In Gaza, Israel Is Racing to the Moral Abyss
JVL Introduction
This is a howl of anguish from Michael Sfard, Israel’s stalwart human-rights lawyer, who tirelessly defends Israeli and Palestinian human rights and peace organisations, movements and activists.
He gives no quarter to Hamas and is unsparing in his condemnation of the massacres of 7th October, as he is of those members on the left who find it hard to unhesitatingly condemn Hamas’s atrocities.
But he knows all too well that the conflict did not begin on that day: the 75 years of refugee status, 56 years of occupation, 16 years of siege have, he says, “normalized a situation where there are people worth less” – so much so that Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president and its moderate face, can say that all Gazans are responsible for Hamas’s crimes.
Sfard deplores the Israeli response and its hounding of critics of that inhumane response (see the Haaretz editorial and Israeli journalist Israel Frey reporting, in hiding after threats to his life – below).
“Moral corruption,“ Sfard says “is no less dangerous to our survival than Hamas.”
This article was originally published by Haaretz on Mon 23 Oct 2023. Read the original here.
In Gaza, Israel Is Racing to the Moral Abyss
Moral corruption is a mechanism that fuels and justifies itself in a cycle that can become endless without powerful and insistent intervention.
For us Israelis, the 75 years of refugee status that we’ve imposed on millions of Palestinians, the 56 years of occupation that we’ve imposed on millions more, and the 16 years of siege that we’ve imposed on the millions of Palestinians in Gaza have eroded our moral principles. They have normalized a situation where there are people worth less. Much less.
Corruption usually moves into the depths of the abyss at a constant speed with frightening periods of acceleration, but there are also moments of hope for a slowdown – until the black Saturday of October 7.
The incomprehensible cruelty that we’ve been exposed to – which proves the degree to which the occupation and the siege corrupt the occupied as well as the occupier – has penetrated our soul. And like nuclear fuel, it has spiraled us on our way to a moral hell.
It took a few days for a day of unbridled and systematic slaughter of civilians – children, women, the elderly and men – by members of an organization that has lost any shred of humanity to lift some of the barriers that we still seemed to have.
Israel today is a country and society where calls to erase Gaza aren’t only the province of pathetic and marginal people leaving comments on social media. It’s a country where lawmakers from the ruling party are openly and unashamedly calling for a “second Nakba,” where the defense minister orders a denial of water, food and fuel to millions of civilians, a country whose president, Isaac Herzog, Israel’s moderate face, says that all Gazans are responsible for Hamas’ crimes. (If I hadn’t seen this part myself I wouldn’t have believed it.)
In Gaza with its 2.3 million inhabitants, over half of them children living under a government combining totalitarian dictatorship with religious fundamentalism, our president couldn’t find a single Gazan – man, woman or child – who wasn’t responsible. It’s a good thing no news channel has ordered a survey to find out what percentage of the Jewish community supports ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
And maybe not only in Gaza; why stop there? When the political and military leadership loses all restraint and approves ideas about a massive blow to civilians, we’re creating a society where the process of stripping away the humanity of the people on the other side of the border has been completed.
And when that happens, the inferno is near. On October 8 we carried out a giant leap in our campaign of moral corruption, and we are now dangerously close to the black hole. It’s no wonder that there are thousands of dead in Gaza – thousands! – and the voices asking if we’ve done enough to prevent harming the innocent are barely heard in the Israeli public debate.
And that’s not all. No social moral corruption is only directed outward. There is always the enemy within – the same enemy the police commissioner declared war on last week when he ordered his subordinates to forcibly prevent protests against the war in Gaza and against harming innocent people there. And he proposed that we deport the protesters to Gaza.
It’s likely that expressing sorrow at the death of children in the Strip (there are already over 1,700 of them) won’t only earn you a spot on one of the police commissioner’s buses. It will also get you suspended from work or university, as has happened to dozens of people in the past two weeks.
And that’s not the worst scenario, because compassion for the children of Gaza could also end in a lynching attempt by a fascist mob, as happened to journalist Israel Frey. (Full disclosure: I’m proud to say that he’s a friend of mine.) In short: How will we define the regime of a country that treats its critics that way? I know how not to define it.
Not far from us, on their own way to the black hole, hover those who call themselves members of the “progressive left.” They’re finding it hard to unhesitatingly condemn – and without fleeing to the “context” – a satanic orgy of destroying civilian Israeli communities near Gaza, along with their residents. Some are even blabbering something about decolonization being an ugly process; that’s what happened in Algeria and Kenya, for example.
