An editorial in Haaretz last week, as well as a piece by the New York Times’s Michelle Goldberg a few days later, told a similar story. Both articles portrayed genocidal statements by Israeli leaders, and both articles explained them as an _expression_ of far-right extremism. Haaretz seems to suggest that the solution (which would protect Israel at the International Court of Justice) would be for Netanyahu to fire his extremist ministers. Goldberg’s article takes it even further, suggesting that Netanyahu is also part of the problem.
However, there’s a story that is not being fully told in these two main liberal outlets. Both ignore the evidence and the polling that show near universal Israeli support for the unfolding genocide in Gaza — both from the Israeli political class and the vast majority of the Israeli population.
Haaretz in denial
On January 3, Haaretz published an editorial titled “Genocide Charge Against Israel Must Serve as a Wake-up Call,” referring to South Africa’s recent appeal (dated December 28) to the International Court of Justice to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The editors mentioned a gathering held that day at the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, “that specified the goal: Palestinian emigration from the Gaza Strip and the settlement of Jews in the territory.” They highlighted extremist statements like that of lawmaker Zvi Sukkot of the Religious Zionism party, who said: “At least the northern Strip we must first of all conquer, annex, raze all the buildings and build neighborhoods”; Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich’s comment that “if there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not 2 million, the entire discussion on ‘the day after’ will be different”; National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s calls for “a project to encourage the emigration of residents from Gaza,” and more. The editors’ conclusion:
“But the most effective way to undermine the filing is to remove from the government those who incite war crimes. This is the only way to persuade the world that the deranged ideas they are spreading do not reflect reality. This must be done urgently, before they cause Israel’s standing to deteriorate to that of a war criminal.”
Muhammad Shehada was brilliant in mocking this portrayal on X.
As they say, it’s the whole damn system.
Who is supposed to “remove from the government” those who incite war crimes when all of those who would have the power to remove them are engaging in the same incitement? Haaretz seems to be suggesting that it’s just a few bad apples, but these bad apples are not only in the government, but well beyond it. For instance, as Shehada mentioned, Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, said that there is no such thing as “uninvolved” civilians in Gaza.
And then there’s the so-called “opposition.” Center-left lawmaker Ram Ben-Barak of Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party, who co-authored with Likud’s Danny Danon an Op-Ed advocating for the “relocation” of Gaza’s residents in mid-November. In early November, Ben-Barak pushed it more forcefully in an interview on Israeli television, making clear he meant the entire Gaza population: “Let’s spread them across the globe. There are 2.5 million people there. If each country takes in 20,000 individuals, that would involve 100 countries…it is better to be a refugee in Canada than in Gaza.” In late December, Danon boasted that according to new polls, 83% of the Israeli population supports the “voluntary emigration” idea. And we know it’s not “voluntary” when you first flatten Gaza and make it uninhabitable.
Let us be clear: 83% of the Israeli population is not an extremist fringe. The vast majority of Israelis support the genocide — they just call it other things, like self-defense. Did we already forget Ben-Barak’s party ally Meirav Ben-Ari’s claim that “the children of Gaza have brought this upon themselves” from mid-October? Have we failed to notice that only 1.8% of Israeli Jews think that Israel is using too much firepower in Gaza? This was on a poll of the Israel Democracy Institute cited in Time in mid-November.
Think about it — only 1.8%! And 57.5% believed the army was using too little firepower in Gaza, which is to say that the combined firepower of two nuclear bombs akin to the ones used on Japan in WWII was not enough for over half of the Israeli public. An additional 36.6% thought it was an appropriate level of firepower, and 4.2% weren’t sure.
To say that Haaretz is not giving us the full picture would be to let it off too easily. Haaretz seems to be most concerned with the supposed extremists “over there,” maintaining denial regarding the prevalence of the genocidal zeitgeist and the nexus between the Zionist right and left.
On Sunday, Jewish Power’s Heritage minister, Amichai Eliahu, used Ram Ben-Barak as his centrist alibi for ethnic cleansing in an interview on the centrist Ynet. This bit was amazing. The host asks Eliahu, “Do you [Jewish Power] support the transfer of the Gazan population and Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip?”
Amichai answered:
“Noa, you know very well that what we are speaking about in Jewish Power is really not transfer. We are speaking about the willingness to improve housing, for the Gazans who seek to improve their housing.”
