eloquent genocides

19 min read RAFAEL POCH-DE-FELIU 0 comments

What makes the current Israeli massacre in Gaza unique is the transparency with which its promoters openly call for genocide

RAFAEL POCH-DE-FELIU

Historically, annihilating purposes are denied and hidden by their protagonists. The Young Turks, or the Nazis, for example, left hardly any declarative and printed evidence of their intentions against Armenians and Jews. Discretion prevailed.

The Israeli authorities have openly proclaimed these intentions with astonishing eloquence. Bathed in a self-justifying national ideology of colonialism and supremacism with roots that link religion and ethnicity, and that routinely dehumanizes Palestinians, Israeli society naturally consumes, assumes and projects the message.

Outside Israel, more and more Jews have broken with Zionism and support a just order between Israel and Palestine. What is happening in the American Jewish community, especially among the youth, is encouraging in that regard, but in Israel it is much more difficult. Taking the path of decency and justice results in great relief, but requires going through a painful process, full of emotional, educational, family and social ruptures, explain the Israelis who have done it. Without going through this, Israeli society is condemned to continue its current crazy career and its state will have no future.

The complaint presented by South Africa before the International Court of Justice in The Hague is an act of internationalist solidarity, particularly rare in a State. The history of South Africa itself explains why its republic has taken the step that no one in Europe or the Arab world dares to take: challenging the United States in court, the leading world power without whose sponsorship Israel's crazy career would be untenable.

The International Court of Justice is part of the UN system, established by the United States to suit itself and its partners after 1945. Everything pushes, therefore, its judges to reject immediate and mandatory precautionary measures, requested by South Africa to end the martyrdom of Gaza. But that will not be easy nor can it be done without entailing important consequences.

The strength of the South African complaint lies in the evidence provided by the verbal incontinence of the Israeli authorities proclaiming their genocidal intention, as well as in the overwhelming evidence provided about the massacre by sources, organizations and officials of the UN, that is, by the same organization. of which the International Court of Justice is the legal arm.

If the court does what it has almost always done, that is, not oppose the designs that gave it life and resolve the matter with a nebulous legal declaration without practical consequences for the end of the massacre, the case will automatically become a condemnation of that international system founded by the West and today in manifest crisis in the eyes of the majority of humanity. The inaction of “international justice” in the face of such a flagrant case of barbarism supported by the West will be a historic scandal, loaded with consequences. Pay attention, then, to the verdict on precautionary measures.

In the meantime, it is worth reading even just the part dedicated to the genocidal proclamations of the Israeli leaders contained in the eighty-page document of the South African complaint. It is an extraordinarily well presented document from all points of view, to which the established Western media, with their usual shamelessness, have not devoted the slightest attention. (The translation provided here is not official. Each of the statements has its source. For reasons of space, this translation does not include the sources either. To identify them, consult the original. Application instituting proceedings and Request for the indication of provisional measures (icj-cij.org) ):

Declarations of genocidal intent against the Palestinian people by Israeli state officials and others. (Excerpted from South African submission to the International Court of Justice).

The evidence of the specific intent ('dolus specialis') of Israeli State officials to commit and persist in committing genocidal acts or to fail to prevent them has been significant and manifest since October 2023.
These declarations of intent, combined with the level of killings, mutilations, displacement and destruction on the ground and in the siege, evidence a continued and ongoing genocide.
They include statements from the following people in positions of maximum responsibility:

– Prime Minister of Israel: On October 7, 2023, in a speech televised by the Government
Press release, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to “act strongly everywhere.” On October 13, 2023, he confirmed that “we are striking our enemies with unprecedented might…”.

On October 15, 2023, when Israeli airstrikes had already killed more than 2.670 Palestinians, including 724 children, the Prime Minister declared that Israeli soldiers “understand the scope of the mission” and are prepared “to defeat the bloodthirsty monsters who have risen against [Israel] to destroy us.”

On October 16, 2023, in an official speech to the Israeli Knesset (parliament), he described the situation as “a fight between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.” a dehumanizing theme that he returned to on several occasions, including: on November 3, 2023, in a letter to Israeli soldiers and officers also published on the “X” platform (formerly Twitter); In the letter he stated
that: “this is the war between the children of light and the children of darkness. We will not give up on our mission until the light defeats the darkness: good will defeat the extreme evil that threatens us and the entire world.”

