Right, so today just happens to be Israel’s 77th Independence Day, they choose to celebrate it on the 1st May, rather than on the 15th when Israel actually gained Independence, but which is frankly better known as the anniversary of the Nakba, when Israel drove out tens of thousands of Palestinians, basically confirming that their conduct as we’ve seen it in all too graphic detail these past 18 months literally started on day one. Therefore it struck me as somewhat prescient that the day the celebrate their independence that their country is literally on fire and on fire by their own hands, as fires started by the insane settlers of the West Bank, as if Louis Theroux’s documentary hadn’t done a good enough job of proving how mad they are, burn out of control, blew back into Israeli controlled territory and now surround Jerusalem. The day the celebrate their independence, in the name of Zionism, their divine right to the land as so many of them see it and they’ve literally set it on fire, the people who call themselves God’s chosen ones now fleeing their Promised Land, and realising it might not have been so promised to them after all. Well, they can always go back to Brooklyn or Miami can’t they? Right, so as wildfires rage across the West Bank and into Israel, heading towards Jerusalem, consuming forests, parks, and homes, the irony is inescapable that these fires, according to some, the largest in the nation’s history, were not an act of nature but the direct result of extremist Israeli settlers setting Palestinian agricultural land ablaze. As the flames spread uncontrollably, they then moved on towards Israel and now the same state that has systematically bombed, starved, and denied aid to Gaza has been pleading for international assistance, the very thing it has denied for weeks and continues to deny to Gaza. And the timing is almost poetic, or some might say karma or even divine intervention, because these fires have erupted to coincide with Israel’s 77th Independence Day, a day meant to celebrate the nation’s founding now being one of scenes of destruction, the very destruction they have wrought on others for 18 months now. Therefore the inferno serves as something of a metaphor for a state consumed by its own violence, hypocrisy, and disregard for international law. This disaster has also shone a light on systemic failings in Israel beyond the environmental though; it is political, moral, and deeply symbolic for reasons I will shortly go into. It exposes the consequences of decades of Israeli policies—land theft, arson, and ecological mismanagement—all now rebounding upon itself. As Israel begs for help while continuing to block aid to Gaza, where normally we wouldn’t ask such a thing but in this case it is impossible to avoid the question of whether any assistance be given without the condition that Palestinians receive the same? Withholding Israeli assistance so we can assist Gaza and the West Bank too? And as the fires burn, you really cannot help but wonder given Zionist justification to do what they do and that is if Israeli’s truly are “God’s chosen people,” why does they now flee their own Promised Land, consumed by flames of their own making? The wildfires did not begin by accident. Eyewitness reports and investigations confirm that extremist Israeli settlers deliberately set fire to Palestinian farmland in the West Bank, a tactic long used to terrorise and displace Palestinians, but its backfired horribly this time. Settlers allegedly torched crops and fields near Jerusalem, igniting a chain reaction that quickly spread out of control due to the dry conditions and strong winds. For decades, Israeli settlers have engaged in systematic arson attacks against, most notably Palestinian olive groves, iconic as these are, but also as acts of economic and cultural warfare, given the olive tree’s significance in Palestinian agriculture. In their place, the Jewish National Fund has for decades planted vast forests of non-native pine trees, I daresay they remind these people of home – where they are actually from, which obviously isn’t Palestine, which are highly flammable and poorly suited to the region’s arid climate. These forests were not just ecological projects but political ones, beginning as an attempt to erase evidence of the Nakba—the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and likely why Israel celebrates Independence on the 1st May, rather than the actual date of the 15th May—by covering destroyed villages with European-style woodlands. The JNF often names trees for people who have stood up for Israeli interests, so them burning down says a lot for that too. Now, those same trees are fuelling catastrophic wildfires which is also something of a grim irony for a state that has been built on displacement from its inception. Even as Israel calls for international help, its government continues to block humanitarian aid to Gaza of course, where some two million people face starvation, disease, and relentless bombardment. The same week that Israeli firefighters are struggling to contain the blazes, Netanyahu’s government defied International Court of Justice orders to allow food and medicine into the Strip, so really as they beg for help, where normally it would be given unthinkingly, should we not stop and think for the sake of those in Gaza for a moment? Countries like the US, Greece, Cyprus, and France have already sent firefighting aircraft and personnel to assist Israel. Yet if the international community is willing to mobilise so quickly for Israeli civilians, why has it failed to do the same for Palestinians? Where were the planes for Gaza? Oh silly me, they’re flying reconnaissance missions for Israel from RAF Akrotiri aren’t they? Any aid to Israel should be contingent on it lifting the blockade on Gaza. Otherwise, the world is complicit in Israel’s double standard here, one where Israeli lives are prioritised while Palestinian suffering is ignored, a disaster that Israeli apartheid and second class citizenry has seen them bring on themselves at that. Rather than take responsibility, Israeli officials have resorted to absurd conspiracy theories and deflection. