Commentary
The supremacist desire in the war of extermination
The dominant reaction among the Israeli public has been, and remains, an immensely powerful desire to regain their old mastery and restore the illusion of immunity.
This text, addressed to the Israeli public, was published earlier this month with a sense of urgency: the war could resume at any time. Now it has resumed. But this is not just a continuation of the war: all signs indicate that the plans for the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza have not been abandoned.
Preparations have been made, and Israeli government spokespersons have openly voiced the threat. One cannot say with certainty whether the Israeli army and its allies in the White House will really be able to proceed with the expulsions, and whether Arab regimes and other countries will venture to cooperate with such a crime, but it would be irresponsible to ignore a danger of such proportions.
For the settler movement – the most powerful bloc in Israeli politics, with ardent supporters in the ranks of the army – achieving even a partial expulsion of Palestinians would represent a breakthrough that would radically change the terms of the Palestinian question. Campaigns to expel Palestinians from Gaza, particularly refugees and their descendants, have already taken place in '67-'68 and between 1971-73. Now, however, the Palestinians are facing a fundamental alignment of local and global conditions, a ruthless campaign of eviction with full imperial support, that has no precedent since 1948. It would be tragic if this was allowed to happen; if people around the world, who have increasingly had enough of the indiscriminate bombing, didn’t understand the importance of what is happening.
The crux of the matter is reciprocity. There is positive reciprocity when people do good things for each other, and there is negative reciprocity when they exchange blows. It is a basic social mechanism whose ancient rule is simply: “Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.” One didn’t need to be a great thinker to understand that mistreating, starving and torturing Palestinian prisoners would endanger the lives of Israeli prisoners in turn. This is what happens even in “ordinary” wars, when the welfare of one side's prisoners of war is linked to the welfare of those of the other side. It is certainly the case in a war that began with a war crime: the taking of civilian hostages, after decades of oppression and abuse of Gaza civilians.
How is it possible that those who would have been able to make this simple calculation – that the worsening abuse of Palestinians was endangering the hostages – did not do so?
Perhaps this is because a mentality that completely denies the principle of reciprocity in social and political relations has taken hold in Israel for decades. In Israel, you can eat as much as you want, while on the other side of the fence the citizens of Gaza have to make do with their allotted rations of pasta and nothing more. In Israel, there is electricity and running water; in Gaza, parents pray that they can get through the winter without electricity and drinking water. In Israel we live in relative safety, while on the other side they live in terror of bombings and night raids.
The denial of negative reciprocity has given rise to the grandiose illusion that we could hit the other side hard without paying a price for it and that we could inflict immense suffering without consequences. A privileged occupation; a policy of unilateralism. We are immune, they are vulnerable.
The most dangerous illusion of the masters is to think that they are not dependent on their servants and that their servants are not human beings like them. It’s true: the occupation has turned us into a “nation of masters,” just as Yeshayahu Leibowitz said. And supremacy comes at a price. The war has driven cracks through this sense of immunity and dominance. Was it realistic to expect that, in the wake of the terrible shock, we would shake off supremacism and recognize reciprocity as a fundamental condition of life, for good and for ill? I can’t say for sure. The war crimes of October 7 struck fear into people's hearts, and trauma can make people lose their minds. But this is not just about trauma. It is about a deeply ingrained pattern: the dominant reaction among the Israeli public has been, and remains, an immensely powerful desire to regain their old mastery and restore the illusion of immunity.
It's true, there is no justification in symmetry: any harm to a civilian population – bombing and kidnapping, displacement, killing and injury, starvation and expulsion – is fundamentally wrong. But Israel's capacity to inflict suffering – destroying entire cities, displacing hundreds of thousands, killing, starving and expelling – is far greater than the capacity of the Palestinian and Lebanese armed organizations. The rule of thumb in Israel has always been that the price exacted must be immeasurably higher than the suffering and pain caused by the other side. Thus, after October 7, there was a widespread expectation among Israelis that dominance and supremacy would be restored through revenge masquerading as an expression of reciprocity: “They did it to us, we will do it to them.” Politicians stoked this sentiment, and generals rode it into battle and used it to justify indiscriminate attacks. But this counterattack, as soon became clear, was not just another round of bloodshed, but something entirely different: a war designed to eliminate the adversary, to break the circle of reciprocity, however awful, and establish a new horizon: that of expulsion and destruction.
This destructive war is driven by a terrible mix of the logic of mutual revenge and the imagination of being able to deal “the final blow” that will put an end to all reciprocity. That is the vision: smoke rising from destroyed buildings and ruined cities and silence as far as the eye can see. The silence of a cemetery. “A people that dwells alone,” literally. That is why there is no end to this war. There is no escape from reciprocity, even between unequal parties. Anyone who tries to escape it risks tearing at the fabric of human life. And as if that were not enough, a war fueled by this explosive mixture is promoting to leadership positions those who truly believe that it is possible to break the bonds of humanity: the messianic and the insane, the followers of the ancient commandment “Destroy, kill and annihilate.” But the Palestinians will not disappear. Not here in Israel, not in Gaza, not in the West Bank, not in exile. Nor will the Middle East disappear.
The denial of reciprocity is preparing us for the next disaster, the next act of revenge and another turn around the circle of death, because all our lives are dependent and interconnected. Anyone who says “there are no innocents in Gaza” must understand that their words provide justification for those who say “there are no innocents in Israel.” And I am insisting that there are. I invite whoever said that there are no civilians in Gaza that are uninvolved to reflect on the fact that adopting the principle that there are no innocents can have dire consequences for the welfare of ordinary people.
And anyone who says that the crimes of the Palestinians justify any measure forgets (or perhaps does not know about) the crimes committed by Israel, ordered by governments elected in relatively free elections.
Nothing can eliminate reciprocity. If we do not establish positive reciprocity, we will find ourselves trapped in a bloody cycle of negative reciprocity. The occupied and dispossessed may not be able to withstand the superior force of an army, which is already waiting for the new apocalyptic bombs to replace those already tested on Gaza. We might recall, however, what experts said at the beginning of this war: a significant part of Hamas' ammunition was made from remnants of Israeli munitions, from bombs that had been dropped on Gaza and had not exploded.
More importantly, a war of extermination sows deadly hatred. We, citizens of the state of masters, have not been immune and will not be immune in the future. We remain fragile, human. Each of us is bound to pay the price – especially the helpless, the weak and the poor. “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”
Gadi Algazi is an Israeli historian.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/il-desiderio-suprematista-nella-guerra-di-sterminio on 2025-03-21