their use of incitement are “eroding the standing of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people and undermining Jewish communities as we face a surge in antisemitic, anti-Zionist hate.”
The government of Israel was undoubtedly hoping for a rise in antisemitism across the globe – although they cannot say so, for obvious reasons – because it would increase the likelihood that Jewish people across the world would want to migrate to Israel. Whereas for those Palestinians forced out of the land in 1948 (or their descendents) there is no right of return, any Jewish person, anywhere, has the right to move to Israel, even if they have no previous connection with the region. Keir Starmer and the Labour Friends of Israel should note the racist character of that blatant discrimination.
Regrettably, since October 7, there has been an increase in antisemitism, that is ill-feeling towards Jewish people as Jews. But that has been much smaller than the huge upsurge in outrage at the Israeli government. In fact, many Jewish people across the globe are bitterly opposed to what Netanyahu is doing. The Israeli government must be disappointed, therefore, that there has been no massive ‘Post-October-7’ boom in immigration.
Immigration to Israel is dropping off
Haaretz reports, that according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, the number of immigrants arriving in Israel in 2024 “dropped by one-third compared with the previous year, to a total of 31,000. In the first half of 2025, this downward trend accelerated, with the total number dropping by nearly 50 percent to 8,700, compared with the year-earlier period”.
This decline in immigration is largely due to a decline of migration from Russia, but the longer the Gaza onslaught has gone on, the greater has been the widespread perception that Netanyahu is not so much creating a ‘safe homeland’ as a trap for Jewish people. The correspondent in Haaretz notes that since October 7, with Israel, entrenched in war on numerous fronts, it is “considered far less safe than most other countries with sizable Jewish communities”.
That growing insecurity is shown also by the fact that nearly 60,000 Israelis left the country last year and didn’t return. That is more than twice the number for the year before. According to the Statistics Bureau, “81 percent were young people and families, often between 25 and 44 years old”. The company Ci Marketing found that around 40 percent of Israelis who are still here are nonetheless considering leaving. (Haaretz, May 12).
Netanyahu’s government has imposed a terrible and, by all appearances irrecoverable, fate on the more than two million Palestinians in Gaza. He is attempting to do the same, albeit at a slower pace (for the moment) on those Palestinians remaining in the West Bank. But in doing so, he is taking Zionism to its logical conclusion, in as much as it is a political movement that seeks to provide a secure homeland for Jews at the expense of others. What Netanyahu has succeeded in doing, despite his military ‘success’ is undermining the very basis of support for Zionism.
In the end, it will not be the half-apologetic and shame-faced supporters of Zionism who will make a difference to the Palestinian people. It will be the international workers’ movement and their direct action in the application of a campaign of disinvestment, boycott and sanctions on Israel.
[Feature photograph shows US vice-president JD Vance with Netanyahu, last April. From Wikimedia Commons, here]
