Israelis were scandalized that the International Court of Justice agreed to hear South Africa's case accusing the country of genocide. And they were apoplectic when the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court requested warrants for the arrest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
It is therefore inexplicable why Israeli political figures insist on advocating policies to torment Palestinian civilians, as if to prove their commitment to violating international law, or to inviting further prosecutions.
On Sunday, Israelis were up in arms about the release of over 50 Palestinians who had been arrested in Gaza during the war and detained in Israel. These included the director of Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital, Mohamed Abu Salmiya, who had been held for seven months with no charges.
Israel says the Al-Shifa Hospital was essentially serving Hamas, who took Israeli hostages there and killed one, while using the complex as cover for tunnels, or for weapons storage. In public discourse, the detainees were simply presumed to be terrorists.
The fact that Abu Salmiya was taken into detention from a UN convoy (in November) and wasn't charged (let alone convicted), alongside doubts about whether the hospital was even clearly connected to the infamous tunnel network, as per a Washington Post investigation – means that Israelis have further blurred the line between civilians and combatants. The discourse demonstrated the circular reasoning by which everyone Israel arrests is a combatant, by virtue of having been arrested. It's little wonder then that many Israelis justify the casualties in Gaza.
The incident also fed what looks like a competition of criminal intentions. In an interview on Monday to Israel's Army Radio, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir gave his solution to the problem of prison overcrowding that prompted the release: "If they had listened to me about the 'death penalty for terrorists' law, we would have killed them, and there would be more room in prisons." Yes, he really said this – in a conversation about detainees.
Not to be outdone, just a couple of hours later on Monday, Bezalel Smotrich (Israel's minister of finance and chief architect of annexation) blasted out to his X feed that Israel had "fallen on its head," following reports that Israel was reconnecting parts of Gaza to its electricity grid. Smotrich said "we are reconstructing Gaza before disarmament, mostly hospitals – that is to say, terror centers."
In other words, Smotrich is advocating to continue denying electricity that would help hospitals run. This ventures into the "no electricity, no food, no fuel" territory marked by Israel's defense chief, Gallant, in the early days of the war – the starring quote in South Africa's evidence of genocidal intention.
It's not like Israel gave Gaza electricity in the past. The Strip has lived with a miserable energy crisis for years on end, cobbling together electricity from its under-performing power plant – often lacking fuel or bombed out in wars – and Egyptian power lines. But the biggest source was the Israeli electricity grid, which sold energy to Gaza, while the fuel for the power plant was purchased from Israel with Qatari money. Since the war began, these sources are basically gone. Electricity is also desperately needed to keep water treatment plants going.
Railing against electricity for Gaza is therefore an unsubtle way of supporting the collective punishment of civilians by an occupying power in wartime – a violation of international laws of war and the Geneva Conventions.
Right-wing but opposition Yisrael Beiteinu party leader Avigdor Lieberman was never one for subtleties. A day earlier, Lieberman told Kan radio that he would "complete the total disconnection from Gaza, close all crossings, no more electricity, water, no fuel, no cargo transfer from Ashdod," while everything could go through Egypt, he said.
Lieberman isn't in the government, but he's still an elected parliamentarian. He echoes both Gallant in October, and former head of the National Security Council Giora Eiland, who advocated a humanitarian crisis in Gaza in November, diseases and all.
And why stop at Gaza? The "flatten Gaza" quip helped the genocide "intention" charge at the ICJ; now Tally Gotliv of Likud thinks that Israel should "flatten southern Lebanon," which can be done in three days, she argues. "What are we waiting for?"
These are typical, terrible conversations in Israel about Gaza. But as awful as these statements are, what's worse is the reality there.
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