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the fire department, downplayed the crisis, dismissing the fires as “typical for this time of year”. Benjamin Netanyahu’s berk of a son, Yair Netanyahu, perhaps that Miami sun is getting to him, baselessly accused the Israeli left of starting the fires to “cancel Independence Day celebrations”. Others, including far-right lawmakers, floated the idea of “terrorism” as the cause, which appears to be nothing but a transparent attempt to absolve settlers of blame and again, if this is the attitude, why should aid come to them unconditionally, when they won’t allow it to come for others? Netanyahu himself claimed that 18 suspects had been arrested in relation to these arson attacks, but police sources revealed that only three have actually been detained so what gives there? Need to seize a few Palestinians to pin the blame on do we, to make up the numbers to 18? Who’d put it past them? Why lie about the numbers? It smacks of a government more interested in managing optics than holding extremist settlers accountable. The scale of the disaster has, aside from the moral and ethnical arguments surrounding assistance for Israel, highlighted Israel’s systemic and political failures too. Over 163 firefighting teams have been deployed, battling flames across nearly 3,000 acres. The army has been called in, and a national emergency declared. Yet experts have been warning for 18 years that Israel’s fire preparedness was dangerously inadequate. An excerpt from The Cradle, spells this out further: ‘Dov Ganem, chairman of Israel’s Fire and Air Rescue Association, told the Walla news outlet that 18 years of warnings about a lack of preparedness to deal with wildfires have been met with “indifference” from policymakers. In response to accusations of arson, Ramy Abdu of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said, “Israeli propaganda has chosen to blame its failures on Palestinians.” “It was the Jewish National Fund (JNF) that decided to plant non-native trees unsuited to the climate – solely to cover up the traces of the Nakba. It was Netanyahu who chose to spend millions on his private luxury jet, the ‘Wings of Zion,’ instead of investing in a Supertanker firefighting aircraft. It is the settlers who are repeatedly caught committing arson – racist acts of fire terrorism targeting Palestinian land, homes, and livelihoods,” he added.’ Instead of investing in firefighting aircraft, Netanyahu prioritized vanity projects like his Wing of Zion—his Air Force One knock-off, but this is par for the course for Israel as the JNF seeking to cover up Zionist sins with the planting of pine trees now making the fires so much worse. The fires are therefore emblematic of Israel’s broader dysfunction in that they are a nation so obsessed with expansion and militarisation and demanding they be recognised and acknowledged as the rightful people of the land, that it neglects the safety of its own citizens—all while inflicting immeasurable suffering on Palestinians and scorching the very land it claims such divine entitlement to. A state built on ethnic cleansing, land theft, and environmental destruction is now watching its own territory burn. The pines planted to conceal the Nakba are turning to ash, revealing the truth beneath. The same settlers who torched Palestinian fields now see their own homes threatened. The government that bombed Gaza into rubble now begs for foreign help as its own cities choke on smoke. For those who do not recognize Israel’s legitimacy—or who condemn its atrocities—the timing is uncanny. On its Independence Day, Israel is not celebrating but fleeing, not thriving but burning. If this is divine punishment, it is not from an angry God but from the consequences of Israel’s own actions. The world really in my mind given what they have been engaged in for months now, not respond to Israel’s pleas without conditions and I hate saying that, it should never be the case, but how else do we get aid into Gaza now? Any assistance should be tied to an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the unrestricted entry of humanitarian aid. If Israel deserves help, so do the Palestinians it has spent decades oppressing. These wildfires aren’t just a disaster—they are a reckoning. A nation that has spent decades setting fire to Palestinian lives is now learning what it means to burn. I wish I could say they’ll change after it, but we do of course know that they won’t. Of course it is not just in Palestine that Israel is falling apart over, its issues with Iran are not going their way either, as the talks between the US and Iran are continuing and now Iran are talking to Europe too, so its little wonder actually that despite warnings not to attack iran they had planned to anyway, but what wasn’t planned was for those plans to leak! Get all the details of that story in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch. 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