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Cam Ogie ✍ This Is Not Just Netanyahu, Hamas or the Palestinian Authority (PA)/Fatah . . . 

As global outrage builds over Israel’s actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, many critics focus on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right coalition. But this framing misses the truth: the policies we’re seeing—mass killings, home demolitions, indefinite detention without trial—are not the inventions of a single government. They are the culmination of a political system built, sustained, and normalized across decades, under left, centre, and right leadership alike.

What we are witnessing is not a deviation from Israeli democracy—it is its structure, functioning as designed. It is time to stop pretending otherwise. If peace and justice are ever to come to this region, the world must support not merely a change in leadership but a democratic transformation of the Israeli state itself. The goal is not destruction, but reconstruction—rooted in equal rights for all who live between the river and the sea.

The international community must confront the reality that the Israeli state's oppressive regime against Palestinians is not the aberration of a single government, but a sustained system of apartheid and colonial domination maintained by successive Israeli administrations. The issue is structural—not merely electoral and calls for the democratic dismantling of Israel’s ethnonationalist system of rule—not the removal of the people or the land currently called Israel, but the dismantling of its geopolitical state structure as an apartheid regime.

The goal is transformation toward a democratic political structure that upholds equal rights for all between the river and the sea.

Critiquing the Zionist State Structure is Not Antisemitism
 
  • Zionism as state ideology, in practice, has created a regime based on ethnic and religious exclusivity.
  • Criticizing a state’s ethnonationalist structure—as with apartheid South Africa or Myanmar—is not antisemitism, but necessary to defend universal human rights.
The Myth of Israeli Democracy: The Case of Bedouin and Palestinian Citizens

The Bedouin: Citizens Without Rights

The Bedouin, primarily in the Naqab (Negev), are formally citizens of Israel but face systematic discrimination:
  • Over 35 Bedouin villages remain "unrecognized" by the state, receiving no basic services like electricity, water, or sewage.
  • These communities are frequently targeted for home demolitions and forced displacement.
  • The Israeli state actively promotes "Judaization" of the Naqab, seeking to replace indigenous Bedouin with Jewish-only settlements.

Palestinian Citizens: Second-Class Citizens in a Jewish State
 
  • Palestinian citizens of Israel, approximately 20% of the population, face over 65 discriminatory laws affecting land rights, education, political expression, and language.
  • The 2018 Nation-State Law legally enshrines Jewish supremacy, declaring that only Jews have the right to national self-determination.
  • Arab political parties and elected representatives face systemic delegitimization, surveillance, and legal threats.

Palestinians in the Occupied Territories: No Rights, No Votes

  • West Bank Palestinians live under military law, while Jewish settlers nearby enjoy full civil rights under Israeli law.
  • Gaza remains under siege, with Israel controlling airspace, borders, and essential goods—functioning as an open-air prison.
  • Millions of Palestinians live under Israeli control without the right to vote in the government that governs their lives.

Israel may hold elections, but for millions under its control, the right to vote, equal protection, and self-determination are denied. This is not democracy—it is apartheid under a democratic façade.

Apartheid Is Not a Slur. It’s a Legal Reality.

In 2021, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem declared: “This is apartheid.” That same year, Human Rights Watch followed. In 2022, Amnesty International did the same. Their reports—rigorously researched and legally grounded—show that Israel maintains a regime of Jewish supremacy over Palestinians through laws, military rule, and bureaucratic engineering.

What does this apartheid look like?
 
  • In the West Bank, Israeli settlers are governed by civilian law. Their Palestinian neighbours live under military rule.
  • In Gaza, over two million Palestinians—most of them refugees from 1948—are blockaded, bombed, and denied freedom of movement.
  • Within Israel’s 1948 borders, Palestinian citizens—20% of the population—live under a system that privileges Jewish identity at every level: land rights, funding, political expression, and language.

The apartheid system includes dual legal systems, discriminatory land laws, home demolitions, denial of building permits, and the exclusion of Palestinian refugees while privileging Jewish immigration. This system has been in place since 1967, and in many respects since 1948, through legal and institutional mechanisms designed to ensure permanent Jewish domination.

