Israel Is a Theocratic Apartheid-Practicing Ethno-State Funded by US Taxpayers

On Sunday, March 30th, 2026, the Israeli Knesset voted 62 to 48 to make death by hanging the mandatory default sentence for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank who are convicted of killings classified as terrorism, a law championed by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir that applies exclusively through military tribunals where the conviction rate is 99.74 percent and where confessions are, according to B'Tselem, "extracted under duress and torture." The law explicitly excludes Israeli citizens and residents. Israeli settlers who live in the same territory, on the same hills, driving on the same roads, are tried in civilian courts where the conviction rate for crimes committed against Palestinians between 2005 and 2024 was roughly three percent. Execution must be carried out within 90 days. No commutation is permitted. The death penalty can be imposed even if the prosecution doesn't ask for it. Human Rights Watch deputy director Adam Coogle called the law what it is: a system that "entrenches discrimination and a two-tiered system of justice, both hallmarks of apartheid." The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, went further, saying its application to residents of occupied territory "would constitute a war crime." Amnesty International called it "a public display of cruelty, discrimination and utter contempt for human rights."

Segregation in 2026

The 2018 Nation-State Basic Law, passed 62 to 55, declared that "the right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people," downgraded Arabic from an official language to one with merely "special status" after a century of legal standing, and enshrined "Jewish settlement" as a constitutional value that the state is obligated to promote. There is no civil marriage in Israel. The Orthodox Chief Rabbinate controls Jewish marriages, divorces, and burials. A Jewish Israeli cannot marry a non-Jewish Israeli inside their own country. Same-sex couples cannot marry. Interfaith couples fly to Cyprus. The Rabbinate can refuse to bury people it doesn't consider Jewish enough. Israel is a state where religious authorities control who you can marry, who you can be buried next to, and whether your marriage is recognized at all.

The segregation extends to where you live. Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights, documented that 43 percent of all residential communities in Israel, 434 small towns, operate admission committees that can reject applicants based on "social suitability" and the "social and cultural fabric" of the community. In the Galilee, 80 percent of towns can reject Palestinian applicants through these committees. In the Negev, 89 percent. The Admissions Committees Law, originally passed in 2011 and later expanded to cover communities of up to 700 households, was upheld by Israel's Supreme Court in a narrow 5-4 decision that essentially legalized residential ethnic screening. Jewish towns in southern Israel receive 35 to 59 percent more per citizen in municipal balancing grants than comparable Arab towns. The average Jewish student receives roughly 42,000 NIS per year in educational funding compared to 28,000 NIS for Arab students. Adalah maintains a database of over 65 Israeli laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens directly or indirectly, covering citizenship, political participation, land, housing, education, language, and due process. More than half were enacted after 2000. If you're an Israeli Jew living in the Galilee or the Negev, the state has made sure that most of your neighbors aren't Arab.

93 percent

The Israel Democracy Institute conducted a flash survey on March 2nd and 3rd, 2026, days after Operation Epic Fury began, and found that 93 percent of Jewish Israelis support "Operation Roaring Lion," Israel's name for its joint strikes on Iran with the United States. Right-wing respondents: 97 percent. Center: 93 percent. Left: 76 percent. When three quarters of the people you'd call the Israeli left support a bombing campaign that has killed over 2,000 Iranian civilians, you're seeing is a society that is thoroughly organized around ethnic supremacy and permanent militarization.

This was not a one-off. When Pew Research surveyed Israeli Jews between March and April 2024 about the military response in Gaza, only four percent said it had "gone too far." Ninety-six percent considered the response either about right or not far enough. A Tel Aviv University poll from late October 2023, weeks into the Gaza campaign, found fewer than two percent thought the IDF was using too much firepower. Nearly 58 percent said too little. A poll reported by Middle East Eye found nearly half of Israeli Jews supported killing all Palestinians in Gaza and a majority supported expelling them.

Sde Teiman

On July 5th, 2024, soldiers from the IDF's "Force 100" unit gang-raped a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman detention camp near Beersheba in southern Israel. The injuries were so severe the victim had to be hospitalized. Surveillance footage broadcast on Israel's Channel 12 in August 2024 showed the assault. Nine IDF reservists were arrested on July 29th, and the Israeli far right's response was to storm two military bases and demand the suspects be released. Guards at Sde Teiman physically pushed back military police who arrived to question the suspects. A crowd broke into the Beit Lid army base where the suspects were being held. National Security Minister Ben Gvir posted "Take your hands off the reservists." Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called the accused rapists "heroic warriors." And Likud Knesset member Hanoch Milwidsky, asked on the floor of parliament whether it was legitimate to insert a stick into a prisoner's rectum, shouted: "Yes! If he is a Nukhba, everything is legitimate to do! Everything!"

