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“Greater Israel”: A Not So Hidden Ambition
Supporters of Zionism, atheist and religious alike, generally rely on two points of religious dogma to validate the occupation of Palestine: the idea that followers of Judaism are “God’s chosen people”, to the exclusion of all others; and the idea that God “gave” the “children of Abraham” all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates rivers. The borders are vaguely and contradictorily defined in multiple places in the Torah (Old Testament).
The concept of “Eretz Israel” (Hebrew “Land of Israel”, with the connotation of expansionism that “Greater Israel” implies in English) is based on a merger of religious fundamentalism and modern political ethno-nationalism, whereby ancient texts are used to justify a modern military expansionist state.
Military invasion attempts into South Lebanon since October 2024, along with recurrent calls for expanding the entity’s border by occupation leaders, have revived contention over long-entrenched Zionist territorial ambitions in the region. The shameless display of a map that engulfs Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, and parts of Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia spotted on the sleeves of occupation soldiers is hardly symbolic, nor exclusive to fringe elements of settler society. The concept of ‘Greater Israel’, long dismissed by “Israelis” and their supporters as a conspiracy theory promoted by paranoid Arabs and anti-Semites, verily captures the essence of Zionism as an expansionist settler-colonial movement with biblical, territorial claims that extend from the Nile to the Euphrates.
LEFT-RIGHT DIVIDE
There is a common misconception that attributes the expansionist behavior of the Israeli entity to the most extreme factions of its society, represented by ultranationalist settlers. These are the ones who hold beliefs from biblical scriptures, whom are often caught on camera harassing and killing Palestinians, stealing their homes, burning their olive trees, and destroying crops and killing herds, all under the full protection of the Occupation Army (IOF) of course. However, to limit the occupation’s aggressive aspirations to conspicuous right-wing extremists is a misreading that leads to the prevailing tendency to appeal to left-right, or religious-secular, nuances within the Zionist entity. This deceptive framing is especially popular among Western liberals.
The public “Israeli” attitude towards its internal affairs does, however, reflect a polarity. The culture is characterized by a religious-secular divide, which involves ongoing debates over the status of religion, the character of the entity as a “Jewish state”, and its territorial borders. This left-right dichotomy exists over a range of internal issues concerned with political and socio-economic questions. However, when it comes to the colonial-expansionist identity of the entity, that dispute most certainly dissolves, and makes no difference to those on the receiving end of its terror.
“Israeli” leaders from across the political spectrum have collectively and directly contributed to the military occupation of Palestine, creeping into more territory by the day, in a steady, consistent and systematic manner since the very establishment of the entity. To clarify, it is not only the likes of Daniela Weiss, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich whose aspirations are problematic, and dangerous, and “extreme”.
To name just a few, the first Prime Minister of the occupation state, the ‘secular’ David Ben Gurion, who led the largest socialist- Zionist party, was also a chief architect of the 1948 Nakba. It was Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, the founder of the Labor Party, who occupied the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai desert, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem following the 1967 Six Day War. The most ‘moderate’ of them all, Yitzhak Rabin, hailed as ‘a peacemaker,’ actually accelerated land theft in the West Bank, and when asked, “what is to be done with the Palestinian population?” he responded with a hand gesture motioning to ‘drive them out!’
Most importantly, these leaders did not emerge from a vacuum; they were brought to power by “Israeli” voters, who also showed overwhelming support for the ongoing genocide against Gaza. Back in November 2023, only 3% of Israelis were in favor of a permanent, “unconditional” ceasefire. The annihilation of Gaza unifies the settler state left and right alike.
FROM THE NILE TO THE EUPHRATES
The possibility of establishing a Zionist entity in Uganda, Argentina or the Sinai Peninsula was initially considered towards the end of the 19th century by Theodore Herzl, the founding father of Zionism. However, the idea that a Jewish entity must spread across the so-called ‘historic biblical land of the Jews’ in Palestine took precedence.
In his 1898 diaries, Herzl mentions a discussion with Max Bodenheimer, another notable figure of the Zionist movement and his close associate, who suggests that a ‘Jewish State’ should extend “from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates”, an idea which Herzl approved to be ‘in part excellent’. In his 1896 pamphlet, Der Judenstaat, Herzl envisions an Israeli entity that would set out as follows: “the northern frontier is to be the mountains facing Cappadocia in Turkiye; the southern, the Suez Canal’. He also points out that it would serve as a “wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism”.
It’s worth mentioning that Herzl’s legacy still reverberates powerfully across the entity today, to the extent that the Knesset passed the Herzl Law as recently as 2004. The Herzl Law makes it mandatory for all Israelis to study his work in order to “structure the state of Israel, its goal and image in accordance with his Zionist vision”.
Rabbi Fischmann, a member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine who assisted in drafting “Israel’s” Declaration of Independence, explained at the U.N. Special Committee of Enquiry on 9 July 9, 1947 that “the Promised Land was quite a large one:, from the river of Egypt, up to the Euphrates”, and that “the promise was given to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, about 4000 years ago and it was reaffirmed to Moses”.
There is no shortage of examples of Zionist leaders expressing their ambition of establishing a “Greater Israel”, but it is important to keep one thing in mind: The Zionist movement underwent many phases, and Zionist ideologues’ opinions about the exact definition of ‘a greater Israel’ and the ideal delineation of its borders fluctuated throughout the years.
ONGOING COLONIZATION OF PALESTINE
Given the constraining circumstances surrounding Zionist colonization in its early days, Zionist expediency understood that to gain leverage, a temporary compromise between its grandiose territorial ambitions, and its immediate instrumental needs, was required.
The Zionist movement was willing to come to terms with less territory at first, in exchange for a ‘state’ with political sovereignty. However, its determination to seize more when a ripe opportunity came along was never abandoned, as a comparison of historic and present-day maps reveals.
In 1948, the Zionist state stole 78% of Palestine. Ever since, new rounds of aggression and expansion have been implemented in an unfettered manner. Since 1967, 100,000 hectares of Palestinian lands have been stolen. In the first months of the genocide in Gaza alone, Israel stole 1,270 hectares of Palestinian land.
