Architectures of Delusion

A legendary prison break confounds and infuriates Zionist authorities

The symbolism is irresistible:  six men—political prisoners according to world opinion, terrorists according to their captors—tunneled out of Israel’s Gilboa, a heavily guarded colonial stockade, and then disappeared into the early morning darkness in an escape so daring and unlikely that it surely would become a big-budget production if Hollywood didn’t hate Palestinians. 

The hole from which they emerged beyond the prison wall couldn’t have been much more than a foot in diameter.  How did six grown men squeeze through such a small cavity?  How did they manage this feat of primitive engineering?  How did they bamboozle the Zionist security apparatus?  We don’t know.  They just did.  This unknowability informs the magic of their escape. 

They emerged from the earth like precious resources, like natal organisms, like seeds determined to initiate life.  Arabs rejoiced across two continents while Israelis and their imperialist sponsors vowed to reassert control:  more law, more order, more spying, more imprisonment.  As always when Palestinians prove capable of human behavior, the occupiers have been bellyaching about savagery and lawlessness, but underlying the outrage is the usual anguish that the natives again rejected their jurisdiction.  The occupiers have been humiliated, demystified, outwitted by people whose supposed inferiority is a critical component of their self-esteem.  No longer can Israelis be comforted by the scornful belief that Palestinians are simple beasts crawling around on their bellies.  The six escapees breached something much more serious than a maximum-security prison; they burrowed into the granular underground of Zionism’s fragile psyche.  First, that tiny hole.  Next, the entire country. 

The joy most observers felt about the escape speaks to the degradations of life under capitalism.  So many of us, anxious and overworked, would like to surface from a small aperture into a different world.  Yet we can recognize that the six men escaped due to incredible effort and devotion, exactly what will be required in a time of increasing scarcity and insecurity, of ecocide and entropy, in which terms like “segregation” and “lockdown” are a regular part of our vocabulary.  We identify with the underdogs who made it out even though we know that the world is still far more dangerous for them.  Those underdogs invited us to at least subconsciously read their breakout as a contest between rebellion and authority, imagination and constraint, primordialism and technology. 

But the escape wasn’t merely a symbolic act.  It was a physical miracle, with material repercussions we’ve yet to totally comprehend.  A humiliated colonizer is a dangerous creature, prone to gratuitous violence as a means to reassert a sense of psychic superiority.  The colonizer wants to capture and demean the escapees.  The colonizer’s self-perception is contingent on these grand gestures of authority.  

Gilboa is inside the green line, in what is improperly known as “Israel proper.”  Once above ground, where did the men go?  Presumably to the West Bank, with perhaps a subsequent flight to Jordan or Syria, which would require another daring escapade.  Again, the magic is in the unknowing. 

Two have since been captured in the biblical town of Nazareth, apparently snitched out by a pensive local.  If it is true, for we can never rule out misinformation, the outcome is basically what most of us expected to happen in the case of rearrest.  Even here, though, there is cause for optimism.  The occupier is damn near useless without the cowardice and mendacity of a few native informants.  The dregs of Palestinian society represent the apogee of Zionism.  Now we await news of the other four escapees. 

Those four must be wary of high-level collaboration in addition to the usual snitches.  The Palestinian Authority has already pledged to help return the men to Israeli custody.  If they manage to cross into Jordan, they can expect no relief from King Abdullah, the fourth generation of Hashemite to collude with the Zionist entity.  They emerged from beneath the prison to take up a life in the underground.  They must find places where devotion to the cause is absolute and unquestioned.  With less fanfare, we might follow their example. 

Whatever becomes of the six men, they can already claim victory.  We celebrate them because for the downtrodden life is embodied by resistance and nothing in the puffy and narcissistic environs of online punditry can match the thrill of a well-executed counterpunch. 

Like thousands of fugitives and exiles and maroons throughout the centuries, they have illustrated that the oppressor’s notion of security is tenuous.  It cannot be constructed of steel and cinder.  Adequately motivated, the native can evade databases and infrared sensors; the native can tunnel below or soar above concrete barriers; the native can disappear into covert spaces to which the occupier has no access.  There’s a fundamental weakness to societies reliant on massive surveillance and policing for visions of safety.  Peace of mind is an illusion proportional to the benefits or travails of a person’s class position.  Over and again, human beings with little social capital or legislative influence have proved capable of undermining strictures meant to comfort the economic and political elite at their expense.  Despite a rough few months, nothing suggests that we’ll stop summoning those capabilities.  The prisons and checkpoints that promise security (to the right citizen) ultimately comprise an architecture of delusion. 

The delusion has been integral to Zionism since its beginning.  Palestinians don’t exist; Palestinians will accede; Palestinians will emigrate; Palestinians will submit; Palestinians will forget.  Here we are, over a century later, and the same Palestinians who were supposed to have disappeared a long time ago are embedded in the hearts of decent people across the globe. 

Ultimately, the escape and subsequent responses elucidate the nature of Zionism and the type of future it wants to create:  destructive, unequal, militarized, catastrophic.  We don’t merely resist Zionism, but the set of values it represents on a deteriorating planet.  The Zionist is generally aware of his ghoulish affiliations, whether or not he chooses them.  Thus the Zionist’s delusional security apparatus.  All Palestinian prisoners are political and all Israeli prisons express anti-Palestinian politics.  Smart money is on the Palestinians.  No colonial structure can stifle the native’s ingenuity and resilience. 

49 thoughts on “Architectures of Delusion”

  1. Good thing Israel is a liberal democracy that safeguards the human rights of its citizens and prisoners. However, Steven makes an excellent argument in favor of swift, merciful death penalty for those Palestinian Arab terrorists who murder, or planned the murder, of innocent people human being just because of the status of their birth. That way, they can never escape and murder again. Steven will make Arabs out of these Israelis yet.

    1. Nonsense. 400,000 Palestinians, stateless, in East Jerusalem have no political status or rights, despite living in Israel under Israeli law and were born there of families there for centuries. Either Jerusalem is the united city of Israel or it isn’t. Either the Palestinians living in Jerusalem are citizens with their rights protected or they aren’t. You don’t even seem to grasp the basic hypocrisy of your claims. You know nothing of these men, their struggles, histories, or their character. Israel is the oppressor. Everything springs from that fact.

    2. “The occupiers have been humiliated, demystified, outwitted by people whose supposed inferiority is a critical component of their self-esteem.”

    3. The occupiers have been humiliated, demystified, outwitted by people whose supposed inferiority is a critical component of their self-esteem.

      1. If they are inferior, it is because they believe they are inferior. After all, they have experienced 73 years of unrelenting humiliation so who can blame them for having an inferiority complex?

        Of course, as Israel is one of the more humane states on Earth, a claim no Arab state could ever imagine saying for itself, harsh security measures, such as total solitary confinement, no allowable contact with the outside world, no visitors, no phone calls, 24 hr a day lighted surveillance, are no an Israeli practice.

        Israel is rightly upset that these terrorists and wannabes escaped, but there is no feeling of humiliation.

    4. Apartheid Israel, as is patently obvious to all but Zionists, is an anti-democratic, fundamentally racist state which applies its hateful creed to anyone who isn’t a right-wing, white Jew.

      “Racism is integral to Zionism, and we see this not just in the treatment of Palestinians, but also in how they treat Jewish people of African descent. The Zionist project is fundamentally about capitalism, settler-colonialism and maintaining an “ethnically” Jewish state. The Ethiopian Jewish community has existed for thousands of years, tracing its history to the ancient kingdoms of Aksum and the Ethiopian Empire. Many Ethiopian Jews immigrated to Israel in the late 20th century.

      Since arriving in Israel, many Ethiopian Jews have faced constant discrimination.Their faith was questioned by rabbis and their communities ostracized from the rest of Israeli society. In 1990, the National Israeli Blood Bank routinely destroyed blood donated by Ethiopian Israelis because they were “afraid that the Ethiopians carried HIV.” There was a cap on the number of Ethiopian Jews entering Israel until relatively recently.

      The minority status of the Ethiopian Jewish community creates poor material conditions. They have the highest poverty rate among the Jewish population in Israel, and face the highest levels of police violence after Palestinians. Israel calls itself a bastion of human rights and progress, while denying rights to both Palestinians and Ethiopian Jews. The treatment of Ethiopian Jews is completely different from the warm welcome offered to Jewish people from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, for instance. ”

      https://www.liberationnews.org/israels-long-history-of-anti-black-racism/

      1. Jamie, you have an amazing collection of lies at your disposal. Ever read anything other than propaganda? Equating the Genocide of the Congo with the lawful eviction of renters who refuse to pay rent is just insanity.

        1. Who is Jamie? Anyway, you offer nothing concrete to counter the growing mountain of well-documented evidence of apartheid Israel’s many crimes since the Nakba of 1948. It is Israeli Zionists who should be paying not just rent to Palestinians whose homes they stole but reparations.

