Alon Mizrahi on the Israel bubble

I have lived most of my life in Israel.  And what I see is how destructive this is, how cruel and inhumane and how destructive it is and it has no future.  Part of me is trying to tell my former country, because I can't call it my country anymore, "You have to stop because what you are doing, you are bringing a catastrophe upon yourself.  You have to stop it before this catastrophe."  But no one seems to want to listen.  The conformity is so strong that no one dares break rank with the politically-approved message: "You have to kill children, you have to..."  We are looking at, I don't know, a huge historical disaster as it's happening and as it's about to get worse.

Israel is different because it is a bubble.  It is isolated basically from the rest of humanity.  And it is being shielded from its neighbors, from... humanity basically by the support of the U.S.  The U.S. is there to make sure Israel never faces consequences for what it's doing.  So Israel can be as belligerent and brazen and lawless as it wants because the U.S. will make sure nothing ever happens to it.  Which is an illusion, because something is going to happen to it eventually.  That's life.  

There's no isolation.  No one is isolated for long.  It can work for a short period of time, but no one is truly isolated.  We are all connected.

~ Alon Mizrahi, "Roger Waters Just Endorsed THIS Anti-Zionist Jew—Israel FREAKS OUT!," Kim Iverson, 12:15 mark, March 21, 2025

Ilan Pappé on the three pillars that support the Israel project

Israel is not just a state.  Israel is a project.  It is a settler colonial project.  And I do think that we are witnessing the beginning of the end of this project, because it rests on three pillars.  One is material, of coure, and there I agree.  I mean, when you use an index that looks at sustainability of the state according to their material capability, Israel is doing well...  And it does well mainly because of the United States.  So this is a condition that can change.

The second pillar is the social coherence of the settler society.  And we know that this coherence is nonexistent anymore.  There is a bit of an optical illusion because of the Hamas operation on the 7th of October that created a sense of unity.  But it's not going to cover up for the fragmentation of the society that we have seen until the 7th of October.  It seems that social coherence that is based on hatred of the Arabs or Palestinians and doesn't have very much else in common, is not very sustainable.

And more importantly than anything else, of course, there is the legitimacy pillar.  Israel enjoys the legitimacy of Western governments, or governments in the global north.  And therefore, there is a sense that it can still be sustainable because of that support of the elites.  But it has lost support of the civil societies.  And this is why probably it's the only state in the world that lobbies for its existence.  Not for its policies, not for its better economic performance, but for its very moral justification.  And it's losing that battle.

~ Ilan Pappé, "Ilan Pappe on Israel: 'We are witnessing the beginning of the end'," Middle East Eye, December 7, 2023

Gideon Levy on how Israelis live with the occupation

The Israel society has surrounded itself with shields, with walls, not only physical walls, but also mental walls...  I'll just give these three principles which enable us Israelis to live so easily with this brutal reality.  A: Most of the Israelis, if not all of them, deeply believe that we are the chosen people.  And if we are the chosen people, we have the right to do whatever we want.  B: There were more brutal occupations in history.  There were even longer occupations in history, even though the Israeli occupation gets to quite a nice record.  But there was never in history an occupation in which an occupier presented himself as the victim.  Not only the victim, the only victim around.  This also enable any Israeli to live in peace because we are the victims...  

But the third set of values is the most dangerous one.  And this is the systematic dehumanization of the Palestinians which enables us Israelis to live in peace with everything.  Because if they are not human beings like us, then there is not really a question of human rights.  And if you scratch under the skin of almost every Israeli, you will find it there.  Almost no one will treat the Palestinians as equal human beings like us.

~ Gideon Levy, "How Israelis Live So Easily With Occupation," Saad Tasleem, November 7, 2023