Underneath the Rhetoric: Israel’s Hatred of Palestinians

Official public statements by a government’s officials obviously trade on rhetoric—manipulation by wording being a part of statecraft—but when the rhetoric is so self-serving and divorced from facts on the ground (i.e., empirically), wording can be indicative of the underlying mentality, which is real. I submit that the statements of Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu and Israeli foreign-ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein in May, 2025 amid the Israeli military offensive in Gaza reveal the surprising extent that hatred can warp human perception and cognition without the warping itself being grasped by the very people in its grip.

Facing pressure from the E.U. and, to a lesser extent, the U.S. in May, 2025, the Israeli government made a decision that the media described as lifting of the two-month-old Israeli ban on humanitarian food and medicine entering Gaza as over a million residents there were facing starvation and a lack of medical care. The so-called lifting of the blockade in actuality consisted in allowing in less than ten trucks on the first day, and between twenty and forty on the second day, with none being able to distribute through distribution centers. As a result, the food—a mere trifle spread over 1.2 million souls—did not reach any hungry mouths. Incredibly, Netanyahu admitted publicly that he was intent to allow in just enough food and medicine that would relieve the Israeli government of the pressure from its allies. Whereas during the ceasefire earlier in 2025 when Israel was allowing 600 trucks into Gaza per day, the “lifting” of the blockade would only permit a maximum of 100 trucks. In essence, the crime against humanity of exterminating a people was ongoing, given how far short 100 trucks’ worth of food (and the trucks also contained boxes of medicine and medical supplies) is in being able to feed 1.2 million people. Meanwhile, the Israeli military was upping its bombing in Gaza, with 100 residents killed on one day and 48 on the next day after the “lifting” of the blockade. In effect, the Israeli government’s cabinet was increasing the demand for medical supplies and medicine while intentionally minimizing the number of humanitarian trucks that could enter Gaza and making it very difficult for the trucks that did get in to unload at distribution centers such that the food and medicine could reach the actual residents of Gaza. Netanyahu’s stated goal of riding Gaza of Palestinians continued unfettered.

It is in that context that the E.U. took the decision to review the “wide-ranging trade and cooperation pact” with Israel “over its intensified offensive in Gaza.”[1] The E.U.’s foreign minister, Kaja Kallas, stated on May 20, 2025 that the E.U. “would examine if Israel has violated its human rights obligations under Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which defines the trading and diplomatic relations” bilaterally.[2] That the Israeli military had already killed over 50,000 residents of Gaza over more than a year begs the question of what took the E.U. so long even just to review the agreement. The constitutional, or basic law, provision for unanimity on foreign policy in the European Council and the Council of the E.U. and that the E.U. state of Hungary had been serially exploiting its veto-power on the federal level is the obvious explanation.

Less well-known, however, is the sheer gradualism in the machinery of any government, federal or unitary, in reacting beyond words in ways that a strong enough to make a real difference “on the ground.” Aggressor regimes around the world benefit from the refusal of legislatures to off-set the inherent gradualism of government by enacting a fast-track option. Both in reacting quicker to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s bombing of Gaza, the E.U. could arguably have made a difference, whereas entrenchment is much more difficult to counter after a year.

Ongoing entrenchment has the benefit to the aggressor of being able to set the contours of debate concerning the militarization of an occupation or an outright invasion and extermination of a people. For example, in responding to the E.U.’s decision just to review the agreement, Marmorstein of the Israeli government wrote on social media that the “war was forced upon Israel by Hamas, and Hamas is the one responsible for its continuation. Ignoring these realities and criticising Israel only hardens Hamas position and encourages Hamas to stick to its guns.”[3] There a number of problems with this reply.

Firstly, whether or not Israel rejects the decision of the E.U. to review the trade and diplomatic agreement, the decision is solely for the E.U. concerning its own review, so this is not something for the counterparty to accept or reject. Secondly, not even Hamas—not to mention the 1.2 million residents of Gaza—forced Israel to kill over 50,000 and decimate entire neighborhoods. Nor did any counterparty force Israel to block humanitarian aid from entering Gaza as people on a mass scale were starving. Behind the rhetoric is a warping of social reality in being incorrect in terms of being forced to make decisions, as if at gunpoint. Thirdly, the extremely disproportionate number of guns and bombs that Israel had over Gaza undercuts the claim that Hamas was “sticking to its guns,” and that this forced Israel to disproportionately bomb and kill in Gaza, especially during its offensive in May, 2025. Fourthly, the claim that Israel was militarily on the defensive is so contrary to the facts that, beyond the rhetorical use of the claim, it points to a rather severe cognitive and perceptual warping. I submit that hatred is the underlying culprit behind the cognitive and perceptional displacement.