This is not about who is in power today. The infrastructure of apartheid was built by Israeli governments across the political spectrum, and it has been reinforced, not dismantled, by the so-called “centre-left.”

The Role of the United States, United Kingdom, and NATO States

A. Material and Diplomatic Support

Israel's ability to sustain its apartheid regime depends heavily on foreign backing:
 
  • The United States is Israel’s largest arms supplier and routinely vetoes UN resolutions demanding accountability. 
  • NATO allies including Germany, France, and the UK provide weapons, funding, and political cover.

B. The UK Court Ruling: A Case Study in Genocide Denial

In June 2025, the UK High Court ruled that the British government was not acting unlawfully by continuing military aid exports to Israel, despite credible evidence—including from the International Court of Justice—that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. The court acknowledged the seriousness of the allegations but declined to find the UK in breach of its legal obligations.

The political motivations were clear: a ruling of complicity would force Parliament to halt arms shipments, expose government ministers and MPs to potential ICC arrest warrants, and shatter the UK's moral credibility. In choosing political expediency over international law, the court effectively insulated the British government from accountability.

This ruling mirrors the behaviour of other NATO states that invoke human rights selectively while continuing to arm and support regimes accused of mass atrocities.

Occupation Is Not Temporary. It Is Permanent by Design

For decades, world leaders have described the occupation as “unsustainable” or “temporary.” Yet since 1967, Israel has expanded settlements, entrenched control, and imprisoned over 800,000 Palestinians, including children—many held without charge.

This is not a policy flaw. It is a strategy. A permanent occupation sustained by military might, masked by democratic rhetoric.

Hamas or the Palestinian Authority (PA)/Fatah

The presence and power of groups like Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority (PA)/Fatah in the West Bank complicate—but do not invalidate—the call for a democratic, rights-based resolution. They must be critically examined for their own failures, while placing them within the broader structure of Israeli domination and international complicity.

Hamas and the PA: Problems of Representation and Legitimacy

Hamas (Gaza)
 
  • Hamas was democratically elected in 2006 but has governed Gaza unilaterally since 2007 after a violent split with Fatah.
  • It has imposed authoritarian rule, limited freedoms of speech and assembly, and carried out human rights violations, including arbitrary detentions, torture, and targeting political opponents.
  • While Hamas claims to resist occupation, it has also been accused—by both international observers and Palestinian civil society—of prioritizing power over democratic legitimacy.

Palestinian Authority / Fatah (West Bank)
 
  • The PA's leadership under Mahmoud Abbas has not held national elections since 2006, undermining its legitimacy.
  • It collaborates with Israeli security forces through a system of “security coordination,” which many Palestinians view as collusion with the occupying power.
  • It is widely seen as corrupt, repressive, and detached from the population it claims to represent.

Reconciliation: These Groups Are a Symptom of the System

  • These Palestinian governing bodies exist within a colonial matrix of control:
  • The West Bank and Gaza are fragmented and besieged.
  • Israel controls borders, airspace, taxation, water, and movement.
  • There is no real sovereignty for Palestinians under these administrations.

In short:
 
  • Hamas and the PA are not the root problem—they are products of occupation, division, and international neglect.
  • The absence of a free political environment makes democratic development nearly impossible.

The Solution Is Democracy. Not Destruction

To be clear: no one with a moral compass should call for the eradication of the Israeli population. The Jewish people, like the Palestinian people, are entitled to safety, identity, and self-determination. But no people have the right to dominate another. That’s the principle at stake.

What needs to be dismantled is Israel’s ethnonationalist system of rule, its regime of apartheid and exclusion.

Just as South Africa transitioned—however imperfectly—from a white ethnostate to a multiracial democracy, Israel must undergo a democratic transformation. That means:
 
  • Equal rights for all people under a single legal system.
  • An end to military rule and settlement expansion.
  • Recognition of the Palestinian right of return, in line with UN Resolution 194;
  • Legal accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

This is not a utopian vision. It is the only viable alternative to permanent war and dispossession.