In fact, records of evidence show that through exercising patience, the colonial occupation has patiently been playing the long game, gradually bringing more Palestinian land under its control by the day. To claim otherwise – that Israel will remain indefinitely satisfied with dominating only a fragment of the land that it maintains belongs to the Jewish people – would be absurd. In fact, this was accurately expressed in 1937 by Ben Gurion, a central figure in the founding phase of the colonial entity, who also served as its first Prime Minister for almost 15 years “a partial Jewish State is not the end, but only the beginning…’’, and “we shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today, but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them”, implying that Israel should never settle for any limitations concerning its borders. This is precisely why, up until the present day, Israel has failed to define its borders.
THE LITANI RIVER
If we consider our current situation, one year into the genocide in Gaza, Israel is attempting to create a “buffer zone” in South Lebanon, something it has incessantly attempted to do since its inception: in 1948, as well as 1978, 1982-2000 and 2006. Amid its current inability to deter Hezbollah from launching attacks against it in support of Gaza, Israel has been seeking to change the status quo by pushing the resistance away from Lebanon’s southern border, and beyond the Litani specifically. Historically, the Litani River has always held strategic importance for Zionist ambitions.
The Litani, the longest river in Lebanon, stretches 170 kilometers southward from the Beqaa Valley, flows along the eastern front of Lebanon’s mountain range, and diverts sharply westward towards the Mediterranean Sea, north of Tyre. Historical documents revealing Zionist plans to take control of it date back as far as prior to the establishment of the entity. Its importance is due to it being a vital water source, along with the fact that its surroundings are of military-strategic value.
The head of the World Zionist Organization, who would later become the occupation state’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, put forward a map for a proposed Jewish colony at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The map he presented fell short of the land guaranteed in accordance with ‘God’s Promise’, from the Nile to the Euphrates. Rather, the proposed borders were drawn according to geopolitical calculations to dominate water resources in the region, incorporating:
“First the whole of Mandated Palestine … secondly, southern Lebanon, including the towns of Tyre and Sidon, the headwaters of the River Jordan on Mount Hermon and the southern portion of the Litani River… thirdly, on the Syrian front, the Golan Heights, including the town of Quneitra, the River Yarmuk and El-Himmeh Hot Springs … fourthly, on the Jordan front, the whole of the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea and the Eastern Highlands up to the outskirts of Amman, running southwards along the Hejaz Railway to the Gulf of Aqaba, leaving Jordan with no access to the sea; fifthly, on the Egyptian front, from EI-Arish on the Mediterranean in a straight southerly direction to the Gulf of Aqaba”.
The priority of accessing water resources was also articulated in a 1919 letter Weizmann sent to David Lloyd George, Prime Minister and head of the British delegation, in which he wrote:
“The whole economic future of Palestine is dependent upon its water supply for irrigation and for electric power, and the water supply must mainly be derived from the slopes of Mount Hermon [Golan Heights], from the headwaters of the Jordan, and from the Litani River in Lebanon”
It wasn’t until 1967 that Israel would partially fulfill its aspiration of controlling more territory and dominating water resources by occupying the Syrian Golan Heights, East of the Jordan River, as well as the Sea of Galilee, also known as ‘Lake Tiberias,’ —but not the Litani River. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan was quoted saying that “Israel had achieved provisionally satisfying frontiers, with the exception of those with Lebanon.” The idea of occupying South Lebanon was enthusiastically adopted by Moshe Dayan as well as Ben Gurion, and was also referred to in the diaries of Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett.
Ben Gurion’s conviction of an Israel with the Litani as its northern border was noted in a book he published in 1918. This idea would remain an essential part of his vision for the entity for years to come, as would the idea of redrawing the borders by fragmenting Lebanon to allow for the establishment of a Christian state with with the Litani as its southern border managed by ‘Israel’.
Zionist plans to annex the region or expand its control over it are not a thing of the past – on the contrary, they always tend to resurface. Established in 2024, a group called “The South Lebanon Movement” has been advocating for the colonization of South Lebanon.
HEGEMONY THROUGH DISRUPTION
Zionist expansionism does not only manifest as direct occupation and control of territory. When the entity abstains from or is unable to claim land, it makes use of other cost- effective tools to spread its hegemony.
This was best articulated in a notorious article that recently resurfaced entitled “A Strategy For Israel In The Nineteen Eighties” published in 1982 in the quarterly Kivunim – a journal of the Department of Information of the World Zionist Organization that encapsulates the Zionist ideology. The piece was written by journalist and senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official Oded Yinon, who precisely advocated for a strategic divide-and-rule plan to fragment the region in Israel’s favor:
“Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short-term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi’ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan. This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area in the long run, and that aim is already within our reach today”.
This describes, in great detail, the current track on which the Levant is heading, confirming the premise of this strategy which was laid out forty years ago. More recently in 2002, then- former president Netanyahu testified before US Congress in fervent favor of “taking out Saddam” by invading and destroying Iraq. This was not about regional peace — remember that a large part of Iraq is contained in “Greater Israel” — the goal was fragmenting and weakening all nations contained within the land of “God’s promise”. Therefore rather than being cohesive nations, the fragmentation of these historically diverse states into sectarian and ethnic groupings, where sub- state identities are exacerbated and mired in conflict, makes them more vulnerable to “Israeli” hegemony, and less capable of projecting power and coordinating action against it. This creates the ideal grounds for submission to the entity’s greater plans. In that case, even if a “Greater Israel” isn’t physically achieved, it will at the very least still be capable of imposing its supremacy over the region.
CONCLUSION
It requires no extensive amount of research to identify from “Israel’s” behavioral pattern, along with statements issued by its officials, that its appetite for expansion is far from quenched. We are witnessing this appetite in real-time. The trajectory of this entity, since its illegitimate establishment in 1948, is self-evident to those of us who have been experiencing its brutality daily. It makes no difference whether it is driven by biblical scriptures associated with the return of “God’s chosen people to the promised land” and the fulfillment of messianic prophecies, or rooted in pragmatic secularism, linked its current territorial occupation, conspires to annex more land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, or conquer the entire area, from the Nile to the Euphrates, the supremacy engrained in its very foundation makes it a danger that cannot be overstated. Equally dangerous are the misleading attempts to dismiss awareness of its territorial ambitions and muddy its imperialistic nature.
Failure to address the extent to which these expansionist ideas are inscribed indelibly in their settler-colonial project will have detrimental implications. Even the so-called “two- state solution”, always a distraction from recognizing the fundamental illegality of the occupation, is an illusionary mantra that has been rejected by the “Israeli” regime itself, which is colonizing more land by the day with full support from the West. This support for “Israel’s” manifest destiny is echoed in the shocking 2019 presidential declaration that the Syrian Golan Heights, invaded by Israel in 1967, were to be recognized as part of the Zionist state. As sitting senior ministers within the occupation government openly declare their intent to invade and colonize Lebanon and Syria, what is to stop their US-backed armies from furthering their goals of occupying the entire region from Jordan to Iraq?
When IOF soldiers wear a “Greater Israel” badge on their uniform, signaling their aggressive intentions towards the whole region, we must believe them.
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{
"article":
{
"title" : "“Greater Israel”: A Not So Hidden Ambition",
"author" : "Sarah Sinno",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/greater-israel-ambition",
"date" : "2024-11-01 13:13:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/greater-israel-fig-2-thumb.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Supporters of Zionism, atheist and religious alike, generally rely on two points of religious dogma to validate the occupation of Palestine: the idea that followers of Judaism are “God’s chosen people”, to the exclusion of all others; and the idea that God “gave” the “children of Abraham” all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates rivers. The borders are vaguely and contradictorily defined in multiple places in the Torah (Old Testament).",
"content" : "Supporters of Zionism, atheist and religious alike, generally rely on two points of religious dogma to validate the occupation of Palestine: the idea that followers of Judaism are “God’s chosen people”, to the exclusion of all others; and the idea that God “gave” the “children of Abraham” all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates rivers. The borders are vaguely and contradictorily defined in multiple places in the Torah (Old Testament).The concept of “Eretz Israel” (Hebrew “Land of Israel”, with the connotation of expansionism that “Greater Israel” implies in English) is based on a merger of religious fundamentalism and modern political ethno-nationalism, whereby ancient texts are used to justify a modern military expansionist state.Military invasion attempts into South Lebanon since October 2024, along with recurrent calls for expanding the entity’s border by occupation leaders, have revived contention over long-entrenched Zionist territorial ambitions in the region. The shameless display of a map that engulfs Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, and parts of Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia spotted on the sleeves of occupation soldiers is hardly symbolic, nor exclusive to fringe elements of settler society. The concept of ‘Greater Israel’, long dismissed by “Israelis” and their supporters as a conspiracy theory promoted by paranoid Arabs and anti-Semites, verily captures the essence of Zionism as an expansionist settler-colonial movement with biblical, territorial claims that extend from the Nile to the Euphrates.LEFT-RIGHT DIVIDEThere is a common misconception that attributes the expansionist behavior of the Israeli entity to the most extreme factions of its society, represented by ultranationalist settlers. These are the ones who hold beliefs from biblical scriptures, whom are often caught on camera harassing and killing Palestinians, stealing their homes, burning their olive trees, and destroying crops and killing herds, all under the full protection of the Occupation Army (IOF) of course. However, to limit the occupation’s aggressive aspirations to conspicuous right-wing extremists is a misreading that leads to the prevailing tendency to appeal to left-right, or religious-secular, nuances within the Zionist entity. This deceptive framing is especially popular among Western liberals.The public “Israeli” attitude towards its internal affairs does, however, reflect a polarity. The culture is characterized by a religious-secular divide, which involves ongoing debates over the status of religion, the character of the entity as a “Jewish state”, and its territorial borders. This left-right dichotomy exists over a range of internal issues concerned with political and socio-economic questions. However, when it comes to the colonial-expansionist identity of the entity, that dispute most certainly dissolves, and makes no difference to those on the receiving end of its terror.“Israeli” leaders from across the political spectrum have collectively and directly contributed to the military occupation of Palestine, creeping into more territory by the day, in a steady, consistent and systematic manner since the very establishment of the entity. To clarify, it is not only the likes of Daniela Weiss, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich whose aspirations are problematic, and dangerous, and “extreme”.To name just a few, the first Prime Minister of the occupation state, the ‘secular’ David Ben Gurion, who led the largest socialist- Zionist party, was also a chief architect of the 1948 Nakba1. It was Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, the founder of the Labor Party, who occupied the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai desert, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem following the 1967 Six Day War. The most ‘moderate’ of them all, Yitzhak Rabin, hailed as ‘a peacemaker,’ actually accelerated land theft in the West Bank, and when asked, “what is to be done with the Palestinian population?” he responded with a hand gesture motioning to ‘drive them out!’2Most importantly, these leaders did not emerge from a vacuum; they were brought to power by “Israeli” voters, who also showed overwhelming support for the ongoing genocide against Gaza. Back in November 2023, only 3% of Israelis were in favor of a permanent, “unconditional” ceasefire3. The annihilation of Gaza unifies the settler state left and right alike.FROM THE NILE TO THE EUPHRATESThe possibility of establishing a Zionist entity in Uganda, Argentina or the Sinai Peninsula4 was initially considered towards the end of the 19th century by Theodore Herzl, the founding father of Zionism. However, the idea that a Jewish entity must spread across the so-called ‘historic biblical land of the Jews’ in Palestine took precedence.In his 1898 diaries, Herzl mentions a discussion with Max Bodenheimer, another notable figure of the Zionist movement and his close associate, who suggests that a ‘Jewish State’ should extend “from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates”5, an idea which Herzl approved to be ‘in part excellent’. In his 1896 pamphlet, Der Judenstaat, Herzl envisions an Israeli entity that would set out as follows: “the northern frontier is to be the mountains facing Cappadocia in Turkiye; the southern, the Suez Canal’6. He also points out that it would serve as a “wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism”7.It’s worth mentioning that Herzl’s legacy still reverberates powerfully across the entity today, to the extent that the Knesset passed the Herzl Law8 as recently as 2004. The Herzl Law makes it mandatory for all Israelis to study his work in order to “structure the state of Israel, its goal and image in accordance with his Zionist vision”.Rabbi Fischmann, a member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine who assisted in drafting “Israel’s” Declaration of Independence, explained at the U.N. Special Committee of Enquiry on 9 July 9, 1947 that “the Promised Land was quite a large one:, from the river of Egypt, up to the Euphrates”, and that “the promise was given to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, about 4000 years ago and it was reaffirmed to Moses”9.There is no shortage of examples of Zionist leaders expressing their ambition of establishing a “Greater Israel”, but it is important to keep one thing in mind: The Zionist movement underwent many phases, and Zionist ideologues’ opinions about the exact definition of ‘a greater Israel’ and the ideal delineation of its borders fluctuated throughout the years.ONGOING COLONIZATION OF PALESTINEGiven the constraining circumstances surrounding Zionist colonization in its early days10, Zionist expediency understood that to gain leverage, a temporary compromise between its grandiose territorial ambitions, and its immediate instrumental needs, was required.The Zionist movement was willing to come to terms with less territory at first, in exchange for a ‘state’ with political sovereignty11. However, its determination to seize more when a ripe opportunity came along was never abandoned, as a comparison of historic and present-day maps reveals.In 1948, the Zionist state stole 78% of Palestine. Ever since, new rounds of aggression and expansion have been implemented in an unfettered manner12. Since 1967, 100,000 hectares of Palestinian lands have been stolen13. In the first months of the genocide in Gaza alone, Israel stole 1,270 hectares of Palestinian land14.In fact, records of evidence show that through exercising patience, the colonial occupation has patiently been playing the long game, gradually bringing more Palestinian land under its control by the day. To claim otherwise – that Israel will remain indefinitely satisfied with dominating only a fragment of the land that it maintains belongs to the Jewish people – would be absurd15. In fact, this was accurately expressed in 1937 by Ben Gurion, a central figure in the founding phase of the colonial entity, who also served as its first Prime Minister for almost 15 years “a partial Jewish State is not the end, but only the beginning…16’’, and “we shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today, but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them”17, implying that Israel should never settle for any limitations concerning its borders. This is precisely why, up until the present day, Israel has failed to define its borders.THE LITANI RIVERIf we consider our current situation, one year into the genocide in Gaza, Israel is attempting to create a “buffer zone” in South Lebanon, something it has incessantly attempted to do since its inception: in 1948, as well as 1978, 1982-2000 and 2006. Amid its current inability to deter Hezbollah from launching attacks against it in support of Gaza, Israel has been seeking to change the status quo by pushing the resistance away from Lebanon’s southern border, and beyond the Litani specifically. Historically, the Litani River has always held strategic importance for Zionist ambitions.The Litani, the longest river in Lebanon, stretches 170 kilometers southward from the Beqaa Valley, flows along the eastern front of Lebanon’s mountain range, and diverts sharply westward towards the Mediterranean Sea, north of Tyre. Historical documents revealing Zionist plans to take control of it date back as far as prior to the establishment of the entity. Its importance is due to it being a vital water source, along with the fact that its surroundings are of military-strategic value.The head of the World Zionist Organization, who would later become the occupation state’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, put forward a map for a proposed Jewish colony at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The map he presented fell short of the land guaranteed in accordance with ‘God’s Promise’, from the Nile to the Euphrates18. Rather, the proposed borders were drawn according to geopolitical calculations to dominate water resources in the region, incorporating:“First the whole of Mandated Palestine … secondly, southern Lebanon, including the towns of Tyre and Sidon, the headwaters of the River Jordan on Mount Hermon and the southern portion of the Litani River… thirdly, on the Syrian front, the Golan Heights, including the town of Quneitra, the River Yarmuk and El-Himmeh Hot Springs … fourthly, on the Jordan front, the whole of the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea and the Eastern Highlands up to the outskirts of Amman, running southwards along the Hejaz Railway to the Gulf of Aqaba, leaving Jordan with no access to the sea; fifthly, on the Egyptian front, from EI-Arish on the Mediterranean in a straight southerly direction to the Gulf of Aqaba”.19The priority of accessing water resources was also articulated in a 1919 letter Weizmann sent to David Lloyd George, Prime Minister and head of the British delegation, in which he wrote:“The whole economic future of Palestine is dependent upon its water supply for irrigation and for electric power, and the water supply must mainly be derived from the slopes of Mount Hermon [Golan Heights], from the headwaters of the Jordan, and from the Litani River in Lebanon”It wasn’t until 1967 that Israel would partially fulfill its aspiration of controlling more territory and dominating water resources by occupying the Syrian Golan Heights, East of the Jordan River, as well as the Sea of Galilee, also known as ‘Lake Tiberias,’ —but not the Litani River. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan was quoted saying that “Israel had achieved provisionally satisfying frontiers, with the exception of those with Lebanon.” The idea of occupying South Lebanon was enthusiastically adopted by Moshe Dayan as well as Ben Gurion20, and was also referred to in the diaries of Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett21.Ben Gurion’s conviction of an Israel with the Litani as its northern border was noted in a book he published in 191822. This idea would remain an essential part of his vision for the entity for years to come23, as would the idea of redrawing the borders by fragmenting Lebanon to allow for the establishment of a Christian state with with the Litani as its southern border managed by ‘Israel’.Zionist plans to annex the region or expand its control over it are not a thing of the past – on the contrary, they always tend to resurface. Established in 2024, a group called “The South Lebanon Movement” has been advocating for the colonization of South Lebanon24.HEGEMONY THROUGH DISRUPTIONZionist expansionism does not only manifest as direct occupation and control of territory. When the entity abstains from or is unable to claim land, it makes use of other cost- effective tools to spread its hegemony.This was best articulated in a notorious article that recently resurfaced25 entitled “A Strategy For Israel In The Nineteen Eighties” published in 1982 in the quarterly Kivunim – a journal of the Department of Information of the World Zionist Organization that encapsulates the Zionist ideology. The piece was written by journalist and senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official Oded Yinon, who precisely advocated for a strategic divide-and-rule plan to fragment the region in Israel’s favor:“Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short-term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi’ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan. This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area in the long run, and that aim is already within our reach today”26.This describes, in great detail, the current track on which the Levant is heading, confirming the premise of this strategy which was laid out forty years ago. More recently in 2002, then- former president Netanyahu testified before US Congress in fervent favor of “taking out Saddam” by invading and destroying Iraq. This was not about regional peace — remember that a large part of Iraq is contained in “Greater Israel” — the goal was fragmenting and weakening all nations contained within the land of “God’s promise”. Therefore rather than being cohesive nations, the fragmentation of