The violence, at the hands of the police and rightwing militants, that many Arab communities inside Israel have endured for taking a moral stance in support of their brethren in occupied Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, indicated that the supposed ‘harmony’ within Barak’s ‘villa’ was a construct that shattered within a few days. Israel’s effectiveness in winning wars and keeping its gains has been greatly hampered in Gaza, as Israel’s efforts have also been repeatedly thwarted in Lebanon in the last two decades.Įven the iron dome – an ‘iron wall’ of a different kind – proved to be a failure in terms of its ability to intercept crudely-made Palestinian rockets, with Professor Theodore Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) arguing that the success rate of the dome was “drastically lower” than what the Israeli government and army have reported.Įven the Israeli ‘villa’ was compromised from the inside, as the popular Palestinian uprising of May 2021 has demonstrated that Israel’s native Palestinian Arab population remains an organic part of the Palestinian whole. The resistance in Gaza has exponentially grown in its capabilities, whether in preventing the Israeli army from entering and holding positions in the Gaza Strip or its ability to strike back at Israeli towns and cities. Time after time, resisting Palestinians have made a mockery of Israel’s security myths. These fantasies, which satisfied and guided the thinking of successive Zionist and Israeli leaders since the times of Jabotinsky, work only in theory. Israelis want to be able to kill, without being killed in return subdue and militarily occupy Palestinians without the least degree of resistance, armed or otherwise they want to imprison thousands of Palestinians without the slightest protest or even the mere questioning of Israel’s military judicial system. But the language used by Israeli officials and media following the death of Shmuel – whose job included the killing of Gazan youngsters – indicates that Israel’s sense of dejection is not linked to the supposed tragedy of a life lost, but by the unrealistic expectations that military occupation and ‘security’ can co-exist. Moreover, one dead sniper for over 300 dead unarmed Palestinians should, from a crude military calculation, appear to be a minimal loss. If so, the shooting of an Israeli sniper, Barel Hadaria Shmuel, by a Palestinian at the fence separating besieged Israel from Gaza on August 21, should have been understood as the predictable and rational cost of perpetual war and military occupation. ‘Security’ for Israel is not simply defined through military, political and strategic definitions. For the Israeli ‘villa’ to remain prosperous and peaceful, according to Barak, Israel needed to do more than merely maintain its military edge it had to ensure the ‘chaos’ does not breach the perimeters of Israel’s perfect existence. Gradually, new ideas regarding Israel’s ‘security’ emerged, such as ‘fortress Israel’ and ‘ villa in the jungle’ – an obviously racist metaphor used repeatedly by former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, which falsely depicts Israel as an oasis of harmony and democracy amid Middle Eastern chaos and violence.

Consequently, Israel and Palestine are now disfigured with endless barricades of walls, made of concrete and iron, which zigzag in and around a land that was meant to represent inclusion, spiritual harmony and co-existence. However, future Zionist leaders, who embraced Jabotinsky’s teachings, eventually turned the principle of the iron wall into a tangible reality. 25 years before Israel was established on the ruins of historic Palestine, a Russian Jewish Zionist leader, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, argued that a Jewish state in Palestine could only survive if it exists “behind an iron wall” of defense.

Sniper job on venture towns