Israeli society’s dehumanization of Palestinians is now absolute

The Israeli military has killed at least 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza — about two percent of the Strip’s population. It has wreaked total havoc, systematically destroying residential neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, and universities. Hundreds of thousands of Israeli soldiers have fought in Gaza over the past 10 months, and yet the moral debate is almost non-existent. The number of soldiers who have spoken out about their crimes or moral difficulties with serious reflection or regret, even anonymously, can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Paradoxically, the senseless and gratuitous destruction that the military is wreaking in Gaza can be seen from the hundreds of videos that Israeli soldiers have filmed and sent to friends, family, or partners out of pride in their actions. It is from their recordings that we watched troops blowing up universities in Gaza, shooting randomly at houses, and destroying a water facility in Rafah, to name just a few examples.

Brigadier General Dan Goldfuss, commander of the 98th Division, whose lengthy retirement interview was presented as an example of a commander who upholds democratic values, said: “I don’t feel sorry for the enemy … you won’t see me on the battlefield feeling sorry for the enemy. Either I kill him, or I capture him.” Not a word was said about the thousands of Palestinian civilians killed by army fire, or about the dilemmas that accompanied such slaughter.

Similarly, Lt. Col. A., commander of the 200th Squadron which operates the Israeli Air Force’s fleet of drones, gave an interview to Ynet earlier this month, in which he claimed his unit had killed “6,000 terrorists” during the war. When asked, in the context of the rescue operation to free four Israeli hostages in June, which resulted in the killing of over 270 Palestinians, “How do you identify who is a terrorist?” he answered: “We attacked on the side of the street to drive civilians away, and whoever did not flee, even if he was unarmed, as far as we were concerned, was a terrorist. Everyone we killed should have been killed.”

This dehumanization has reached new heights in recent weeks with the debate over the legitimacy of raping Palestinian prisoners. In a discussion on the mainstream TV network Channel 12, Yehuda Shlezinger, a “commentator” from the right-wing daily Israel Hayom, called for institutionalizing rape of prisoners as part of military practice. At least three Knesset members from the ruling Likud party also argued that Israeli soldiers should be allowed to do anything, including rape.

But the biggest trophy goes to Israel’s Finance Minister and Defense Ministry deputy, Bezalel Smotrich. The world “won’t let us cause 2 million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral until our hostages are returned,” he lamented at an Israel Hayom conference earlier this month.

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