these historically diverse states into sectarian and ethnic groupings, where sub- state identities are exacerbated and mired in conflict, makes them more vulnerable to “Israeli” hegemony, and less capable of projecting power and coordinating action against it. This creates the ideal grounds for submission to the entity’s greater plans. In that case, even if a “Greater Israel” isn’t physically achieved, it will at the very least still be capable of imposing its supremacy over the region.CONCLUSIONIt requires no extensive amount of research to identify from “Israel’s” behavioral pattern, along with statements issued by its officials, that its appetite for expansion is far from quenched. We are witnessing this appetite in real-time. The trajectory of this entity, since its illegitimate establishment in 1948, is self-evident to those of us who have been experiencing its brutality daily. It makes no difference whether it is driven by biblical scriptures associated with the return of “God’s chosen people to the promised land” and the fulfillment of messianic prophecies, or rooted in pragmatic secularism, linked its current territorial occupation, conspires to annex more land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, or conquer the entire area, from the Nile to the Euphrates, the supremacy engrained in its very foundation makes it a danger that cannot be overstated. Equally dangerous are the misleading attempts to dismiss awareness of its territorial ambitions and muddy its imperialistic nature.Failure to address the extent to which these expansionist ideas are inscribed indelibly in their settler-colonial project will have detrimental implications. Even the so-called “two- state solution”, always a distraction from recognizing the fundamental illegality of the occupation, is an illusionary mantra that has been rejected by the “Israeli” regime itself, which is colonizing more land by the day with full support from the West. This support for “Israel’s” manifest destiny is echoed in the shocking 2019 presidential declaration that the Syrian Golan Heights, invaded by Israel in 1967, were to be recognized as part of the Zionist state. As sitting senior ministers within the occupation government openly declare their intent to invade and colonize Lebanon and Syria, what is to stop their US-backed armies from furthering their goals of occupying the entire region from Jordan to Iraq?When IOF soldiers wear a “Greater Israel” badge on their uniform, signaling their aggressive intentions towards the whole region, we must believe them.REFERENCES Farber, S. (2020). A Zionist State at Any Cost. Jacobin. Retrieved from: https:// jacobin.com/2020/04/david-ben-gurion-state-at-any-cost-review ↩ Shipler, K. (1979). Israel Bars Rabin From Relating ‘48 Eviction of Arabs. New YorkTimes. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/1979/10/23/archives/israel- bars-rabin-from-relating-48-eviction-of-arabs-sympathy-for.html ↩ JP Staff (202). Most Israelis support humanitarian pause, but only if hostages released – poll.The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved from: https://www.jpost.com/israel- news/article-772623 ↩ Erakat, N. (2019). Justice For Some: Law and Question in Palestine. Standford University Press. ↩ Herzl,T. (1960).The complete diaries ofTheodor Herzl (R. Patai, Ed.; H. Zohn, Trans.). Herzl Press. ↩ United Nations General Assembly Thirty Second Session (1977). New York. Retrieved from: https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/nl7/803/48/pdf/nl780348.pdf ↩ Herzl, T. (1896) The Jewish State. Leipzig and Wien: M. Breitenstein’s Verlags- Buchhandlung ↩ Abuhazeira, O. (2007). Herzl Day. YNet News. Retrieved from: https://www. ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3393335,00.html ↩ United Nations General Assembly (1947). Special Committee on Palestine: Verbatim Record of the Twenty Fourth Meeting. Jerusalem Palestine. Retrieved from: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-210700/ ↩ Sayegh, F. (1965). Zionist Colonialism in Palestine. Palestine Liberation Organization. Retrieved from: https://www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/ DOC12_scans/12.zionist.colonialism.palestine.1965.pdf ↩ Galnoor, I. (2009).The Zionist Debates on Partition (1919-1947). Israel Studies, 14(2), 74–87. Retrieved from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30245854?read- now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents ↩ Haddad, M. (2020). Palestine and Israel: Mapping an Annexation. Al Jazeera. Retrieved from: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/6/26/palestine-and-israel- mapping-an-annexation ↩ Israel’s Occupation: 50Years of Dispossession (2017). Amnesty International. Retrieved from: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel- occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/ ↩ Imbert, L. (2024). Israel grabs largest tract of West Bank land in three decades, Le Monde. Retrieved from: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/07/06/ israel-grabs-largest-tract-of-west-bank-land-in-three-decades_6676844_4.html ↩ Sayegh, F. (1965). Zionist Colonialism in Palestine. Palestine Liberation Organization. Retrieved from: https://www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/ DOC12_scans/12.zionist.colonialism.palestine.1965.pdf ↩ Bar-Zohar, M. (1977). Ben-Gurion: A Biography. NewYork: Delacorte Press. ↩ Chomsky, N. (1984). The Fateful Triangle: the United States, Israel and the Palestinians, Montreal: Black Rose Books. ↩ Sayegh, F. (1965). Zionist Colonialism in Palestine. Palestine Liberation Organization. Retrieved from: https://www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/ DOC12_scans/12.zionist.colonialism.palestine.1965.pdf ↩ United Nations General Assembly Thirty Second Session (1977). New York. Retrieved from: https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/nl7/803/48/pdf/nl780348.pdf ↩ Israel in Lebanon (2009). Al Jazeera. Retrieved from: https://www.aljazeera. com/news/2009/8/12/israel-in-lebanon ↩ Rokach, L. (1985) Israel’s SacredTerrorism: A Study Based on Moshe Sharett’s Personal Diary and Other Documents. Belmont, Massachusetts: Association of Arab American University Graduates ↩ Ben Gurion, D. & Ben Zvi,Y. (1918). EretzYisrael in the Past and Present. New York: Poale Zion Palestine Committee. ↩ Shlaim, A. (2001).The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. W. W. Norton & Company ↩ OLJ (2024). Who is this ‘small group’ of Israelis who dream of colonizing southern Lebanon? L’Orient Le Jour. Retrieved from: https://today.lorientlejour. com/article/1410033/who-is-this-small-group-of-israelis-who-dream-of-colonizing- southern-lebanon.html ↩ Matoi, E. (2024). Greater Israel: an Ongoing Expansion Plan for the Middle East and North Africa. Middle East Political and Economic Institute. Retrieved from: https://mepei.com/greater-israel-an-ongoing-expansion-plan-for-the-middle- east-and-north-africa/ ↩ Yinon, O. (1982). A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties. Kivunim. Retrieved from: https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/A_strategy_for_Israel_in_the_Nineteen_ Eighties.pdf ↩ "
}
,
"relatedposts": [
{
"title" : "Mark Zuckerberg Went to the Prada Show In Milan. It Wasn’t For Fashion",
"author" : "Louis Pisano",
"category" : "essay",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/mark-zuckerberg-prada-meta-glasses",
"date" : "2026-03-06 09:07:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Pisano_Meta_glasses.jpeg",
"excerpt" : "When Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan took their seats in the front row at Prada’s Milan runway show on February 26, the photographs circulated quickly—the Meta CEO in his now-familiar uniform of expensive basics, watching models move down the runway in Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ latest vision of intellectual austerity.",