The Path Forward: A Unified Democratic Vision

A democratic future must replace both Israeli apartheid and unaccountable Palestinian rule. That means:

1. End the Occupation and Siege
 
  • Israel must end its military rule, blockade of Gaza, and settlement expansion to allow for any meaningful Palestinian self-determination.

2. Democratic Palestinian Institutions
 
  • Support must be directed toward Palestinian civil society, grassroots organizing, and new political formations that reflect the democratic will of all Palestinians—in Gaza, the West Bank, inside Israel, and in exile.
  • A democratic transformation must include free and fair elections across the whole Palestinian polity.

3. One Equal Democratic System or Shared Sovereignty
 
  • The ultimate goal is a single political system, or a binational one, where all individuals—Jewish and Palestinian—have equal rights, irrespective of origin, religion, or ethnicity.
  • In such a system, Hamas and Fatah would be political actors among many, subject to the same laws, rights, and checks as everyone else.

Accountability for All, Including Palestinian Leaders

Yes, Hamas has committed serious abuses. So has the Palestinian Authority. But these cannot be used as an excuse to maintain or justify Israel’s apartheid regime. Instead:
  • All parties—Israeli and Palestinian—must be held to international legal and human rights standards.
  • Only through decolonization and democratization of the entire territory can new, legitimate political actors emerge.

Justice demands more than replacing one authoritarian regime with another. It demands a restructured political order that dismantles domination and allows all peoples to choose their representatives, govern themselves, and live with dignity.

Addressing Demographic Fears: Lessons from South Africa

If Israel transitions from a Zionist ethnocracy to a democratic state with equal rights for all, many Israeli Jews fear they would become a numerical minority, potentially exposed to retaliation, marginalization, or even violence—as some Afrikaners feared in post-apartheid South Africa. These fears are not unfounded emotionally, even if they're not justified politically nor do they justify sustaining a system of ethnic domination.
 
  • But fear does not justify apartheid, ethnic cleansing, or permanent occupation.
  • Just as South African whites couldn’t ethically sustain apartheid to protect their demographic advantage, neither can Israel.

Difference with South Africa: The Role of History and Power

Yes, the demographics differ:
 
  • In apartheid South Africa, whites were ~15% of the population.
  • In Israel + Occupied Territories, Jews are roughly 47–50%, Palestinians the rest.

But this isn’t only about numbers—it’s about systems of power and racial supremacy.

What’s similar:
 
  1. Legalized privilege for one group, enforced through violence.
  2. Separate systems of law, movement, housing, voting, and military rule.
  3. The need to dismantle a supremacist structure, not a people.

Addressing Jewish Fears Directly

We cannot build a democratic future on denial of fear. We must confront it with political guarantees, legal safeguards, and cultural transformation.

1. Constitutional Guarantees

  • A future democratic state must enshrine protections for all minorities, including Jews.
  • This includes language rights, cultural autonomy, religious freedom, and political participation.

2. Transitional Justice Framework
 
  • Like in South Africa, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission can expose past crimes without turning justice into revenge.
  • Amnesties may be possible for those who admit and reconcile, to prevent mass reprisals.

3. Power-Sharing Models
 
  • Consider federal or confederal models where Palestinians and Jews share power but retain cultural and local autonomy.
  • Belgium, Switzerland, and Bosnia offer models for multi-ethnic governance that do not rely on demographic dominance.

4. International Guarantees
 
The international community (UN, Arab League, EU, etc.) should provide binding guarantees to protect Jewish communities during and after the transition.
This is key to showing that justice does not mean revenge or erasure.

The South African Example: Lessons and Misconceptions

What South Africa got right:
 
It avoided civil war and ensured white South Africans remained in the country with full rights.
It dismantled racial hierarchy and built a constitutional democracy (despite serious post-apartheid flaws).
It showed that political power doesn’t require demographic supremacy.

