We Need to Focus on the Crime

Discussions of identity narratives and historical justifications are interesting, but are irrelevant when faced with a crime

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An empty UN Security Council chamber

I have written, and spoken quite extensively about Jewishness, Jewish identity, Jewish religion, and the relationship between these human made constructs and what Israel is doing. There is much to criticise about Israel calling itself ‘Jewish’, and presuming to speak for ‘all Jews’. Profound questions surround what Jewishness means and what makes a person a Jew. As someone born, raised, and indoctrinated in Israel, I have always felt I was in a good position to dispel some of the confusion and provide clarification about the psychology of Israeli society and how it operates. I have been determined to tear away Israel’s façade and expose the false image it has so successfully sold to the world. However, despite my own, and other people’s attempts, many are still confused about whether it is ‘OK’ to criticises Israel and support the Palestinian people.

We all have a fine-tuned survivalist compass that tells us when we are comfortably in the mainstream, or risk being ‘out’ in the fringes of our group or society. The confusion people feel about Israel has more to do with our natural human fear of mainstream disapproval, than it does with any facts relating to the situation. It hasn’t been that long since people gathered in village squares to watch someone burned at the stake or hanged, merely for disagreeing with those in power. I can only imagine what things were like when we still lived in caves.

The confusion about whether to support Palestinians is intentionally generated by Israel and its supporters, who exploit our basic human need to remain safely at our society’s centre. An antelope in the middle of the herd, looking and behaving like all the other antelopes, is less likely to fall prey to the lion than the one that wanders off alone.

Countries like Germany, the US, or the UK, justify their support for Israel by citing ‘Jewish suffering during the holocaust’ and European antisemitism. However, I do not believe for one second that any country that supports Israel does so out of sudden love for Jewish people, or genuine remorse about their role in Jewish history. Nor do I believe their support stems from concern about systemic racism in their societies.

I believe that anyone who supports Israel does so for their own purposes and gains, and because they share Israel’s colonial and settler-colonial psychology and ideology. We are led by oligarchs—very wealthy business leaders wielding enormous political influence. Their obscene wealth has been acquired within the context of colonial and imperialist economics. This power dynamic isn’t new. Political power has always rested with the rich and ruthless, who needed control to safeguard and increase their wealth. Today’s monarchies and aristocracies are a historical relics of successful warlord families who excelled at acquiring and maintaining wealth. We have enjoyed a brief period; a few decades of democracy and attempts at equalising society, and universalising political power. The wealthy played along for decades, pulling political strings from the shadows. Since the 1980s, however, they no longer operate in the background or pretend to respect democratic principles. The wealthy now openly possess all significant political power globally, and actively support their counterparts in other societies.

Why does Keir Starmer support Israel? He knows perfectly well what Israel is doing. He is smart and educated enough to know what settler-colonialism is. He reads, or is at least aware of the countless reports by human rights organisations, and can see what we see even through our biased media. Starmer and his gang support Israel because they believe in the right of one group of people to take what it wants from another. They believe in the idea that some humans are more entitled than others to survive, acquire wealth, and live in comfort. Groups and individuals ‘prove’ their entitlement by the very act of using force to impose their will, making entitlement and force synonymous. In this framework, might is not only right; it is ‘righteous’.

Regardless of his political affiliation—whatever being associated with ‘Labour’ even means anymore—Starmer is a son of the British Empire, and has a title to prove it. He has been ‘knighted’ by an entitled aristocracy, within an outdated class system that has no place in a modern democracy. Anyone accepting a title demonstrates their collusion with a system that stratifies people, declaring some ‘more important’ or more worthy than others. The ‘more important’ are considered ‘well-bred’, not only in their own circle but by many in the general population. Their status is inherited. People who receive titles from the monarchy as rewards for societal contributions are ‘commoners’ who merely help the privileged class maintain an illusion of benevolence, and of caring about good works in society.

In our ancient capitalist system, now reinvented as neoliberalism, acquiring wealth is its own virtue. If you acquire, you are good, and by your own actions you prove that you are entitled. Resources are always finite; what we take for ourselves leaves less for others. Since acquiring more at others’ expense requires ruthlessness, ruthlessness itself becomes synonymous with virtue. It is hardly surprising that the concept of sharing more equally and equitably is feared by neoliberalists, and is considered heresy in our neoliberal ‘religion’.

A Crime Is A Crime

Whatever Israel calls itself is irrelevant. I couldn’t care less if Israel called itself Buddhist, Christian, Scientologist, Hindu, or Muslim. Only what Isreal does matters. It is time we stop playing into identity narratives and start focusing on the crime that Israel is committing, and on the persistent cover and support it enjoys from some of the world’s most powerful players.

