This is why Israel will not change on its own. It is why Nazi Germany or apartheid South Africa did not change on their own. The only change that can come will be from external pressure. Boycott, sanctions and divestment. Ceasing all military aid. Stopping all diplomatic relations. Ending the normalization of its pathology.

Israeli society is gripped by a racist, genocidal mania that has been stoked by political leaders, its media and its popular culture. An apartheid state that has been meticulously curated to maintain a myth of its supposed democratic character, even as it trampled on and denied human rights to millions of people under its occupation and control. A militaristic ethno-state with nuclear weapons which has been a colonial asset of the American Empire for decades. One that has been brainwashed to weaponize antisemitism and past traumas as it is convinced of its perpetual victimhood.

The trajectory of its ethos has always been genocide. After all, Zionism is antithetical to democracy. Antithetical to human rights for all. And now, the mask has finally slipped for all to see. It was never created as a refuge for Jewish people. It was created as a colonial stronghold, one which used the crime of the Holocaust to justify its own crimes. And this is why so many Jews refuse its conflation with Judaism. Because they know how it sullies its rich and beautiful traditions with racist dogma. How it warps it into something grotesque and terrifying.

Understanding this is not defeatist. It is the passageway toward dismantling apartheid and ending this genocide. And it is the only realistic hope that is left.

Kenn Orfanos, July 2025