What Afrikaners feared (and still say):

  • That they lost control of the state and now suffer crime, inequality, or discrimination.
  • But most of these outcomes are tied to global capitalism and neoliberalism, not the loss of white minority rule.

For Israeli Jews, the lesson is this:

The cost of maintaining supremacy is perpetual war. The alternative—a shared, democratic state—requires trust, law, and mutual protection, but it is possible and just.

In Israel-Palestine, Jews would likely become a numerical minority if all Palestinians were granted equal rights. However, democracy is not built on maintaining demographic supremacy. Justice demands a system where all people have equal rights, protections, and access to political power.

Reimagining National Symbols: Should the Name ‘Israel’ Remain?

As part of a genuine democratic transformation, the question arises whether the name “Israel” should remain for a future state that guarantees equal rights for Palestinians and Jews alike. The current name is inseparable from the Zionist project and the political architecture of exclusion it enabled. For many Palestinians and anti-colonial advocates, “Israel” symbolizes dispossession, apartheid, and impunity.

Renaming the state could serve as a powerful symbol of rupture and reconciliation, similar to post-apartheid South Africa’s constitutional overhaul or the renaming of colonial states in Africa. It would not erase Jewish presence or identity but rather signal a new beginning: a shared civic identity not rooted in ethnicity or religion, but in universal rights.

Any such decision should be made democratically, through inclusive processes that reflect the aspirations of all people between the river and the sea, not imposed unilaterally. A name change, if pursued, must be part of a broader symbolic and structural transformation—including the flag, anthem, and national narrative.

Conclusion: Beyond the Illusion of Democracy

Israeli democracy, as it is often described, exists for some and not for others. A democracy for only one ethnic group is not democracy—it is apartheid by another name. Calling for democratic change is not antisemitic. On the contrary, it is an expression of solidarity with all those—Jewish, Palestinian, and others—who believe in dignity, equality, and peace.

The international community must stop shielding Israel’s system of repression by blaming only its most extreme politicians. The problem is not just Netanyahu. It is a state built on exclusion. And the solution is not erasure, but reconstruction—toward equality for all.

Democratic governments must stop treating Israel’s occupation and oppression as temporary or exceptional. These are not distortions of Israeli democracy—they are its foundation as currently constructed. The solution is not to erase the state, but to democratize it fundamentally: end apartheid, guarantee equal rights, uphold international law, and recognize Palestinian peoplehood and self-determination as non-negotiable.

The issue is not just Netanyahu, nor is it limited to one political party. The apartheid system in Israel is institutional and cross-partisan, reinforced by international complicity. The goal is not the physical eradication of Israel or its people, but the dismantling of its current apartheid regime and the political re-founding of the state into a new democratic structure. To end apartheid in Israel/Palestine is to end Israel as it currently exists—as a Zionist ethnonationalist state—and to replace it with a decolonized, inclusive system rooted in justice, equality, and shared sovereignty for all who live between the river and the sea. This requires dismantling structures of domination and building a new political framework based on equality, justice, and human rights—not just in Israel and Palestine, but within the international system that protects and enables apartheid.

Justice for Palestinians cannot be achieved without holding Western states accountable for their complicity. Until that happens, the global human rights framework remains a selective tool of empire—not a universal standard of justice.

Or are we too late to propose such an "Endlösung der Judenfrage"-

Gaza deserves death. The 2.6 million terrorists in Gaza deserve death! … Men, women, and children – in every way possible, we must simply carry out a Holocaust on them – yes, read that again – H-O-L-O-C-A-U-S-T! For me, gas chambers. Train cars. And other cruel forms of death for these Nazis. Without fear, without hesitation – simply crush, eradicate, slaughter, flatten, dismantle, smash, shatter …. Gaza deserves death. Let there be a Holocaust in Gaza

 - Elad Barashi, an Israeli TV producer affiliated with Channel 14, on 27 February 2025. in a post on X which was later deleted.

⏩ Cam Ogie is a Gaelic games enthusiast. 