Shortly after Hamas’s unjustified attack and kidnapping on October 7, 2023, the president of Israel said publicly that every resident of Gaza was culpable. Such over-reach of accusation, even considering that Hamas had democratic legitimacy in Gaza, bespeaks hatred, and is consistent with the UN’s finding of reason to believe that Israel was guilty of the crime of trying to exterminate a people, which is easier to prove than genocide. Furthermore, Netanyahu’s admission that he would allow only a minimum of humanitarian food-aid into Gaza in May, 2025 and only to satisfy the U.S. and E.U. points to an underlying hatred like smoke suggests the presence of fire. 

Also indicative of hatred in the Israeli government, Yair Golan, a former deputy chief of staff of the Israeli army, said at the time that the Israeli government was “rejecting” the E.U.’s decision to review the trade and diplomatic agreement: “A sane country does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies as a pastime, and does not engage in mass population displacement.”[4] This revealing glimpse both of the intent of Israel’s cabinet and what atrocities had been going on in Gaza strongly implies that hatred was a, or even the motivator, for what else other than sadistic pleasure could explain killing babies as a pastime. Furthermore, the statement belies the claim that Israel was being forced by its adversary to hit, and hit hard in Gaza. The refusal to take responsibility for one’s own decisions and even blame a counterparty as if it had made the decisions or forced them is suggestive of a sordid character and even delusion. It is probably that Israeli government’s officials have continued to be so angry and demeaning of a people deemed in effect (and ironically!) as sub-human that the policy of extermination has continued unabated even by the so-called lifting of the blockade of humanitarian aid that might keep the population from continuing to shrink as intended and desired by the Israeli officials. 

It is no wonder that the ICC has issued arrests warrants; it is more astonishing that the world has allowed the Israeli officials to continue to commit war crimes and a crime against humanity with only slight pressure to let some humanitarian aid into Gaza. While certainly not as culpable, the E.U.’s delay in even reviewing its agreement with Israel is astonishing. Is there a threshold of atrocity beyond which a coalition of countries would take immediate action against an aggressor-state? Given the impunity of not only Israel, but also Russia in Ukraine, it seems unlikely that there is such trigger even when a squalid, hateful, and over-reactive aggressor-character is on the loose as if it were in Hobbes' state of nature. 

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1. Euronews, “Israel ‘Completely Rejects’ EU Decision to Review Trade and Cooperation Deal,” Euronews.com, May 21, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Astha Rajvanshi, “Ex-Israeli General Hits Out at Government for ‘Killing Babies as a Pastime’ in Gaza,” Nbcnews.com, May 20, 2025.

Beyond Description, Atrocious, Inhumane: The New Normal?

“The situation for Palestinians in Gaza is beyond description, beyond atrocious and beyond inhumane.”[1] So wrote Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, on May 17, 2025. He could have been looking at films taken when the Nazi concentration camps were liberated in 1945 at the end of World War II. It was a shock to the world back then. The scale of the inhumane atrocity of over a million people living in rubble and starving by design in the next century raises the question of whether extreme inhumanity toward a group in searing hatred was becoming normalized, and thus tolerated by the world absent even a coalition of the willing to step in and counter what even democracy could inflict.

At the very least, the impunity enabled by Israel’s major ally pointed to a fatal flaw in the post-World-War II world order, including the United Nations. Ironically, the collapse of the Soviet Union made the world vulnerable, given the bias in there being one less superpower. “A policy of siege and starvation makes a mockery of international law,” the head of the UN wrote.[2] He added that annexation and settlements in the Palestinian territories are illegal, and “nothing justifies the collective punishment of the Palestinian people,” or, I might add, of any people.[3] Yet even such strong phraseology is but dry parchment while Israel killed over 100 residents of Gaza on next day—bombing a hospital no less in an attack called Operation Gideon’s Chariot.

To be sure, the Israeli government announced it would “allow a ‘basic amount of food’ to enter Gaza ‘to ensure a famine crisis does not develop’ after blockading the territory for 10 weeks.”[4] Lest humanity be presumed to be the motive, Israel’s IDF made the recommendation “out of the operational need to enable the expansion of the intense fighting” as Israel’s army expanded its presence in Gaza.[5] A similar logic may have been behind Eichmann’s frustration that there simply were not enough ovens so the number of people gassed daily had to be reduced. In both cases, group-identification led to viewing some humans as not human.

It is as if the world and especially the Israelis learned nothing from the disclosure of Hitler’s brutality, for by the 2020s, group-identification itself had still not come to be viewed as dangerous, especially when the obsession becomes reductionistic, and large-scale, planned-out atrocities in Gaza and Ukraine were allowed to go on. Eerily, were the Russian government successful in riding Ukraine of Ukrainians and the Israeli government successful in exterminating the Palestinians in Gaza, would the rest of the world blink? More likely, the tyranny of the status quo would turn a blind eye and go on as if nothing atrocious had happened.

I think it very likely that not even Guterres’s strong words would be enough to translate any political will into action to forestall the victimizers even by the UN. The lesson is perhaps that having strong allies can indeed enable a government to enact Nazi-level atrocities with impunity while the rest of the world looks on as if collectively helpless. What was shocking in 1945 may be viewed going forward as a precedent rather than a “never again,” line in the sand. Remembering past systematic atrocities by governments, whether of Hitler or Stalin, that were oriented to punishing or even eliminating a people out of hatred doesn’t help if such large-scale inhumanity is actually (i.e., de facto) to become precedent. In the midst of destructive, large-scale technology and the banality of efficient state organizing, the world could do worse than come up with a new world order in which having a powerful ally does not give victimizing governments a de facto veto over countervailing efforts to protect peoples from being exterminated out of sheer hatred.

John Locke knew that one rationale for government is that victims make lousy judges of their respective aggressors. That governments might view themselves as victims and leash out hyperactive vengeance may not have occurred to Locke, or even to Kant, who stated that a world federation would only possibly but not probably ensure world peace. It seems that political development beyond the nation-state needs to catch up to the modern reach and intensity of government being used as a tool of hatred. Even in 2025, Putin’s hatred of Ukrainians and Netanyahu’s hatred of Palestinians were of such intensity that both men should have been rendered unfit for office by international if not by domestic means.

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1. Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, LinkedIn.com, May 17, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Wyre Davies and Rushdi Abualouf, “Israel Says It Will Allow Basic Amount of Food into Gaza, Ending 10-week blockade,” BBC.com, May 18, 2025.
5. Ibid.

Nationalism at Eurovision: A Lack of Vision

The inherent retentiveness of conservatism benefits a society because it need not “reinvent the wheel” in “starting from scratch,” as resort can be made to customs that have been efficacious. Unfortunately, conservatism can easily be in denial as to the need for adaptation to changes whether in geopolitical institutions or in culture. The advent of the European Union as a federal system of dual-sovereignty has been easy fodder for conservatism’s proclivity of denial with regard to very new things. Eurovision, too, was an invention beyond even the European Union, and thus also of the post-World-War-II history of integration meant in part as a check on the full-blown nationalism that had twice decimated Europe in the twentieth century. So it is problematic that the EBU, the organization behind the Eurovision Song Contest, has made so many category mistakes involving Europe in favor of nationalism.

The epitome of EBU’s bias and inconsistencies is the decision taken first to ban altogether and then relegate the E.U.’s flag while giving the state flags pride of place on stage, as if Eurovision were a political rather than an entertainment event. It was as if the EBU and the Swiss government were conveniently oblivious to the notion and instantiation of an empire-scale federal system of states. The notion that a person could be a citizen both of a union and one’s own state, and thus be under two flags at once, had been invented by political compromise in 1787. So, it was odd that in 2025, the performers who were E.U. citizens were to be denied the opportunity to show the E.U. flag, whereas bringing along the state flags was permissible.  It was, in effect, to say, you can vote for your representative in the European Parliament, but you cannot hold or wear the E.U. flag under which that parliament is instantiated as a legislative body. This inconsistency is at the very least consistent with the anti-federalist, Euroskeptic political ideology, and thus partisan in nature. Even worse, the decision fuels the sort of nationalism out of which two World Wars had destroyed Europe in the last century.

