2024. You want to look forward to any new year in a positive frame of mind. But right now, there is no way of generating the feeling of optimism that’s required. Since the onset of the new year, the grim and bloody spectre of war has been impossible to escape. News of one atrocity after another pings into our phones even in the dead of the night, while we are desperately trying to get some sleep.

We all know that, on 7 October 2023, a vicious and murderous attack was carried out by Hamas, which saw 1,200 Israelis being butchered and 220 being taken hostage. It was horrendous, utterly unjustifiable and wrong.

Since then, in a brutal and inhumane act of revenge, over 25,000 people – the majority of them women and children – have been slaughtered in Gaza, by the Israeli army.

The pretext is that the Israelis are “going after Hamas.” The reality is that they are engaged in a concerted assault of a type which has been termed “domicide” – that is, a merciless, indiscriminate bombardment, the aim of which is to destroy the houses, the schools, the hospitals, the communications systems, the businesses – in fact the entire infrastructure of Gaza – so that there is nothing left for Palestinians to hold onto. And, while they are at it, they intend to kill as many young men as possible, and women too, while maintaining the fiction that this tyrannical brutality is in some perverse way justifiable. It isn’t. Not even remotely. Not ever.

Anyone with a shred of honesty knows that what is happening now in Gaza and the West Bank really is a deliberate, genocidal campaign; that a secondary purpose is to help the Israeli so called “settlers” steal as much land as possible in the West Bank; and also to maintain what’s left of Gaza as an open prison over which Israel can preside, feeling free to brutalise the people living there with impunity on an ongoing basis.

Against that background, the government of South Africa has instituted proceedings against Israel in the International Court of Justice, in the form of an Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip.

Some politicians and commentators want to get everyone else bogged down in semantics, debating the precise meaning of the word ‘genocide’ – which, of course, suits the Israeli government. But there are no subtleties on the ground. Enormous munitions, pounding your home-place into dust and killing entire families is clearly genocidal in both intent and effect. The gruesome reality is that – whatever the International Court of Justice decides – the weight of evidence against Israel is now inescapable. Let us hope that – in its initial decision on “provisional measures”– the Court acts accordingly.

CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS

It is important to acknowledge there are Jewish people all over the world who support the case that South Africa has taken. Some of these dissenters are opposed to Zionism on political grounds. For others, it is a religious and a moral issue.

Among the latter critics of Israel is Rabbi David Feldman, a US-born member of the Neturei Karta International, a worldwide orthodox Jewish organisation. Rabbi Feldman does not mince his words. He has denounced the actions of the Israeli government and the Israeli army in Gaza as “months of genocide, mass murder of innocent men, women and children.”

The rabbi added that Jewish people – or some of them at least – are “deeply embarrassed that all of this is being done supposedly in our name…” And he went on to praise South Africa “for its brave stance of standing up and holding Israel accountable for all that is going on.”

Photo: Naaman Omar

This is not a popular stance in Israel, but there is not a single word of it that can be honestly rebutted. Dovid Feldman is right. But the rabbi went further. He argued that a ceasefire is not enough, and that the blockade of Gaza must be totally lifted and the occupation brought to an end. This view is shared by hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of good, morally motivated, left-leaning, civil rights-focussed Jewish people all over the world. But it is fascinating to hear it expressed so eloquently by someone rooted in the conservative, Orthodox Jewish tradition.

“People are suffering in Palestine already for decades,” he said. “Unfortunately, we are witnessing an endless cycle of bloodshed when everyone suffers. It’s the Palestinian people suffering; it’s the Jewish people involved in all of this.”

What he means, it seems, is that Zionists are responsible for all of this.

“This is not Judaism; this is not the Jewish religion,” Rabbi Feldman insisted. “According to Judaism, all of this is forbidden.”

Clearly, Dovid Feldman is trenchantly opposed to Zionism, and to the brute nationalism that it promotes at the expense of religious belief. A sovereign homeland for Jews, he added, was “totally forbidden according to the basics of Judaism.”