"content" : "When Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan took their seats in the front row at Prada’s Milan runway show on February 26, the photographs circulated quickly—the Meta CEO in his now-familiar uniform of expensive basics, watching models move down the runway in Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ latest vision of intellectual austerity.He was there because Meta is in active discussions with Prada to develop a line of branded AI smart glasses, a logical next step for a company whose Ray-Ban partnership has become one of the more surprising consumer electronics stories of the decade. Sales more than tripled in 2025, and on Meta’s January earnings call, Zuckerberg described them as “some of the fastest-growing consumer electronics in history.” The Oakley deal followed. Prada, if negotiations close, would be the latest luxury house recruited to solve a stubborn distribution problem: how to get people to wear a computer on their face without making them feel like they’re wearing a computer on their face. The answer, apparently, is to put it in a frame that costs as much as a car payment. The Meta Oakley Vanguards can be yours for the low cost of $549.Zuckerberg is not executing this pivot alone. Over the past year, tech’s richest men have staged a quiet, coordinated rebrand away from the founder-in-a-hoodie archetype toward something more deliberately cultured. Jeff Bezos has become a fixture in the fashion press, his aesthetic transformation carefully managed, his public image now signaling cultural seriousness alongside the financial kind. The underlying message from both men is consistent: that they are not the problem, but rather represent the future. And that the future can be beautiful and luxurious.This is what elite legitimacy looks like in our era of late-stage capitalism. When your industry faces sustained scrutiny across antitrust proceedings, data privacy legislation, and the slow erosion of public trust, you don’t just deploy lobbyists and communications teams. You acquire taste. You sit front row at shows with a century of cultural prestige behind them. You let the associations do work that no PR campaign could. Cultural capital operates differently from paid media; it feels earned, and its effects are harder to trace.Which is why the timing of Zuckerberg’s Milan appearance is worth examining more closely. At the same time that Zuckerberg was cementing a potential partnership with one of fashion’s most storied feminist houses, his company’s flagship wearable product was generating very different press coverage.In January 2026, BBC News investigated a pattern of male content creators using Ray-Ban Meta glasses to secretly film women during staged pickup encounters on the street, then uploading the footage to TikTok and Instagram as dating advice content. Dilara, a 21-year-old from London filmed on her lunch break, found her phone number visible in footage that had accumulated 1.3 million views, leading to a night of abusive calls and messages. Kim, a 56-year-old filmed on a beach in West Sussex, received thousands of inappropriate messages after her video reached 6.9 million views, and was still receiving them six months later. None of the women had seen any recording indicator. The BBC separately found YouTube tutorials demonstrating how to cover or disable the small LED light that Meta claims signals when the glasses are filming.The problem has spread internationally. In early 2026, a Russian vlogger traveled through Ghana and Kenya filming covert encounters with women using smart glasses (though it has not been confirmed that they were Meta-brand glasses) and posting footage to TikTok, YouTube, and a private Telegram channel where more explicit content was available by paid subscription. Some women were filmed in intimate situations without any knowledge that they were being recorded, let alone distributed to a global audience. Ghana’s Gender Minister confirmed that some victims were receiving psychological support, noting that exposure of this kind carries severe social consequences in conservative communities. Kenya’s Gender Minister called it a serious case of gender-based violence. Meta’s response, when asked for comment, was to point to the LED indicator light and its terms of service, a response that privacy advocates have consistently noted is equivalent to putting a “do not steal” sign on an unlocked car.Hundreds of similar accounts exist across TikTok alone, and the women who appear in them have had no recourse beyond reporting content that has already been viewed millions of times. These cases sit alongside The New York Times’ recent revelation of internal Meta plans for a feature called “Name Tag,” which would allow wearers to identify strangers in real-time by pulling data from Meta’s ecosystem of Instagram and Facebook profiles. Refuge and Women’s Aid told The Independent that this capability would pose a direct and serious risk to domestic abuse survivors, women who have rebuilt their lives at new addresses, hoping that distance and anonymity might be enough. Refuge reported a 62%rise in referrals to its technology-facilitated abuse specialist team in 2025, driven in part by wearable tech being used by abusers to monitor and control partners. Real-time facial recognition running on glasses indistinguishable from any other pair does not care about restraining orders.Into this landscape walks a potential Prada co-branded version of the same device. And there is something worth sitting with in the specific choice of Prada as Meta’s luxury target.Miuccia Prada has spent decades articulating, through her collections and in her public statements, a sustained engagement with feminist thought, grappling explicitly with how women are perceived, constrained, and resist the codes that govern their visibility in public and private life. The Prada woman, as a cultural figure, has never been decorative, according to Miuccia. She is thinking—and she is often acutely aware of being watched.Whether Miuccia Prada or the Prada Group’s leadership has genuinely reckoned with what women’s safety advocates have documented about the device they are being asked to co-brand is a question the company has not yet been asked loudly enough to their consumers. A Prada-branded pair of AI glasses would not simply be a licensing deal; it would be an aesthetic endorsement of the technology inside the frame, lending the cultural authority of a house that has built its identity around the intelligence and autonomy of women to Meta’s surveillance hardware.There is a term for what happens when corporations facing public scrutiny attach themselves to respected cultural institutions, when they fund museum wings, sponsor literary prizes, or plant themselves in the front rows of fashion weeks historically associated with progressive values. The association is meant to transfer accountability and even responsibility. The institution’s credibility flows toward the brand, and the brand’s controversies recede into the background noise of cultural life.Zuckerberg’s Milan appearance fits this pattern. A Prada partnership would give Meta’s smart glasses access to a female luxury consumer demographic they have struggled to reach, while simultaneously borrowing the feminist credibility of a house that has spent decades earning it, at the exact moment when critics, charities, and regulators are arguing most loudly that the product threatens women’s safety. The front row seat was not incidental to the pitch. It was the pitch.But the women who have had their faces filmed without consent, their phone numbers exposed to millions of strangers, their locations potentially traceable by the men who mean them harm, don’t get to sit front row or get a rebrand. What they get is a company whose products have been repeatedly documented and enabled their harassment, now aligning itself with a symbol of female empowerment, hoping the association does its work before the reckoning catches up.Miuccia Prada has built her career on the argument that what we put on our bodies makes an argument about the world. If she signs off on this, the argument she’ll be making won’t be the one she intended."