At this point, the whole studio cracked up with laughter, unable to stop themselves. The other host says, “So you’re saying if only they had a parking and an elevator…”
Eliahu laughs, too. He continues: “This is the parallel of the word transfer… what we suggest is voluntary emigration.” Here, he mentions Ben-Barak: “It’s not only us who are saying it, people from the left spoke about this, Ram Ben-Barak.”
But we all know what transfer really means. Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote:
“Transfer was inevitable and inbuilt in Zionism — because it sought to transform a land which was ‘Arab’ into a Jewish state and a Jewish state could not have arisen without a major displacement of Arab population.”
A euphemism for ethnic cleansing that has now become a ridiculous caricature of itself when the Jewish Power Minister tried to portray it as an “improvement of housing.” It would be hilarious if the results weren’t an actual genocide. Yet when people like Ben-Barak seriously promote this, people don’t seem to register that it is not a fringe suggestion.
Times’ ‘good old Israel’
Over to Michelle Goldberg at the Times, who wrote on January 5 a piece titled “America Must Face Up to Israel’s Extremism.” Much in line with Haaretz, Goldberg opens by citing Smotrich and Ben-Gvir on their calls to depopulate Gaza.
Goldberg seems somewhat more specific and inclusive than Haaretz. She notes that while the Biden administration “has joined countries all over the world condemning these naked endorsements of ethnic cleansing,” it still “acted as if Ben Gvir and Smotrich’s provocations are fundamentally at odds with the worldview of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
So far, so good. At least she includes Netanyahu, since it’s about his whole government, not just a few rogue ministers.
Goldberg even mentions Danny Danon as an example of a Likud minister “pushing emigration as a humanitarian solution,” but fails to mention his co-author, Ben-Barak.
Goldberg says that “U.S. policymakers are fostering denial about the character of Netanyahu’s rule,” and mentions Biden’s oft-cited stories about meeting Golda Meir in 1973 as representing a view of Israel that “sometimes seems stuck in that era,” as with “many American Zionists.”
Goldberg finds space to cite a Golda Meir quote (the one about being able to “forgive the Arabs for killing our sons,” but not being able to “forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons”), which Goldberg admits is probably unauthentic, but she still doesn’t find space to talk about the prevalence of these views and advocacies among the Israeli public. She cites Daniel Levy for pointing out the “willful refusal to take seriously just how extreme this government is — whether before Oct. 7 or subsequently” — which is true in and of itself, but again, what about the rest of Israeli society?
After October 7, Netanyahu took in two centrist generals and made them Ministers in his war cabinet, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot. Gantz boasted of returning Gaza to the “stone age.” Eisenkot coined the Dahiya doctrine, advocating indiscriminate, “disproportionate force” against any area from which rockets are fired — a doctrine now at the heart of the current genocide. These two ministers demonstrate precisely how genocide is a centrist issue in Israel today. Even “leftist” general Yair Golan, who used to be in what is considered a far-left party, Meretz, said that the Gazans can just “die from starvation, it’s totally legitimate.”
Goldberg ends her piece by saying, “I’m tempted to say that Ben-Gvir and Smotrich said the quiet part out loud, but in truth they just said the loud part louder.”
Goldberg already goes further than Haaretz, but her framing still seems to imply that a liberal Israel still exists on the other side — and who knows, maybe if they just fight more for “democracy” and get a more moderate centrist government, things will be better. Haaretz says that these “deranged ideas they are spreading do not reflect reality” — but the scary thing is that they do.
Since Goldberg brought up Golda Meir and the romanticism she invokes about the “good old Israel,” it would be irresponsible not to remind readers that Golda Meir poisoned a Palestinian village as part of an ethnic cleansing operation and then scolded ministers for being too outspoken about the settlement enterprise, telling them to “simply do and do not talk [about it]… talk less, and do as much as possible.”
It’s chilling to think that so many people for so many decades have been more worried about how Israelis talk than about what they do.
What Israelis say is important, of course, but actions count more — and more often than not, ethnic cleansing and genocide are carried out in silence.
Israel is committing genocide, and almost all Israelis are on board. We need to face that Israel is beyond saving. We need the international community. We need boycott, divestment, and sanctions, but even more than that, we need international intervention in the whole damn system.
H/t Ofer Neiman, Tali Shapiro