The reckoning has begun. Israel’s descent into fascism echoes what Hannah Arendt, Malcolm X, and Frantz Fanon witnessed in their own time — the empire’s violence returning home.

Now, almost 80 years after the massacres of 1948, can Israel withstand the inevitable? Is the end finally upon Israel?

Lebanese scholar Leila Nicolas in a recent Al Mayadeen article applies Arendt’s “imperial boomerang” theory, arguing that the violence intrinsic to the subjugation of Palestinians is chipping away at Israel, like an axe to a tree.

Israel’s violence, Nicolas cautions, has come home to roost — producing the very totalitarian state Arendt warned against.

Homecoming

Arendt spoke of colonies as ‘laboratories of domination’ — spaces where the coloniser sharpens and expands its imperial toolkit beyond legal or moral constraint. These tools and practices, Arendt is likely to agree, are turning inward. In these laboratories, the coloniser perfected methods which circle back to Europe itself, sooner or later. The hallmarks of this playbook have been on public display since Israel’s establishment, institutionalising racism and weaponisation of the legislature to sustain its racist ethnostate.

Since its inception, Israel has been shaped by colonial violence. During the Nakba in 1947, Israeli armed forces massacred Palestinians — sparing not even children — and razed entire cities to the ground. Around 500 villages were destroyed during the founding years of the State of Israel. Forests were planted on their remains to hide they ever existed. And the story continues. Surely you’ve heard of Netanyahu?

In the words of Arendt:

Barbarism, once practiced on the periphery, will one day strike back at the centre.

Netanyahu, take note.

Israel’s boomerang moment

Israel never was and never will be a unique case. It’s another settler-colonial project which has failed to subjugate Palestinians into oblivion. The forces that sustain it — racism, militarism, and religious fanaticism — are those devouring the coloniser from within.

During the Gaza genocide, Israeli leaders and media figures called Palestinians “human animals” and framed its disproportionate response as a biblical war of “light versus darkness.” “Remember what Amalek did to you?” The butcher was heard saying.

Across the West Bank, settlers unleashed pogrom-like violence against Palestinians, largely protected by state forces loyal to far-right minister Itamar (in Arabic Himar) Ben-Gvir. The 2018 Nation-State Law legally enshrined Jewish supremacy, rendering Palestinians inside Israel as second-class citizens. In Arendt’s terms, Israel operates under a dual legal system — a formal apartheid.

Israel’s decision to arm thousands of extremist settlers has blurred the line between the military and ideological militias, ultimately losing control over the monster within.

As Nicolas points out, Israel’s war in Gaza is about much more than the wanton extermination of Palestinians. It erodes the ethical basis of Israeli society and pushes the state closer to the brink

Fanon: the coloniser dehumanised

Frantz Fanon, writing from the battlefields of French-mandated Algeria, described this psychological self-destruction in The Wretched of the Earth.

Colonialism, he wrote:

dehumanises the coloniser just as it dehumanises the colonised*.*

Violence, once a tool of domination, becomes an addiction. In Fanon’s words:

the coloniser becomes a creature of habit, intoxicated by power.

These words ring true decades on in the context of Israel’s militarised nationalism. The settler-colonial project has produced generations conditioned to see violence as normal, purity as virtue, and domination as destiny. And to think that Gen Z are wild.

While Arendt analysed the political structure of this decay, Fanon diagnosed its psychological wound.

Empire self-destructs

Israeli journalist Menachem Rahat, writing for HaMizrachi, a pro-Zionist outlet, warns of a historical pattern that he calls “the curse of the eighth decade.”

He notes that both previous Jewish sovereignties — the Davidic and Hasmonean kingdoms — collapsed around their eighth decade, not from external invasion but from internal division and moral rot.

The State of Israel, now in its eighth decade of life and about to celebrate its 75th birthday, is today closer than ever before to the danger of a fratricidal war, each man against his brother,

Rahat continues that they shouldn’t be worried about ‘Palestinian criminal gangs’ for the danger lies within.

Far more threatening and dangerous to our future is the division and polarisation within Israeli society.

It is a striking echo of Arendt’s imperial boomerang — the violence that defines a colonial power inevitably turns inward, and its founding myths unravel.

Arendt, Malcolm X, and Fanon, all warned that the empire falls not when the oppressed rise up, but when the coloniser cuts off its nose to spite its face. If Arendt’s prophecy holds, the colonial state cannot remain confined to its victims. Sooner or later, the machinery of dehumanisation turns inward.

Colonialism always comes home.

It’s coming home!

For Israel, that reckoning is underway — colonialism is coming home. As Malcolm X warned, the empire’s chickens always come home to roost.

The question is no longer if, but when. The passage of 80 years since this all began has not dulled international attention to Israeli transgressions. Support for Palestinians is louder than ever and the latest chapter of Israeli colonial violence in Gaza will not, and must not, be forgotten.

From rising global pressure, to growing condemnation from the International Court of Justice, is the outside world finally taking note? Is it enough to pierce through Israel’s colonial armour? Is God, the almighty, making a late comeback on Fergie time? All of the above?

Only one way to find out. Should I create a calendar invite?

2028, we’ve got our eyes on you.

Featured image via Naji Al Ali

By Jamal Awar

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