}
,
{
"title" : "Freezing Time with Matthew Johnson",
"author" : "Matthew Johnson",
"category" : "visual",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/matthew-johnson",
"date" : "2026-03-05 21:00:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/MJxSF_Iran_1.jpg",
"excerpt" : "What we are witnessing is beyond what words, analysis, or hot takes can capture. It is an impossible tragedy.",
"content" : "What we are witnessing is beyond what words, analysis, or hot takes can capture. It is an impossible tragedy.Through his photographic series “Screen Time”, Johnson uses long-exposure techniques to capture moving TV broadcasts, creating images to hold the intensity of these atrocious moments. Praying for the bombs to stop.Israeli intercepter missilesBeirutTehranDisplacement from the SouthRiyadh embassey attack (unconfirmed)Iranian drone strike on high rise in BahrainDubaiIranian missile launch"
}
,
{
"title" : "How to unpack and resist a pedophilic beauty standard: In a post-Epstein file world",
"author" : "Emma Cieslik",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/how-to-unpack-and-resist-a-pedophilic-beauty-standard",
"date" : "2026-03-05 13:58:00 -0500",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Justice_Store_13594585535.jpg",
"excerpt" : "In January, the Department of Justice released a 3,000,000-document drop of Epstein files which mentioned among others Les Wexner, the billionaire behind Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch among other brands. Although Wexner was already labelled a co-conspirator with Epstein by the FBI, this newest file drop raises questions about how Wexner–and by connection Epstein–were connected to clothing marketed towards young girls. In the aftermath, a whole generation of women are deconstructing how a pedophile was actively part of the marketing that eroticized and idealized prepubescent girls’ bodies as the ideal.",
"content" : "In January, the Department of Justice released a 3,000,000-document drop of Epstein files which mentioned among others Les Wexner, the billionaire behind Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch among other brands. Although Wexner was already labelled a co-conspirator with Epstein by the FBI, this newest file drop raises questions about how Wexner–and by connection Epstein–were connected to clothing marketed towards young girls. In the aftermath, a whole generation of women are deconstructing how a pedophile was actively part of the marketing that eroticized and idealized prepubescent girls’ bodies as the ideal.It is a reckoning with how American girlhood was shaped by men like Wexner and Epstein that informed not only the clothing that was marketed and sold to us but also the body shame that came with it, along with purity culture enforced by the very Christian leaders whose writings Epstein sent to his own victims.Birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein attributed to Donald Trump. The text is censored due to potential copyright concerns (authorship of this work is disputed), though the rest of the piece is composed of simple shape and thus falls into the public domain.Wexner was the creator of L Brands, the retail company behind Victoria’s Secret, Bath & Body Works, and Abercrombie & Fitch, and owned TOO, Inc., the parent company of Justice and other brands marketed directly towards young girls. This past Friday, Wexner participated in a deposition to House Democrats about revelations from this latest file drop, claiming that he was “duped by a world-class con man.”Wexner notes that Epstein became his financial advisor back in the 1980s and at one point, served as his power of attorney. In this same deposition, Wexner revealed that he cut ties with Epstein after he discovered that Epstein stole over $100 million from him.Wexner called the accusations that he was part of Epstein’s sex trafficking “outrageous untrue statements and hurtful rumor, innuendo, and speculation,” claiming that his relationship with Epstein was strictly business. He also denied Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre’s claim that he was one of the men that Epstein trafficked her to. Wexner similarly denied knowing Maria Farmer, who accused Epstein of sexually assaulting her in 1996. Farmer claimed that after she was assaulted, Wexner’s security staff kept her on the property until a parent could pick her up, but Wexner said that “I never met her, didn’t know she was here, didn’t know she was abused.”But House Democrats repeatedly questioned how Wexner could not have known that this sex trafficking was happening and that it was fueled by his own money. The Democrats cast doubt on his story, arguing that “there would be no Epstein Island, no plane, no money to traffic women and girls without the support of Les Wexner.”While Victoria’s Secret sexualization of infantilized women is not new–we have known for years that the modelling industry behind Victoria’s Secret not only targeted children but sold people an ideal of beauty conflated with girlhood, this new file drop reveals that this was intentional by Wexner and others that sold us a form of girlhood that enabled predators.It’s no mistake that President Trump, another person mentioned over 38,000 times in the Epstein files, also owned Miss Teen USA pageants. In fact, in the deposition, Wexner said the only time that Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump would have interacted would have been at a Victoria’s Secret fashion show. Both attended fashion shows.But this latest Epstein file release is a wide scale realization that Wexner wasn’t the only one grooming a generation–think of what came out about producer Dan Schneider (who was also named in the Epstein files) after the release of the 2024 docuseries Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV. Schneider oversaw the rampant, calculated sexualization of young actors.As children who watched Schneider shows and wore Wexner’s clothes, we are reckoning with the ways that many of us were exploited as children within a system marketing sexualized girlhood to us. Artist Sam Rueter put words to many people’s emotions following the latest Epstein file drop: “women in America are in deep grieving. Not because we are surprised or overcome with disbelief … but because we have to reckon with the cruel proof of our entire lives being a commodified, fetishized version of girlhood: and we are meeting, all at once, the children we were and could not protect.”In the aftermath, how can you reckon with and reject pedophilic beauty standards in the aftermath of the Epstein file drop?1. Do not spend money or support brands that sexualize children or infantilized models.While at first glance, this includes for many of us Victoria’s Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch, and other brands owned by Wexner, this also includes brands that market sexualized clothing or content to children. This month, the babycare brand Frida Baby came under fire for using phrases suggesting sexual innuendo on their baby products. The packaging had the phrases “I get turned on quickly,” “How about a quickie,” and “This is the closest your husband’s gonna get to a threesome.” Other brands like Balenciaga and Fashion Nova have also come under fire, but a number of other brands and fashion corporations are to blame–according to a 2011 study, ⅓ of all children’s clothing for girls is sexualized; “tween” stores like Abercrombie Kids, the study finds, are most to blame.In a capitalist society, sadly our most powerful tool is choosing where we spend our money, so it’s important to boycott and call out brands that sexualize children and market infantilized models.2. Do not consume and boycott any media sensualizing or sexualizing children by avoiding AI, social media platforms, and other content.Sadly in the age of AI, a number of digital