Systemic Apartheid And Repression 🪶 The Case For Democratic Dismantling Of Israel’s Ethnonationalist Governance

Cam Ogie ✍ This Is Not Just Netanyahu, Hamas or the Palestinian Authority (PA)/Fatah . . . 

As global outrage builds over Israel’s actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, many critics focus on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right coalition. But this framing misses the truth: the policies we’re seeing—mass killings, home demolitions, indefinite detention without trial—are not the inventions of a single government. They are the culmination of a political system built, sustained, and normalized across decades, under left, centre, and right leadership alike.

What we are witnessing is not a deviation from Israeli democracy—it is its structure, functioning as designed. It is time to stop pretending otherwise. If peace and justice are ever to come to this region, the world must support not merely a change in leadership but a democratic transformation of the Israeli state itself. The goal is not destruction, but reconstruction—rooted in equal rights for all who live between the river and the sea.

The international community must confront the reality that the Israeli state's oppressive regime against Palestinians is not the aberration of a single government, but a sustained system of apartheid and colonial domination maintained by successive Israeli administrations. The issue is structural—not merely electoral and calls for the democratic dismantling of Israel’s ethnonationalist system of rule—not the removal of the people or the land currently called Israel, but the dismantling of its geopolitical state structure as an apartheid regime.

The goal is transformation toward a democratic political structure that upholds equal rights for all between the river and the sea.

Critiquing the Zionist State Structure is Not Antisemitism
 
  • Zionism as state ideology, in practice, has created a regime based on ethnic and religious exclusivity.
  • Criticizing a state’s ethnonationalist structure—as with apartheid South Africa or Myanmar—is not antisemitism, but necessary to defend universal human rights.
The Myth of Israeli Democracy: The Case of Bedouin and Palestinian Citizens

The Bedouin: Citizens Without Rights

The Bedouin, primarily in the Naqab (Negev), are formally citizens of Israel but face systematic discrimination:
  • Over 35 Bedouin villages remain "unrecognized" by the state, receiving no basic services like electricity, water, or sewage.
  • These communities are frequently targeted for home demolitions and forced displacement.
  • The Israeli state actively promotes "Judaization" of the Naqab, seeking to replace indigenous Bedouin with Jewish-only settlements.

Palestinian Citizens: Second-Class Citizens in a Jewish State
 
  • Palestinian citizens of Israel, approximately 20% of the population, face over 65 discriminatory laws affecting land rights, education, political expression, and language.
  • The 2018 Nation-State Law legally enshrines Jewish supremacy, declaring that only Jews have the right to national self-determination.
  • Arab political parties and elected representatives face systemic delegitimization, surveillance, and legal threats.

Palestinians in the Occupied Territories: No Rights, No Votes

  • West Bank Palestinians live under military law, while Jewish settlers nearby enjoy full civil rights under Israeli law.
  • Gaza remains under siege, with Israel controlling airspace, borders, and essential goods—functioning as an open-air prison.
  • Millions of Palestinians live under Israeli control without the right to vote in the government that governs their lives.

Israel may hold elections, but for millions under its control, the right to vote, equal protection, and self-determination are denied. This is not democracy—it is apartheid under a democratic façade.

Apartheid Is Not a Slur. It’s a Legal Reality.

In 2021, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem declared: “This is apartheid.” That same year, Human Rights Watch followed. In 2022, Amnesty International did the same. Their reports—rigorously researched and legally grounded—show that Israel maintains a regime of Jewish supremacy over Palestinians through laws, military rule, and bureaucratic engineering.

What does this apartheid look like?
 
  • In the West Bank, Israeli settlers are governed by civilian law. Their Palestinian neighbours live under military rule.
  • In Gaza, over two million Palestinians—most of them refugees from 1948—are blockaded, bombed, and denied freedom of movement.
  • Within Israel’s 1948 borders, Palestinian citizens—20% of the population—live under a system that privileges Jewish identity at every level: land rights, funding, political expression, and language.

