Abolish Israel

From Institute of Barbarian Books

Like so many others, I’m still struggling to find the words for this moment. I wrote this zine because of two that give me hope: Abolish Israel. It’s an expression that is conspicuously missing from protest chants, posters, headlines and opinion pieces. I don’t know if people are afraid of being labeled antisemitic or are simply unable to imagine a future without Israel, but our unwillingness to engage meaningfully with abolition as a valid goal only continues to strengthen the Zionist cause and its propaganda.

The Israeli state has shown us time and time again that it will use every means at its disposal to carry out the most violent and horrific acts against Palestinians in its quest for total domination. Since the latest bombing, invasion, and genocide campaign in Gaza this October, the limits to which we believed Israel could act with impunity have proved to be boundless. If Israel is convinced their most radical path of violence is the only answer, so too must we answer with the most radical language: nothing less than total abolition. The occupation must end. Settlements must cease construction. The Israeli police and military forces must be disbanded, and the government and all its politicians must be stripped of power. The Zionists with blood on their hands must be held accountable.

I take an anarchist perspective in this zine not because I believe it is the most essential or even useful position—truthfully, I am saddened by what I perceive to be an overall lack of solidarity and willingness to engage with Palestinian Liberation that anarchists have generated so far. Despite that, anarchism is still the lens I personally use to perceive the world at large, and I think there is an intersection of shared principles that are worthwhile to explore. Anarchists are, after all, people who tend to be committed by principle to working towards abolishing not just the police and incarceration systems, but the very States we live in themselves (along with having dispensed of any illusion about justice under international law). Israel is a culmination of the worst aspects of authority and State power anarchists profess to oppose. Abolition is not only a natural objective, but a necessary one.

Liberation isn’t without precedent. From Haiti to Vietnam, from Algeria to South Africa, the abolition of occupation and apartheid regimes demonstrates that a free Palestine is more than just wishful thinking. What comes after is the source of much contention, and rightly so. None of the examples listed above have resulted in revolutionary free societies, and inequality, State power, and violent oppression are still alive and well (though the armed struggles in each case have undoubtedly weakened colonial power overall and saved countless lives). Nevertheless, I think it is a mistake to focus all of our energy on arguing about what Palestine should be when the immediate need to end the genocide and occupation are far more necessary to save Palestinian lives today. Beyond the band-aids of ceasefire or “peace,” we must remove the bullet that is Israel. Only then can we all truly begin to heal and support Palestinians in building a free and just society.

A few short years ago public discourse on Palestine was still hesitant to use the word “apartheid” to describe the system of Israeli control, regardless of the obvious reality that has existed on the ground since 1948. And until the newest round of indiscriminate bombings in Gaza this October, it was rare to hear the word “genocide” when describing any of Israel’s actions, despite the fact that the “systematic and widespread extermination” of Palestinians has been the Zionist modus operandi since its inception over 100 years ago. Abolishment is the next and imperative hurdle we must incorporate in our language and translate into our actions. I hope this zine can contribute in some small way towards this purpose.

Barbarian W, 2023

BARBARIANS FOR PALESTINE

Five days after Hamas’ surprise attack, Eliot A. Cohen, an American author who has served multiple positions in the Department of State and Department of Defense wrote for the Atlantic: “We are in the fight of our lives…[The fight against Hamas] is about barbarism.”1
He isn’t alone in expressing this sentiment and the chorus of Zionist-supporters likening Hamas (and Palestinians in general) to barbarians is nothing new. But what’s so ironically wonderful about Cohen’s article is how succinctly and accurately he describes the very State he wishes to defend:

“That is why [the barbarians] like taking pictures of their weeping, terrified victims; why they make videos of slow beheadings; and why they dance around mutilated corpses.”
“Barbarians live for grievance—grievance against those who they believe have wronged them, but also against those who enjoy the good things in life. That is why they enjoy wrecking homes and kidnapping children... They dream of an unrealizable utopia, in which their nation dominates the Earth, or their religion extirpates all others, or their enemies grovel for a mercy they will never grant.”

“Barbarians fear argument and are driven to madness by certain books and certain ideas. In place of reason, compromise, forgiveness, or compassion, they revert to rage, and that is because they sense their inner weakness.”
Like the savage or terrorist the barbarian is inevitably one who poses a threat to the ruling order, one who does not conform to the sovereign’s wishes, one who is simultaneously persecuted AND feared. But within this character also lives the unbreakable spirit of freedom—not only is resistance essential, but another way of living is possible. It is for this reason that we’ve adopted the barbarian as our namesake. It’s our small attempt to honor the savages before us, to proudly embrace the barbarians who refuse to accept that a White, European, Capitalist society is the purpose of humanity.

To Israel, Palestinians and their supporters are barbarians of the worst kind, guilty of demanding and fighting for their freedom. But to call for the end of the occupation, the end of genocide, and the end of Israel itself is not only barbaric, it is necessary.

TO THE ANARCHISTS

Our collective inability to end the most public and callous genocide of our lives reflects not only our failure to the Palestinian people, but also as self-proclaimed radicals. As anarchists we are constantly striving for ways of living outside the oppressive structure of our global capitalist society. Sometimes within its borders (a new world within the shell of the old) and sometimes in direct opposition to its most explicitly violent forces. In February of 2022 anarchist media outlets (I am speaking of the mostly American and European English-dominated websites) were awash with analyses and opinions about Ukrainian resistance. Solidarity was called for and fundraising/ direct action opportunities were widely publicized while a general condemnation against the Russian state was agreed upon.
During this entire period it seemed to me that not a single voice called out or even acknowledged the very obvious double-standard that authors and activists so rapidly embraced.

For those of us who have been involved with Palestinian solidarity work in the past, or even those of us who inhabit anarchist and anarchist-adjacent spaces that aren’t White, the lack of Palestinian interest and support is not that surprising. A quick search for past articles or published works by popular anarchist sites result in only a handful of results, many of them by self-identifying Jewish anarchist groups that for better or worse, tend to re-center the issue around themselves.

“For me, given the nature of the situation here, settlers with good conscience looking to join the anti-colonial resistance, which is the only revolutionary movement in region and the forefront of any actual radical change, cannot do it as an Israeli, from inside the Israeli society, looking for ways to reform and improve it. On the contrary, we must shed ourselves off any colonial identity and develop tools and resources for effective race treason. We must develop an anti Israeli politics, turn against our society, and join the oppressed and the colonized, under their terms and leadership.”
—Israeli Anarchist1

“I don’t care. The ones that actually care, they leave.”
—Palestinian in Ramallah when asked what the significance of the Anarchist movement is in Israel.2

1: https://161crew.bzzz.net/interview-with-an-israeli-anarchist/ 2: https://itsgoingdown.org/a-front-line-report-from-the-westbank-of-occupi... 01:15:35

There are a few reasons why anarchists may have been and continue to be reluctant to engage meaningfully with Palestinian liberation. There is the obvious language and culture (non-White) gap, the spirituality and significance of Islam, and the fact that the struggle is undoubtedly a nationalistic one to name a few. These are compounded by the restrictive and dehumanizing system of control over Palestinians that make travel and dialogue more difficult, specifically between activists or academics where anarchist ideas seem to spread more easily.

“It’s become clear that this now is seen by Arabs and almost all of the people across the Global South as the last anticolonial struggle. Israel is the last remnant of 19th century European white settler racist colonialism. They came, they pushed out the Palestinians, who had 93% of the population in Palestine, and they created an Israeli state. They succeeded. But they only succeeded because they had tremendous support from the white racist colonial British, and now they have it from the Americans. They’re still in the West Bank. Gangs of settlers are going around burning Palestinian villages. They’ve expelled 500 people from their villages in the last month or two. And they’re still doing settler colonial expansion and driving out Indigenous people. This is now the driving force for the resistance against Israel and against the United States and Europeans who join them. This is the last anticolonial struggle in the world. And that’s why you see huge demonstrations all over the world when things like this happen.”
—Rami Khouri on Democracy Now, October 24, 20231

