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| Source: Gaza 2023 AP. Image Not for article below. |
KILLING FOR KILLING’S SAKE IN GAZA
A radicalized IDF sees all Palestinians as terrorists
Gaza has become a killing field—that is the view of a well-informed Israeli veteran who was an enthusiastic supporter of the initial Israeli response to the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. He believes that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the mastermind of the all-out retaliatory bombing and ground attack there, is now a contemporary Colonel Kurtz, the psychotic killer of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, the famed Vietnam War movie of 1979 based on Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella Heart of Darkness.
What began as a retaliatory war by the internationally revered Israel Defense Forces against a disciplined Hamas guerilla force turned into the systematic starvation of a society whose civilian survivors—men, women, and children—are the victims of an Israeli military whose combat units are often led by the second generation of Israeli settlers. These officers, increasingly prominent as the war in Gaza goes on, are religious zealot majors and lieutenant colonels who believe it is their calling to shoot and kill any Palestinian who moves, whether combatant or civilian.
There are more than 120 Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including fifteen in East Jerusalem. There are also more than two hundred illegal outposts that are supplied with weapons by the increasingly radical Israeli government while not officially sanctioned by that government. Violence against Palestinians in the West Bank has grown steadily, including Israeli Air Force bombing missions.
The IDF recruiting pattern explains the growing violence against Palestinian men, women, and children in the war. I was told that 40 to 45 percent of today’s higher officers in the IDF come from settler families in the West Bank who combine “deep religiosity with Netanyahu’s political fervor.’’ The Israeli veteran told me of watching in horror, with colleagues, as Israeli bombings and earth-moving machinery were continuing to, as he put it, “level” north Gaza and turn it into a dead zone. He said that there “have been more and more reports of colonels and even generals issuing orders to kill every Palestinian you see and destroy every building still standing. Israel’s war in Gaza has become fanatical. It’s apocalypse now. Killing for killing’s sake. It is corruption like never before.”
He was referring to a devastating article published in December by Haaretz, the liberal Israeli daily that is under increasing attack by the Netanyahu administration. The article focused on the Netzarim Corridor, once a narrow partially paved road separating north and south Gaza that has since the 10/7 attack been expanded by the IDF into a two-and-a-half-mile wide safe zone that runs the entire four-mile width of the Gaza Strip. Hundreds of nearby buildings, including a hospital, were bulldozed to clear space for the IDF. The zone is commanded by more than a few officers who, Haaretz reported, routinely order IDF soldiers to execute Gazans, including those who come with children in tow, seeking food and safety.
Many have been summarily executed on the order of senior officers who deemed them to be terrorists. IDF soldiers on duty at the corridor told Haaretz that, at best, one in every twenty of those Gazans looking for any kind of help was a “terrorist” but all were routinely gunned down. One commander at the corridor called it “the line of dead bodies,” where, because bodies were not collected, there are “packs of wild dogs who come to eat them.”
It was explained that the area was a “kill zone,” and anyone who entered without permission was to be shot. There was inevitable competition among the various units assigned to guard the corridor, a recently discharged IDF officer told Haaretz. He also said that the kill zone extended as far as a sniper could see. “We’re killing civilians who are then counted as terrorists.” If one perimeter defense unit has 150 kills, “the next unit aims for 200.”
The competition was very familiar to this reporter. I reported often and mercilessly about the competition for body counts among companies in combat during the Vietnam War. There were benefits for killing the most Vietnamese: a weekend far away from the war with an all-you-can-eat barbeque for the winning unit, complete with a constant flow of beer and, on special occasions, a busload of Vietnamese prostitutes brought by bus from a local city. Once grand but decaying armies, whether in Gaza or Vietnam, fall into the same patterns.
There are other voices—moderate but far from radical—to be heard. Momentmagazine, founded in 1975 for the American Jewish community by, among others, the late Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate who survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald during World War II, published an interview last month with Israeli General Yair Golan. A paratrooper who retired a decade ago as the IDF’s deputy chief of staff, Golan was then elected to the Knesset, where he served as deputy minister of the economy.
Golan is the leader of the newly formed Israeli Democrats Party, a liberal Zionist group that could capture, the magazine reported, ten seats in a future election. He is a modest man with modest views. He said he believes—the interview took place in November—that a ceasefire with Hamas is feasible but Netanyahu “prefers to keep the war going so as to appease the far-right members of his coalition who want to rebuild settlements in Gaza.” Settlements in north and south Gaza for the religious zealots who support Netanyahu? It’s in the plan.
Golan said that there are at least four different tribes in Israel: ultra-Orthodox Jews, Orthodox Jews, secular Jews, and Arabs. He added: “We need to bridge the gaps in our society between these groups and should foster judicial equality and equality of opportunity for all.”
Asked how to end the war In Gaza and free the remaining 10/7 hostages, Golan said: “Netanyahu knows that all that is needed is a hostage deal to move in a positive direction. But he does not want it. Why? The war in the south provides the opportunity to convince the Israeli people that we are in a time of emergency and only he can save us.”
Asked about strategic issues, Golan said: “We often need to choose between bad and worse. Here we need to choose between good and bad. But this government prefers the bad. This is its main crime. This government ignores the interests of Israel and serves only the personal and political interests of its members. . . . The alternative to Netanyahu must be a unified government coalition.”
Asked how Israel should deal with Donald Trump, he said, “It is very difficult to predict the policy of the new American administration. In any event, to have a regional front against Iran we need the United States. To reach a new peace agreement with the Palestinians, we need the United States with us. A new Memorandum of Understanding with America is required by 2026. This MOU must clearly state that America supports the security of Israel.
“The worst-case scenario for Israel would be if Donald Trump takes office and says something like, ‘It is too hard to deal with you. You are not a good partner.’”
Modest man. Modest ideas. Common sense. If modern history tells us anything, it is: don’t bet on it.
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