The Myth of Israel’s “Right to Exist”

From Apartheid to Atrocity: Why the End of Impunity Is Inevitable

“The blood of the innocent cries out forever. No nation, however powerful, can escape the consequences of injustice.”
—Menachem Begin

The South African Precedent

Israel’s defenders invoke democracy, security, and exceptionalism to justify its genocidal actions. But so did South Africa’s apartheid regime. For decades, Pretoria insisted that its system of racial segregation was necessary for stability. It claimed to be a beacon of Western civilisation surrounded by chaos. It held elections, just not for Black South Africans. It spoke the language of peace while building a legal architecture of exclusion and repression. Every act of brutality, every massacre, every instance of torture was cloaked in the language of “defence.”

Like Israel today, apartheid South Africa maintained a two-tiered system of citizenship, mobility, and access. It built walls not just physically, but also bureaucratically, legally, and ideologically. It denied the humanity of the majority and criminalised their resistance. It described Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress as terrorists. It taught its children that the natives were dangerous, that Black people could not be trusted with power, and that the nation’s survival depended on dominance.

“Apartheid Soweto”

And for far too long, the world accepted these lies. The United States, Britain, and much of Europe provided diplomatic support, economic trade, and political leniency. Multinational corporations profited from cheap Black labour and the spoils of state repression. The media, when not complicit, remained silent.

But apartheid didn’t fall because its rulers suddenly found conscience. It collapsed because the fiction broke. Because boycotts, divestments, and resistance made the regime untenable. Because the moral clarity of global outrage finally outpaced the cowardice of governments. Israel’s claim to exceptionalism, its insistence that no comparison can ever be made, evaporates the moment we recall how long South Africa said the same.

Colonial France’s Algerian Nightmare

“France’s Algerian Nightmare”

The Israeli state’s founding myth is built on the idea of returning to a “promised land”, a narrative stitched together from ancient biblical references that have no bearing on modern political reality. These stories, centuries removed from context and meaning, were weaponised to mask what was, in practice, a European settler-colonial insertion into Palestine. That narrative echoes another disastrous experiment: French Algeria.

When France invaded Algeria in 1830, it did not view it as a colony but as an extension of France itself. The settler population, known as pieds-noirs, renamed cities, seized land, and imposed French law, the French language, and French culture. Indigenous Algerians were rendered second-class, subject to a brutal colonial code that punished dissent as sedition and viewed resistance as savagery.

The French spoke of order and modernity, but delivered massacres, torture chambers, and collective punishment. The 1957 Battle of Algiers revealed the true face of the occupation: mass arrests, disappearances, and systematic torture administered in the name of national security. France referred to Algeria as “eternally French.” It criminalised calls for independence. It was believed the colony could be sustained indefinitely through sheer force.

But history had other plans. After 132 years, the settler project collapsed under its contradictions. The brutality became too visible. The resistance was too determined. The legitimacy was too threadbare. France eventually evacuated one million settlers in a matter of months, proof that permanence in colonial terms is always an illusion.

The parallels to Israel are chilling. From the renaming of cities to the criminalisation of resistance, from the doctrine of “eternal homeland” to the daily machinery of occupation, the Zionist project replicates the Algerian nightmare almost step for step. And as in Algeria, no regime built on denial, siege, and racial supremacy can survive when the world stops pretending.

Vietnam – The Empire That Wouldn’t Learn

“America’s Vietnam”

If Israel’s defenders still believe that superior firepower guarantees permanence, they would do well to remember Vietnam, a country that defeated two empires in a single generation.

France began its colonisation of Vietnam in the mid-19th century, declaring it part of Indochine française and imposing its language, laws, and Catholic institutions. The Vietnamese people were relegated to second-class status in their land; their rice was harvested for export while they starved. Rebellion after rebellion was crushed with executions, concentration camps, and collective punishment. As in Algeria, France spoke of civilisation and order, but ruled by decree and rifle.

When Vietnamese nationalists rose, they were branded as terrorists. When they demanded self-rule, they were imprisoned. When they fought for liberation, France responded with total war. The First Indochina War ended with France’s humiliating defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954; a moment that shattered the illusion of imperial invincibility.

But the Americans refused to learn. In the name of “containing communism,” the United States poured millions of tonnes of bombs onto Vietnam, poisoned its forests with Agent Orange, and killed millions in one of the most lopsided and brutal conflicts of the 20th century. Villages were massacred, cities napalmed, and entire generations scarred. All of it justified as “defence,” all of it wrapped in the rhetoric of peace and progress.

The result? Catastrophic defeat. The most powerful military in the world was driven out by a people fighting for the right not to be occupied. The Vietnamese did not win because they were stronger; they won because they refused to surrender their dignity. And when the American military fled Saigon in 1975, clinging to helicopters on rooftops, it marked more than the end of a war. It marked the collapse of another empire’s myth: that it could dictate history by force.