On March 12th, 2026, the IDF dropped all sexual assault charges, claiming the defendants' right to a fair trial had been violated. Not a single soldier was convicted. The military prosecutor who pursued the case reportedly faces professional consequences for having tried. A March 2025 UN report found that sexual violence by Israeli forces against Palestinian detainees was used as a "method of war," with forced stripping, sexual assault, and sexual harassment described as "standard operating procedure."

baby Karim

On or around March 22nd, 2026, 18-month-old Karim Abu Nassar and his father Osama were near the al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza when they came under IDF fire. Osama was ordered to leave his toddler on the ground and advance to a checkpoint, where he was stripped naked and searched. According to Karim's mother and journalist Osama Al-Kahlout, who filmed the child's wounds, IDF soldiers tortured the 18-month-old in front of his father to pressure him into confessing. A medical report confirmed cigarette burns on one leg and a nail punctured into the other. The child was released to relatives via the International Committee of the Red Cross after 10 hours of detention. His father remains in Israeli custody. The family had been going out to buy sweets ahead of Eid al-Fitr. The IDF claimed Karim's injuries were "splinters caused by warning shots" and that Osama had used his own toddler as a "human shield." The UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine stated the same week that Israel has adopted torture as state policy.

75,227 and counting

At least 75,227 people have been killed in Gaza since October 2023. Over 169,679 injured. Nearly 20,000 children dead. Over 10 percent of Gaza's 2.1 million people killed or wounded. 1,015 babies under one year old directly killed. 56,000 children who have lost one or both parents. 254 journalists killed, 540 aid workers, 1,722 healthcare workers. Famine confirmed by the WHO in August 2025 after Israel blocked all aid starting March 2025. 460 starvation deaths, 154 of them children. 80 to 90 percent of all structures damaged or destroyed. 97 percent of school buildings damaged. 25 of 38 hospitals non-functional. 79 percent of mosques, 835 of them, destroyed completely. 200,000 tons of explosives dropped on a strip of land 25 miles long and seven miles wide.

Save the Children projects that four out of five children in Gaza will face catastrophic hunger levels in 2026. The International Court of Justice ruled in January 2024 that it was "plausible" Israel's acts could violate the Genocide Convention and ordered provisional measures. Israel's response was to block all aid. The ICJ's July 2024 advisory opinion declared Israel's entire occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem illegal under international law, including the settlement regime, and found Israel's legislation violates the international prohibition on racial segregation and apartheid. The court mandated Israel to end the occupation, dismantle settlements, and provide full reparations. 124 countries voted in favor of a UN General Assembly resolution to enforce the opinion. The United States and Israel voted against.

Pogroms in the West Bank

Major General Yehuda Fuchs, the IDF commander responsible for the West Bank, called the February 2023 attack on Huwara "a pogrom carried out by law-breakers," after hundreds of settlers torched homes, businesses, a school, and vehicles, shot one Palestinian dead, and injured over 390. CNN found that IDF soldiers on the scene did nothing to intervene. A soldier told Breaking the Silence: "We just let them continue to advance." When Palestinians threw rocks in self-defense, the IDF fired tear gas at them, not the settlers. Finance Minister Smotrich, the same man who called accused rapists "heroic warriors," said Huwara "should be wiped out."

The IDF's own data shows settler violence rose 25 to 27 percent in 2025, with severe attacks (shootings, arson) spiking over 50 percent, from 83 incidents in 2024 to 128 in 2025. The UN recorded 2,920 settler attacks between January and October 2025 alone. Over 200 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank in 2025, including 50 children. In the village of Jit in August 2024, at least 100 settlers entered firing bullets and tear gas, torching cars and homes, killing one Palestinian and injuring several others. In Jinba in March 2026, an IDF inquiry found that soldiers present at a settler attack "vandalized and damaged equipment" themselves.

