You ask: Why this war?, and the truth is that the answer, in Israel, is: And why not?
«No one wonders where we are headed. What matters is to keep fighting, because #Hamas, on the contrary, wants to stop, and we are here to make clear to Hamas who’s in charge. But we have to stop the war. What has #Israel gained? Was it worth it? Let’s set aside slogans like «Every country has the right to defend itself.» Besides the joy for the disaster in Gaza, what have we achieved? Nothing.»
Gideon Levy, star columnist of Israel’s leading daily #Haaretz since 1982, writes what in Europe he would never be allowed to write. He does not have an easy life like all free thinkers. But he keeps going. He keeps challenging mainstream views. Even alone. Because he knows that the fate of the Israelis is tied to the fate of the Palestinians: that with violence, you start in Gaza, and you end in Sde Teiman, the Abu Ghraib of the Negev, where the #IDF abused and humiliated, and sometimes executed, many prisoners, executing itself and its values. That’s why, on October 7th, in the early hours, when it is still unclear what is going on, and in Tel Aviv, despite rockets and sirens, life is still as usual, he looks at the Palestinians crossing the fence a bit like the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Not an attack. But a liberation. For everyone.
It isn’t so. And he will be one of the first to report from the lunar remains of the kibbutzim, without any justification for Hamas. But certainly, for Gideon Levy, October 7th was not a sudden attack. An unexpected attack. «What were we thinking?» he says. «That Gaza would forever stay in the shadow of Israel’s whims? Totally isolated? What are Palestinians supposed to live on? Why is the blockade still in place? Can someone explain to me why the future of Gaza is never discussed? Did we really think that everything would continue like this, without any reaction whatsoever?” he says. These are the opening pages of this anthology. And they are from 2014.
They date back to Operation «Protective Edge».
Which is not at all protective, he says.
Because it does not protect at all.
Of the five wars in Gaza, this is the most merciless. It goes over any edge. And yet, it is also the one with the broadest support. A support that is basically absolute. Because in Israel, he says, the problem is not #Netanyahu. The truth is that on both the right and the left, no one would act differently. «When it comes to the Palestinians, when it comes to the core issue, the core issue that Netanyahu promised simply to sweep away, the prime minister has acted as all his predecessors have acted and as all his successors will act. No one has ever even considered allowing the establishment of a Palestinian state. Nor was it Netanyahu who ordered the siege of Gaza. Netanyahu must go, there is no doubt, but Israel will continue this way.» It is no coincidence, he says, that there have been no desertions or protests in the Army. Israel only cares about what it went through. Gaza is invisible. «Since October 7th, there has been a kind of conscience-ectomy.»
Now, only force matters.
That’s how everything is faced.
Of the five wars in Gaza, this is the most merciless.
«As Ben-Gvir said after the latest airstrikes on Iran: Dardaleh! That’s now the new battle cry,» he says, referring to the Hebrew expression with which football fans call a weak shot on goal. Only blood matters. And it is never enough.
«But Palestinians are right. They have no choice but to fight for freedom with everything they have, up to their body. They have no choice but #Qassam rockets: either violence or surrender. A people who fight with kites, tunnels, tyres, scissors, Molotov cocktails, rockets against one of the most sophisticated military machines in the world is desperate. But when do we talk about Gaza? Only when there is shooting. That’s why the Palestinians have no choice but to shoot,» he says. Without weapons, they are doomed.
And the proof, he says, is Mahmoud Abbas. Who is against violence? And it is irrelevant.
Only blood matters. And it is never enough.
But what if we listened to Hamas instead?, he says. To its proposals? After saying everything that has to be said, obviously, that it is fundamentalist, that it is authoritarian, that it is ruthless, that it does not recognise Israel, that it kills civilians, that it hides in schools and hospitals, after all the criticism, he says. But in the end, Palestinians are here to stay. And so, if they are even animals, as some say, why not listen to them? «Hamas has listed the conditions under which it is willing to accept a truce,» he says – it is 2014. «Read them, and decide whether even one of them is unfair. The withdrawal of the IDF; the release of the prisoners rearrested after Gilad Shalit’s release; the end of the siege; international supervision of the Rafah border; the opening of a UN-run port and airport; the construction of an industrial zone; the extension of the fishing zone; allowing people to go from Gaza to #Jerusalem to pray; a 10-year ceasefire with the closure of airspace to Israeli jets.»
Is there anything so unreasonable? he says.
If here one attack, however wild, has caused so much hatred, so much fear, so much mistrust, he asks, what have all these years of siege done to the minds and hearts of Palestinians?
