“Saturn Devouring His Son” and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

“Saturn devouring his son” by Goya

Maximiliano Diaz Magón.

The recent armed conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has, as always, awakened emotional responses from those who support or condemn either side. The competition to establish who is the victim, who is the victimizer, who is on the side of international law and who is the criminal, who is the most ethical, moral, and compassionate in killing the other, etc… revolves around determining who is good and who is evil. The debate surrounding this problem has persisted for more than a century, with its roots in the creation of Zionism in the late XIX Century.

The debate has become impossible mainly because it revolves around emotions, where each side uses history, law, ethics, logic, reason, religion, etc., to support their pro-Israel or pro-Palestinians position. As my grandmother used to say, “when you hate someone, any stone is a projectile.” Those interested in finding “stones” à la carte will discover a wide range of literature, videos, experts, etc., tailored to their positions. Here, with apologies to both sides, because “he who does not throw stones is accused of helping the stoned” – in its simplest “cowboy” version, “if you are not with us, you are against us” – I will position myself “beyond good and evil.”

I would like to approach the problem not from the religious, human, political, psychological, legal, etc., points of view but from its origin: the Zionist ideology that gave rise to the creation of the state of Israel. The purpose of Zionism from its origin was to establish a national state in the territory referred to as “The Promised Land” in the Jewish Bible, where Jews could live in a sanctuary of peace and security. What I want to emphasize is that a fundamental part of the Zionist project is to achieve peace and security for the inhabitants of this “Jewish-only” state called Israel. The project has been a remarkable success, establishing a militarily powerful and nuclear state with the unconditional support of the most powerful superpower in history. Yet, there is a paradox: Is the state of Israel today the safe sanctuary for its Jewish inhabitants that Zionist ideology envisioned? The answer is obvious: No, not only is it not safe, it never has been since its founding in 1947, though the security enjoyed is incomparable to that of the Palestinians.

However, if one compares the security of a Jew in the state of Israel with that of any Jew outside of it, including those of the Jewish community in Iran – whom Israel accuses of “wanting to kill Jews” – it is evident that the greatest insecurity for a Jew is in the state of Israel. This is dramatically illustrated by the events of October 7, 2023. Starting from the goal of the Zionist movement, not only has it not achieved the sanctuary it set as its objective, but it has achieved not only exactly the opposite, but also fostering insecurity for Jews outside the state of Israel. They become victims of those who do not differentiate between the Jewish religion and Zionism (originally secular), the atheist Jew and the religious Jew, the Zionist Jew and the anti-Zionist Jew, the Israelite Jew and the Jew of another nationality. They attack any symbol or person with any relation to Judaism, considering it synonymous with the self-appointed Jewish state of Israel. Paradoxically, this is precisely what the Zionist ideology intends to prevent.

To analyze this paradox, we must start from the fact that Zionism is an ideology, and like all ideologies, it is a mental creation (an idea) that builds an ideal. By definition, its realization is in the future and implies that the prevailing reality has to be modified. In this sense, it is no different from ideologies such as Marxism, Capitalism, National-Socialism, Fascism, Neoliberalism, liberalism, etc. Ideologies share the common goal of promoting the creation of a better reality, more just, heroic, and secure. All of them have their bases and justifications, logical, historical, philosophical, etc. Their implementation as a program is necessarily violent because they have to destroy the prevailing reality. Once the objective is achieved, they go through a “boom”, and the new reality seems to affirm the ideal and legitimize it. An example is the ideology of “Manifest Destiny” in the USA and the subsequent gain of territories in its wars of conquest. In the case of Marxism, it is the period called the “socialist miracle” in the disappeared Soviet Union or the “German miracle” of the 1930s in the case of fascism, and yet they ended in the opposite of what was idealized: Justice and equality of workers ended in the gulags, political purges, bankruptcy, and subsequent dismemberment of the Soviet Union. The case of National Socialist Germany and Italian fascism ended in the submission of the “Blond Beast” to Anglo-American capitalist economic interests, and Italian fascism ended in the lynching of its leader and the reduction of Roman culture to an amusement park for tourists. Even the so-called “American Dream” is turning into a nightmare.

And the fact is that every ideology, being an ideal mental creation, has a narrow vision of reality that it violates to create an ideal fictitious one, thus denying any reality contrary to its ideal. It invents reality and history to justify everything it does to achieve the only conceivable goal: the realization of the “Ideological dream.” By violating reality, it not only necessarily lies but lies to itself by creating ad hoc “truths” to justify the ideal. Lysenko’s Biology and social art are violence perpetrated on science and art to satisfy the socialist dream euphemistically called socialist reality. The “West” does not escape with the use of genetics and the theory of evolution as the basis for the ideologies of “superior races” as the “scientific” support for eugenic policies and colonization of societies considered inferior, mainly by the Anglo-Saxon and Western European world (Joseph Borrel’s The European Garden” vs. “Barbarism” are good recent examples of this dogmatic attitude). Anything goes to justify ideology. However, this fabricated reality or hyper-reality – to paraphrase Baudrillard – when colliding with reality creates the conditions for the emergence of contradictions that finally negate the ideological principle, thus beginning the movements that oppose ideology, and that it fiercely fights since they represent an existential treat.

This antagonism goes to the extreme of calling things by their opposite: war is called peace, death is called life, slavery is called freedom, massacres are called liberation, aggression is called defense, etc., until ideology succumbs to the very forces it originates. Seen from this point of view, the Zionist dream cannot be achieved. Not because it is inhuman, illogical, illegal, etc., or not. No, it cannot be achieved because in the attempt to achieve it, it necessarily creates the conditions that prevent its realization.

They may be able to eliminate Hamas and Hezbollah. Just as in the Greco-Roman myth of Saturn who devours his children to avoid being deposed, or Laius who orders the killing of his son Oedipus to save his own life and avoid incest, the problem lies in ideology. Ideologies engender their own nemeses.

Hamas as well as Hezbollah, and all anti-Zionist movements (including the Jewish ones) are children of Zionism. They can be finished like Saturn devouring them, or have them killed like Laius wanted, but sooner or later they will be their nemesis. They are necessarily engendered by the same process that aims to achieve the ideal of paradise in the promised land in which only Jews live. Gaza may disappear from the map, along with the West Bank, but the fear, that fear of October 7, the same fear of Saturn and Laius, already impregnates with the bombings in Gaza the womb that will give birth to the future children of Zionism until its Jupiter or its Oedipus emerges. They may be Muslims, Secular, Atheists, Christians or – why not – Jews!

We do not know, the only thing we know is that the problem is ideological and it has already reached the moment when the result is exactly the opposite of what was idealized, of what was promised. The king is already naked in his obscenity to the horror of those who witness the spectacle. And the image of Goya’s “Saturn devouring his son” comes to mind.