Israeli Journalist| What makes many Israelis not be shocked by the killing of thousands of children?

Here is the Gaza Strip being erased and disappeared. With all its families, people, children, and the smiles and laughter of these children. What allows the majority of the state’s Jewish population to support this systematic and collective erasure, and to consider it the only decent response to the “massacre” carried out by Hamas militants and those who accompanied them, and it is the only decent response to the insult that Israel received, militarily, in addition to the suffering of the kidnapped, the wounded, the survivors, their families, and the families of the hundreds of unspeakable dead?

The Israeli army is wiping out the Gaza Strip's cities, streets, villages, fields, amazing vineyards, the alleys of its refugee camps, and its coastal parks, as well as the Strip's cultural institutions, universities, and archaeological sites. It is true that the military infrastructure of the Hamas movement is being destroyed, and perhaps completely destroyed, and it is true that thousands of Hamas fighters are being killed, and will be killed soon. But the Hamas movement itself, and its leaders, will recover and return to prosperity. In every population center and in every place, the process of erasing the Gaza Strip will remain engraved in the conscience.

What makes the majority of Jews in Israel not feel shocked, as a result of our killing within two months of nearly seven thousand children (this is a temporary number that is likely to rise), using advanced bombs provided to us by the United States? What allows the majority of Jews not to choke in fear when they hear the news that 1.8 or 1.9 million people are crammed into an area that does not exceed 120 square kilometers, in addition to the fact that this area is also being bombed without stopping? What prevents the Jews from screaming in terror when they hear reports about the starvation and thirst of 2.2 million Palestinian civilians, and news of epidemics spreading among them due to overcrowding, water shortages, and lack of hospitals? What is it that allows all this erasure and mass killing of children, with our participation, whether active or passive? Here are some answers:

Decades of education on the principles of absolute belief in the exclusive ability of military force to ensure the existence and prosperity of the Israeli state, in light of the deprivation of the Palestinian people of their rights.

Ignoring any “context” in which the events took place: to the Israeli public, incitement became synonymous with supporting the Hamas movement and justifying the atrocities it committed.

We, the Jews, have a monopoly on the issue of suffering resulting from the savagery of others.

We choose not to know, and not to watch the cruel and unbearable scenes that show Palestinian children, their faces covered in ash and dust, being pulled from destroyed buildings. And do we not know who are the luckiest: are these children, or those who were killed?

All the mass or fragmented massacres that we committed against the Palestinians over the years, and every plundering, every insult, and every torment, pass through media, psychological, and academic filters. The result of all these filters is to convince ourselves that their situation is better than that of Somalis or Syrians, and therefore, they should not complain.

Remember every massacre that the Palestinians committed against us. And forgetting every massacre we committed against them.

For decades, it has become accustomed to living in relative peace and prosperity, five minutes away from our backyard, in which Israel (i.e. us) demolishes Palestinian homes and builds homes for Jews, provides water to Jews, and makes Palestinians thirsty. And all the matters recorded in the reports of human rights institutions.

Decades of ignoring the warnings of “moderate” Palestinians, according to which the plundering of lands and the freeing of settlers’ hand in violence, with the help of the state (and inspired by the violence practiced by the state itself), diminishes the prospects open to their children, and generates despair and faith in the force of arms and revenge alone.

That perception of the world that Palestinians are destructive by nature. And they were born with hatred for us in their blood. They are a direct continuation of the legacy of Bohdan Khmelnytsky [the Cossack hetman responsible for the murder of thousands of Jews in present-day Ukraine], and Titus [the Roman emperor responsible for suppressing the “Jewish revolt” and demolishing the Temple].

We have convinced ourselves that we are a democratic country, even though for more than 56 years we have been controlling the lives, lands, and economies of millions of people who lack citizenship rights.

Our deep racist contempt for the Palestinians, which we have cultivated in order to justify, cognitively and psychologically, the issue of crushing them under our feet.

Denying Palestinian history and the roots of Palestinian existence between the sea and the river.

Wiping out the Gaza Strip is permissible because since 1994, we have deliberately missed the opportunity that the Palestinians gave us: getting rid of our characteristics as an occupying and settler entity, based on plunder, and granting them a state on 22% of the lands west of the Jordan River. In July 2021, I wrote the following: In the turmoil of talk about apartheid, we ignore and diminish the dynamic, active, and dangerous dimension of talk about Jewish settler colonialism.

Replacement colonialism's ideology holds that Palestinians are 'surplus'. The matter is represented by the actions that shaped this ideology. This is a settlement designed, inspired by the actions committed, and it in turn feeds these actions.

In short: it is possible, and even advisable, to live without the Palestinians. The presence of these people among us is a suspended existence, and it is a result of the generosity of our morals, not because of their right to exist. It is conditional on our will and the goodness of our hearts, and it is a temporary matter. The ideology of “being generous with the blessings” that we bestow on them is nothing but a poison that spreads through our veins, especially when the settlement based on plunder is at the height of its activity. Replacement colonialism is in a constant movement of seizing lands, eliminating historical borders, redrawing them again, and expelling the local population.

When I wrote these words, at the time, I was talking about the “blessings” in which Palestinians live in the West Bank, and I was warning of the intention to expel them. I assumed that treating the residents of the Gaza Strip as “surplus” was limited to separating them from their people and families behind the Erez checkpoint. 

But today we are witnessing the consequences of being redundant, through their voluntary expulsion (“displacement”), under the bombing, their physical erasure, and through plans to renew Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip. Woe to them, and woe to us for the consequences of that.