And there’s more..

“Palestine deserves freedom,” he added pointedly, “and the Jewish people deserve the peace that did exist in Palestine before this whole occupation started, 100 years ago, before this invented Zionism.”.

Boil his views down and Rabbi Feldman supports a one-State solution – the classic position of the political left. That State would include Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. It would be democratically run, with equal rights accorded to everyone, irrespective of their racial or religious background or beliefs.

Even more Jewish people support a two-State solution, involving the establishment of a Palestinian state that would co-exist peacefully alongside Israel. Many of these Jews, completely reject the murderous military campaign being pursued by the Israeli government.

Right now, they are made to look like voices crying in the wilderness.

WHITE FLAG OF PEACE

It may never be possible to ascertain how widespread these views really are, because it is currently extremely difficult for Jewish people living in Israel to express any form of opposition. A true democracy embraces non-violent dissent. In Israel, the Government has introduced laws that allow the police and the army to jail anyone who speaks out against the mass murder of Palestinians. And the police have been using those laws, with relish.

Meir Baruchin, an Israeli history teacher, told the truth about what is happening in Gaza in a series of Facebook posts, beginning on on 8 October. “Horrific images are pouring in from Gaza,” he said. The photo he shared was of the Abu Daqqa family, killed in one of the initial Israeli airstrikes. “Entire families were wiped out. I don’t usually upload pictures like this, but look what we do in revenge.”

He went on to criticise the Israeli military, mourn the Palestinian civilians killed in Gaza and warn against engaging in a war of retaliation. In a separate post, he urged Israelis to oppose the ongoing madness.

Ten days later Baruchin had been sacked from his job as a teacher. Soon afterwards, he was arrested and incarcerated in a high-security prison. He was “suspected” of committing an act of treason and of intending to disrupt public order – all for honestly expressing his political opinions.

In the first seven days of the bombardment of Gaza alone, 40 people in Israel were arrested on “suspicion of supporting terrorism.”

Yale Ayalon, a school principal, shared on Facebook an article from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which warned that the media in Israel were hiding the extent of the suffering of the Palestinian people. “A nation that conquers another nation will never be free,” she said in a caption. She was summoned for disciplinary action, and was reinstated only after a tribunal ruled in her favour.

In the US, there has also been considerable Jewish opposition to the increasingly grotesque excesses of the Israeli military and bombing campaign.

As far back as 19 October, hundreds of Jewish demonstrators wearing Not In Our Name t-shirts gathered on Capitol Hill with placards saying Jews Say Ceasefire Now; Let Gaza Live; and Philly Jews Say Never Again Is Now, among other slogans.

A week later, thousands of members of Jewish Voice for Peace – a multi-racial, intergenerational organisation – and their allies, gathered for a sit-in at Grand Central Station in New York. It was a massive act of civil disobedience that aimed to end the US government’s support for Israel’s brutal and indiscriminate attacks in Gaza. About 400 people were arrested on the day, including rabbis, “famous actors” and elected officials from the New York State Assembly, the city council and the Senate.

Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu still walks free.

Everywhere you turn, protests against Israel’s genocidal campaign are being crushed. It is happening in Germany, France, Switzerland, the UK, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Serbia and Austria among others.

All of this is as politically reprehensible as it is morally repugnant. And it has been interpreted by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as providing a carte blanche to carry on killing.

He, and numerous other members of his government and the Likkud Party, have openly acknowledged that the objective of the military campaign is to destroy the Palestinian people, to wipe them from the face of the earth.

“They,” he said, speaking in Hebrew, of the Israeli people, “are committed to completely eliminating this evil from the world” – ‘evil’ being a reference to Hamas. He then added: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.”

Remember what? In the first Book of Samuel, God commands King Saul to kill every person in Amalek, a rival nation to ancient Israel.