1: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/24/rami_khouri_gaza_ israel_palestine

One may hold differing opinions on this or that specific idea but after the global uprising for Palestine since October 7th I believe one thing has become undeniable if solidarity has any meaning and we choose to believe in it, our self-identification as anarchists must be secondary, or at least equally devoted to supporting the Palestinian struggle for liberation. The Israeli state has never been weaker. We cannot let this opportunity pass.

ABOLISH ISRAEL

Anarchists, like any other group, can be guilty of and incapacitated by its own dogmatic beliefs. How we reach out to, share, and work with other people in a society, especially with humans who hold different beliefs, will perhaps be the most important struggle after we abolish States, capitalism, and all forms of violent, arbitrary authority. Allow me to reiterate a few points on why viewing Palestinian liberation through an anarchist lens, especially an anti-Statist one, can be a helpful starting point for those just beginning to get involved.

Nation states are the most recognizable and ubiquitous forms of control and subjugation we contend with, be it the U.S. empire or Egyptian state. Their active complicity and/or incapacity to act in the face of a simple ceasefire demand their populations overwhelmingly desire demonstrates beyond a doubt how little power we hold over our “leaders” and consequently over our own lives. There is no reasoning or resolution one can make with the State; it will either grow or be destroyed.

The Israeli state is the distillation of our worst tendencies as human beings played out in a concentrated area against its indigenous people—the Palestinians.

The Israeli state is a racist, colonial regime founded by a vile Zionist ideology and allowed to flourish with emphatic support from U.S. and U.K. empires.

The Israeli state is a proudly fascist state run by psychotic authoritarians so intent on dosing its civilians with Zionism that any opposition to its supremacy is swiftly and decisively silenced.
The Israeli state is the metaphorical moldy fig leaf for White liberalism, a penance for the Holocaust that vainly tries to obscure its own anti-Jewish feelings under the guise of being against antisemitism.
The Israeli state is a center of extreme greed and capital, its location a necessary outpost for the protection of Western interests in oil and natural resources while concurrently acting as a buffer to antagonistic Arab nations.

The Israeli state is a NUCLEAR weapons capable laboratory of death, a weapons manufacturer’s wet dream where technology and policing tactics that surveil, harass, and murder Palestinians are routinely tested and exported around the world. But within this laboratory also grows a culture of resistance—a mosaic of daily struggle and a defiance to live in the face of the most despicable occupation. Palestinian resistance needs no justification; it is a way of being and survival for Palestinians1.The most powerful and well-funded systems of domination simply can’t destroy the Palestinian spirit to not only live, but flourish. Within this way of being shines a beacon of hope and inspiration to all of us that wish to fight for a better world. The massive solidarity demonstrations and actions taking place across the earth in defiance to the most powerful empires and their well-oiled propaganda machines attest to the strength drawn from the Palestinian struggle and the empathy all oppressed people can identify with. If there is one thing the Israeli state refuses to understand it’s this: Zionism will never win.

1: www.birzeit.edu/en

October 7th, 2023 exposed just how smug the Israeli state is and how dehumanizing their idea of Palestinian resistance was. Content with “mowing the lawn” every few years in Gaza, the Hamas offensive revealed how vulnerable one of the world’s supposed most powerful armies is. Solidarity with ALL Palestinian resistance means just that, be it the armed struggle of the Qassam brigades, our Palestinian anarchist comrades, the farmers continuing to grow food and harvest olives, the journalists who wear a target on their back, the doctors and medical responders who tirelessly save and heal, international efforts to expand the BDS movement, or the local rallies and direct action sabotage campaigns in our own countries. As plenty of others have pointed out the struggle against the Israeli state is not one dimensional, and our support can and must converge on multiple fronts.

