Opinion: How Israel's racist mobs paved the way for Gaza genocide

Middle East Eye

a day ago

Over the past two years, the world has witnessed such an intensification of atrocities emanating from the Israeli state that each one threatens to obscure the last.
This invariably means that responding to each new outrage risks distracting from the key issue: the relentless Zionist project of ethnically cleansing Palestine in favour of an ethno-nationalist Jewish state, and the creation of a neutralised and neutered regional environment, where states abandon the Palestinian cause out of self-interest or because of bullying by Israel and the US.
Israel's recent attack on Iran all but wiped out coverage of the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
This, in turn, has obscured the violent assaults, land theft and ethnic cleansing taking place in the occupied West Bank. Palestinian citizens face such a multi-levelled onslaught against their lives and livelihoods that, within this maelstrom, many single actions that deserve scrutiny and analysis are overlooked, especially if they are not seen to have lethal outcomes.
To understand the purpose to which Israel's genocide in Gaza is being put, it is useful to pause and take account of the connections between this extermination project and the regular hate marches in Jerusalem, with all the linguistic violence they embody.
While the wider world has focused on the incriminating genocidal statements made by Israeli leaders since October 2023, Palestinian commentators have been far more attuned to their decades-long history.
It is thus important to look back on the racist and eliminationist rhetoric that has emanated from 'Jerusalem Day' since long before the most recent Netanyahu government, with its cabinet of avowed extremists and racists.
Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotric joins right-wing activists rallying at Jerusalem's Damascus Gate on 5 June, 2024 during the so-called Jerusalem Day flag march (AFP)