Israel — Apartheid, International Law, and the Logic of Resistance
October 7 is not a date. It is a narrative. Constructed to render everything that came before invisible — and to make everything that followed appear as a reaction.
1,200 people killed, the majority of them civilians. Around 250 people were taken hostage to Gaza. These were war crimes under international humanitarian law. What happened on October 7 is fully present in public discourse. What came before it—and what has been happening in Gaza—is not. This article fills in what is missing.
How It Actually Began
Founded on Terror
All of this began in 1948—with Deir Yassin: units of the Irgun and the Lehi terrorist organizations murdered at least 107 residents, the majority of them women, children, and elderly men. Afterward, they broadcast the news through loudspeaker trucks in Arab neighborhoods as a warning. The mass flight that followed was calculated. 750,000 people were expelled. 530 villages were destroyed.
„As early as 1937, Zionist underground groups had already carried out more than 57 attacks against the British mandate authority and the Palestinian population, killing more than 5,000 people. On July 22, 1946, the Irgun, under the command of Menachem Begin, bombed the King David Hotel, killing 91. Further massacres of Palestinian villages followed in December 1947 and January 1948—Al-Khisas, Balad al-Shaykh, and Jaffa.
Irgun commander Menachem Begin, who ordered the Deir Yassin massacre, became prime minister. Yitzhak Shamir, co-organizer of the assassination of UN mediator Folke Bernadotte in September 1949, became prime minister. Ariel Sharon, held responsible for the Sabra and Shatila massacres in September 1982, also became prime minister. Terror is not the exception; it is the founding principle—and not a faded relic of the founding years. As late as 1983, Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan told Yediot Ahronot that once the land was fully settled, the Arabs would only be able to „scurry around like drugged roaches in a bottle.“ From the very first hour to the highest ranks of military leadership: the same stance.
What followed was 77 years of systematic land seizure: from 5,000 settlers in the late 1970s to over 700,000 today—every single settlement is illegal under international law, per UN resolutions 446, 452, and 465. In April 2026, Netanyahu and Smotrich approved 34 new settlements in a single cabinet decision. Finance Minister Smotrich states the goal openly: full control of the West Bank—without its inhabitants. (Benny Morris, 1988; UN-Res. 446/1979, 452/1979, 465/1980; B’Tselem, 2023; Haaretz, 11.04.2026; CJPME, 2024; Yediot Ahronot, 04/13/1983; Middle East Monitor, 10.2023; Wikipedia, 2026)
Apartheid
The consequence: apartheid. Two legal systems are operating on the same territory: civil law for settlers, military law with a 96 percent conviction rate for Palestinians—based largely on coerced confessions. What is happening in Palestine has a name — and it is not only Israel’s most respected human rights organization, B’Tselem, that uses it. Over 65 laws discriminating on the basis of ethnicity are documented by Adalah. Settlers consume seven times more water per capita than their Palestinian neighbors—while an Israeli expert explained to CNN: „We want to expel the Palestinians, so we want to take away their means of living.“
What this looks like in practice is Palestinian daily life: 849 checkpoints and roadblocks controlling who can move, when, and where. Since 1967, approximately one million Palestinians have been detained in total. Hundreds of minors every year—frequently pulled from their beds in the middle of the night, prosecuted before military courts without a lawyer, without their parents, in a language many of them do not speak. B’Tselem documents cases of Palestinians arrested without apparent cause, beaten with rifle butts, sexually humiliated. At checkpoints, women and children are systematically harassed. Ambulances are held up. Patients die because the permit to leave for a hospital arrives too late—or not at all. A journalist from Nablus put it plainly: ‚We now see killings as something routine.
And it is getting worse: On March 30, 2026, the Knesset passed the death penalty by hanging—exclusively for Palestinians, with no right of appeal. Minister Ben Gvir wore a golden noose on his lapel during the vote.
Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s former defense minister under Netanyahu, describes the ideology behind it in an interview with Ynet: „What is Jewish supremacy? Eighty years after the Holocaust, it’s „Mein Kampf“ in reverse. The superior race—that’s us.“ And on the reality on the ground: „The Israeli government is encouraging Jewish pogromists to dispossess Arabs of their land through violence.“ Former Mossad director Tamir Pardo, the son of a Holocaust survivor, said after touring devastated West Bank villages, speaking directly to camera: „What I saw today made me ashamed to be a Jew.“ Former Mossad Director Tamir Pardo—son of a Holocaust survivor—said on camera after touring devastated West Bank villages: „What I saw today made me ashamed to be Jewish.“ (B’Tselem, 01.2021; Adalah, 2024; Frontiers in Water, 2024; CNN, 04.2026; Knesset, 30.03.2026; OCHA, 2025; B’Tselem, 12.2024; UNICEF / HRW / Amnesty, lfd.; Al Jazeera, 22.04.2026; NPR, 12.12.2025; Moshe Ya’alon / Ynet, 2025; Channel 13 / Tamir Pardo, 04.2026)
Resistance Framed as Terror
Dispossession. Occupation. Apartheid. Oppression breeds resistance—and in Western discourse, that resistance is invariably framed as terrorism, even though the terror started on the other side. Every nuanced analysis begins with a mandatory ritual: denouncing the atrocities of the terrorists. Skip it, and you’re suspect. The mechanism is perfect—it forecloses context before it can begin. But asymmetric resistance is not a moral question—it is the product of circumstances. An imprisoned population with no army, no air force, no tanks, no artillery, no allies—facing one of the most heavily armed militaries in the world, backed by the veto power and military funding of the last remaining superpower. Those who fight under these conditions do not fight with the weapon of their choice. They fight with the weapon left to them. The French Resistance against German occupation is honored as heroic to this day. Sitting Bull was a terrorist—until he wasn’t. Nelson Mandela remained on the US terrorism watchlist until 2008. The designation of resistance as terror is not a legal category. It is the exercise of power. (Congressional Research Service, 2024; Oxfam, 10.2024; US State Dep. Terrorist Designation Archive)
What Has Been Documented Since October 7
Resistance, too, is not a static condition. Counter-violence, embedded in decades of institutionalized dehumanization, produces what we have seen documented since October 7: a policy and army that, from the outset, have pursued displacement and ethnic cleansing, and a society increasingly degenerating to fall in line behind it.
The Targeted Killing of Children
What has been documented in Gaza since October 7 does not come from activists. The BBC, De Volkskrant, and 65 American physicians independently documented the same pattern: children killed deliberately. Shots to the head or chest, in designated humanitarian safe zones and evacuation corridors that the IDF itself had established. Former Dutch Army Commander Lieutenant General Mart de Kruif: „This is not collateral damage. This is intentional.“
The UN Commission of Inquiry found in its report of June 23, 2026: Israeli security forces deliberately killed Palestinian children—which the Commission identified as the central element in establishing genocidal intent. At least 20,179 children were killed between October 2023 and October 2025, accounting for roughly 30 percent of all fatalities. The Commission documented targeted strikes against maternity and neonatal wards. Commission Chair Muralidhar: ‚By targeting children, Israel is targeting the Palestinian people’s capacity to exist and to determine their own future.‘
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant. The United States responded with sanctions against the court. (BBC Investigative Unit, 08.2025; De Volkskrant, 09.2025; NYT / Sidhwa et al., 10.2024; ICC, 21.11.2024; UN Independent Commission of Inquiry, 23.06.2026; UNICEF, 2026)
The Psychology of Dehumanization
Professor Yoel Elizur, former chair of the Israeli Council of Psychologists and emeritus professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, documented an incident involving a four-year-old child: „The commander suddenly runs over, grabs the boy, and breaks his arm at the elbow and his leg. Kicks him three times in the stomach and walks on.“ When asked about it, the commander reportedly said: „These children need to be killed from the day they are born.“ A reserve soldier described the normalization of cruelty at the Sde Teiman detention facility: „I saw sadistic people there. People who enjoy inflicting suffering on others. What disturbed me most was seeing how easily and quickly ordinary people can emotionally disconnect.“ Another soldier admitted: „There is total dehumanization here. It bothers me that it didn’t bother me.“
These are not a few individuals who snapped. Elizur documents the mechanism behind it: the commander ran toward the boy—unprovoked, in full view of his soldiers. He broke the boy’s arm and leg, kicked him three times in the stomach, and walked on. No consequences. No intervention. This was not a loss of control. It was a demonstration. Those who refuse to participate or report what they see are pushed out — Elizur documents this through the case of a reserve fighter, who spoke out against the crimes: ‚They threw me out of my team.‘ The title of Elizur’s analysis captures what new arrivals in Gaza are taught: ‚When you leave Israel and enter the Gaza Strip, you are God.‘ (Haaretz / Prof. Elizur, 23.12.2024; Haaretz Editorial, 12.03.2026; Al Jazeera, 13.03.2026)