After more than a month of a live-streamed genocide, the images of which will be seared into our nightmares forever, something has changed in the air. The Zionist emperor is naked, and he STINKS! There are more people being radicalized with every fired Israeli bomb and bullet, and the Israeli propaganda apparatus, bloated by decades of success and impunity is finally starting to tear itself apart. The Israeli State, along with Western powers and media pundits are counting on us to feel exhausted, carry on, and forget. But if there was ever a moment in the seventy-five plus years of atrocity that has had the potential to meaningfully change the Israeli stronghold, the moment is now.

AGAINST PEACE

The complete inability of human rights organizations, the U.N., and independent media broadly to stop the Israeli regime highlights not only their ineffectiveness as institutions, but the inherent weakness of hierarchical structures that may mitigate some damage but ultimately exist to sustain the status quo. Our desperate appeals to the morality of elected officials once again reveals the subjugated position we have as citizens in supposed “free societies.” However if there’s one thing liberal democracies will eventually concede to it is the concept of a non-violent, political solution for peace.

“Colonialism is not a machine capable of thinking, a body endowed with reason. It is naked violence and only gives in when confronted with greater violence.”
—Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

I am writing this in Hiroshima, Japan. Barely two generations have passed since the decision by the U.S. empire to drop atomic weapons on a civilian population two times. Looking back on that unimaginable horror I can’t help but look just a bit further and see the absolute terror and destruction Imperial Japan reigned on much of this region of the world and how it’s now intentionally ignored and forgotten, buried under proclamations of peace (and neoliberalism).

The “peace” we enjoy in Japan today was bought with more than the victims of nuclear weapons. It was bought with countless slaughtered humans across China, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and beyond. It was bought so the politicians, war-cheerleaders, and weapons manufacturers never have to be held accountable, indeed, they have benefited most.

Peace, like the phrase all lives matter, masks the violent reality that can be ended with nothing less than the abolishment of the Israeli state. Peace will be expounded by the media and politicians again and again to exhaust the energy of the current movement. It will be used to try and justify the indefensible bombings of Gaza. It will be used to ensure the occupation continues.

There will never be any peace so long as an Israeli state exists, so long as a military occupation that commits daily atrocities and murders with impunity is allowed to continue. How dare we call for peace between a regime of terror and a population of brutalized peoples? Shall we ask the racist cops to simply be a bit more open-minded too? Politely request the billionaires and corporate CEO’s to share their wealth with the peasants and pay their fair share of taxes?

“As I condemned the government for its ruthlessness and lawlessness, I stepped across the line: I said that the time for passive resistance had ended, that nonviolence was a useless strategy and could never overturn a white minority regime bent on retaining its power at any cost. At the end of the day, I said, violence was the only weapon that would destroy apartheid and we must be prepared, in the near future, to use that weapon.
The crowd was excited; the youth in particular were clapping and cheering. They were ready to act on what I said right then and there. At that point I began to sing a freedom song, the lyrics of which say, “There are the enemies, let us take our weapons and attack them.” I sang this song and the crowd joined in, and when the song was finished, I pointed to the police and said, “There, there are our enemies!” The crowd again started cheering and made aggressive gestures in the direction of the police. The police looked nervous, and a number of them pointed back at me as if to say, “Mandela, we will get you for this.” I did not mind. In the
heat of the moment I did not think of the consequences.”
—Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

Those who have been brought up by the West’s indoctrination of non-violence as the only accepted form of reaction will object to the “rights” of Israelis to live in peace. They will say that the abolition of Israel is tantamount to the abolition of Jews. Nothing could be farther from the truth! It is only when we finally recognize and reject the absurdity of a “two-state solution,” actively combat that forces that wish to conflate antisemitism with anti-zionism, and stop being afraid to demand for much more than a ceasefire that we can even begin to imagine a livable Palestine for Arabs AND Jews.

