Phalapoem editor, 14/11/25
In the long, tortured history of political doublespeak, few statements sink lower than the recent declaration by a belligerent political strongman—let’s call Smotritch what he is: a thug—who claimed that “without illegal settlements there is no security.”
It takes a special kind of moral inversion to argue that the path to safety lies in violating international law, displacing families, and turning civilian land into fortified fascist outposts. But for this thug, legality, ethics, and human dignity have never been obstacles—only inconveniences.
To call settlements “illegal” is not an opinion. It is a matter of international consensus. When a politician openly admits that his vision of security depends on illegality, he is confessing something far darker:
that he can only maintain control through domination, expropriation, and permanent war and apartheid.
Instead of offering diplomacy, coexistence, or long-term stability, he offers bulldozers, barbed wire, and nazi checkpoints, wrapped in the language of “security.”
This isn’t leadership. It’s illegal and brutal occupation dressed as strategy.
The thug’s statement reveals a truth he never intended to share:
the so-called security he champions is not universal. It is a selective security—
security for one group purchased at the cost of terrorizing another.
Under his vision, security does not mean peace.
It means permanent militarization.
It means normalization of the abnormal and illegal.
It means normalisation of theft and destruction.
It means making an entire people invisible so that a political project can continue unchallenged.
There is a chilling historical echo in such rhetoric. When leaders claim they need illegal actions to achieve safety, societies slip into cycles of violence that become self-justifying.
First come the illegal settlements.
Then come the walls.
Then come the armed guards.
And finally comes the narrative that the system must remain forever because “look at how dangerous the situation is.”
A crisis manufactured to justify its own perpetuation.
The thug’s words deserve not just criticism but shame.
Shame for using “security” as a mask for expansion.
Shame for treating the lives and homes of others as disposable.
Shame for reducing a deeply human conflict to the geometry of land grabs.
No society that relies on illegality for its safety deserves to call itself secure.
No leader who glorifies violations of law deserves the trust of any people.
Real security does not grow out of stolen land, demolished homes, or the normalization of apartheid and fascist policies.
Real security is built through justice—something this thug, and those like him, fear more than any external threat.
Because justice would expose the lie at the heart of their political empire:
that their power depends not on protecting people, but on controlling them.