Like South Africa, like Algeria, like Rhodesia, Vietnam proves that no amount of violence can permanently suppress the will of an oppressed people. Israel, armed to the teeth and backed by American billions, may dismiss this lesson. But history doesn’t forget. Israel, like the United States, may believe that firepower ensures permanence. But Vietnam proved that history belongs to the people who refuse to be erased.

The Myth of Eternal Rule

“Israeli Mouthpiece”

Every settler-colonial project believes it is different and that its destiny is permanent. That its founding violence can be justified by divine promise, civilisational mission, or historical grievance. Israel is no exception.

It claims a unique right to exist, defined not by legal recognition or peaceful coexistence but by the right to dominate, to expel, and to kill with impunity. Its leaders speak of an eternal Jewish state, impervious to borders, international law, or demographic reality. It claims to be a democracy while disenfranchising millions. It claims to defend itself while launching one of the most disproportionate bombing campaigns in modern military history. Its very survival, it argues, depends on the subjugation of other people.

However, the myth of eternal rule is just that: a myth. Rhodesia, the white-minority regime in present-day Zimbabwe, also claimed permanence. It held referendums. It had elections, exclusively for whites. It argued that Black majority rule would bring chaos. It criminalised liberation movements and painted itself as the last bastion of Christian civilisation. It lasted less than two decades.

So too did Kenya’s British colonial regime, which conducted mass torture and internment against the Mau Mau. So too did apartheid-era Namibia, illegally occupied by South Africa. In every case, the claim to eternity was undone by the weight of injustice. And when collapse came, it came quickly.

Israel’s military might, its surveillance state, its legal fictions, and its foreign alliances have delayed that reckoning. But they will not prevent it. No state built on siege warfare, settler expansion, and demographic manipulation can evade collapse indefinitely. When the illusion breaks, and it always does, the fall is swift, and history is not forgiving.

The Global Shift in Conscience

“The Foundation of the Zionist State of Israel”

For decades, Israel has enjoyed near-total impunity on the world stage. Shielded by American vetoes, funded by billions in military aid, and defended by an international network of lobbyists and apologists, it has operated as a rogue state with the façade of legitimacy. Western media reinforces its narrative. Western governments parrot their justifications. War crimes are laundered through euphemism. Civilians are labelled human shields. Entire cities are reduced to rubble, and the world is told to sympathise with the demolisher, not the destroyed.

But the tide is turning. Across the Global South, Israel is no longer seen as a democracy, but as an apartheid state in open defiance of international law. In Latin America, Africa, and Asia, governments are beginning to break ranks. In Europe and North America, younger generations are rejecting the propaganda of their elders. Protests fill the streets. Jewish voices of conscience are growing louder. The myth of moral exceptionalism is cracking.

Social media has ruptured the information monopoly that once allowed Israel to act without scrutiny. Images of white phosphorus on children, of bombed-out hospitals, of parents cradling lifeless bodies, have rendered the old talking points grotesque. The world no longer buys the narrative of the eternal victim when the evidence of perpetration is overwhelming.

The parallel with apartheid South Africa is no longer academic; it is generational. Where once Israel was a symbol of rebirth after the Holocaust, it is now increasingly seen as an occupying power that has betrayed that very memory. Genocide denial, racial supremacy, and collective punishment are not acts of survival; they are the trademarks of regimes that history ultimately condemns. The last illusion to die is that such regimes can endure forever.

The Empire Behind the Empire

No assessment of Israel’s impunity is complete without confronting the decaying superpower that enables it. The myth of Israeli exceptionalism has always relied on American power, military, financial, and diplomatic support. Washington has armed, funded, and shielded Israel not despite its violence, but because of it. Israel is not just an ally; it is the forward operating base of American imperial interests in the Middle East, a garrison state serving the architecture of global dominance.

But that empire is crumbling.

“Requiem for an Empire”

As the 21st century unfolds, America, the most militarily belligerent nation in modern history, is showing every sign of internal decay. Under Donald Trump, the mask slipped. The bullying rhetoric, the brazen corruption, the naked embrace of autocrats; it is not a break from American tradition, but its unvarnished continuation. Trump’s admiration for authoritarian leaders, from Netanyahu to Putin, from Sisi to Modi, exposed what had long been true: that American democracy was never more than a convenient fiction, easily discarded when power demanded it.

Inside its borders, America is rotting from within: police forces resemble occupying armies, protests are met with batons and tear gas, civil liberties are systematically eroded, and truth-tellers are punished as enemies of the state. Dissent is surveilled. Protest is criminalised. Borders have become war zones patrolled by paramilitary agencies. Within its cities, America mirrors its foreign occupations: streets patrolled by forces clad in combat gear, armed as if subduing an enemy population, treating dissent not as a right, but as a battlefield condition.

