By Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has lambasted Palestinian efforts to raise international awareness over Israel's institutionalized apartheid and other forms of systematic abuse of Palestinian rights.

Netanyahu, an extreme right-winger and strong believer in Jewish supremacy, reportedly warned that Israel was facing “international campaign to blacken its name" aimed at de-legitimizing its very existence.

Netanyahu routinely equates international criticisms of Israel's apartheid policies against Palestinians with denials of Israel's existence. On Monday, he was quoted as saying that the BDS campaign does not target Israel based on its policies regarding the Palestinians but "seeks to deny our very right to live here."

But, Netanyahu is not telling the truth, unless he implies that Israel could only exist at the expense of another people, the Palestinians.

In fact, his argument is tantamount to a Nazi leader in the late 1930s or early 1940s arguing that Nazi Germany had a right to exist and that voices opposed to genocidal Nazi policies effectively amounted to denying Germany the right to exist.

But the right of nations and states to exist is not absolute. Indeed once a nation-state violates the legitimate rights of other nation-states or peoples, that state is criminalized and treated like a pariah. That is why, many states kill murderers who knowingly and deliberately murdered innocent people.

Today, Israel pursues manifestly criminal policies against the Palestinians. It constantly narrows their horizons by blockading their towns and villages, pushing millions of men, women and children to the brink of starvation.

Israel denies Palestinian basic human rights and civil liberties, including the right to self-determination.

Israel routinely and indifferently murders Palestinians, including children, and refuses to prosecute the murderers.

Israel demolishes Palestinian homes in order to create space for Jewish settlers hailing from distant parts of the world.

Israel routinely targets the Palestinians' livelihood and their ability to make a living by burning their fields, destroying their olive groves, and violently seizing their farmland.

At the same time, Israel continues unabated to expand Jewish colonies in the West Bank, transforming Palestinian population centers into ghettos surrounded by Jewish colonies, inhabited by genocidal thugs, indoctrinated in racist hatred for the entire humanity. And all of this is done in full view of the international community, including Israel's guardian-ally, the United States.

BDS campaign

The BDS (Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions) campaign against Israel is actually one of the few peaceful means on which the Palestinians pin their hopes for mitigating Israeli insolence and criminality.

Indeed, with the United States government thoroughly dominated by Israel, mainly through the powerful Jewish lobby, and with Europe eternally reluctant to take a pro-active stance against Israeli fascism, the Palestinians have no choice but to directly appeal to the peoples of the world for justice.

The ultimate purpose of the BDS is actually to save lives and force Israel to adhere to international standards governing the treatment of civilians languishing under a nefarious military occupation.

The BDS campaign is the very very least the world community should adopt to help the thoroughly tormented Palestinians face Israel's apartheid, lebensraum and ethnic cleansing.

It is true that Palestinians are not being shipped or trucked to gas chambers. But the Palestinians are being denied the most elementary rights that people elsewhere take for granted, including the right to life.

We all know from history how the greatest calamities and crimes against humanity started. They started with simple, even seemingly innocuous violations. Which beg the question: Does the world have to wait until Israel embarks on the unthinkable?

Israel, now ruled by the most fascist of the fascist elites in the Jewish state's history, feels invincible and totally immune from any international pressure. Hence, concerns about the criminal designs Israel could pursue against the Palestinian people are not exaggerated by any standards.

Israel has already killed the two-state solution strategy. There are those who would argue that Israel is actually shooting herself in the foot by killing any remaining chances for the establishment of a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem.

But Israel is not that naïve.

Israel wouldn't allow the demographic Palestinian advantage to abort the Zionist enterprise and turn it from a dream into a nightmare, even at the expense of adopting a Nazi-like approach against the Palestinians, including partial or full genocidal ethnic cleansing.

Indeed, this is the official but undeclared strategy of the ruling military-political establishment in Israel.

Israeli and Zionist leaders may or may not tell the truth as to their real intentions vis-à-vis the Palestinians.

But deeds speak louder than words. And the seemingly irreversible decapitation of any remaining prospects for the establishment of a Palestinian state worthy of the name does illustrate Israel's real intentions, namely annihilating and/or expelling Palestinians, or most of them, from their ancestral homeland.

True, there are some Israeli leaders who advocate stringent apartheid for the Palestinians instead of effecting genocide on the ground that genocide could backfire and might generate a harmful boomerang effect.

However, even these "moderates" realize that apartheid can't be sustained indefinitely for a variety of reasons.

Hence, the more genocidal fascists are likely to eventually have their way.

I am not being unduly phobic. My remarks are based on a conscious, careful and profound reading of reality, especially in light of the thinking now permeating in Israel.

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Khalid Amayreh is a Palestinian journalist and current affairs commentator living in occupied Jerusalem.