Gideon Levy, a reporter and co-editor of the Israeli daily Haaretz, has watched with horror the fundamental changes in morality and values that the year-long Gaza war has brought about in Israeli society. On October 7, 2023, Hamas and other armed groups in Palestine attacked Israel, killing more than 1,200 people, and Israel responded with an unprecedented military operation in Gaza. The number of Palestinian deaths has now exceeded 40,000.
The massacres and targeted killings of civilians, as well as the unimaginable destruction on the part of Israel, are justified by three basic arguments: First, the October 7 massacre was a result of the bloodthirsty, innate brutality of the Palestinian people living in Gaza, without any specific context. Second, all Palestinians are complicit in the crimes committed by Hamas against Israelis, and therefore all Palestinians are collectively responsible. Third, these two arguments lead to the conclusion that Israel can do whatever it wants after this horrific massacre, and no one has the right to stop it. This right of self-defense applies only to Israel, not to Palestine.
In Levy’s view, this power granted to Israel to exercise unlimited violence and to ignore all norms of international law and human rights has resulted in the legitimization of barbarism both in the actions of the Israeli military and in Israeli socio-political discourse. He says that Israel has lost its humanity by glorifying the power of killing. Any expression of compassion or humanity for the suffering of Palestinians has been erased from public discourse, and such views are censored on social media, Levy says. Even Israelis are treated as criminals by the authorities in such cases. Yet the horrific and miserable inhumane conditions in Gaza are rarely reported in the Israeli media, which is instead full of hatred and racism against the Palestinian population.
Levy sees the Israeli media’s response to the killing of the Hezbollah leader in Beirut as ethically abysmal. For example, a journalist on a popular TV channel handed out chocolates to passersby on the street during a live broadcast, while another journalist wrote on X: “the leader was crushed in his bunker and died like a lizard... a fitting end for him,” Levy said of the report. “The Nazis called Jews rats, but the Hezbollah leader was a ‘lizard’ in the eyes of the Israelis.” A few days earlier, there was a similar euphoric reaction when hundreds of pagers and radios were detonated in Lebanon, killing dozens and injuring thousands. This act, which could be interpreted as state terrorism under international law, was instead praised as a stroke of genius by the Israeli Secret Service.
Shockingly inhumane statements can be found not only in the media but also in academia. A professor of history at Tel Aviv University, is known as one of Israel’s most popular Middle East experts. He sees the starvation of civilians in northern Gaza, who were unable to follow Israeli military orders to move south, as a natural consequence. In a TV interview: “Anyone who stays in the area will be considered a terrorist by law and will be subject to starvation or extermination.” Another professor has called for the Israeli military to now occupy Gaza, and a prominent historian, has even openly advocated dropping a nuclear bomb on Iran. These individuals appear to be far more radical than the current leaders of the Israeli military and security services.
In addition to their work defending potential war crimes and the Israeli occupation of Gaza, they are also engaged in a campaign to demonize Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims. A university lecturer said Israeli academics have been trying to rally public support for the Israeli military’s destructive actions in Gaza. To do this, they openly call for ignoring valid international law. For example, one scholar believes that the rules that work in the West do not apply to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying, “If you try to solve the Middle East on Western terms, you are doomed to failure.” People with this mindset believe that Israel should be proud that it is not a liberal Western democracy. “These scholars want Israel to follow the same path as other Middle Eastern countries,” “That means Israel will also adopt an authoritarian order in the region. They believe that is the only way for Israel to survive in the region.”
A prominent Palestinian human rights lawyer, expressed his fears in an interview with the Guardian that Gaza is in danger of becoming a “graveyard for international law.”
Sourani founded the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in 1995 and was part of a team of South African legal experts who brought charges of genocide against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on December 29, 2013. He lived in Gaza until October 2023, when Israeli authorities detained him six times and charged him with terrorism. That month, a 900-kilogram bomb completely destroyed his home.
This happened after he was interviewed by Amy Goodman, founder of the American left-wing television-radio-internet political magazine Democracy Now!. Fortunately, he escaped safely with his wife and son, but he is convinced that Israel targeted his home. He vowed never to leave Gaza, but the threat of being killed led him to seek asylum in Cairo. He was a sharp critic of the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) inaction in response to Israeli abuses.
He recalls a conversation with Luis Moreno Ocampo, the first prosecutor of the ICC and the predecessor of the current prosecutor, Imran Khan, who said that Ocampo told him that he could not take action against Israel without the permission of the US government. Incumbent Imran Khan, who in May 2024 filed an arrest warrant against Prime Minister Netanyahu and the recently dismissed then-Defense Minister Galland for allegedly starving civilians in Gaza for their war-mongering and targeted killings of civilians, believes Khan is also being overly cautious. Sourani believes that if the ICC had intervened sooner to protect Palestinians, the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, could have been prevented. Instead, Israel has been receiving a steady stream of signs from the US and Europe that “Israel is untouchable and will not be held accountable.” The Netanyahu government has now gone one step further in its mockery and disregard for international law, launching a direct military strike on UN agencies in Gaza this October.
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