A genocidal mood in Israel

JVL Introduction

Below are extracts from the latest mailing from Gush Shalom, the Israeli Peace bloc, 17th October, reporting on the dire mood prevailing in Israel.

Adam Keller writes: “I have been active in the Israeli peace camp since I was a high school student in Tel Aviv in 1969. In all these years, I can’t remember a time as grim and horrifying as these days since October 7th.”

Now he reports that the streets of Tel Aviv are flooded with red stickers reading “Exterminate Gaza!” They don’t say “Destroy!” or “Flatten!” but clearly and explicitly call for the extermination of Gaza.

And he stresses, too, that the idea of Genocide has now entered the public agenda in the State of Israel.

In the face of this Gush Shalom is calling for hostage and prisoner exchanges as the top priority, a demand no longer restricted to radical groups.

RK

The Most Horrifying of Times – And What Can We Still Do?

By Adam Keller

What happened on October 7 stunned and shocked us all.  The reports and pictures of the horror in the destroyed kibbutzim on the Gaza Strip border fueled Israeli society with a tidal wave of blind hatred and calls for bloody revenge, a wave that grew stronger day by day. Under the slogan “Hamas are Nazis, Hamas is ISIS!” public opinion was prepared for a total war – a war with the declared aim of destroying Hamas, and which would inevitably lead to terrible death and destruction in the Gaza Strip

For many years, when I saw the word “Genocide” in the statements of radical groups in Israel and abroad, I would approach the writers and comment that – however appropriate the condemnation of Israeli acts of oppression –  Genocide is not among these acts.  But this week Roy Sharon, a “respectable” radio and TV commentator on the main Israeli broadcasting corporation, spoke very explicitly of his desire to see “a million dead bodies in Gaza”.

And the streets of Tel Aviv are flooded with red stickers reading “Exterminate Gaza!”. Not “Destroy!”, not “Flatten!” – but clearly and explicitly “Exterminate Gaza!”. “Le-Ha-Sh-Mid!” – “Exterminate!” Every Hebrew-speaking Jewish Israeli knows from a young age exactly what this word means. “Exterminate!” “Exterminate!” “Exterminate!”. Hundreds of times “Exterminate!” on every street corner.

Last Friday I walked for three hours along the Dizengoff and King George Streets in Tel Aviv.  I diligently searched for these disgusting stickers and destroyed them. I estimate that I found about 90% to 95% of what the dirty bastards had put up. It gave me momentary satisfaction, but of course it did not really affect what the pilots in the air and the soldiers on the ground already do and may yet do in the near future.

So far, there are not (yet?) a million dead bodies in Gaza. There are “only” thousands of bodies buried under the rubble of the bombed buildings, and a million people who are still alive but who have been displaced from their homes and are wandering the roads without food, without water and without shelter, and  who may at any moment fall victim to the bombs that continue to fall. That is the situation “for the time being” – and who knows just how far this madness will go?

There is no escaping the horrifying statement – the idea of Genocide has now entered the public agenda in the State of Israel, and there is every justification to use this terrible word and to beat all the drums and raise all the possible alarms. The first group in the Israeli Jewish society to speak explicitly about the danger of Genocide were “Israelis against apartheid”, a radical group that is not afraid to remain isolated and to swim even against strong currents. But it’s time for less radical people to talk about it too.

Almost immediately with the beginning of the war, demonstrations began demanding an exchange of prisoners, which persisted even when they encountered blatant violence by the right-wing people, in some cases joined by equally violent police. The demand for an exchange of captives and prisoners, for the return of the Israelis captured by Hamas and taken to Gaza, is an important and vital humanitarian demand in itself. But it is also the best way to still try to put a brake on the escalation towards a destructive and bloody ground invasion of Gaza.