Even though Switzerland is not an E.U. state, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation announced in May of 2025 that performers would not be allowed to bring the E.U. flag on the main stage, the turquoise carpet, and even in the green room. In obfuscating the E.U. flag with those of “personal, cultural or regional identity,”[1] the Swiss government was making a category mistake, for to liken the E.U. flag with a gay-rights flag, for example, is to ignore the major difference between a cultural movement and a union that has executive, legislative, and judicial branches at the federal level. Neither was the E.U. “a network,” as David Cameron infamously said of the E.U. when Britain was a state thereof. In fact, Britain seceded in large part in rejection of the fact that governmental sovereignty had already been split between the state and federal levels. 

Lest Euroskeptics raise alarm bells, a federal union can exist in theory and practice without the federal level being recognized as a state internationally, for governmental institutions can indeed exist without constituting a state in the sense of having exclusive competency in foreign affairs. That governmental sovereignty can be divided does not necessarily mean that foreign policy and defense are completely federalized (i.e., E.U. exclusive competencies, or enumerated powers). Yet in terms of government, laws can be passed at both the state and federal level with binding legal force, hence the sovereignty enjoyed at the federal union level by executive, legislative, and judicial branches is distinct from the sovereignty retained by the states.

Therefore, that the “same rule applies to the Rainbow flag” as the E.U. flag “and the Palestinian flag” points to a logical inconsistency founded on a category mistake, but actually founded on a political ideology that is against the European Union.[2] Regarding the Palestinian flag, that Eurovision considered Israel to be European also represents a logical problem, for Israel is a sovereign state occupying Palestine in the Middle East, which is distinct from Europe geographically and culturally.

Furthermore, in refusing to exclude Israel from the competition, Eurovision was in denial, in effect, regarding the fact that the Israeli government had been blocking food and medicine from Gaza for more than a month as the 1.2 million captives in Gaza starved, as if each one had been culpable on October 7, 2023. In fact, on the day after the announcement on the E.U. flag being relegated to the background at Eurovision, essentially putting the state flags in front as if the states were still completely sovereign, Israel’s prime minister announced to the world that “full force” would be mustered against the inhabitants of Gaza.[3]

Also on the day after the Swiss announcement, lest the world of entertainment be assumed to be completely passive in the midst of the exterminating atrocity in Gaza, a “group of more than 350 international actors, directors and producers . . . signed a letter published on the first day of the Cannes Film Festival condemning the killing of Fatma Hassouna, the 25-year-old Palestinian photojournalist and protagonist of the documentary Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk. Hassouna was killed along with 10 relatives in an Israeli air strike on her family home in northern Gaza {in April, 2025}, the day after the documentary was announced as part of the ACID Cannes selection.”[4] The letter pointed to the “shame” in the film industry’s “passivity.”[5] Passivity, as well as shame, can also applied to the EBU of the Eurosong Contest because it ignored a letter yet again in 2025 “calling for Israel to be banned from Eurovision” so the EBU would not be “normalizing and whitewashing” Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.[6] That the EBU had banned Russia even though at least part of Russia is in Europe sheds light on the rule by double-standards at Eurovision.

In such a condition, perhaps no flags at all should have been allowed in the vicinity of the song contest. Why open the door to explicit politics anyway, given that EBU’s handling of the political domain was itself so controversial, and, I contend, impaired even just from the standpoint of logic and consistency? I submit that the ideology of nationalism, which had given the world two major wars in the twentieth century and was allowing Israel to so abuse its national sovereignty, had become too engrained in the song contest. If the history of European integration after World War II, which includes Euroatom and the European Coal and Steel Cooperative, can be interpreted as a series of efforts to check nationalism, then the E.U. flag should be highlighted rather than relegated to the periphery if political flags are to be allowed at an entertainment venue at all, which itself is problematic and seems to incur a category mistake. Should Eurovision be assigned as a political or an entertainment event?  Passivity on even this basic question can be regarded as blameworthy.  

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “Eurovision Will Allow European Flag for Fans in the Audience but Not for Artists on Stage,” Euronews.com, May 13, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Gavin Blackburn, “Israeli Military to Continue Gaza Operation ‘With Full Force’ in Next Days, Netanyahu Says,” Euronews.com, May 14, 2025.
4. David Mouriquand, “More than 350 Stars Condemn Gaza ‘Genocide’ in Open Letter in Time for Cannes Opening,” Euronews.com, May 14, 2025.
5. Ibid.
6. David Mouriquand, “Eurovision’s Israel Contestant Yuval Raphael’s ‘Expecting’ Booing During This Year’s Competition,” Eurovision.com, May 13, 2025.