          1. Jamie,

            There is no “well document evidence” as Israel is not a state that practices apartheid. Only by deliberately redefining Apartheid was HRW able to include Israel. Martin Shaw did the same with genocide.

            The Palestinian Arab waged a war with a goal of genocide. They are owed nothing for their utter defeat (Nakba, which they redefined to make themselves victims) and 70 years of utter and total humiliation for losing to “vastly inferior Jews.”

        1. There is little or no point in debating with you, Mr Signan. The vast and growing quantities of evidence showing well beyond reasonable doubt that apartheid Israel and Zionism are racist, anti-semitic and lethal to Palestinian people are rejected by you as prejudiced. So we won’t bother debating you any more.

          1. Yes, Mr. Simpson, when you enter the debate with propaganda as your only source of knowledge, debating a grounded scholar is a waste of your time. There is no evidence beyond invented propaganda or rewritten definitions that prove even superficially that Israel is an Apartheid state nor the Zionism is racism.

            Of course, by rewriting definitions, all aspects of nationalism, especially Pan-Islamic and Pan-Arab is racist and lends itself to being labeled apartheidic.

            Of course, when you state that Zionism is antisemitic you make yourself a laughingstock who is easily ridiculed when not ignored. Good luck with that.

            For the record, I had not realized you were engaged in a debate.

    5. A ridiculous response to Salaita, who did not at all mean what you propose. You deliberately misrepresent and misunderstand what he says, that there is no chance that the colonization of Palestine can go on forever. Freedom must come.

      1. While you may consider it ridiculous, the issue with removing the death penalty for murderers, is that they can escape and murder again. Salaita is celebrating the escape of murderers. For others, that is enough to make them reconsider the abolishment of the one punishment that guarantees that murderers never get the opportunity to murder again.

    6. Quiet, colonizer. You have made abundantly clear you are a racist jewish-supremacist peice of dog excrement. You can go now.

      1. I agree with you Frida, this person has absolutely no morals. He forever seeks to defend the indefensible and to deny that Israel is a rogue, racist, apartheid state, when all the evidence points in that direction. He thinks that we are all fools, when in fact it is he who is fooling himself.

        1. You’re right, Sean. There’s little purpose in arguing or debating with Zionists, as they prefer the sound of their own voices. Witness the self-regarding arrogance of Mr Sigman who is, I quote, “a grounded scholar” but who refuses to provide evidence for his claims and merely resorts to personal abuse. It’s heartening to see the rapidly-growing support around the world for the Palestinian cause and, at last, widespread acknowledgment of the facts of Israel’s racism, apartheid and brutal oppression even of Ethiopian Jewish people.

          1. Yes, when truth is on your side, it is difficult for antisemites to oppose it, so they must end the debate as quickly as possible before the humiliation of another loss overwhelms them.

            Growing support? Anyone actually threatening Israel other than Iran? Israel’s international trade continues to grow as more Arab states, which only gave the Palestinian Arabs lip-service, stabilize their relationship with the Jewish state.

            How many Palestinian Arabs have been murdered by Lebanese and Syrian Arabs?

  2. The 400,000 Palestinians are not citizens of Israel and they are not the responsibility of Israel. They are constituents of Hamas and Fatah, two authoritarian kleptocracies, one genocidal, the other just incompetent, Who mostly spit of the Palestinian Arabs when they are not using them as human shields or publicity dead people.

    The Palestinian Arabs living in Jerusalem, refusing citizenship, are not citizens. They do have rights and those rights are respected by the Israeli government.

    What I do not grasp is your pontification via a severe lack of knowledge about anything not in a propaganda packet.

      1. You’re saying it was their choice to be invaded and converted into an apartheid state where they live in an open air prison and are murdered with impunity by illegal settlers?

          1. Of course they did. In fact, they likely invented everything imaginable under the sun. Thank you for the endorsement of the ingenuity and brilliance of the Jews. It is appreciated.

        1. How you came up with that is absolutely amazing. As none of those conditions exist, except as far-fetched propaganda material…

      2. Am a Jerusalemite who told you we are starless by choice! This is nonsense ! We even struggle everyday to keep the right of staying in the city we and our ancestors are born in

  3. I think the smart money is on the Jews. And it’s been on them for a few thousand years before Arabs or Europeans, Muslims or Christians even existed.

