“The Jewish state would form a part of a wall of defence for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilisation against barbarism,” Theodor Herzl, one of the founders of modern political Zionism, wrote in Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), a pamphlet published in 1896. In the pamphlet, he argued that security for Jews could be guaranteed only by the creation of a separate national state for them, and requested the Ottoman Sultan to give Palestine to the Jews. He promised, in return, to undertake the regulations of the whole of Turkey’s finances. The movement Herzl began culminated in the creation of the state of Israel in historical Palestine in 1948. More than 75 years later, the civilisational outpost Herzl had imagined, which continues its illegal occupation of Palestinian territories, is fighting a calamitous war on the Gaza Strip.
In just 10 weeks, Israel, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls the “people of light”, has killed 20,000 Palestinians, a vast majority of them women and children, wounded over 50,000 and displaced almost 90% of the enclave’s population. While Israel has managed to turn Gaza into what the United Nations called a “graveyard for children and a living hell for everyone else”, it also faces questions on whether it is meeting its objectives after two and a half months of bombing and invasion.