The apartheid system includes dual legal systems, discriminatory land laws, home demolitions, denial of building permits, and the exclusion of Palestinian refugees while privileging Jewish immigration. This system has been in place since 1967, and in many respects since 1948, through legal and institutional mechanisms designed to ensure permanent Jewish domination.

This is not about who is in power today. The infrastructure of apartheid was built by Israeli governments across the political spectrum, and it has been reinforced, not dismantled, by the so-called “centre-left.”

The Role of the United States, United Kingdom, and NATO States

A. Material and Diplomatic Support

Israel's ability to sustain its apartheid regime depends heavily on foreign backing:
 
  • The United States is Israel’s largest arms supplier and routinely vetoes UN resolutions demanding accountability. 
  • NATO allies including Germany, France, and the UK provide weapons, funding, and political cover.

B. The UK Court Ruling: A Case Study in Genocide Denial

In June 2025, the UK High Court ruled that the British government was not acting unlawfully by continuing military aid exports to Israel, despite credible evidence—including from the International Court of Justice—that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. The court acknowledged the seriousness of the allegations but declined to find the UK in breach of its legal obligations.

The political motivations were clear: a ruling of complicity would force Parliament to halt arms shipments, expose government ministers and MPs to potential ICC arrest warrants, and shatter the UK's moral credibility. In choosing political expediency over international law, the court effectively insulated the British government from accountability.

This ruling mirrors the behaviour of other NATO states that invoke human rights selectively while continuing to arm and support regimes accused of mass atrocities.

Occupation Is Not Temporary. It Is Permanent by Design

For decades, world leaders have described the occupation as “unsustainable” or “temporary.” Yet since 1967, Israel has expanded settlements, entrenched control, and imprisoned over 800,000 Palestinians, including children—many held without charge.

This is not a policy flaw. It is a strategy. A permanent occupation sustained by military might, masked by democratic rhetoric.

Hamas or the Palestinian Authority (PA)/Fatah

The presence and power of groups like Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority (PA)/Fatah in the West Bank complicate—but do not invalidate—the call for a democratic, rights-based resolution. They must be critically examined for their own failures, while placing them within the broader structure of Israeli domination and international complicity.

Hamas and the PA: Problems of Representation and Legitimacy

Hamas (Gaza)
 
  • Hamas was democratically elected in 2006 but has governed Gaza unilaterally since 2007 after a violent split with Fatah.
  • It has imposed authoritarian rule, limited freedoms of speech and assembly, and carried out human rights violations, including arbitrary detentions, torture, and targeting political opponents.
  • While Hamas claims to resist occupation, it has also been accused—by both international observers and Palestinian civil society—of prioritizing power over democratic legitimacy.

Palestinian Authority / Fatah (West Bank)
 
  • The PA's leadership under Mahmoud Abbas has not held national elections since 2006, undermining its legitimacy.
  • It collaborates with Israeli security forces through a system of “security coordination,” which many Palestinians view as collusion with the occupying power.
  • It is widely seen as corrupt, repressive, and detached from the population it claims to represent.

Reconciliation: These Groups Are a Symptom of the System

  • These Palestinian governing bodies exist within a colonial matrix of control:
  • The West Bank and Gaza are fragmented and besieged.
  • Israel controls borders, airspace, taxation, water, and movement.
  • There is no real sovereignty for Palestinians under these administrations.

In short:
 
  • Hamas and the PA are not the root problem—they are products of occupation, division, and international neglect.
  • The absence of a free political environment makes democratic development nearly impossible.

The Solution Is Democracy. Not Destruction

To be clear: no one with a moral compass should call for the eradication of the Israeli population. The Jewish people, like the Palestinian people, are entitled to safety, identity, and self-determination. But no people have the right to dominate another. That’s the principle at stake.

What needs to be dismantled is Israel’s ethnonationalist system of rule, its regime of apartheid and exclusion.

Just as South Africa transitioned—however imperfectly—from a white ethnostate to a multiracial democracy, Israel must undergo a democratic transformation. That means:
 
  • Equal rights for all people under a single legal system.
  • An end to military rule and settlement expansion.
  • Recognition of the Palestinian right of return, in line with UN Resolution 194;
  • Legal accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

This is not a utopian vision. It is the only viable alternative to permanent war and dispossession.

