The illusions of 2024

In his novel, The Thorn and the Carnation, Yahya Sinwar’s character Ibrahim challenged his cousin Mahmoud, who said the Palestinians had to surrender lest they be wiped out entirely. Ibrahim said no, they cannot wipe us out, because they are governed by many equations. Mahmoud’s defeatism was always on the wrong track because the Israelis don’t accept surrender. After 2024 it seems Ibrahim was also mistaken about the equations.

Israelis were probably surprised as everyone else that they have been permitted to run this open-ended genocide. In the past, they’ve behaved as if constrained by things that didn’t turn out to constrain them in 2024. Let’s make a list so we can go into 2025 without illusions about the world we live in.

We can divide our list into non-constraints and partial constraints that may just not have reached an effective level.

Non-constraints first. Israelis are not constrained by any of the following:

Israeli society. The Western conscience. Israeli society began this year irredeemably genocidal and racist and has descended into worse condition every single day. They are actively demonstrating in favor of starvation and masses of them watch footage of Palestinians dying for pleasure. Western elites support all this with equal racist enthusiasm.

Hostage families. The families of the Israeli captives that actually want a prisoner exchange have been crushed by the weight of Israeli society and have no leverage over their government. There are also families of Israeli captives that campaign against a prisoner exchange. Israel’s plan is to kill all the hostages in order to continue the genocide. They will not be stopped by the captives’ families.

The American Jewish Diaspora. In 2024, there were some high-profile protests by Jewish Americans against what Israel is doing. But the majority of the Jewish diaspora supports Israel including while Israel is conducting genocide. https://www.ajc.org/news/survey2024. Predictions made by, e.g., Norman Finkelstein in his 2011 book A Farewell to Israel, that there would be a split between Israel and the Jewish diaspora, have proven incorrect.

Widespread information and Western public opinion. I’m old enough to remember when millions marched against the forthcoming invasion of Iraq in February 2003. The New York Times labeled us the “second superpower”, global public opinion. I had the feeling at the time that it was some kind of taunt, but was naive enough at the time to believe that the cost of the war would be too high and that if the US had wanted to invade and occupy Iraq they would have done it 12 years before in 1991. It seems I’ve been fooled by this type of delay many times now (believing for example that if HTS couldn’t take Syria in 2019 they couldn’t do it in 2024; or that if Israel couldn’t succeed in Lebanon in 2006 that they wouldn’t try in 2024…) In any case 2024 has shown yet again that global public opinion is no superpower.

American voting. The American electoral system worked to effectively exclude any third anti-genocide party and ensured that all candidates of both parties were genocidal. Pro-genocide forces boast openly about how anti-genocide voters have no option and how America will support Israel no matter what. The Israeli leader gets more standing ovations than any American could dream of. There will be no voting out the genociders.

American activism. Professional pro-genocide organizations have devoted enormous resources over decades to making anti-genocide organizing on campuses and elsewhere exceptionally difficult. The student encampments that brought hope of a new movement were dismantled by immense police violence in 2024. The election revealed the worthlessness of trying to pressure politicians through protest or petition. America’s genocide is well insulated from the mechanisms of civic action and activism.

The Arab street. It was believed, out of fear that the masses might revolt and destabilize them, that Arab regimes like Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and others wouldn’t dare support Israel while Israel was genociding the Palestinians. There were some demonstrations in Jordan at various times in 2023 and 2024 in solidarity, but these were crushed and their organizers jailed. In Egypt, the people live in fear of the regime. Israel might just try to overthrow Egypt in 2025, to try to displace the Palestinians into the Sinai desert for Israel to kill there in an Israeli-reoccupied Sinai peninsula - or try the equivalent in the West Bank, removing a supportive regime in favor of direct occupation and ethnic cleansing. Even the Palestinian Authority has continued faithfully with its security cooperation with Israel, killing West Bank resistance members even as their fellow Palestinians are being genocided. The only Arab government overthrown with great fanfare in 2024 was Syria - the last neighbour that opposed Israel. In 2024, the Arab street has done more for Israel than against it.