platforms have been shown to generate and share sexualized images of minors, and according to the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), a number of online platforms including Instagram, Roblox, GitHub, eBay, Discord, X, Reddit, Spotify, and Snapchat fail to protect children from sexual content, putting them at risk for grooming and sexual exploitation. Avoid AI for this reason (among many others, including environmental impact) but also if you can, boycott social media platforms and call your representatives to urge the government to require these platforms to take actionable steps to protect children.This also applies to what may be some of your favorite Classic movies, television shows, or music, but know that by watching the movie, show, or consuming the content, you not only give your consent but also support its continued existence on streaming platforms. This is also a timely reflection given what has come out in the past three years about children on Nickelodeon; what once seemed innocent, at most odd, is revealed to be intimately connected to abusive behavior and sexualizing children.This also goes for new content, like the new season of America’s Next Top Model.3. Do not dress up as sexy babies, or sexualized children.While the Spirit Halloween costume section was full of sexy babies in the early 2000s, I hope it’s clear that any costumes that sexualizes children or infantilized adults contribute to the perception that sexualizing children is acceptable or funny. This is a simple step that you and others can take next Halloween when choosing your costume, or when engaging in kink and BDSM cultures.And if you are buying clothing for your children or those of friends and family, do not buy them clothing that sexualizes them. This includes snarky sayings like “lady’s man” on a baby’s smock or “heartbreaker” on a baby’s bib. While some people may brush it off, especially if the child can’t read, studies have shown.) that children may begin to view their bodies as sexual objects and may be treated differently, including being targeted by sexual predators.4. Do not police other people’s bodies, period.This may be harder for people who were raised in systems where unshaved armpits or unplucked eyebrows are seen as unkempt (spoiler alert, this is connected to transphobic, racist beauty standards), but pedophilic beauty standards are built not only on a beauty standard that idealizes not just a hairless body but also a small, underdeveloped one. Commenting on other’s bodies, even if it’s not meant to criticize their appearance, can contribute to body image issues, and at the root of pedophilic beauty standards are the very eating disorders glorified in the early 2000s.This beauty ideal (perpetuated not only by companies like Victoria’s Secret but by magazines, music corporations, and media companies that glorified baby-ified women) not only aided and abetted the development of eating disorders but also severe body dysphoria that persists to this day. I distinctly remember friends of mine that experienced amenorrhea, or the absence of regular periods, because of eating disorders. Without vital nutrients, their periods stopped coming regularly, and with it, the development of their bodies—stunting their growth. Many of them remain small or underdeveloped because of childhood eating disorders.The same marketing and cultural influencers that encouraged us that skinniness was not acceptable but necessary also enabled young girls to stop getting their periods, the one thing that many cultures identify as their transition to womanhood. To be clear, a child getting a period does not make them an adult.5. Start with your own beauty routine.Do you dislike shaving or waxing your legs, armpits or other parts of your body? Do you dread expensive, medically unnecessary skincare routines and Botox meant to glorify perpetually young bodies? Good news–you don’t have to do these things.While our American beauty standards are rooted in the model of a young girl, they are not absolute and they only change when people pressure corporations that have marketed these standards to us in order to sell their products. If you can (for cultural and sensory reasons, not everyone is able to), take the first step and reject the urge to shave, wax, pluck, or inject.As someone with autism, I admit that shaving my legs and armpits is a sensory issue informed by pedophilic beauty standards, but it’s still a practice that helps me feel at home in my body. None of these suggestions are asking you to reject what makes you feel at home in your body. Some of the body care processes that pedophilic culture has coopted are ones that help to affirm our genders–practices that affirm who we are and how we feel at home in our bodies should never be challenged, but these steps encourage us to think about what has informed not only our view of what is an attractive woman (often modelled after young girls) but also what a woman is.6. Reject transphobic, racist beauty standards. Consume brands that showcase models of diverse body and beauty types.Because the urge to wax, shave, and pluck our hair is not only rooted in pedophilia, it’s also rooted in White supremacist transphobia that essentializes the beautiful body as inherently thin, White and visually binary. Pedophilic culture is sexist culture is purity culture is racist culture is transphobic culture. Gender essentialism is the bedrock of sexist beauty standards that seek to make adult women feel bad about our bodies. Fighting transphobia goes hand in hand with fighting gender essentialist beauty standards and by extension, pedophilic ones too!In a capitalist economy, much of our power is defined by money. Use that to your advantage! Along with not supporting brands that sexualize children and infantilize adults, seek out brands that showcase and celebrate adult bodies. Some great ones include WRAY, SmartGlamour, Lucy & Yak, and Modcloth that purposefully create clothing for and highlight models of diverse body types.7. Encourage and embody body neutrality.In this same vein, embody body neutrality by refusing to assign value judgement to your body and others’ bodies. Body positivity is great, but it still assigns a value judgement to bodies–for many fat people like me, celebrating our bodies much less feeling beautiful in them is rare because of thinness culture (especially in the age of Ozempic), but assigning our bodies value judgements still exacerbates the problem. Bodies are bodies that help us to stay alive. Need helpful starting steps? Check out Jessi Kneeland’s 2022 book Body Neutrality: A Revolution to Overcoming Body Image Issues.8. Finally, reject new-age purity culture.Although the Purity Culture Movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s is already facing a public reckoning, other Christian groups are trying to rebrand purity culture for the next generation. Back in 2022, I wrote about how modern social media influencers like Girl Defined are rebranding purity culture for a new generation, and I have even argued that modern anti-trans legislation is a new form of purity culture policing queer bodies. Take note of where purity culture continues to exist and call it out!And importantly, fight school districts, religious institutions, and public spaces that enforce sexist clothing rules like the ones we all remember from childhood. The fact that young girls were told that we would distract not just our male classmates but also teachers is deeply upsetting and shifts blame onto children and victims rather than adults and predators.This is a deeply upsetting reckoning but one that we have to undertake personally and communally. I hope that these recommendations are helpful first steps to move towards unpacking the very beauty standards and sexualization that groomed a whole generation of girls and women."
}
]
}