The Israeli Prime Minister also took up the issue in his “Christmas message”, stating: “we are facing monsters, monsters who murdered children in front of their parents (…). “This is a battle not only of Israel against these barbarians, it is a battle of civilization against barbarism.” On October 28, 2023, as Israeli forces prepared their ground invasion of Gaza, the Prime Minister invoked the biblical story of the total destruction of Amalek by the Israelis, declaring: “you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Saint Bible. And we remember it.” The Prime Minister again referred to Amalek in the letter sent on November 3, 2023 to Israeli soldiers and officers. The relevant biblical passage says the following: “Now go, attack Amalek, and banish all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill equally men and women, children and infants, oxen and sheep, camels and donkeys.".

– President of Israel: On October 12, 2023, President Isaac Herzog made it clear that Israel did not distinguish between militants and civilians in Gaza, stating in a press conference to foreign media – in relation to the Palestinians of Gaza, more than one million of which are children: “It is an entire nation that is responsible. This rhetoric that civilians are not aware that they are not involved is not true. It is absolutely false. …and we will fight until we break their backs.”
On October 15, 2023, echoing the words of Prime Minister Netanyahu, the president declared to the
foreign media that “we will uproot evil so that there is good for the entire region and the world.”
The Israeli president is one of many Israelis who have handwritten “messages” on bombs that will be
launched on Gaza.

– Israeli Defense Minister: On October 9, 2023, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, in a “situation update” from the Israeli Army, reported that Israel was “imposing a total siege on Gaza. There is no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. “We are fighting against human animals and we act accordingly.” He also informed troops on the Gaza border that he had “released all restrictions,” stating in terms that: “Gaza will not go back to what it was before. We will delete everything. If it doesn't take us a day, it will take us a week. It will take weeks or even months, we will reach all the places.” He further announced that Israel was moving toward “a full-scale response” and had “removed all restrictions” on Israeli forces.

– Israeli Minister of National Security: On November 10, 2023, Itamar Ben-Gvir clarified the government's position in a televised speech, stating: “to be clear, when we say that Hamas must be destroyed, it also means those who celebrate, those who support and those who distribute candies: they are all terrorists and must also be destroyed.”

– Israeli Minister of Energy and Infrastructure: “Tweeting” on October 13, 2023, Israel Katz stated: “All civilians in Gaza are ordered to leave immediately. We will win. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world.” On October 12, 2023, he “tweeted”: “Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switches will be turned on, no hydrants will be opened, and no fuel trucks will enter until the Israeli hostages return home. Humanitarianism for humanitarianism's sake. And no one will give us moral lessons.”

– Israeli Finance Minister: On October 8, 2023, Bezalel Smotrich declared at an Israeli Cabinet meeting that “we have to strike a blow that has not been seen in 50 years and end Gaza.”

– Israeli Minister of Heritage: On November 1, 2023, Amichai Eliyahu posted on Facebook: “The northern Gaza Strip, more beautiful than ever. Everything is blown up and flattened, simply a pleasure for the eyes… We must talk about the day after. We will deliver plots to all those who fought for Gaza for years and to those evicted from Gush Katif” [former Israeli settlement]. He later came out against humanitarian aid, since “we would not deliver humanitarian aid to the Nazis,” and “there are no uninvolved civilians in Gaza.” He also proposed a nuclear attack on the Gaza Strip.

– Israeli Minister of Agriculture: On November 11, 2023, Avi Dichter recalled in a television interview the Nakba of 1948, in which more than 80% of the Palestinian population of the new Israeli State was forced to abandon or flee their homes, stating that “now “We are carrying out the Nakba of Gaza.”

– Vice President of the Knesset and member of the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee: On October 7, 2023, Nissim Vaturi “tweeted” that: “now we all have a common goal: to erase the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth. Those who cannot will be replaced.”

Similar statements have been made by Israeli army officers, advisors and spokespersons, as well as by others collaborating with Israeli troops deployed in Gaza:

– Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (“COGAT”) of the Israeli Army:
On October 9, 2023, in a video statement addressed to Hamas and Gaza residents, published by
On the official COGAT channel, Major General Ghassan Allian warned: “Hamas has become ISIS and the citizens of Gaza are celebrating it instead of being horrified. Human animals are treated accordingly. Israel has imposed a total blockade on Gaza, no electricity, no water, only damage. “They wanted hell, they will have hell.”

