My latest column for UK outlet, Middle East Eye:
Israel‘s plans to remove Palestinians from Gaza, ominously called “voluntary transfer“, may seem like a shocking new idea. But it is as old as the Jewish state itself.
Insecurity about the country’s origins has been baked in since 1948. In recent years, Israel’s Defence Ministry has literally dispatched teams into Israeli archives to remove vast numbers of documents that prove the reality of the Nakba.
Was this embarrassment, shame, hubris – or all of the above?
These are the actions of a guilty nation that can’t face its own past, though many Israelis today are increasingly proud of the ethnic cleansing that took place in the late 1940s – and are determined to repeat it on steroids.
From the late 1960s, Israeli political and military leaders spoke in strikingly similar terms to Israel’s far right and mainstream in the 2020s; removing Palestinians from Palestine was the overriding goal.
There was little Jewish public pushback, including in the Diaspora, to these ideas.
In 1967, after Israel began occupying even more areas of Palestine, there were roughly 400,000 Palestinians in Gaza. Countless proposals were floated to send Palestinians to neighbouring Arab countries, the West Bank, Jordan, or any state willing to take them.
Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Dayan had no hesitation in suggesting the most egregious crimes in June 1967.
“If we can evict 300,000 refugees from Gaza to other places… we can annex Gaza without a problem,” he said.
His ultimate vision was to empty Gaza of all Palestinians and settle Jews in their place.
The Israeli Prime Minister at the time, Levi Eshkol, was even more explicit.
“I propose annexing Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, although I wouldn’t say the two things in one breath,” he stated. “We’re willing to be killed over Jerusalem, and as far as the Gaza Strip is concerned, when we recall 400,000 Arabs, that leaves a bitter feeling.”
Another Israeli politician, Yisrael Galili – who was chief of staff of the Haganah, the Jewish militia that existed in Palestine before the state of Israel was established and committed numerous terrorist acts – understood what was on the table and said as much in 1971.
“I’m not deluding myself that this is a humanitarian act and that we are doing charity work with them,” he admitted. “I don’t want to sugarcoat this cruel operation, but it’s the least worst option under the given conditions.”
Today, there is no need to hide such views in private meetings. They are out in the open, from an Israeli government simply reflecting a public that would like nothing more than to see Palestinians disappear entirely.
The emptying of Gaza has already begun. One hundred Palestinians from Gaza are leaving for a pilot work programme in Indonesia – an initiative that Israel hopes will develop into something far bigger. Congo and other African nations are reportedly in discussions with Israel to take in Palestinians from Gaza.
There is a long history of the Jewish state bribing, arming and partnering with corrupt and dictatorial states in Africa and beyond to further its interests.
Little has changed in 2025.
It would be comforting to think that Israel’s extremist government represents a fringe view in Israeli society. The large protests against Netanyahu might suggest that there is a sizeable number of Jews who reject the cronyism, violence, racism, and mass slaughter in Gaza.
But this would be mistaken. While many Israeli Jews undeniably loathe Netanyahu and his mafia-like administration, there is little concern for Palestinian lives or dignity. Protests in Israel calling for the return of hostages often ignore who has caused the carnage in Gaza – and who could stop it immediately.
There are Israeli left-wingers, though they hold little to no political power. Their voices are drowned out by hard-right, pro-annexation, pro-war crowds.
For decades now, the pro-settler minority has successfully taken over the state at the governmental, military and diplomatic levels.
The Trump administration has granted Israel’s growing fascist groups the kind of political freedom they have dreamed about for years. This includes policies that emboldened settler movements, whose violence against Palestinians now unfolds with near-total impunity.
The Israeli public is largely wilfully oblivious to what is happening to their Palestinian neighbours who live kilometres from their comfortable homes in Tel Aviv. Israeli fascism is on the march with far too little opposition.
One of the long-held visions of Israel’s fascist right is the destruction of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the Temple Mount in its place. A poll in 2013 found that one-third of Israeli Jews supported this move, despite the likelihood that it would spark a global religious war.
Racism is not unique to Israel. Blatant discrimination against minorities is surging, from Trump’s America to an increasingly anti-Muslim Germany.
But the level of contempt shown by mainstream Israelis towards Palestinians places the Jewish state in a unique position among so-called democracies (though Israel is only nominally democratic for Jews alone).
A 2016 poll found that close to half of Israelis would not live in the same building as Arabs, and a third backed separating Jewish and Arab mothers in maternity wards.
What does this tell us about the state of mainstream Israeli society? It is often racist, scared, insular, arrogant and largely lacking in empathy for the victims of its war machine. Hatred of Arabs is ubiquitous.
Since 7 October 2023, the world has seen what countless Israeli soldiers have proudly posted on social media: the evidence of their crimes in Gaza. This has not caused any scandal in Israel beyond the military ordering its troops to stop doing it.
The Israeli army has not demanded an end to the genocide of the Palestinian people – only that its soldiers stop showing the world what they are doing so openly, to avoid legal and political risk. Israeli troops, however, remain addicted to posting videos and photos of their own crimes.
Israeli society and much of the Jewish Diaspora have chosen to align themselves, wholly and almost without question, with a far-right Israeli regime that proudly boasts of destroying Gaza. With fascism on the rise globally, it is unsurprising that Israel is proving to be one of its most resilient models and inspirations.