Chris Sidoti, a member of the UN Commission of Inquiry, responded to Netanyahu’s claim that the IDF is „the most moral army in the world“—with a legal verdict, not a moral one: „The only conclusion one can reach is that the Israeli army is one of the most criminal armies in the world.“ Commission chair Navi Pillay called the scale of the war crimes „unprecedented.“ The Commission handed over 7,000 pieces of evidence to the ICC. (UN Commission of Inquiry / Chris Sidoti, 06/19/2024; Navi Pillay, 06/19/2024)
Genocide: The Evidence
These are not isolated incidents. In December 2024, Amnesty International published a 296-page report following 14 months of independent investigation, titled „You Feel Like You Are ‚Subhuman’—conclusion: „The State of Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.“ Human Rights Watch reached identical conclusions in its own report the same month. In September 2025, the UN Commission of Inquiry led by Navi Pillay—former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and judge at the Rwanda Tribunal—officially found: „Israel is responsible for committing genocide in Gaza. It is clear that the intent exists to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza.“ The elements of the 1948 Genocide Convention are met. More than 250 human rights and aid organizations — including Save the Children, Oxfam, and Human Rights Watch — called on all UN member states in a joint open letter to halt weapons deliveries to Israel. Over 1,000 organizations and movements worldwide supported South Africa’s genocide case before the ICJ. The West watches. And keeps delivering weapons. (Amnesty International, 05.12.2024; HRW, 19.12.2024; UN Commission / Navi Pillay, OHCHR, 16.09.2025; Amnesty / Save the Children / Oxfam et al., 11.04.2024)
The depth of Israeli society’s degeneration is also visible in data from within that society: 75 percent of Jewish Israelis agree that there are „no innocent people in Gaza.“ 82 percent support the forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. 88 percent consider the scale of Palestinian casualties justified. 68 percent support blocking all international aid to Gaza. These are not fringe positions. This is the mainstream. And it is Israeli universities and Israeli newspapers that are documenting it. (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, June 2025; Penn State University / Haaretz, March 2025; Tel Aviv University, Peace Index, 11.2023; Israel Democracy Institute, 02.2024)
According to a peer-reviewed study from the University of Pennsylvania, published in The Lancet, life expectancy in Gaza has fallen from 75.5 years before the war to 40.5 years — a drop of nearly 35 years in twelve months, the largest collapse in modern medical history. For men, the decline exceeds 38 years. The authors explicitly note: these figures are conservative. The outcome is the product of a combination: over 70,000 tons of bombs, rockets, and artillery munitions dropped on a territory smaller than the city of Cologne — six times the explosive force of Hiroshima, concentrated on 365 square kilometers. Systematic bombardment of civilian infrastructure. Deliberate destruction of hospitals. Blockade of foreign aid. Destruction of drinking water and food supplies. Calculated starvation. Each element alone would constitute a war crime. Their systematic combination has a name: genocide. Approximately 73,500 Palestinians had been killed by April 2026—a conservative estimate according to the Lancet study. Over 80 percent of them civilians. More children killed in the first year of war than by any other military in the world over the previous 20 years combined. The Genocide Convention explicitly defines genocide as the deliberate imposition of conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a group. That is not an interpretation. It is a statutory element. Meanwhile, more journalists have been killed than in the American Civil War, both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan combined. „Many were deliberately targeted—for their work documenting the crimes on the ground.“ (Lancet / Guillot et al., 01.2025; WHO, 05.2024; UN-Menschenrechtsbüro, 31.12.2024; UN / Mofokeng & Albanese, 08.2025; Amnesty International, 07.2025; UN OCHA / Fletcher, 13.05.2025; HRW, 12.2024; Scientists for Global Security / Paul Rogers, 04.2025; Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, 04.2025; Watson Institute / Nick Turse, 01.04.2025; Reporters Without Borders, 2025; UN / Irene Khan, 15.09.2025)
Why the West Looks Away
Despite genocide findings from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations spanning nearly two years—despite ICC arrest warrants, despite 232 journalists being killed, despite life expectancy having collapsed to levels last seen in 1918—Western governments continue delivering weapons, continue providing diplomatic cover, and stay silent on the rest. Western media frames genocide as conflict, apartheid as a security issue, resistance as terror—reproducing exactly the inversion they ought to be exposing. And Western societies watch. With few exceptions, there is no coordinated mass movement, no political pressure capable of forcing governments to reconsider. The outcry never comes—not because people don’t know, but because the system in which they think prevents it.
In Western discourse, all of this is classified as a response. That is the core inversion. The victim is framed as the perpetrator. This inversion is so complete that simply naming reality reads as an attack. This is not accidental. It is the product of a system in which cognitive distortion, institutional blind spots, and social dynamics work in concert — not only in the Middle East but also in the perception of the Western world that watches and says nothing. (The Lancet, 02.2026; Oxfam, 10.2024; ICJ, 19.07.2024)
Those who want to understand the mechanisms behind this dehumanization will find the framework in Distorted Reality. Not as consolation. As a tool.