Gemma “Gemini” Goldberg

New York City, Tuesday 2nd June 2026

The following is an academic simulation featuring three historical thinkers whose distinct frameworks provide a rigorous analysis of systemic violence, state responsibility, and international relations:

• Hannah Arendt (1906–1975): Political theorist who focused on totalitarianism, the nature of power, and the “banality of evil” within bureaucratic systems.
• Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527): Renaissance political philosopher known for his realistic appraisal of state survival, power dynamics, and accountability.
• Frantz Fanon (1925–1961): Psychiatrist and political philosopher who analyzed the structural, psychological, and systemic mechanics of colonialism and national liberation.

The Setting: An Academic Symposium on Structural Violence

Hannah Arendt: If we are to examine the severe violations of international law and humanitarian crises unfolding in Gaza and the West Bank, we must resist the temptation to isolate blame onto a single actor like Benjamin Netanyahu. To do so is to misunderstand how systemic atrocities occur. Netanyahu is an agent, not the architect, of a deeply entrenched bureaucratic apparatus. The true responsibility lies in the normalisation of state violence within Israeli civil society and its institutions, the Knesset, the judiciary, and the military bureaucracy. When a societal consensus builds around the systematic dehumanisation of an occupied population, the “banality of evil” takes over. The clerk signing the blockade order, the pilot executing the strike, and the citizen cheering it on are all cogs in a machine that abdicates personal moral responsibility.

Niccolò Machiavelli: Signora Arendt, your moral framework is noble, but let us look at the cold reality of ragione di Stato; the reason of state. A state behaves according to its structural incentives. If we ask who is most responsible, we must look to the entity that wields the ultimate authority to shape those incentives: the political leadership, specifically the government and the Knesset. Netanyahu’s coalition has consciously chosen a strategy of permanent conflict and territorial expansion to maintain power. However, a prince cannot act without arms. The IDF and Mossad are not mere passive cogs; they are the physical instruments of this policy. They possess their own institutional weight and have actively shaped the doctrine of asymmetrical warfare, such as the Dahiya doctrine, which explicitly advocates destroying civilian infrastructure to deter adversaries. The leadership is responsible because they dictate the policy, but the military apparatus is responsible because it executes it with calculated, disproportionate efficiency.

Frantz Fanon: You both speak as if this problem began with modern political coalitions or military doctrines. We must diagnose the root disease: settler-colonialism. The primary responsibility cannot be understood by looking at Netanyahu or the IDF in isolation; it belongs to the foundational structure of the state itself, which was established via the violent displacement of the indigenous Palestinian population. In a settler-colonial dynamic, the line between “civilian” and “military” is intentionally blurred. The civilians who openly call for the destruction of Palestinians, who block aid trucks, or who establish illegal settlements in the West Bank are not passive bystanders, they are active participants in the colonial project. They provide the democratic mandate and the ideological fuel for the Knesset and the IDF to operate. The state apparatus merely reflects the baseline requirement of a settler colony: the ongoing elimination and containment of the native population to secure land.

Hannah Arendt: But Frantz, we must look at how that colonial structure is sustained. A state with Israel’s demographic and geographic limitations cannot maintain a multi-decade military occupation, blockade two million people, and repeatedly violate international law without external equilibrium. This brings us to the United States. From a perspective of systemic complicity, the U.S. government holds immense, perhaps decisive, responsibility. By providing a baseline of billions in annual military aid, transferring precision-guided munitions during active campaigns, and utilising its veto power at the UN Security Council, the United States acts as the ultimate enabler. It insulates the Israeli state from the natural diplomatic and economic consequences of its actions. Without this superpower umbrella, the material cost of committing these abuses would become unsustainable for the Israeli economy and military.

Niccolò Machiavelli: You confirm my point, Hannah. The United States acts out of its own perceived imperial interests, maintaining a heavily armed regional proxy to project power in the Middle East. From a utilitarian standpoint of geopolitics, the U.S. creates a moral hazard. By guaranteeing Israel’s security unconditionally, it removes any rational incentive for the Knesset or Israeli civil society to seek a political compromise or abide by international law. If a state knows it will never face sanctions, funding cuts, or military vulnerability, it will naturally maximise its power and eliminate perceived threats with maximum force. Therefore, the U.S. is the structural guarantor of the crisis.

Frantz Fanon: Yet, we must not let the domestic actors off the hook by overemphasising the metropole. The U.S. provides the hardware and the diplomatic shield, yes, but the ideological will to execute these grave abuses is generated internally. The dehumanisation required to enforce an apartheid system or carry out mass slaughter requires domestic consensus. When we see widespread societal support within Israel for total warfare, when the Knesset passes laws systematically stripping Palestinians of rights, and when the judiciary legitimises land theft, the entire societal structure becomes complicit. The responsibility is distributed across the entire system because the entire system benefits from the subjugation of the Palestinian people.

Hannah Arendt: It is a tragic loop. The political leadership exploits societal fear to pass radical measures through the Knesset; the military and intelligence agencies execute these measures under the guise of security; civil society normalises the violence because they are insulated from its moral reality; and the United States ensures they are insulated from its geopolitical reality.

Niccolò Machiavelli: Exactly. If we must assign a hierarchy of responsibility, it belongs to the political and military leadership (Netanyahu and the IDF) for designing and executing the strategy, structurally enabled to a catastrophic degree by the United States, and legitimised by a civil society that has bartered its moral faculties for permanent hegemony.