An invasion in which the army would invade and crush Gaza with all its might would most likely lead to the killing of the Israeli abductees, among all the many others who would be killed.  This was expressed with characteristic bluntness and ruthlessness by the extreme right Minister Smotritz:  “We need to be cruel, not to think too much of the captives”.  Negotiating with Hamas for a prisoner exchange deal is not compatible with a total war whose goal is to completely destroy Hamas. This was explicitly stated by Tzachi Hanegbi, head of Israel’s National Security Council. The State of Israel has a choice between two courses that in practice rule out each other – either an effort to bring back the captives and abductees from Gaza, or a ground invasion that will multiply the killing and destruction already caused in the week of bombings.

Michal Warshawski, a veteran activist who had been herself among Israelis held hostage during the 1976 Entebbe plane hijacking, systematically presents on her Facebook page the demonstrations for the exchange of prisoners and that are taking place daily in various places in Israel. The material in this and the other following links is in Hebrew, but the photos are self-explanatory and some of the signs are in English (see featured image above).

…

In recent days, the demand that the Israeli government give top priority to the return of the abductees is gaining momentum and is no longer restricted to radical groups. Family members of the abductees, who are terribly anxious about their fate and who enjoy enormous sympathy and moral authority in the Israeli society, mobilized themselves for this struggle.

Avishai Brodetz from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, whose wife and three children were kidnapped, started a sit-in strike outside the gates of the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv and intends to remain there until his family is returned. He was joined by other family members, who covered a large section of the Ministry of Defense wall with pictures of their abducted dear ones and posters with their names. See here and here.

On Saturday night I was there, in front of the Ministry of Defense on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv, where hundreds of demonstrators gathered to support the family members. Clearly, they were from the “Kaplan Protest”, the mass movement which for the past six months and until the outbreak of war held every week a massive protest on the same location, to oppose Natayhau’s “Judicial Reform” and his assaults on the Supreme Court. The familiar emblems of the “Kaplan Protest” – Blue and White Israeli national flags and khaki shirts emblazoned  with the words “Brothers in Arms” – are now mobilized in demanding the return of the abductees from Gaza, combined with calling  for the resignation of Prime Minister Netanyahu – responsible for the most resounding military fiasco in the history of Israel.

In contrast to previous demonstrations, some of which were forcibly broken up by violent right-wingers, when on Saturday night some “Bibi fans” showed up and started shouting “Traitors!”, the crowd united against them, crying out: “How dare you say that to the families of the captives! Away from here, away, away, you scoundrels!”.  They did leave quickly, and then the demonstrators blocked Kaplan Street with prolonged shouts of “Bibi – Murderer! Bibi – Murderer!”.

Of course, these demonstrators were referring to Netanyahu’s responsibility for the death of 1,300 Israelis, rather than the death and destruction that the Air Force is raining down on the residents of Gaza at the same Netanyahu’s command.  Nevertheless, a Prime Minister who is called that on the streets of Tel Aviv will find it more difficult to send soldiers into the Gaza Strip, to face the deadly surprises and traps that Hamas had undoubtedly prepared for them.

The Saturday night demonstration included some of the “Kaplan Protest” people, but certainly not in the great numbers that were seen in demonstrations on the same location on the weekends before the war. Will there be more in the coming days? Protest leader Shikma Bresler announced a few days ago that the protest movement  intends  to wait “patriotically” until the end of the war, and only then mobilize big crowds to demand Netanyahu’s removal. Will the protestors change this policy now? This can have a critical effect, when large military forces are being prepared around the Gaza Strip and wait for the order to go in.

I have been active in the Israeli peace camp since I was a high school student in Tel Aviv in 1969. In all these years, I can’t remember a time as grim and horrifying as these days since October 7th. Horrible news are constantly coming in – from the Gaza Strip about the acts of an Air Force which abandoned all restraint and any pretense of moral considerations, from the West Bank about the murderous rampage of settlers under the cover of the war, and from the Lebanese border about an intensifying series of incidents that threaten to open a second bloody and destructive front in this war.

Is it still possible to stop this escalation and deterioration? That is far from certain. What is certain is that we all must must must mobilize and struggle with all our might, do everything that can still be done, all of us together – Jews and Arabs, Zionists and anti-Zionists, veteran