– Israeli Army Reservist Major General, former Head of the Israeli National Security Council and advisor to the Minister of Defense: On October 7, 2023, Giora Eiland, describing the Israeli order to cut off water and electricity to Gaza, wrote in an online diary: “This is what Israel has started to do: we cut off the supply of energy, water and diesel to the Strip. . . But it's not enough. For the siege to be effective, we have to prevent others from giving aid to Gaza. . . The population must be told that they have two options: stay and starve, or leave. If Egypt and other countries prefer that these people perish in Gaza, that is their choice.” The same day, she stated in a national newspaper that “when you are at war with another country, there is nothing you can do to avoid it. In war with another country, you don't feed them, you don't provide them with electricity, gas, water, or anything else. A country can be attacked in a much broader way, to bring the country to the brink of dysfunction. This is the necessary result of the events” in Gaza.

He has repeatedly affirmed the benefits to Israel of creating a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, stating that “Israel has no interest in the Gaza Strip being rehabilitated and this is an important point to make clear to the Americans.” ", and that "if we ever want to see the hostages alive, the only way is to create a serious humanitarian crisis in Gaza." He has indicated that water should be the goal, noting that water in Gaza “comes from wells with salt water unfit for consumption. They have water treatment plants, Israel should attack those plants. “When the whole world says that we have gone crazy and that this is a humanitarian disaster, we will say that it is not an end, but a means.” In an interview on Times Radio on October 12, 2023, he reiterated that the military should:

“Create such great pressure on Gaza that Gaza becomes an area where people cannot live. People cannot live until Hamas is destroyed, which means that Israel not only stops supplying energy, diesel, water, food... as it has done in the last twenty years... but prevents any possible help from third parties and believes in Gaza a situation so terrible and unbearable that the population cannot live. A terrible, unbearable situation that can last weeks and months.”

Giora Eiland has repeatedly been given a media platform to call for Gaza to be made uninhabitable, stating that “the State of Israel has no choice but to make Gaza a place where it is temporarily, or permanently, impossible to live.” In an interview on November 6, 2023, he suggested that “if there is an intention to carry out military action at Shifa [hospital], which I think is unavoidable, I hope that the head of the CIA receives an explanation as to why.” "This is necessary, and why the United States must ultimately support even an operation like this, even if there are thousands of civilian bodies in the streets afterwards."

Furthermore, he proposed that “Israel needs to create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, forcing tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands to seek refuge in Egypt or the Gulf. . . Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.” Echoing President Herzog's words, he has repeatedly stressed that there should be no distinction between Hamas fighters and Palestinian civilians, saying:

“Who are the poor women from Gaza? They are all mothers, sisters or wives of Hamas assassins. On the one hand, they are part of the infrastructure that sustains the organization and, on the other, if they suffer a humanitarian disaster, it can be assumed that some of the Hamas fighters and the most junior commanders will begin to understand that war is useless... The community International warns us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and serious epidemics. We should not shy away from it, no matter how difficult it may be. Ultimately, serious epidemics in the southern Gaza Strip will bring victory closer. . . It is precisely its civil collapse that will bring the end of the war closer. When Israeli senior officials say in the media 'Either us or them', we should clarify the question of who 'they' are. They are not only armed Hamas fighters, but also all 'civilian' officials, including hospital and school administrators, as well as the entire population of Gaza. Also the entire population of Gaza who enthusiastically supported Hamas and cheered its atrocities on October 7.”

– Motivational speech by an Israeli army reservist: On October 11, 2023, Israeli Army reservist Ezra Yachin – veteran of the Deir Yassin massacre during the Nakba of 1948 – called to “raise the morale” of Israeli troops before the ground invasion, was quoted on the networks social events, inciting other soldiers to genocide in the following manner, while being driven in an Israeli army vehicle dressed in an Israeli army uniform:

“Succeed, finish them off and leave no one behind. Erase his memory. Erase them, their families, mothers and children. These animals can no longer live. . . Every Jew with a gun must go out and kill them. If you have an Arab neighbor, don't wait, go to his house and shoot him. . . We want to invade, not like before, we want to enter and destroy what is in front of us, and destroy the houses, and then destroy the one behind. With all our strength, complete destruction, enter and destroy. As you can see, we will witness things we have never dreamed of. Let them drop bombs on them and erase them.”

– Head of the Air Operations Group of the Israeli Army: On October 28, 2023, Lieutenant Colonel Gilad Kinan described the Air Force as “working together with all IDF (Israeli Army) bodies when the objective is clear: destroy everything that has been touched by the hand of Hamas.” .

– Commander of the 2908th Battalion of the Israeli Army: In a video posted online on December 21, 2023, Yair Ben David stated that the Israeli army had “entered Beit Hanoun and did there the same thing that Simeon and Levi did in Nablus,” and that “all of Gaza should look like Beit Hanoun”, referring to the city in northern Gaza that has been totally devastated by the Israeli Army… The biblical passage in question says: “On the third day, when they were in pain, Simeon and Levi, two of Jacob's sons, Dinah's brothers, each took his sword, entered the city unmolested, and killed all the males.".

