The following article by Dianne Kirby was first published in Unity, the weekly paper of the Irish Communist Party.
ON the viewing platforms erected for observing the staggering destruction inflicted on Gaza, binoculars cost five shekels (£1.10) for 2½ minutes. Payment by contactless card.* Genocide as entertainment. Societal depravity writ large. Complemented in early 2024 by mainstream Israeli television broadcasting from detention facilities their officials bragging about the mistreatment of detainees. The IDF took civilians to watch and film the torture of often naked Palestinians live. Society's appetite for more was fuelled from the top. The Israel Beitenu opposition party leader, Avigdor Lieberman, wanted Palestinians indicating disloyalty to Israel to be decapitated by axe, with Palestinian prisoners drowned collectively in the Dead Sea. Israel's latest debauchery: trials and executions of Palestinians are sanctioned to be public and filmed. Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, states the legislation 'subordinates every principle of fair criminal justice to a punitive and retributive spectacle'. State-sanctioned 'show trials.' A dehumanised Israel.
Since Israel passed its death penalty law intended solely for Palestinians, expanding capital punishment in military and civilian courts, an avalanche of legislation has increased state sanctioned death for Palestinians. Most recent, 11 May, relates to Palestinians suspected of any degree of involvement with 7 October. It applies retroactively and permits convictions on a minimal evidentiary basis, including 'evidence' obtained under torture. B'Tselem describes Israeli prisons as 'a network of torture camps.'
The inclusion of looting allows execution for those unconnected to planning or implementing the attack. Those who crossed the fence to pick fruit or vegetables, illegally occupied people momentarily escaping their concentration camp with its carefully controlled calory intake and oppressive conditions, are deemed participants in a 'genocide' against the Jewish people, as Israeli media presents 7 October. The law contains a collective dimension permitting collective indictments, removing the possibility of prisoner exchanges for anyone 'suspected, indicted, or convicted of an offense committed within the October 7 massacre events.' Moreover, suspects can be tried without being present. The trial decision requires a simple majority of two out of three judges appointed by the military's Chief of Staff, superseding the previous practice of requiring unanimity. On June 2, the Israeli Knesset allocated substantial annually recurring sums to the tribunal infrastructure's broadcasting systems, clearly anticipating popular demand for viewing Palestinian suffering and death.
At the same time, Israel's occupation and slaughter continues in Lebanon as well as Palestine. The Gazan genocide endures unabated. Israel's ambitions to destroy Iran and fulfil the Greater Israel Project remain extant. Attempted sabotage of the precarious Iran-US Memorandum of Understanding is accompanied by claims of a 'radical Sunni axis of Evil,' mooting conflicts with Syria, Pakistan (a nuclear armed nation), Qatar and Türkiye (a NATO member, now accorded enemy state status by high-ranking Israeli politicians, including former prime minister Naftali Bennett). Syria has striven to accommodate Israel, even indicating its willingness to join the Abraham Accords. But Israel covets more of its territory. Depicting Pakistan, Qatar and Türkiye, key to US-Iran negotiations, as an anti-Israel alliance, reveals Israel's conviction that all are obstacles to its regional dominance.
Critics indict Israel as a psychotic, delusional rogue state. But if Gaza and subsequent events exposed the charade of Israeli democracy, they equally ripped away the mask of so-called western civilization. Netanyahu and Trump differ on whose immediate interests should be prioritized. Public opinion world-wide favours Palestine. Yet Israeli impunity persists. Israelis sing in Eurovision, compete in international sport, trade and invest globally, travel freely. Treating Israel as a normal nation, while branding citizens who oppose its criminality as terrorists, makes for more than complicity. It makes for responsibility. It makes for western sponsored state terrorism. The western world and its allies tell the Israelis that no matter what, they are one of us and we are with them, ensuring military superiority, impunity from international law, protection from the wrath of global populations.
Civil liberties and freedom of speech corrode in our faces. Unresponsive politicians put their interests before ours. It is ever more imperative to free Palestine if we are to free ourselves.
* Photographs/reports of this can be found in many newspapers including the New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde. On July 21st 2026 The Irish Times showed a photo of: "A man in Sderot, on the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip, watches smoke rising following an Israeli airstrike near Beit Hanoun.