  4. As BT selem notes:
    “A regime that uses laws, practices and organized violence to cement the supremacy of one group over another is an apartheid regime. Israeli apartheid, which promotes the supremacy of Jews over Palestinians, was not born in one day or of a single speech. It is a process that has gradually grown more institutionalized and explicit, with mechanisms introduced over time in law and practice to promote Jewish supremacy. These accumulated measures, their pervasiveness in legislation and political practice, and the public and judicial support they receive – all form the basis for our conclusion that the bar for labeling the Israeli regime as apartheid has been met.”
    Doing this ensures the continued erosion of American support. Eventually israel will pay a very high price.

    1. “Eventually israel will pay a very high price.” When? Anyone who cares about this must realise that change will not happen unless we make it happen; it is no good just hoping that history will take care of it. As Zionist commenters on this very comment thread demonstrate, US-funded, apartheid Israel has propagandists lurking on every leftist website, looking to spread their lies to people who are less informed. Here in the UK, readers can join the campaigns and take part in effective actions with:

      https://palestineaction.org/
      https://www.palestinecampaign.org/

      1. When? That would be never. I imagine there are many in the ranks of pro-Israel supporters who seek to counter propaganda put out by you and yours. I am rather shocked that I am the only one here on Steven’s blog. He was, at one time, a voice. He is still featured in borderline antisemitic and full-bore anti-Israel sites such as MondoWeiss.

        In the UK, where is seem antisemitism is far more acceptable, there are more propaganda outlets. However, GB is slowly sinking to third-world status.

        1. Lying and misleading propaganda are generally the roles of the many well-funded outlets from apartheid Israel, as I expect you are well aware.

          “An inquiry in the Seventh Eye, an Israeli independent website, revealed that through the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, the Israeli government allocated more than $100m in support of “hidden propaganda” against the BDS movement and its sympathisers. The money is channelled to “proxy” organisations outside Israel, which act in favour of Israel’s policies and against efforts to boycott it or its settlements, without revealing that they are funded by the Israeli government. Some of the funds go into “buying” favourable coverage in the international and local media.”

          Encouragingly, “Almost every Israeli who travels abroad can feel the change of mood regarding Israel. Michael Sfard, a well-known Israeli human rights lawyer, recounts that when he made his first tour in American campuses 10 years ago, he was met with hostility because he was critical of Israel’s conduct in the West Bank. Now he is criticised for not supporting a full boycott on Israel.

          Nothing scares Israel more than following the South African model during the apartheid regime. It fears that a similar worldwide consensus against it may threaten its very legitimacy.”

          https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israels-hidden-propaganda-war

          And Israel is the least-legitimate state on the planet, enforcing Jewish supremacy through terror, violence, unjust laws and lack of democratic rights for Palestinians.

          1. I am aware that you post propaganda filled with lies, invented facts, and such. I am certain that there are those who support Israel who also exaggerate somewhat.

            As BDS is inherently antisemitic and does call for the destruction of the Jewish state, it does not seem unusual that Israel would spend money combatting BDS.

            As there is no comparison between South Africa and Israel, it would seem appropriate for Israel to battle those antisemitic forces attempting to make such a connection.

            That Palestinian Arabs do not have democratic rights is the fault of their leadership, not Israel. Israeli Arabs have full democratic rights.

            Ever think of not lying?

  5. A few statistics on the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

    Israel currently has 261 Jewish-only settlements and ‘outposts’ built on confiscated Palestinian land. Palestinians do not have any settlements on Israeli land.

    0 Israeli homes have been demolished by Palestinians and at least 48,488 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel since 1967

    0 Israelis are being held prisoner by Palestinians, while 4750 Palestinians are currently imprisoned by Israel

    Israel has been targeted by at least 77 UN resolutions and the Palestinians have been targeted by 1.

    During Fiscal Year 2020, the U.S. is providing Israel with at least $10.5 million per day in military aid and $0 in military aid to the Palestinians.

    32 Israelis were killed in Palestinian rocket attacks and over 4,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes since September 29, 2000.

    12324 Israelis and 164038 Palestinians have been injured since September 29, 2000

    137 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians and 2,339 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000.

    1. Try meaningful stats instead of inventing them. What is “Palestinian Land?” Is it the land they want for a state? Is it land associated with a village? Or is it private land. If it is private land, that is bad. The other two categories are “state” land and Israel legally builds on state land. It is not owned by any Palestinian Arab.

      As no Palestinians live in Israel as anything but residents, they would not be able to “build” any settlements.