International law. In 2024 the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant and the ICJ declared the occupation illegal. Having ordered provisional measures and been ignored, the ICJ promised to take years to rule on whether Israel is committing genocide and they have fulfilled their promise to do nothing legally for a long time. The Security Council issued a ceasefire resolution that wasn’t even vetoed by the US. All were ignored. International law has been exposed as an illusion.

ICJ, duly ignored in 2024

International diplomacy and BRICS. A couple of countries have cut ties with Israel. Most - including big powers who could have made a big difference like China and Russia - continue to interact with Israel as if it’s not committing genocide (Turkey also could have made a difference and it did - helping Israel and destroying Syria). On the official level, the countries of the world have taken the position either that genocide is not a big deal or that it’s actually fine. It turns out that if you’re Israel, committing genocide won’t make you a pariah state - business will continue as usual.

None of the above have had any effect in halting the genocide.

What about partial constraints? The following probably still operate but, so far, below the threshold needed to stop genocide.

The balance of terror. At the beginning of 2024, Iran’s president Raisi, Hamas’s leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar, Hezbollah’s General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah and the organization’s senior commanders all were alive. Israel killed them all. Even though they failed to occupy Lebanon through war, the Israelis have crept forward during the ceasefire and made a separate peace with Lebanon. They removed Assad, occupied Syria and destroyed the state and its arsenal, and probably used a nuclear weapon on an undefended target in Tartus. Iran still exists and Yemen continues to fight Israel but both are threatened with annihilation in 2025. If there was a balance of terror and deterrence going into 2024, it has been broken.

Military casualties. In previous Israeli wars on Gaza and Lebanon, Israel stopped well short of the casualty numbers they have already suffered in 2023-4. In 2024 they successfully added the religious orthodox to the recruiting pool and censored their actual casualty numbers effectively while likely suffering tens of thousands of wounded and thousands killed. Israel was believed to be a society that would disintegrate if military casualties reached a certain threshold. Perhaps Israeli society is in fact disintegrating, or perhaps the threshold is higher than previously believed. At the level that the Palestinian resistance can inflict them, military casualties have not so far been sufficient to stop Israel’s genocide.

Civilian casualties. Before 2024, many observers believed that Israel would balk at attacking Lebanon because of Hizbollah’s capacity to hit targets in Israel with rockets, drones, and missiles (as promised in a famous speech by Nasrallah in 2012). In 2024 Israel attacked Lebanon, slaughtering Lebanon’s civilians, destroying infrastructure, and absorbing the standoff attacks by Hizbollah. Israel sought a ceasefire after taking hundreds of military casualties in a short period of time, but continued genocide every single day of 2024, including days it was being bombed by Palestinian Resistance rockets from Gaza, by Hizbollah, by Ansrarallah in Yemen, by Iraqi resistance groups, and the two nights that it was bombed by Iran.

Economic attrition. Ansarallah in Yemen successfully imposed a major set of costs on Israel through its blockade of ships bound from Israel through the Red Sea. Hundreds of thousands of reservists were taken out of the work force to go and kill children in Gaza. The tourism industry died. Major investors have withdrawn. But the US will provide any amount of funds needed to keep Israel going and to keep the bombs falling on the children. Arab neighbours have created a land bridge so that Israelis can keep eating while they starve the Palestinians. Turkey keeps providing fuel while Israel plunges the Palestinians into darkness and cold. International shipping has assumed the extra costs of traveling around Africa to avoid the Red Sea blockade. Israel is suffering economically, but that suffering has not made Israel reconsider its genocide.

What are we left with? Palestinian and allied armed resistance, legal under international law. The potential of unarmed resistance of the kind that Palestine Action is engaged in. The accumulation of pressures that haven’t yet reached the required level - military actions, economic pressure, and activism at a higher threshold.

Since nothing has worked yet and the genocide goes on, it is impossible to say how well anything is working. Whenever the genocide does end, some of the things that didn’t yet get it done in 2024 will have played a role.

What’s certain is that against this enemy there’s no room for wasted effort.

May 2025 be a year of no more illusions.