“This is what the Lord Almighty says,” the prophet Samuel tells Saul. “‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”

It could not be clearer: Netanyahu was instructing the armed forces of Israel to put to death innocent Palestinian men and women, children and infants. And everyone you murder, you can accuse of being a ‘militant’. You can lie through your teeth – as they do.

Think about it: the Israeli army murdered three male Israeli hostages who had escaped – the last one holding up a white flag of peace or surrender when he was shot. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in Israel when this happened. What a terrible mistake! They missed the essential point: that this summary execution revealed exactly the approach of the Israeli army to every group of young Palestinian men. They are on a murderous rampage. The policy is to shoot now and ask questions later. They looked at these three Israelis, didn’t see any difference and shot them dead.

Remember: they didn’t see any difference.

SECRETIVE WORLD

So let us not talk falsely now: the hour is getting late. Dig deeper and you realise that Benjamin Netanyahu sees this war primarily as a way that he can cling onto power. That is his only real motivation. He doesn’t care how much damage he does to Israel’s international reputation. He doesn’t give a damn if it triggers a much wider regional conflict. He couldn’t give a shit how many lives are lost as a result, including Israeli lives.

His calculation is that he will remain Prime Minister for as long as he can make the war last. It is all about his own survival – and so he will attempt to drag it out, no matter how many more Palestinians or Israelis are killed.

He has become ever more arrogant in his dismissal of appeals for a ceasefire. He has also explicitly rejected the two-State solution, favoured by the US and Europe, that would see the establishment of a Palestinian state alongsde Israel. He has snubbed President Joe Biden – perhaps knowing that the last thing the latter wants is to see US Jewish money being poured into the coffers of Donald Trump, with whom he is fated to do battle for the US presidency later this year.

Of course, Netanyahu wants Trump to win and Vladimir Putin to have him on speed-dial. He is absolutely toxic, the worst possible leader for Israel, in a time of huge jeopardy both locally and internationally.

And so we come back to 2024: the coming year is packed with elections that may prove vital to the future of democracy – and of late, the polls suggest that this threat is very real. So you can see why optimism is in short supply.

It doesn’t take great perspicacity to forecast that a concerted effort will be made by Russia, and other rogue nations, to meddle in every significant election in Europe and the US, with the aim of undermining democracy, promoting the far right, and generally creating the kind of political havoc that will stall aid for Ukraine, and thereby help to fulfil the Putin masterplan.

How will that effort be driven and who will be paying for it?

That’s a good question. What we can say for sure is that every trick in the social media book will be thrown at it. A huge amount of paid-for advertising will help to spread lies, disinformation and paranoid nonsense, as far and as widely as possible.

Every sensible politician or regulator knows that this is coming, The social media companies are aware of it too. So how do we get Facebook, Google, Twitter (now X) – and so on – to take the precautions necessary to ensure they do not end up profiting from the demise of democracy.

There is a way. The EU – or every individual Stat ewithin it – needs to introduce an emergency law that requires all tech platforms – and similar – to supply, once a week to the relevant authorities, from now until the end of the year (it'd be a good start), a list of all of advertisers, how much they have been spending, where they are based, who is paying the bills, what messages they have been promoting – and so on.

The tech companies have this information. They can trace where every bank transfer or credit card payment comes from and link it to particular ads. At the moment, their policy collectively is to take the money and run. So they should be told in stark terms: supply this information or we will shut you down. That way we’d all be in a position to know who is attempting to influence elections across Europe, and potentially in the US. And if the tech or social media companies are found to have knowingly accepted dark money for disinformation, they should be put out business anyway.

There is no other way of managing this effectively. That secretive world of what are essentially hush-hush payments, with the tech companies making vast fortunes from the attempt by nefarious actors to undermine democracy, needs to be broken open. At every stage the current set-up favours the unscrupulous, the manipulative and the exploitative – and that must be brought to an end.

This is how to do it. But will European – and US – governments have the bottle? The truth is that there is no excuse for failure. Full transparency is required from tech companies if we are to save democracy.

Now there’s a thought to start the new year with!