"Limited and targeted" turned permanent

On March 16th, 2026, the Israeli military announced ground operations in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah, describing them as "limited and targeted." By March 25th, Defense Minister Israel Katz was announcing that Israel would seize and hold a "security zone" stretching 30 kilometers to the Litani River, roughly a tenth of Lebanon's territory. Smotrich said what Katz was trying to obscure with the word "security": "the new Israeli border must be the Litani." Israel destroyed at least seven bridges over the Litani River, trapping civilians south of it and cutting off humanitarian aid routes. Human Rights Watch's Ramzi Kaiss warned that once the bridges were gone and the region was isolated, "the civilian harm is going to be so immense that you have a humanitarian catastrophe." UNICEF reported 121 children killed and 399 injured in the escalation, with over 370,000 children displaced. UNICEF's Deputy Executive Director said the offensive was killing or wounding "one classroom of children every day." Katz himself declared Israel would "turn southern Lebanon into a wasteland like Gaza."

Annexation of occupied territory is categorically prohibited under Article 2(4) of the UN Charter and the Fourth Geneva Convention. The ICJ has ruled that the prohibition against acquiring territory by force is customary international law from which no derogation is possible.

Your tax dollars at work

The United States has sent Israel more than $310 billion in cumulative aid since 1948, adjusted for inflation, making it the largest recipient of American foreign assistance in history. The annual baseline is $3.8 billion under the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding, but that's the floor. Between October 2023 and September 2024, Brown University's Costs of War project found that US military aid to Israel totaled at least $22.76 billion, roughly six times the annual baseline. In February 2025, Trump declared an "emergency" to push through another $4 billion in weapons sales, including bombs, JDAMs, and Caterpillar D9 bulldozers.

Here is what American taxpayers are funding: a country where every resident has universal healthcare under the 1995 National Health Insurance Law, no deductibles, at about 7.5 percent of GDP. University tuition runs $3,000 to $4,000 per year. Maternity leave is 26 weeks, the first 15 paid at 100 percent salary replacement. Israel pays monthly child allowances to all families with children. The United States has no universal healthcare, no federally mandated paid parental leave, student loan debt north of $1.7 trillion, and tens of millions of people who cannot afford to see a doctor. American taxpayers subsidize Israel's military budget to the tune of tens of billions, which frees up domestic spending for a social welfare system that Americans themselves have been told they can't afford.

And the reason Congress keeps voting for it despite collapsing public support (only 32 percent of Americans now approve of Israel's military action, a record low, and among 18-to-34-year-olds, a majority now sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis for the first time in the history of polling) is the pro-Israel lobby, which spent over $100 million in the 2024 election cycle through AIPAC's super PAC alone. They spent $14.6 million to defeat Jamaal Bowman, the most money any interest group has ever spent on a single House race, because he criticized Israel. They spent $8.6 million to defeat Cori Bush for the same reason. The message to every member of Congress is explicit: criticize Israel and we will spend whatever it takes to end your career. The House voted 422 to 6 in favor of continued missile defense funding for Israel. Thirty-two percent of the public approves. Four hundred and twenty-two members of Congress voted yes.

The world is turning

There is one part of this story that the Israeli government, the US State Department, and AIPAC cannot control, and it is the rest of the planet. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant in November 2024 for war crimes including starvation as a method of warfare, crimes against humanity, murder, and persecution, and all 125 ICC member states are now obligated to arrest them if they set foot on their territory. Over 150 countries recognize Palestine, including, as of September 2025, the UK, France, Canada, Australia, and Portugal, the first G7 nations to do so. Fourteen of 19 G20 members now recognize Palestine. Eleven countries have recalled ambassadors or severed diplomatic ties. Bolivia cut all relations. Brazil expelled Israel's ambassador. South Africa recalled its entire diplomatic mission. Twelve countries committed to a total arms embargo on Israel in July 2025. Spain formally imposed one in October. Turkey banned all exports and imports. Italy, Japan, Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany have all suspended arms exports.

Brazilian President Lula called it "a premeditated genocide from a far-right government," and he was specific: "In Gaza, nothing justifies the indiscriminate killing of thousands of women and children and the use of hunger as a weapon of war." Pope Francis called for a genocide investigation, noting that "according to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide." A UN Special Committee judged Israel's conduct "consistent with the characteristics of genocide." Spain closed its airspace to US military aircraft involved in the Iran war. Germany's president called the war "a disastrous mistake" and a breach of international law.

Israel has spent decades building a narrative that criticism of its government is antisemitism, that its military is the most moral in the world, that the occupation is temporary, that the settlements will be negotiated away, that the blockade is for security, and that the apartheid reports are biased. The world is finally waking up and calling Israel out for what it is: a zelous racist ethnostate funded and armed by the United States.

— dingo__dog