Zionism’s Continuing Victimhood Narrative: Legitimizing Occupation and Terror

Once again, we are in the midst of a cruel and bloody war between Israel and the Palestinians. Many things are as they always are in such wars; Israel’s indiscriminate and unproportional use of force against civilians, failure to acknowledge its responsibility regarding the human beings whose land it illegally occupies, high number of civilian deaths, and Israel’s simultaneous repetition of the victimhood narrative.

Zionism’s construction of the Jew as the eternal victim was first applied as a tool to justify the its intention of occupying another people’s land and establishing a state on it. Since the original inhabitants of that land, regardless of religion or political inclination, resisted this land theft (Robson; Hassassian), the victimhood narrative was again used to justify the violence and ethnic cleansing that was essential to the establishment of the regime. The Zionists falsely referred to themselves as the weak side, the David fighting the Goliath of Arab power, a metaphor that was debunked by Israel’s own revisionist historians (Shlaim), and was harder to uphold following the large-scale occupation of Arab land as a result of the 1967 war. Still, with all the inconsistencies, the victimhood myth continues to live on and serve as justification for violating the basic human rights of Palestinians.

One of the early objectives of Zionism as an ideology has been to change the “old Jew” into a “new Jew;” the Sabra (Almog). This new Jew was supposed to be independent, brave, and rough, and to internalize the belief that he will always be a victim; no one can be trusted to save him so he should always be prepared to fight for his existence. Out of this extremely pessimist worldview emerged an Israeli strategic culture that practically legitimizes preemptive and inhumane violence towards perceived enemies. It is as if the Holocaust, the pogroms and all other forms of antisemitism emerging mainly from Europe, provide the Jew with an exclusive right to victimhood.

Naturally, lies have been essential for establishing Jewish victimhood as an ongoing tragedy and selling it to global public opinion. The Israeli regime possesses the region’s fourth strongest military and receives billions of dollars of American aid, more than any other country in the world (Wolf), and mainly spent on the military sector, but still manages to portray itself as the underdog. This image is constantly reproduced and propagated through mainstream media, manipulating global audiences into believing that the Israeli regime’s atrocities are in fact nothing but self-defence. The case of the false report on Israeli babies beheaded by Hamas, reported by mainstream media (such as CNN) and even repeated by the American president (Gray et al.), without any sort of evidence to back it up is just one example (Boyraz; “What We Know”).

The advent of social media has forced mainstream news outlets to provide some semblance of impartiality and fairness, and include Palestinian commentators in their programmes, whilst different media tactics are used to maintain the Israel-is-the-victim frame. Pro-Palestine guests are repeatedly asked whether they condemn resistance fighters’ supposed ‘terrorism’ against civilians whilst similar questions are practically never directed at Israeli spokespeople.

The myth of victimhood has two catastrophic implications, first is the obvious dehumanization of Palestinians and Arabs, and the second more subtle one is that many Jewish people are ruined by being led to internalize such an image. These people not only live in a constant state of fear and phobia but also accept the extreme racist approach towards fellow human beings. Zionist Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, for instance, refers to the people of Gaza as “human animals” (“Israeli defence minister”) before starting a complete siege and carpet bombing of Gaza; a dehumanizing rhetoric to ensure that no Israeli conscience ever questions the ethics of such a policy.

The whole world was taken back by surprise on 7th October with the Hamas operation, not only because of the timing which coincided with the Yom Kippur war which took place 50 years ago, but because the sophisticated planning that enabled Hamas to inflict large scale damage on the Israeli enemy. Many things were happening for the first time; infiltration by thousands of fighters into occupied territories, taking prisoners of war in large numbers, destroying Israeli military tanks and equipment, etc. Western media quickly took to framing the incident as a terrorist attack on peace loving Israeli civilians, although most of the Israelis that were killed or taken as prisoners of war were actually IDF personnel. But what added to the shock for Israelis and the West was the fact that Hamas had dared to fight back in an effective manner. The Oriental, as post-colonial theory demonstrates, is always expected to be submissive to its occupier; the moment it dares to fight back and resist its subjugation, he/she becomes the irrational, bloodthirsty monster. This is how indigenous Americans, African Americans, Indians and all other colonized people are depicted in colonial culture. Although some would say that Palestinian militants act against their people’s interests because they facilitate the victimhood narrative for Israel, Hamas’s latest operation was in fact a great success precisely because it negated the ‘submissive oriental’ image and expectation. The Al-Aqsa Storm operation, with all the sacrifice that went into it, demonstrated to the world that Palestinians are capable of effectively fighting for their rights and that the Palestinian problem cannot be pushed into oblivion by normalization deals.

 Israel will certainly intensify its self-victimization in the course of the current violent conflict with the powerful tools that it possesses, so those who speak for Palestine and the resistance should dissect this false narrative using creative approaches and diverse means and ensure that the reality of Palestine’s true and real story gets out to as many people as possible.

The article was written by Elham Kadkhodaee, assistant professor at Faculty of World Studies, Tehran University, and first published in Khamenei.ir.

References:

Almog, Oz. The Sabra: The Creation of the New Jew. Translated by Haim Watzman, University of California Press, 2000.

Boyraz, Turgut Alp. “Israeli army says it does not have ‘confirmation’ about allegations that ‘Hamas beheaded babies.’” Anadolu Ajansi, 11 Oct. 2023, https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israeli-army-says-it-does-not-have-confirmation-about-allegations-that-hamas-beheaded-babies-/3014787.

Cortellessa, Eric, and Brian Bennett. “Biden and Congress Craft $2 Billion Aid Package as Israel Vows to ‘Crush’ Hamas.” Time, 11 Oct. 2023, https://time.com/6322820/israel-aid-biden-congress-hamas/.

Gray, Sarah, et al. “The White House is walking back Biden’s statement that he saw photographic evidence of beheaded children.” Insider, 12 Oct. 2023, https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-pictures-terrorists-beheading-children-white-house-2023-10.

Hassassian, Manuel. “The Palestinian Christians Are Integral in the Palestinian National Movement.” Palestine-Israel Journal, vol. 22, no. 4, 2017, https://www.pij.org/articles/1810/the-palestinian-christians-are-integral-in-the-palestinian-national-movement.

“Israeli defence minister orders ‘complete siege’ on Gaza.” Aljazeera, 9 Oct. 2023, https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2023/10/9/israeli-defence-minister-orders-complete-siege-on-gaza.

Robson, Laura. Colonialism and Christianity in Mandate Palestine. University of Texas Press, 2011.

Shlaim, Avi. “The War of the Israeli Historians.” Annales, vol. 59, no. 1, Jan. 2004, pp. 161-67.

“What we actually know about the viral report of beheaded babies in Israel.” Sky News, 12 Oct. 2023, https://news.sky.com/story/its-important-to-separate-the-facts-from-speculation-what-we-actually-know-about-the-viral-report-of-beheaded-babies-in-israel-12982329.

Wolf, Christopher. “How Much Aid Does the U.S. Give to Israel?” U.S.News, 10 Oct. 2023, https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2023-10-10/how-much-aid-does-the-u-s-give-to-israel#:~:text=The%20United%20States%20has%20given,it%20more%20than%20%24260%20billion.&text=By%20Christopher%20Wolf-,Oct.,2023%2C%20at%203%3A48%20p.m.