I read that and die of shame. Maybe you didn’t understand, but the struggle to end the occupation and achieve independence for the Palestinian people is part of the universal struggle to defend everyone’s human rights, not vice versa. The idea of the sanctity of human life, the noble idea that every person has basic rights that shouldn’t be undermined, isn’t a tool for implementing Palestinian independence but the other way around. Palestinian freedom and self-determination are designed to advance a reality where people enjoy protection of their rights and are free to conduct their lives as they desire.
Those who are confused about this issue aren’t humanists. Those who are confused about this issue aren’t expressing a complex and profound moral thesis, they’re simply sliding into support for terror.
Being humane is hard work. Remaining humane in the face of inhumane cruelty is far more difficult. Despite what we often think, humaneness isn’t a natural human trait. Much more natural is the desire to take revenge, to blame everyone on the other side, to drop thousands of bombs on them, to erase them from the face of the earth. Human history is full of examples, and apparently we haven’t learned a thing.
These are terrible times. We have experienced a horrific trauma perpetrated by human beings who have lost their humanity, and now we’re bombing, killing and starving people, and mainly hardening our hearts to stone. Moral corruption is no less dangerous to our survival than Hamas.
Editorial | Haaretz, 18th October 2023
Israel’s McCarthyite Persecution of Its Own Citizens Has Begun
Emergencies are fertile ground for harming individual rights, first and foremost freedom of expression. Under the cover of emergency orders, State Prosecutor Amit Aisman expressed official support last week for “investigating, detaining and trying anyone who expresses praise or support for the horrors,” even once.
Aisman lowered the bar for enforcement against the crimes of incitement, refusal to serve, disobedience, racism or violence, rebellion, harming the public’s feelings on matters of religion and tradition, disregard for the justice system and insulting public servants.
It can be seen clearly in practice. Dozens of Israelis, the overwhelming majority of them Arabs, were detained and arrested since last week over what they said about the war in Gaza. Forty people were arrested and more were interrogated and warned (Jack Khoury, Haaretz Hebrew, Tuesday). Their statements or posts that preceded their arrests or warnings were not necessarily expressions of support for Hamas. All it takes to get the Israel Police involved is an expression of support for Gazan residents or comparing the deaths on both sides of the border.
Alongside the arrests, it was reported that Arab citizens have been fired for expressing opinions contrary to the consensus. The Rehovot Municipality, for instance, demanded that developers in the city sign a declaration they don’t have any Arab workers on their construction sites (Hadar Horesh, TheMarker Hebrew, Tuesday).
The state wants to silence the Arab media as well. The ministers of the security-diplomatic cabinet are debating emergency regulations that would permit the government to shutter media outlets that security officials believe are harming state security. Currently it’s the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera in the crosshairs, which reports from Israel among other countries. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara insists that the defense minister has the authority to close down a media outlet for security reasons. And yet Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi wants to be the one with the authority. There’s no need to point out that should this be the case, it would create an opening for political persecution directed at other media outlets, in keeping with Karhi’s fascist worldview.
Furthermore, among right-wing extremist groups on Telegram there has been an increase in the number of calls for doxing – the publishing of personal information about targeted individuals. Thus the personal details of left-wing activists are published, enabling right-wing activists to start threatening them. The ultra-Orthodox reporter Israel Frey was attacked, verbally and physically. Dozens of right-wing extremists threw firecrackers at his home late Saturday night and chased after him when he fled.
There’s a thin line between protecting state security and McCarthyite persecution of broad swaths of the public. Even during these challenging, tense moments, we cannot cross this line.
The above article is Haaretz’s lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.
Good for Israel Frey. Whether Arab or Jew, not easy in Israel speaking up against the government and expressing support for the Palestinians.
There is no middle ground in this argument. Israel must be condemned absolutely for what it has done. For Israel, the question of innocence and guilt no longer applies: no-one is innocent, all are guilty.
Israel created a monster: the monster broke free, and attacked its creator: and now the monster must be destroyed and the land that sustained it made barren.
The pain and anguish Israel has brought upon itself must, Israel says, be paid for in blood. Israel seeks now only what it has always coveted, the land of another people. Israel need no longer hide its true intentions.
Of course, the culpabilility of Hamas is very great.
Its crimes were two-fold. First, it committed horrific crimes against a people who they knew were in no position to defend themselves, in a kind of bizarre mimicry of the kinds of Israeli behaviours they claimed to be defending Gaza against. And second, it gave Israel exactly the justification it was looking for to kill Palestinians indiscriminately with the sole intention of once and for all winning Gaza for itself.
I have no doubt that there are Israelis and Gazans alike who, while looking on their supposed enemies with horror, see also unbearable horror in what their own governments are doing in their name.
My own disgust is absolute.
Solidarity to Israel Frey.