Opinion | Ignoring Massacres in Gaza City While Protesting for Democracy in Tel Aviv

Ruins in Gaza on Thursday.Credit: Leo Correa/AP

"This isn't a problem of the media concealing or manipulating.

It is the fruit of militaristic racist indoctrination
that begins in kindergarten and continues until death.

An indoctrination that needs destruction to justify the existence of Zionism."

Israel recently committed the largest child massacre in its history.

               Two hundred children and 100 women were killed in one day. Altogether, about 400 civilians were killed, and the number of dead is not yet final.

               These numbers are not reported in the Israeli media, and if they are – it's always minimized outrageously.

For example, Channel 12 News, Israel's mainstream television station, reported that the 400 dead were "operatives." How can you claim that they were all "operatives" when it's completely clear that the entire world is seeing the horrifying pictures of dozens of babies and children bombed to death? How is it possible to lie so blatantly when the truth is so clear? For how long will the Israeli media be complicit in the crimes of the Israeli government?

Even the media of other countries that committed genocide would be ashamed to lie like that. But Israel's chutzpah is a foundation stone of its approach.

The majority of the Israeli public, which opposes the war, thinks that the war jeopardizes the hostages' lives and that the fighting was resumed for political reasons. I was somehow able to understand the Israeli reaction at the start of the war, after October 7, 2023, even though it did not directly refer to the Palestinian victims. At that time, the response was intended to protect against being labeled as "traitors." But after 18 months of mass killing, which will enter the history books as an eternal disgrace, that mechanism can no longer work.

Although resuming the war will kill the hostages, it mainly kills masses of Palestinian men, women, children and the elderly. At what point will anti-war Israelis say aloud what should be said and stop being euphemistic? I understand there has been some coming to terms with being labeled "child murderers." Is it possible to reach a lower moral nadir? Doesn't it frighten them to be labeled as such?

It's already impossible to distinguish between things in Israel. It's impossible to distinguish the media from the public. Because even those who oppose the war are afraid to say that Gazans are human, too. Because it's impossible to separate the pilot from the bomb. He's told to push the button and he pushes it. The majority of the people not only tolerate mass slaughter, but demand it, either explicitly or tacitly.

This isn't a problem of the media concealing or manipulating. It is the fruit of militaristic racist indoctrination that begins in kindergarten and continues until death. An indoctrination that needs destruction to justify the existence of Zionism.

There is something warped in the narrative, which is currently being presented by the liberal Jewish public in Israel, as a struggle to save Israeli democracy. This struggle exists in the near total absence of reference to the war's lethal consequences on Gaza and Gazans.

How is it possible to square the defense of democratic values with a situation in which on the other side tens of thousands of lives are being cut short in a single blow? It sounds unbelievable.

How is it possible to insist on freedom and justice without any reference to the inconceivable human price of this war? How it is possible to devalue life in Gaza, which has become so cheap for Jews in Israel, while simultaneously calling for the preservation of Israeli democracy? Exactly what democracy are we talking about? One that carries on its back such enormous, terrible destruction every day?