      That is enough for now. The rest of your “stats” are meaningless. Unless you are admitting that the Palestinian Arabs are so incompetent that even though their aims are genocidal they are utter failures.

    2. Thanks for the summing-up of the situation facing Palestinian people enduring the illegal occupation by apartheid Israel in 2021. The comparisons make appalling reading: they make clear that Israel has virtually all of the power and virtually all of the military strength which is aggressively uses with impunity. The Palestinian cause is just and urgent!

      https://bdsmovement.net/
      https://palestineaction.org/
      https://www.palestinecampaign.org/

      1. You keep thanking someone for providing you up-to-date propaganda. The propaganda you post proves you had no need of the information.

        It is true that “Israel has virtually all of the power and virtually all of the military strength.” So the Israel you believe it to be could settle all of the issues as the Syrians have tried to do but with so much greater efficiency and competence in that the result would be nary another complaint from anywhere within the disputed Palestinian territories.

        Perhaps your Israel is a figment of your imagination.

  6. “ One might imagine that those on the receiving end of uber mensch behavior would not, themselves, choose and insist upon becoming oppressors, and even less so toward those who had not had any hand in the original crimes and abuse.

    However, power and especially military might somehow permit those possessing such power to do grevious harm to those who are weaker and who did no harm to those with that power.

    One notes, as well, that those who believe their right of dominance is, somehow, god-given, as does Israel, as does the US, and as did Apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany, behave with a special viciousness as they enact their “solutions”.

    However, let it be well understood that it is the US which not only funds the Israeli capacity of terror and violence, but is also the primary global practitioner of both, all while wrapping itself in a cloak of piety and privilege.

    Israel could not do what it does were the US not smiling fondly upon its horrendous behavior and suppprting the racist and and hate-filled justifications for the slaughter, the theft, the open imprisonment of an entire people.

    As well, consider all the Nazi “expertise” which the US gathered to itself post war, much of it terrifying and deadly in nature and intended use; total dominance and global hegemony.

    Israel is either lap dog or inspiration according to many.

    Perhaps it is but a comrade in vicious armament and deadly inhumanity.”

    1. Spot on. The USA’s history of ruling-class oppression of the poor and of Black people makes it an ideal supporter of apartheid Israel’s equal viciousness towards Palestinian people and to Black Jewish people, such as the Ethiopian Jews who settled in Israel. It’s a two-way relationship, as you state.

      1. It is amazing what kind of vicious ignoramuses Salaita attracts as support for his cause. One would hope comments would be made by intellectuals who support the Palestinian cause. Unfortunately, All Steven has are a pair of tag-team idiots on his side “Simpson and Breathnach (a play on “I can’t breath?”)

  7. Labour Conference Motion Passed.

    The text of the historic motion passed at the Labour Party 2021 annual conference is below.

    Israel and Palestine

    Conference condemns the ongoing Nakba in Palestine, Israel’s militarised violence attacking the Al Aqsa mosque, the forced displacements from Sheikh Jarrah and the deadly assault on Gaza.

    Together with the de facto annexation of Palestinian land by accelerated settlement building and statements of Israel’s intention to proceed with annexation, it is ever clearer that Israel is intent on eliminating any prospects of Palestinian self-determination.

    Conference notes the TUC 2020 Congress motion describing such settlement building and annexation as ‘another significant step’ towards the UN Crime of Apartheid, and calling on the European and international trade union movement to join the international campaign to stop annexation and end apartheid.

    Conference also notes the unequivocal 2021 reports by B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch that conclude Israel is practising the crime of apartheid as defined by the UN.

    Conference welcomes the International Criminal Court decision to hold an inquiry into abuses committed in the occupied Palestinian Territory since 2014.

    Conference resolves that action is needed now due to Israel’s continuing illegal actions and that Labour should adhere to an ethical policy on all UK trade with Israel, including stopping any arms trade used to violate Palestinian human rights and trade with illegal Israeli settlements.

    Conference resolves to support “effective measures” including sanctions, as called for by Palestinian civil society, against actions by the Israeli government that are illegal according to international law; in particular to ensure that Israel stops the building of settlements, reverses any annexation, ends the occupation of the West Bank, the blockade of Gaza, brings down the Wall and respects the right of the Palestinian people, as enshrined in international law, to return to their homes.

    Conference resolves that the Labour Party must stand on the right side of history and abide by these resolutions in its policy, communications and political strategy.

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