When someone commits a crime in our society, the police also investigate collaborators and enablers. We know exactly who Israel’s collaborators are and we must take responsibility for our opinions, and what we support. Anyone still uncertain about supporting Palestinians or standing up to Israel needs to reflect on the extent to which they are motivated by fear of being outside the mainstream.

In my twenty-five years as a psychotherapist, I have witnessed the profound impact that unrepentant, entitled perpetrators have on people. Psychopaths and other perpetrators keep me in my job. My knowledge about their nature and how they operate does not come solely from second-hand testimonies, or from textbooks. I am regularly privy to texts, letters, emails and voice messages from perpetrators. One recurring theme in the narrative of abusers is the ludicrous and delusional excuses and rationalisations they offer for their actions. Another, is feigning victimhood, always blaming everyone else for what they do, especially their actual victims.

Israel is hardly original, or special. Settler-colonialism and genocide have existed in some form since humanity began. As long as our legal systems still consider settler-colonialism a crime, we must focus on the crime and work to stop it. The sad reality is that we cannot trust or assume that the law will always criminalise the abuse of power. Those in power control the law. Given the characters now in power, and their deliberate destruction of our systems of ‘checks and balances’, we cannot assume that current laws will endure. Laws have always been changed, often rapidly, when new regimes assume power. We must stand united and clear-headed when faced with a crime. If we do not, we are choosing the role of collaborators.

Lara Sheehi explains why settler-colonialism is a crime.

The swiftness with which the settler colonial state of Israel could marshal brute force, civilizational discourse, and institutional disciplinary tactics both “at home” and in other settler colonial conditions (such as in the US) post-October 2023, alerts us to a pre-established setter colonial logic primed for activation. Settler colonialism relies on structures and acts of violence as its primary functioning, legitimizing this violence through the valiance of virtues. This legitimization process is often actualized through mission civilisatrice or spreading “democratic values”—relying on moralism and codes of civility, what Heike Schotten (2020, 287) highlights as “settler colonial eliminationist ideology.” The codes are ideological, contouring larger processes such as who has indisputable sovereignty; who acts in self-defense; and who is enabled to enact violence with impunity, as we see happening right now in Palestine. In smaller, yet still consequential ways, these codes also determine who can speak, about what, and, most importantly, how that speech is delivered, especially in the case of Palestine vis-a-vis Zionism. While many of the mechanics of these codes operate undetected, many are also blatant, operating in painful clarity, such as through the justification of genocidal warfare in Gaza. — (Lara Sheehi (13 May 2024): Intent to Harm: Settler Colonial Outposts in Psychoanalysis, Middle East Critique, DOI: 10.1080/19436149.2024.2348373)

Our civic duty

Violence, theft and exploitation are not crimes unless we so declare them. Our laws demonstrate the values we would like to live by. In other words, laws are a human invention. We must not only protect good laws from being overturned or perverted, but also demand that international law aligns with the laws inside our societies. If home invasion is considered a serious crime within our societies, so should settler-colonialism be seen in the international domain. If bullying is not tolerated and is punished inside our societies, so should bullying be treated in the global arena. If (at least in theory) everyone in our society is equal before the law, and no one is entitled to special treatment or to escape punishment, so should collective entities like countries be considered globally.

Conferring the right of veto on some countries in the UN Security Council, makes a mockery of what the UN was supposed to be. It means that the bullies remain in charge, whilst maintaining the façade of cooperation and unity. Imagine if someone’s friends and family had the right to veto any court decision against them, so that when they break the law and are caught, they could escape punishment for their crimes. Whilst the traditional colonial and settler-colonial bullies can veto any decision that goes against their interests, we have achieved nothing.

Humanity is a joke. The system we created and live under is absurd. I do not believe in chipping away at the edges of problems whilst the rotten structure underneath remains unchallenged and unchanged. We think we are advanced because we have advanced technology. But we cannot consider ourselves progressive until we rid ourselves of systemic hierarchies that favour some people over others, align international law with state law, and ensure it is enforced.

Israel is committing a crime against humanity and this should remain our only focus. When a crime is committed it does not matter who the criminal is, or what story they tell about themselves. When we fail to stand with Palestinians, we tell the world that some people are allowed to commit genocide. Just as laws must apply equally to everyone, morality cannot be selective—we cannot condemn a crime when one group commits it, and excuse it when another does. Or rather, we can, but in doing so we expose our hypocrisy.

And if we cannot act out of genuine concern for our fellow human beings, let us at least act out of self-interest, because as Martin Luther King Jr. said,¹ “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The Palestinians did not deserve to become victims of settler-colonialism and genocide, any more than anyone deserves to fall victim to abuse or injustice. In a world lacking a consistent moral foundation, anyone can become a victim.

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1. Martin Luther King Jr. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”.