* * *

The above statements by Israeli political and military officials indicate, by themselves, a clear intention to destroy the Palestinians of Gaza as a group. They also constitute a clear, direct and public incitement to genocide, which has remained uncontrolled and unpunished. The clear inference from the Israeli military's actions on the ground - including the huge number of civilian deaths and injuries, as well as the magnitude of the displacement, destruction and devastation caused in Gaza - is that these genocidal declarations are being carried out against the Palestinian people. That is also the clear and necessary deduction that emerges from the evidence being obtained from Israeli Army soldiers serving in Gaza:

– Israeli army colonel, deputy head of COGAT: In a video filmed in Beit Lahia - one of the areas of Gaza that appears to have suffered particularly severe levels of destruction - and broadcast on Israeli television on November 4, 2023, Colonel Yogev Bar Sheshet declared: “Whoever returns here, if Come back later, you will find scorched earth. No houses, no agriculture, no nothing. They have no future”; another army colonel recorded in
In the same video, Colonel Erez Eshel also commented that: “Revenge is a great value. There is revenge for what they did to us… This place will be a fallow land. “They won’t be able to live here.”

– Israeli army soldiers: Israeli soldiers in uniform have been filmed on December 5, 2023
dancing, chanting and singing “may their village burn, may Gaza be erased.” Two days later, on another occasion inside Gaza, on December 7, 2023, dancing, singing and chanting “we know our motto: no uninvolved civilians” and “erase the seed of Amalek.”

It should be noted that the second video of soldiers chanting that “there are no uninvolved citizens” in Gaza and that “they will erase the seed of Amalek” was filmed on December 7, 2023. By that date, 17.177 Palestinians had died in Gaza, of which It is estimated that 70% were women and children.

December 7 and 8, 2023, were especially devastating for the Palestinians, as 350 people died in the space of 24 hours, approximately one Palestinian killed in Gaza every four minutes.

This genocidal rhetoric from government and military officials is also widespread and common among non-Cabinet members of the Israeli Knesset, who have repeatedly called for Gaza to be “annihilated,” “flattened,” “erased,” and “crushed.” …over all its inhabitants.” Parliamentarians have publicly deplored that anyone “feels sorry” for the “uninvolved” Gazans, repeatedly stating that “there are no uninvolved”, that “there are no innocents in Gaza”, that “the murderers of women and children should not be separated of the citizens of Gaza", that "the children of Gaza have asked for it" and that "there should be one sentence for everyone there: death." The parliamentarians have declared that “we must not forget that even the innocent citizens, the cruel and monstrous inhabitants of Gaza took an active part… there is no room for any humanitarian gesture – we must protest against the memory of Amalek”, and that “without hunger and thirst among the population of Gaza, we will not be able to recruit collaborators.” The parliamentarians have also called for bombing “mercilessly” from the air, demanding the use of nuclear weapons (“doomsday”), and a “Nakba that eclipses that of '48.”

Similar genocidal rhetoric is also common in Israeli civil society, with genocidal messages routinely disseminated – without censorship or sanction – in Israeli media. The media calls for Gaza to be “wiped out,” turned into a “slaughterhouse,” that “Hamas must not be eliminated,” but rather that “Gaza must be razed,” with the repeated assertion that “there are no innocents… There is no population.” . “There are 2,5 million terrorists.”

A local official reportedly called for Gaza to be “desolate and destroyed” like the Auschwitz museum, “demonstrating the madness of the people who lived there.” Former members of Parliament have called for a level of destruction similar to that of Dresden and Hiroshima, stating that “Gaza must be destroyed”, that it would be “immoral” for the Israeli army not to be “vengeful and cruel”. In an interview on the Israeli news, a former MP called for all Palestinians in Gaza to be killed saying:

“I tell you that in Gaza, without exception, they are all terrorists, sons of dogs. We must exterminate them, kill them all. We will crush Gaza, turn them into dust, and the army will clean up the area. “Then we will begin to build new areas, for us, above all, for our security.”

These statements by prominent members of Israeli society - including former parliamentarians and news anchors - constitute a clear direct and public incitement to genocide, which the Israeli authorities have failed to control or punish. That this sentiment appears to be so widespread in Israeli society is particularly worrying given that the soldiers stationed in Gaza are largely reservists drawn from and informed by civil society.