The Path Forward: A Unified Democratic Vision

A democratic future must replace both Israeli apartheid and unaccountable Palestinian rule. That means:

1. End the Occupation and Siege
 
  • Israel must end its military rule, blockade of Gaza, and settlement expansion to allow for any meaningful Palestinian self-determination.

2. Democratic Palestinian Institutions
 
  • Support must be directed toward Palestinian civil society, grassroots organizing, and new political formations that reflect the democratic will of all Palestinians—in Gaza, the West Bank, inside Israel, and in exile.
  • A democratic transformation must include free and fair elections across the whole Palestinian polity.

3. One Equal Democratic System or Shared Sovereignty
 
  • The ultimate goal is a single political system, or a binational one, where all individuals—Jewish and Palestinian—have equal rights, irrespective of origin, religion, or ethnicity.
  • In such a system, Hamas and Fatah would be political actors among many, subject to the same laws, rights, and checks as everyone else.

Accountability for All, Including Palestinian Leaders

Yes, Hamas has committed serious abuses. So has the Palestinian Authority. But these cannot be used as an excuse to maintain or justify Israel’s apartheid regime. Instead:
  • All parties—Israeli and Palestinian—must be held to international legal and human rights standards.
  • Only through decolonization and democratization of the entire territory can new, legitimate political actors emerge.

Justice demands more than replacing one authoritarian regime with another. It demands a restructured political order that dismantles domination and allows all peoples to choose their representatives, govern themselves, and live with dignity.

Addressing Demographic Fears: Lessons from South Africa

If Israel transitions from a Zionist ethnocracy to a democratic state with equal rights for all, many Israeli Jews fear they would become a numerical minority, potentially exposed to retaliation, marginalization, or even violence—as some Afrikaners feared in post-apartheid South Africa. These fears are not unfounded emotionally, even if they're not justified politically nor do they justify sustaining a system of ethnic domination.
 
  • But fear does not justify apartheid, ethnic cleansing, or permanent occupation.
  • Just as South African whites couldn’t ethically sustain apartheid to protect their demographic advantage, neither can Israel.

Difference with South Africa: The Role of History and Power

Yes, the demographics differ:
 
  • In apartheid South Africa, whites were ~15% of the population.
  • In Israel + Occupied Territories, Jews are roughly 47–50%, Palestinians the rest.

But this isn’t only about numbers—it’s about systems of power and racial supremacy.

What’s similar:
 
  1. Legalized privilege for one group, enforced through violence.
  2. Separate systems of law, movement, housing, voting, and military rule.
  3. The need to dismantle a supremacist structure, not a people.

Addressing Jewish Fears Directly

We cannot build a democratic future on denial of fear. We must confront it with political guarantees, legal safeguards, and cultural transformation.

1. Constitutional Guarantees

  • A future democratic state must enshrine protections for all minorities, including Jews.
  • This includes language rights, cultural autonomy, religious freedom, and political participation.

2. Transitional Justice Framework
 
  • Like in South Africa, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission can expose past crimes without turning justice into revenge.
  • Amnesties may be possible for those who admit and reconcile, to prevent mass reprisals.

3. Power-Sharing Models
 
  • Consider federal or confederal models where Palestinians and Jews share power but retain cultural and local autonomy.
  • Belgium, Switzerland, and Bosnia offer models for multi-ethnic governance that do not rely on demographic dominance.

4. International Guarantees
 
The international community (UN, Arab League, EU, etc.) should provide binding guarantees to protect Jewish communities during and after the transition.
This is key to showing that justice does not mean revenge or erasure.

The South African Example: Lessons and Misconceptions

What South Africa got right:
 
It avoided civil war and ensured white South Africans remained in the country with full rights.
It dismantled racial hierarchy and built a constitutional democracy (despite serious post-apartheid flaws).
It showed that political power doesn’t require demographic supremacy.

