Opinion | This Israeli Army General Has a Plan for Gaza: Starvation, Transfer and Genocide

FILE PHOTO: Palestinians crowd together as they wait for food distribution in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, November.Credit: Hatem Ali,AP

Maybe the enlightened public will object?
Don't worry.

The public that has abandoned the hostages will accept the starvation of civilians (and Arabs at that!) as easily as it's accepting the unnecessary war in Lebanon.

No one will call to throw Eiland's plan into the garbage, just like no one has called to stop the bloody adventure in Lebanon.

The public knows that the war could have been stopped if the corrupt prime minister and a coterie of guilt-ridden generals wanted that.

Wait a minute, what about the transfer?

Oh, who cares!

In this war we have learned that what you don't see, you don't know. And when you don't know, you don't react. Neither emotionally or practically. We have learned that life is easier when you know as little as possible, when reality is hidden by the "psychological terror" argument.

According to reports, "hundreds" have been killed in Lebanon, and "tens of thousands" in Gaza. Great. Be satisfied with that. Don't bother. We don't want to know any more.

We feed on propaganda. The information provided to us is not chosen according to what we need to know, but according to what television wants us to know. They're right. The last thing we want to know is how many 10-year-olds were killed in Gaza, in Lebanon, or by exploding pagers. Any such information is psychological terror that damages our fighting spirit and lowers morale.

Psychological terror is also the plan of Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, under which "besieging" 300,000 Gazans, who will be "evacuated" from their homes with their only choice being to flee or die. This plan shows us to be cruel and without any moral foundation, thereby damaging our fighting spirit, but no emotion is registered; there are no demonstrations outside Eiland's home – the sagacious use of sterile terms like "siege" and "evacuation" calmed us.

The plan is based on a logical assumption: If someone isn't fed, he dies. We have no problem if Arabs die – on the contrary, the more, the better. We only need to present the atrocities so that it doesn't show through the decent words, and our hand won't reach for the remote to find something happier.

It's better to obscure the horror, so as not to evoke emotions or memories. Say "starvation" or "transfer" – and some of us will feel an unpleasant tingling in the pit of our stomach. Our memories will evoke old testimonies. Thin arms, skin and bones, stretched out to beg for food. This is what "starvation" looks like. Refugees carrying bundles in supermarket carts; this is what "evacuation" looks like. This is not reality, TV presenter Ohad Hemo will explain; it's psychological terror.

So how can we contain the disgrace? 

A tent camp in Rafah, Gaza.Credit: Abdel Kareem Hana,AP

Don't worry. We won't see anything. Television knows that the public's desire to know has limits. Eiland's starvation plan will succeed on the condition that there are no cameras. If we see a girl, even an Arab girl, stretching out her emaciated hand to a camera, we'll immediately start howling in the best leftist tradition. What we don't see, we don't know, and what we don't know, doesn't exist.

What about the Genocide Convention, to which Israel is a signatory?

What an insulting question! Are you implying that we...? You should know, they tell me, that not all starvation is genocide. Genocide, they say, has bad PR. It can be converted and turned into a cute means for population transfer (called, let us say, Humane Civilian Transportation).

To Eiland's credit, he actually chose the moderate sections of the convention: only starvation and population transfer. There were worse. The "siege" will take care of the starvation (without "humanitarian" and such nonsense), and the air force will oversee the "evacuation," meaning that 300,000 people will have to flee to areas where they may or may not be bombed.

There's a chance that Eiland's proposal for a kosher and modest Jewish genocide will bring about total victory, or, if you like, the final solution of the Palestinian problem. The question isn't the plan's immorality. Who cares about morality? The question is whether those responsible for implementation can expect arrest warrants when they go shopping in Europe. So just calm down. Eiland checked.

The framework conforms with international law, because he's allowing the population to evacuate from the combat zone before the siege is imposed.

Maybe the enlightened public will object? Don't worry. The public that has abandoned the hostages will accept the starvation of civilians (and Arabs at that!) as easily as it's accepting the unnecessary war in Lebanon. No one will call to throw Eiland's plan into the garbage, just like no one has called to stop the bloody adventure in Lebanon. The public knows that the war could have been stopped if the corrupt prime minister and a coterie of guilt-ridden generals wanted that.

Wait a minute, what about the transfer?

Oh, who cares!