“Regarding the two-state solution, the stated goal of the 1993 Oslo “peace process”: …we will never accept the two-state solution. Imagine someone comes to your home and forcefully robs your home. After he sees that you are resisting and won’t leave your home, he suggests that you share your home between you both. Does this make sense to you? If this is logical, then all of the following events are also logical: Someone steals your mobile phone on the street, gets caught, and then suggests you share that phone or sell it and split the money. Or someone steals your car and after he realizes that you will never give up your car, he
suggests that you share the car or sell it and split the money.”
—Interviews with Fauda1

1: https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/view/
bXukGKl7ZbP2hEIsMALt8xfasPksxcWVtLFC+mY9uTU/

The abolishment of Israel will lead to a free Palestine. A free Palestine for all. It is only then, when the perpetrators of violence have been brought to justice and the system of Zionist Jewish supremacy is destroyed can we talk about real, meaningful peace.

Perhaps it is one of our strengths as stubborn anarchists to never settle for compromise. There can be no compromise until all the walls are torn down, until all the prisoners are released, and until all the states are abolished. We must stand with our Palestinian sisters, brothers, and siblings now and until they are free.

Until Palestine is free, none of us are free.

Whether you [the Jewish people] like it or not, anti-Zionism will be, along with the indictment of the nation-state, the primary site of this endgame. It will be the site of the historical confrontation between between us, the opportunity for you to identify your real enemy. Because fundamentally, it’s not us that you must be reconciled with, but with white people. We stand before a fool’s game, in which we are the celebrities playing the main roles. Jews and Arabs, those terrible and turbulent children who exhaust themselves reconciling the good Christian souls. While the main actor is white: the West.
—Houria Bouteldja, Whites, Jews, and Us

“I want to say this, and I want the world to remember my words. In my culture, in my language, we say, ”Kama tadinu tudan, walaw ba’ada heen.” In your culture, in your language, they say, “What goes around comes around.” And when it comes around, like this whole world is watching the genocides happening in the Gaza
Strip, we shall be watching, too.”
—Youmna Elsayed on Democracy Now, October 26, 20231

1: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/26/gaza_reporting_youmna_elsayed

She learned revolution is, in fact, always unimaginable. It shatters the world you know. The future is unwritten, brimming with potential. The colonizers habe no idea what is coming, and that makes them panic. It terrifes them.
Good. It should.
—R. F. Kuang, Babel, An Arcane History

About us:

The Institute of Barbarian Books is an independent, unconventional print shop, small publisher, and sometimes library run by Momoe Narazaki and William Shum (ITWST). Until 2020 we were located in Nishiaizu, Fukushima but we are now based in Hiroshima. Please contact us if you'd like to learn more and stay updated with our projects. Thank you for reading.

Telephone: 080-4684-0130
Email: info [at] barbarianbooks.institute

There are 7 Comments

#notanarchist ?

They facepalm a well meaning message with "BARBARIANS FOR PALESTINE".

This could have actually been anarchist by separating the people from the would-be-state/place.

And before Wayne Price goosesteps his way into the conversation with "Palestine is the PeOpLE, blah blah". No, the apparatus that would be(come) the Palestinian State is not something anarchists support.

No gods, no master, no nations, no states.

Why not make all Israelis get instant orgasms which according to Wilhelm Reich (the 4th Reich ;) )will destroy fascism. No one dies and piece returns to the region. Abolish Abrahamic gods as well!

The statement quotes, apparently agreeing, Khouri, "This is the last anticolonial struggle in the world. "

No it isn't, unfortunately. And it certainly is not the last anti-imperialist struggle in the world! (Including the struggle of the Ukrainian people.) That's why people all over the world support the Palestinians and condemn the Israeli state.

{How's that for "goose-stepping"?}

"people all over the world support the Palestinians and condemn the Israeli state"

Magic, empty statements. Look, UkWayne, this is also verifiably valid but equally empty: people all over the world support the Israeli state and condemn the Palestinians.

Blah blah most people agree!

anarchist cowards, all too scared to support the one illegal state that if ever implemented would negate them all

boring donothingists

what?!

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