The attacks by Hamas on 7 October 2023 licensed the very worst psychopathic tendencies, both within Israel and among its uncritical supporters throughout the diaspora.

If it was only a small number of Zionists calling for the murder and starvation of Palestinian children it might be possible to dismiss these voices as isolated and extremist. But when they include ministers of the Israeli Government, members of the Knesset, religious leaders, public relations flunkies, TV anchors and overseas supporters, we are confronted by the moral degeneration of a very wide circle of people: these remarks cannot be dismissed as aberrations.

In modern history, it is difficult to think of a comparable example. Even at the extreme levels of human depravity, the Nazis did not boast that they just wanted to kill Jews or that it was fun to do so, but gave crazed justifications that they were “purifying the Aryan race” and acting in “self-defence”. Despite the industrial scale of the Holocaust, they went to great lengths to destroy the evidence of their crimes, in particular the paper trails linking the Shoah directly to decisions taken by senior political and military commanders. Their success in this concealment subsequently enabled “Holocaust denial” to take root in the 1980s.

This suggests that the Nazis had a sense of right and wrong, otherwise there would be no need to construct elaborate theories of racial and cultural superiority, or hide their culpability for such barbaric behaviour. Why they chose to act on their beliefs and how they sold their policies to a receptive German population are separate questions.

Over the last 18 months, supporters of Israel’s destruction of Gaza, including IDF perpetrators, have openly backed the annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza. And no group has been spared. Aid workers, doctors, nurses, journalists, school teachers and clerics, many of whom are normally protected under the laws of war, have been branded “Hamas” and targeted without mercy.

Those perpetrating the slaughter have taken to social media to record their crimes for posterity, confident there will be no adverse consequences arising out their departure from the world of ethical principles which most humans inhabit. It is not just the confidence they have in their legal impunity: on Instagram, Facebook and X they boast with glee about their horrific exploits.

Supporters of the genocide in the civilian population are no less joyful or inhibited. For a rabbi to bless the murder of a Palestinian child because he will one day grow up to be a “terrorist” demonstrates the need to dehumanise and demonise an enemy as a prerequisite to legitimising their “righteous” murder. That remarks like this elicit almost no comment in the media of countries supplying Israel with the means to accomplish the task is deeply disturbing.

How can these calls for mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing be explained, especially when they come from Jews whose families experienced the horrors of the Holocaust and who, in many cases, have little or no connection to the Levant? Why do they act and speak in ways that they must know in their hearts is wrong? Is it ideology, unconditional tribal loyalty or racism?

Humans are complex creatures, subject to many external pressures and internal prejudices, choosing their actions under an intricate array of conditions and motives, often with only a partial understanding of them. But if the conditions of moral judgment — the formation of our ethical values — is rooted in our internal nature, then something powerful has interceded since Hamas militants broke out of the world’s largest prison camp and attacked those whom they blamed for their incarceration.

Zionism, a nationalist and political narrative of late 19th century origin, seems the obvious culprit. It is a settler-colonial land-grab dressed up as an ethnic refuge whose raison d’etre was bolstered by the destruction of European Jews by Hitler. And it is the Palestinians who have paid the heaviest price since 1948 because they are the largest obstacle to its ultimate realisation.

Like many nationalist movements, especially those laced with messianic religion, Zionism targets the moral code of its citizens, convincing them to do and say things they would never otherwise consider to be morally-defensible: we saw it in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. It is deep indoctrination — in this case the normalisation of genocide and ethnic cleansing — that is most shocking to those who no longer source their information from mainstream media which have consistently censored the worst of it.

Political resistance to land theft, occupation and annexation will continue. In the short term, it is unlikely to be successful, but in the medium to long term Israel is already well down the path to pariah status. It has become a “state in a bubble”, an ethnocracy of racial supremacists who no longer believe that either international law nor the broader conventions of international society apply to them. In the future, even Israel’s value as a garrison state and strategic asset to the United States cannot be guaranteed.

The most indelible stain of the genocide, however, will be on Israel’s moral reputation. By this is meant not simply the leadership of a particular government, but the broader national group where, according to a new Penn State poll, 82% of Israelis support the forced expulsion of Gaza’s residents and only 9% of men under 40 oppose all genocide scenarios for Palestinians: is it any wonder Norman Finkelstein, the world’s foremost authority on Gaza’s political history, has called Israel a “lunatic society”?

The same moral accountability will come to Israel’s wider field of apologists, including financial backers, social media warriors, activist journalists, enabling governments in Europe, Australia and North America, and organised lobby groups. They cheerlead for a civilian slaughter in the name of “self-defence” and relentlessly attacked anyone who opposed it as antisemitic.

For governments which boast of their friendship with Israel, the mass starvation and forcible displacement of two million people — which cannot be rationalised as part of a conflict with Hamas — may prove to be a bridge too far. Unsurprisingly, their public rhetoric has hardened recently and some will strive to resuscitate the long dead two-state solution by recognising the State of Palestine in June. Washing away their complicity in the mass murder of tens of thousands of innocent civilians, however, will prove much more challenging. Their day of judgment will also come.

That a reckoning is coming cannot now be in doubt. It may not be swift, but it will be devastating, and it will come at the very price those who defend the state without scruple or reservation have long feared: the end of Israel as we know it.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.