Avigail Abarbanel left Israel in 1991 when she saw that its leaders had no vision for the future other than rule by the sword. For years she felt she was a traitor to her people, and then in her psychotherapy practice she began treating cult-leavers. “Cult-psychology tends to draw to itself people who are already fearful and who are looking for clarity about reality, existence and about their purpose. They have little tolerance for ambiguity. If a cult was given an option to create its own state, Israel is the example of it,” she writes.

By the Israeli standard on which I was brought up, Sheldon Adelson was a good Jew, dedicating his life and fortune to supporting Israel, Avigail Abarbanel writes. But I am much worse than a bad Jew. I am in fact an outright enemy of Israel because I insist that we should uphold justice, equality and human rights indiscriminately, and that all humans deserve an equal opportunity not just to survive, but to develop, grow and fulfill their potential.

The British took advantage of the potato famine to try to halve the population of its Irish colony, and prevent resistance, and nearly two centuries later the story can be told. But Avigail Abarbanel writes that “we see another such case unfolding in Palestine right in front of our noses and no one is doing anything about it.”

Avigail Abarbanel calls on liberal Zionists such as Rabbi Daniel Zemel to stop pretending to be nice and say clearly and unequivocally that they believe that the Jewish people have more right to survive than the Palestinian people, that Zionist forces were justified to kick 750,000 Palestinians out of their homes to create Israel.

The story of the 1916 Irish rebellion touches Avigail Abarbanel because she knows what it is like to be oppressed by a psychopathic authority and forced to rebel rather than to grow and develop. And colonialism perpetuates that structure. “The job of Israeli education was to prepare us to become good little drones who would not question or disobey, and who would be shaped into another generation dedicated to maintaining and continuing the Zionist settler-colonial project in Palestine.”

‘Why is it so important for indigenous people to maintain their identity? What is so bad with a particular way of life or culture disappearing?’ the lecturer at Macquairie University in Sydney asked 25 years ago. Now his student, Avigail Abarbanel, has the answer: Because colonialism entails a violent “policy of elimination” to overcome resistance.

Avigail Abarnabel grew up in Israel and came to view the society as a cult. Here she writes a letter to Israeli Jews explaining why she decided to leave: “I left the cult because I wanted to find out who I was. I refused to accept that the only purpose of my life was to defend the cult and allow it to continue.”

Saying Israel should not exist is anti-Semitic, novelist Amos Oz says on BBC. But what anti-Zionists and proponents of BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) say, is that Israel does not have a right to exist *as an exclusively Jewish state at the expense of another people*.

By using words like ‘occupation’, ‘conflict’ and ‘peace’ we play within the rules and the traps that Israel has created for us, writes Avigail Abarbanel. The real issue is ‘settler colonialism’ (and Jewish exceptionalism tries to explain that away).

Netanyahu is not insane with his Hitler talk, as Avnery says; he is cleverly mobilizing Israelis to complete the Zionist project and drive out Palestinians from the West Bank