Abroad, America’s threats lack credibility. Continuous wars have eroded global trust. Drone strikes, regime changes, embargoes, and covert interventions have turned once-neutral countries into adversaries. It maintains a sprawling network of military bases, secret prisons, and black sites where torture is outsourced, denied, or euphemised. From Abu Ghraib and Bagram to Guantánamo Bay and CIA rendition flights, the United States has normalised cruelty as a tool of statecraft. Its backing of genocidal campaigns, in Gaza and Yemen, has obliterated any remaining claim to moral leadership.

The alliances supporting the American empire now have deep and complex roots. They include Israel’s apartheid policies, Saudi Arabia’s ongoing conflict in Yemen, Egypt’s military-led government, India’s tough stance in Kashmir, and Turkey’s harsh treatment of the Kurds. His ideological backing of Putin only adds to this pattern. These aren’t isolated cases; they represent the chosen allies of a superpower that has moved away from the ideals of liberty it once spoke about.

As American influence diminishes, its reliance on violence no longer signals dominance; it exposes desperation. Like all empires in decline, it lashes out: with bombs, with threats, with sanctions, even as its citizens descend into poverty, illness, and despair. Its obsession with control has become a death spiral, dragging its allies and proxies down with it.

Israel is not an outlier. It is a mirror.

The settler-colonial logic that birthed America now finds its reflection in Israel’s actions. The endless war, the racial supremacy, the theology of exceptionalism, the defiance of international law; it is not just Israel’s story, but America’s legacy exported. And like every empire that believed itself invincible, both are hurtling toward reckoning.

The question is no longer whether that reckoning will come; it is simply a matter of when. It is whether we will name it for what it is: the death of an empire built on lies, and the fall of the regimes that mistook violence for permanence.

Conclusion: No More Exceptions

“Israel’s Weapons of War”

Israel is not merely committing war crimes; it is a war crime in real time. Like the empires before it, it will be held accountable. Its impunity is not permanent. Its violence is not sustainable. And its myth is not immune to collapse.

History teaches that no state can indefinitely maintain rule through apartheid, exile, and siege. Whether it takes years or decades, the truth always emerges, and the walls always fall. Justice may be delayed, but it is patient. The archives of atrocity are being written daily by journalists, by survivors, by the dead.

Israel’s fall will not come from its enemies. It will come from the unbearable weight of its contradictions, just like every settler regime that came before it.

Israel has no right to exist, not as an apartheid regime, not as a settler-colonial project, not as a state built on stolen land and ethnic supremacy. Hitler’s Nazi regime had no right to exist. A state founded on genocide cannot claim legitimacy, and Israel is no different. Netanyahu and his Zionist fanatics are not aberrations; they are the ideological heirs of history’s most brutal tyrants.

I am old. I have lived through wars, through collapses, through the rise and fall of regimes that once seemed eternal. I may not live to see the fall of this one, but I will die knowing that it is inevitable. No nation that starves children, bombs hospitals, and cages the wounded behind concrete walls can endure. No state that turns religion into a shield for slaughter will survive the long memory of the human conscience. Israel will fall not despite its violence, but because of it, not as a failure of defence, but as the price of aggression.

Empires built on cruelty always believe themselves immortal until the day they are not. The arc of history may be long, but it is merciless. What is happening in Gaza is not a war. It is a crime. And crimes have consequences, even when delayed by power.

The world is watching. The images are etched into the conscience of a generation. The graves, the rubble, the bloodied bodies of children, they are not statistics. They are indictments. They are testimony. And they will not be forgotten.

The day of reckoning will come perhaps slowly, then all at once, as it always does. And when it does, no flag, no scripture, no invocation of trauma or terror will be enough to explain it away. The foundations of this regime are already cracking under the weight of its lies. History is patient. But it never forgets.

The Israeli people have stood by, decade after decade, as their governments have committed open genocide in their name. They claimed the spoils of stolen land and called it civilisation. But history will not absolve them. And they will not be able to say, “We didn’t know.”

For Netanyahu, Trump, Putin, and the rest of the world’s tyrants, there may never be a Nuremberg. But there will be a day of judgement, and for them, history reserves a special hell.

“Zionism Through A Child’s Tears”

Don’t Look Away. Don’t Stay Silent.
If this shook you, challenged you, or told the truth that others won’t or don’t;
👉 Subscribe; it’s free, and you’ll receive every urgent dispatch the moment it's written, raw, unscheduled, unflinching.
🔁 Restack this to amplify it across Substack.
📤 Share it widely, on Twitter/X/X, Facebook, email, anywhere the silence still holds.
💬 Comment and join the dialogue. Resistance doesn’t happen alone.
This isn’t content. It’s a confrontation. And it only grows when you do something with it.