What Afrikaners feared (and still say):

  • That they lost control of the state and now suffer crime, inequality, or discrimination.
  • But most of these outcomes are tied to global capitalism and neoliberalism, not the loss of white minority rule.

For Israeli Jews, the lesson is this:

The cost of maintaining supremacy is perpetual war. The alternative—a shared, democratic state—requires trust, law, and mutual protection, but it is possible and just.

In Israel-Palestine, Jews would likely become a numerical minority if all Palestinians were granted equal rights. However, democracy is not built on maintaining demographic supremacy. Justice demands a system where all people have equal rights, protections, and access to political power.

Reimagining National Symbols: Should the Name ‘Israel’ Remain?

As part of a genuine democratic transformation, the question arises whether the name “Israel” should remain for a future state that guarantees equal rights for Palestinians and Jews alike. The current name is inseparable from the Zionist project and the political architecture of exclusion it enabled. For many Palestinians and anti-colonial advocates, “Israel” symbolizes dispossession, apartheid, and impunity.

Renaming the state could serve as a powerful symbol of rupture and reconciliation, similar to post-apartheid South Africa’s constitutional overhaul or the renaming of colonial states in Africa. It would not erase Jewish presence or identity but rather signal a new beginning: a shared civic identity not rooted in ethnicity or religion, but in universal rights.

Any such decision should be made democratically, through inclusive processes that reflect the aspirations of all people between the river and the sea, not imposed unilaterally. A name change, if pursued, must be part of a broader symbolic and structural transformation—including the flag, anthem, and national narrative.

Conclusion: Beyond the Illusion of Democracy

Israeli democracy, as it is often described, exists for some and not for others. A democracy for only one ethnic group is not democracy—it is apartheid by another name. Calling for democratic change is not antisemitic. On the contrary, it is an expression of solidarity with all those—Jewish, Palestinian, and others—who believe in dignity, equality, and peace.

The international community must stop shielding Israel’s system of repression by blaming only its most extreme politicians. The problem is not just Netanyahu. It is a state built on exclusion. And the solution is not erasure, but reconstruction—toward equality for all.

Democratic governments must stop treating Israel’s occupation and oppression as temporary or exceptional. These are not distortions of Israeli democracy—they are its foundation as currently constructed. The solution is not to erase the state, but to democratize it fundamentally: end apartheid, guarantee equal rights, uphold international law, and recognize Palestinian peoplehood and self-determination as non-negotiable.

The issue is not just Netanyahu, nor is it limited to one political party. The apartheid system in Israel is institutional and cross-partisan, reinforced by international complicity. The goal is not the physical eradication of Israel or its people, but the dismantling of its current apartheid regime and the political re-founding of the state into a new democratic structure. To end apartheid in Israel/Palestine is to end Israel as it currently exists—as a Zionist ethnonationalist state—and to replace it with a decolonized, inclusive system rooted in justice, equality, and shared sovereignty for all who live between the river and the sea. This requires dismantling structures of domination and building a new political framework based on equality, justice, and human rights—not just in Israel and Palestine, but within the international system that protects and enables apartheid.

Justice for Palestinians cannot be achieved without holding Western states accountable for their complicity. Until that happens, the global human rights framework remains a selective tool of empire—not a universal standard of justice.

Or are we too late to propose such an "Endlösung der Judenfrage"-

Gaza deserves death. The 2.6 million terrorists in Gaza deserve death! … Men, women, and children – in every way possible, we must simply carry out a Holocaust on them – yes, read that again – H-O-L-O-C-A-U-S-T! For me, gas chambers. Train cars. And other cruel forms of death for these Nazis. Without fear, without hesitation – simply crush, eradicate, slaughter, flatten, dismantle, smash, shatter …. Gaza deserves death. Let there be a Holocaust in Gaza

 - Elad Barashi, an Israeli TV producer affiliated with Channel 14, on 27 February 2025. in a post on X which was later deleted.

⏩ Cam Ogie is a Gaelic games enthusiast. 
Cam Ogie Israeli Genocide In Gaza

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