Israel’s War in Gaza Is Nothing but a War of Annihilation

Iris Leal

It is, of course, not the first instance in history in which a regime builds a community of crime, as historian Adam Raz has described, and expands it to the entire nation: war crimes, annihilation of life-support systems, killing 20,000 children

Smoke rises as a residential building collapses after an Israeli air strike, in Gaza City.Credit: Mahmoud Issa/Reuters

Hagai, the father of hostage Matan Angrest, said something heartbreaking to me at a protest on Wednesday. It summarized the prevailing situation in Israel after 700 days of war. Angrest begged the president to offer Benjamin Netanyahu a pardon for releasing his son because he understood who was really keeping him in captivity.

Amos Harel wrote recently that those working closely with Netanyahu have long been convinced that the prime minister has lost all feeling for the plight of the hostages and their families. From this, one realizes that he has also lost all sensitivity to the death of soldiers in the war he refuses to end.

It’s precisely the kind of violence that 20th-century totalitarian leaders inflicted upon their people. Netanyahu pretends that he’s trying to change Israel’s geopolitical position to strengthen its security, when what he wants to change is the nature of Israeli society, to perform upon it a lobotomy with a scalpel that will penetrate all areas of life: education, culture and the place of religion in the state.

That’s also how we should understand the decision to appoint David Zini, who was too messianic for him previously, to head the Shin Bet security service. Zini is an important part of his formula to fundamentally change the state’s institutions and to demolish all the social norms, like his friend Trump is doing in the United States.

Netanyahu is not messianic or Kahanist. He doesn’t share the same worldview as Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir or Zini. He is a dictator. He is the one behind the judicial overhaul, and he is the one behind the plan to impose military rule over Gaza, even if he’s still hesitating about enacting the plan.

In this regard, he doesn’t share the same personal pathology as other dictators. The process of him becoming one of them is taking place before our eyes, but he is hesitant. He is struggling to shed his self-image and to get used to what he’s become. He is still afraid to totally disregard the law and to face an international trial, but he takes a step in that direction every day.

And the ones who invested him with near total power and helped him are the moderate, statesman-like, liberal forces. Everyone, from cabinet ministers, the defense leadership, reservist soldiers, who a moment earlier were protesting against him – and primarily Benny Gantz, Gadi Eisenkot, Isaac Herzog and a host of politicians. They unwittingly became partners to a crime.

Anyone who took an active part in this or declined to report, anyone who dropped bombs from the air or shot an artillery shell at a camera and annihilated a medical team, is a partner to the community of crime and has no choice but to continue fighting.

In my column last week, I asked how it is possible that he still has soldiers for this war, which no one believes in. This is the answer. There is no significant force calling it by its real name: a war of annihilation. At most, people talk about “the price of stopping the war,” insisting that Israel be able to resume annihilating the remnants of Gaza after the hostages return.

But it’s a closed circuit. While the army took down high-rise buildings in Gaza, army representatives told the hostage families that the operation is endangering their lives. If Hamas murders them, Netanyahu will ramp up the pace of destroying the population in Gaza, and the soldiers carrying out the mission will believe that it’s fair retribution for their brothers, the ones they were drafted into the army two years earlier to save.

It’s the nature of the criminal trap that Netanyahu has set for the entire society. They must fight to the bitter end for the great victory that will never arrive, or until his fate is the fate of other dictators.

Source: HAARETZ

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