78 years since the Nakba
collapse of Zionist project

For decades, the Zionist project sold the world a carefully constructed image: that of a modern democracy, militarily invincible, morally superior, and destined for historical permanence. Today, that narrative is collapsing before the eyes of the world. But this crisis did not begin yesterday.

As the 78th anniversary of the Nakba approaches — the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948, which saw the mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, the destruction of entire villages, and the formal consolidation of a settler-colonial project over historic Palestine — it is impossible to separate the current crisis from its foundational roots.

What we are witnessing in Gaza is not a rupture with Israel’s history. It is the radical continuation of the very logic upon which it was founded.

What is in crisis is not merely Benjamin Netanyahu or an exceptionally brutal extremist government. What is collapsing is the Zionist project itself as a political structure built upon occupation, apartheid, ethno-religious supremacy, and permanent war.

Netanyahu did not create these contradictions. He merely accelerated, radicalized, and exposed them without disguise.

For years, sections of the Western political establishment sustained the fiction that Israel was a vibrant democracy temporarily hijacked by the far right. This narrative ignores a fundamental truth: no genuine democracy can be built upon the systematic denial of an indigenous people’s rights.

The first major collapse is military. For decades, Israel cultivated the mythology of invincibility. Its army was portrayed as technologically unmatched, morally exemplary, and capable of delivering swift and decisive victories. Gaza shattered that myth.

After months of mass devastation, the destruction of hospitals, schools, universities, and refugee camps, Israel has failed to achieve its declared objectives. Palestinian resistance remains operational. Multiple fronts of confrontation have exposed unprecedented strategic vulnerabilities.

When a regime must destroy civilians on an industrial scale to simulate strength, it is because its real strength has already begun to decline. But the crisis extends far beyond the battlefield.

Colonial projects survive only so long as they can convince settlers that there is a future worth defending. That consensus is beginning to unravel. Permanent fear, insecurity, and the erosion of trust in state institutions are producing a devastating phenomenon for any settler-colonial enterprise: flight.

When the occupiers themselves begin abandoning the project they were meant to consolidate, the crisis ceases to be political and becomes existential. And here emerges a devastating contrast.

The Palestinian people, subjected to massacres, forced displacement, and systematic destruction, continue to demonstrate attachment to their land, resilience, and the capacity for resistance.

The occupier, despite its overwhelming military arsenal, displays growing signs of fragmentation, fear, and strategic paralysis. The paradox is brutal: those who lost their homes preserved hope; those with military superiority have lost confidence in the future.

Economically, the fractures are also deepening. Prolonged wars corrode economies, drive away investment, and undermine the material stability necessary for any state project. No colonial regime survives on military force alone. When economy, security, and legitimacy enter crisis simultaneously, collapse ceases to be temporary.

Diplomatically and morally, the blow may be even more profound. The televised genocide in Gaza has demolished Zionism’s most powerful narrative shield: the image of permanent victimhood used as a moral defense. Global perception has shifted.

For broad sectors of international public opinion, Israel no longer appears as a besieged democracy, but as a regime of apartheid, occupation, and structural violence. In attempting to isolate Gaza, Israel has isolated itself.

Never has the Palestinian flag been so visible in the streets of the world. Never has international solidarity been so widespread. Never has the moral legitimacy of the Zionist project been so openly challenged.

Internally, the implosion is equally severe. Israeli society is deeply fragmented. The political consensus that sustained the regime has fractured. The judiciary has lost credibility. Parliament has become hostage to extremist radicalisation. Social cohesion is deteriorating rapidly.

But perhaps the central question is this: Israel is not failing despite its supremacist nature. It is failing precisely because of it. A state founded on ethno-religious supremacy, the expulsion of indigenous peoples, and permanent war carries contradictions that are ultimately unsustainable.

Zionism promised security, it delivered endless war. It promised normalcy, it delivered total militarization. It promised permanence, it delivered an existential crisis. As the 78th anniversary of the Nakba approaches, history appears to be demanding its reckoning.

Projects built on expulsion, colonization, apartheid, and the systematic denial of a people’s rights may impose suffering for decades. But they cannot indefinitely escape the contradictions embedded in their very foundations.

Netanyahu will eventually leave power. But the real historical question is whether the project he came to embody can survive the crisis he helped accelerate. What we are witnessing is not the crisis of a government. But the historical decomposition of a supremacist colonial project that has reached its point of no return.

-Sayid Marcos Tenório is a historian, specialist in International Relations, founder and vice-president of the Brazil-Palestine Institute (Ibraspal). Author of the book Palestina: do mito da terra prometida à terra da resistência (Palestine: from the myth of the promised land to the land of resistance). His article appeared in MEMO.