An Israeli professor who has been living in the United States for decades made one of his frequent visits to Israel this week. He teaches at a prestigious university, he is a kibbutz child from a family of fighters in '48. and belongs to the intellectual aristocracy. If such a thing exists in Israel. He is still deeply rooted here and despite his long absence his roots are still strong, not least because of the family members who live here. In the United States, he tries to watch the news every night on one of the Israeli television stations. One of his friends here researches and writes about Israel, among other things.
We are both from the same village, we belong to the same generation and the same city, but until the day before yesterday when he came to my place, we had never met. Yesterday he left, it was his last day in Israel. Before we parted, he told me that he felt something was choking him. He already wanted to leave. He doesn't understand how anyone can still live here. In his contacts over the last year with university leaders in Israel, he has felt a sharp turn and merging with the majority. The wife of his childhood friend, a retired Supreme Court judge, told him she found it difficult to accept his views. She had never said anything like that before. Her husband was one of the symbols of liberalism here.
The professor is sure that Israel is carrying out genocide in Gaza, he understands this because of his profession and explains why. There is no definition of ethnic cleansing in international law, but it represents a stage on the way to genocide. When you forcibly displace the population, not to a safe place, but to a place where you continue to kill, it is genocide. There is no longer any doubt that Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing in the north of Gaza. Israel declares it, and its actions clearly testify to it. And more than that, the fact that Israel is systematically destroying everything in the north of Gaza, leaving no stone unturned, indicates the intention not to allow return.
My guest is convinced that the International Court of Justice, when deciding whether Israel committed genocide, will focus on the north of the Gaza Strip, as it did in the case of Srebrenica. "Only" about eight thousand Bosniaks, mostly men, were killed there, despite the city being declared a protected zone. The Hague and the whole world found that there was genocide there and the accused were prosecuted.
When you mercilessly bomb a displaced population in a new location, as the Israeli army does, that is genocide. If it looks like genocide and happens like genocide, then it is genocide. In Israel it is impossible to say, even to liberals. Even at the elite universities in the United States, whose donors are Jews, it is difficult to say that. Israeli and Jewish ears are not ready to hear it, no matter what the reality looks like.
My guest discovered that even most of his liberal friends, intellectuals, people of peace and conscience of Israel are not ready to accept this. Differences of opinion turned them into enemies, which had never happened before.
There was always a block here that supported radical opinions. I also felt that during the years of my work there was an understanding for a radical view of extreme reality. There were displays of hatred and sometimes even violence, but on the other side stood a perhaps small but no less determined bloc. That's it. My guest felt it well. Maybe some can still bury their heads in the sand, but not the radical bloc in this most extreme reality in the country's history.
Israel has sunk into its grief and disaster, blind to everything else. The much more horrific disaster in Gaza is being ignored. A lot has already been written about the vile role of the media in creating this situation, but the responsibility for the state of total "disappointment and sobering" lies on the conscience of every disillusioned Israeli. Maybe he'll accept her one day.
The guest left. He will surely return, but he has very few interlocutors left here, so few that they can be counted.
(Haaretz; Peščanik.ner, translation from Hebrew: Alma Ferhat)
Bonus video:
