Rep. Mike Lawler (NY-17) was in the Bronx on Tuesday, April 22, to speak to students at Manhattan University. Dr. Margaret Groarke, the Department Chairperson of History, Political & International Studies, extended the invitation as the coordinator of Jaspers Vote, a nonpartisan voter engagement organization on campus. Lawler, a 2009 university alumnus, engaged in an open student forum. Groarke explained, “He answered prepared questions on Ukraine, tariffs, DOGE and government cuts, the state of the economy, due process, US AID, and more.” Lawler also took questions from the audience.
I didn’t have the opportunity to see Lawler enter the building. Apparently, he was whisked in quickly to bypass about fifty demonstrators who showed up to express their displeasure with him. The group was primarily over 55, and robustly chanted refrains such as “Take a Hike, Maga Mike” while waving signs and holding banners. They were eager to express their opinions on Lawler’s shortcomings.
When I asked Steven Epstein why he was in attendance, he had plenty to say. “I’m here to save Democracy. Lawler lies. He supports defunding Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. He voted for the Republican budgets and fired people.” Without missing a beat, he added, “All Republicans are MAGA.” The students passing by ignored the rally, and most did not want to engage when I tried to speak with them. The two engineering majors who did respond to my questions had no idea who Lawler was and weren’t particularly interested in finding out.
Grassroots activists Ann Starer and Maureen Morrissey, founders of Fight Lawler, spearheaded the action. They had previously staged an Empty Seat Town Hall for Lawler’s constituents in NY17. Their top concern, borne out by other sources, was his propensity for being disingenuous about his political positions.
Morrissey said, “He’s my Representative. I live in Mount Kisco. He obfuscates. He changes how he talks about issues to create disinformation.” In tandem with one of the displayed placards, Morrissey noted, “And he got $1.7 million for his campaign from Elon Musk.” When questioned about that donation during a CNN show, Lawler responded, “Not exactly.”
Addressing her apprehension for the Mount Kisco immigrant population (approximately 35 percent), Morrissey discussed those residents who had moved to Mount Kisco in 1995. “They are day laborers, restaurant workers, nannies, and gardeners.” Morrissey has worked with this population since they arrived, to help them acclimate and lead productive lives. “They are major contributors to our community, and now they are afraid to leave their homes to go shopping.” Morrisey underscored, “Lawler is anti-immigrant. He tows Trump’s line on immigration.”
Starer, an attorney, emphasized that Lawler is “fundamentally a MAGA Republican.” With disgust she pointed out, “85 percent of his strategy is replying to questions with answers that “are not forthright,” Starer reiterated, “He’s a MAGA guy who masquerades as a moderate.”
That was the consensus of everyone I spoke to. Kathy Solomon from North West Bronx Indivisible asserted, “What’s dangerous about him is that he presents as a moderate, but he’s not. He voted for the 2025 SAVE ACT (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act).” Lawler, in fact, was an original co-sponsor. Both the League of Women Voters and the ACLU have condemned the legislation as a form of voter suppression.
When I checked out Lawler’s website, the verbiage differed from many of his public (and behind closed doors) statements. Although he has maintained that he is “firmly opposed to any effort to ban abortion nationally,” Lawler was identified as one of the Republicans specifically presenting voters with ambiguous information about his views on women’s reproductive care before the November 2024 election. There was a piece on the ACLU website and an article published by the19th News. Neither reflected his page on Women’s Health, nor did the callout by Emily’s List about Lawler’s record.
It was a very different picture and succinctly encapsulated what the constituents I met had been complaining about. Apparently, Lawler is on the watch list of numerous entities working to keep Republicans accountable. American Bridge had a page devoted to Lawler before his televised debate. Most recently, he got caught in a major jam when a Social Security office in his district was closed. In a Trumpian move, he tried to ascribe blame to the Biden administration.
On guns, he states that he has a sensible approach. Gabby Gifford’s organization for gun safety felt differently.
Lawler is holding a Town Hall on April 27 in response to the outcry that he is unavailable to voters. An RSVP is required, and comments on his Facebook page suggested that claims it was “sold out” meant that attendees were being vetted.
Regardless, Starer and Morrissey will be there — if not inside the venue, then outside. “We have concerns about his designs on the governorship,” they told me. “We feel we must keep the spotlight on him. Every chance we get, we will show up where he is.”
As Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
“Viewer discretion is advised,” introduces the documentary “There is Another Way,” to prepare viewers for video footage from bodycams used by Hamas on October 7 and from the Israeli military during excursions. The images, as noted, are “difficult.” However, so is the overwhelming psychic pain expressed by those Palestinians and Israelis who have lost loved ones and whose lives have been forever changed by violence in the land.
Director Stephen Apkon has delivered a follow-up documentary to the 2016 “Disturbing the Peace,” which examined the beginnings of Combatants for Peace (CFP). This Israeli and Palestinian binational organization seeks to bring together “former enemy combatants.”
The group now includes those who have not been in battle but who have committed to the mission of non-violence and examining the narratives that formed an integral part of their upbringing and consciousness. Despite constant challenges, they stretch themselves to connect with “the other,” previously the perpetrator of their nightmares, in order to move toward “collective liberation.” Nothing would challenge them more than the events of October 7 and its aftermath.
Where to start? The film uses archival material of disparate content with the quote, “Stories rarely have clear beginnings.”
Images of the sun over Jerusalem and the separation wall morph into on-the-ground shots of October 7. Some footage is familiar, some isn’t. We witness Hamas fighters as they break through protective fencing and barriers, and their elation over what they have achieved. The incursion into Kibbutz Be’eri is shown in graphic detail. The final communication between Yonatan Zeigen and his mother, peace activist Vivian Silver, is shared. Her message, “They are inside the house,” is chilling.
A voiceover comments on Israelis and Palestinians. “We find that we actually have something in common. That willingness to kill people we don’t know.”
Apkon takes the viewer back to when Israeli soldiers who no longer wanted to serve in the Occupied Territories heard that there were Palestinians moving away from armed action as a model for resolution. Featured in the film, along with their personal stories of evolution, are several founding members of Combatants for Peace.
The current Director of CFP is co-founder Sulaiman Khatib. After attacking two IDF soldiers when he was 14 years old, Khatib served a decade in Israeli prisons. While incarcerated, he went on hunger strikes and learned English, Hebrew, and the history of the Jews.
The grandson of Holocaust survivors, Chen Alon, became a co-founder after the defining move of signing onto the Courage to Refuse letter of 2002. Fifty combat officers and soldiers endorsed the missive, stating they would no longer serve in the Occupied Territories.
Jamel Qassas’s family was displaced in 1948. He was born in a refugee camp outside of Bethlehem and watched the IDF kill his brother during the First Intifada. He was in and out of Israeli jails over a dozen times.
Kibbutz-raised Avner Wishnitzer served for four years in an elite IDF unit. In 2003, he also publicly refused to serve in the Occupied Territories. He is a co-founder of Combatants for Peace and sees his work as a model for other areas of conflict around the world.
Ahmed Al-Helou’s family was displaced from Gaza and then resettled in Jericho. He joined Hamas as a teenager and was sent to prison when he was 15-years-old. While there, he was exposed to new ideologies and relates how he “divorced Hamas” and began a new phase of his life.
The Israeli allies in CFP have a primary resolution: To “stand in solidarity with all Palestinians who live under occupation.”
When October 7 occurred, both Palestinians and Israelis realized something huge was happening on an unprecedented scale. How would the group move forward? Would they be triggered and revert to “gut reactions?” Experience euphoria that there had been a break from the Gaza prison that limited their lives? Backslide to a desire for revenge in response to the murders at the Kibbutz and the music festival?
The core alliance found its way back to each other. Suliman Khatib felt an internal shift on “a moral basis to “shame, and [a] disconnection to the violence.” He reflected, “This is not a struggle for freedom.”
Chen Alon grappled with his anger. Yet once he received a message from Jamel Qassas, “It changed everything.” Qassas wanted the group to issue a joint statement. “It is now when you have to show your commitment,” he said. Key members mutually agreed that an urgent meeting was essential, to “sit and talk truthfully about our feelings.”
Alon spoke about his shock at seeing the carnage in the Kibbutz. “It was the first time we saw piles of bodies of Israelis…although it looks the same.”
Meanwhile, retribution in Gaza was about to commence. Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant closed Gaza off to everything from food to electricity. He incited the Israeli public with the nefarious comment, “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.” Netanyahu’s rallying cry was, “Total victory over Hamas.”
Now it was the turn of the Israelis to call their Palestinian companions to find out how they were and if they were safe. There are images of dead Palestinian children and babies, as well as limb extremities partially exposed from under the rubble of destroyed construction. A widely disseminated clip that had circulated on American news media shows a Palestinian man with his hands lifted to the sky. He asks repeatedly in despair, “Where is the humanity?”
Nothing was more visceral than seeing Palestinian bodies wrapped in blue plastic sheeting, lined up in a ditch, then covered with dirt pushed forward by a bulldozer. It was impossible not to visualize the parallel of dead European Jews in shallow graves.
Six days after October 7, CFP decided to do a group Zoom. It wasn’t easy.
Iris Gur, an educator and former school principal, had an opening request: “Recognize my pain now.”
There was fragmentation within the group. They lost people. Some went to the army, a “red line” in CFP. Suliman Khatib, who spoke of his allegiance to the core values of CFP, said, “You can’t step away from peace when it gets more difficult.” He referenced his ongoing suffering from checkpoints, arrests, and stolen land.
Two weeks later, thirty CFP members met for an entire weekend. They openly shared their rawest emotions from the “very first hours and moments of October 7.” The question, “How can we continue together?” was the top concern. There was anger, grief, fighting, and “being human together.” But it was “words, not bullets.”
“You acknowledge the pain,” Iris Gur stated. “Then you move forward.”
Gur’s insights reflected the disconnect between internalized “truths” and the ignored larger realities. Gur said, “I used to learn about pogroms in Europe. It’s the same. It’s the same.” In her actions with individual soldiers who were protecting settlers, she told them, “You don’t have to do everything without thinking.” Gur opined, “They are brainwashed.” When commenting on the behavior of many IDF soldiers, Gur’s perception was, “The evil is inside us. It’s getting inside. The whole society is collapsing.”
The group decided to do a media blitz, giving interviews to outlets who were willing to hear how “Israeli democracy cannot coexist with occupation.” From the New York Times to Democracy Now, they shared their views.
The section of the film highlighting the violence of messianic settlers in the West Bank is quite disturbing. One Israeli pronounces, “No Palestine. It’s finished, Palestine. It’s Bibi in the government.” The settlers are enabled to intimidate, harass, and physically assault Palestinians, Israelis, and international advocates with the backing of the government and the IDF running interference for them.
Seeing young men with payos, kippahs, and tallitot acting with gleeful malevolence presents the disconnect between “religion” and reality. Young male Israeli soldiers, filled with bravado and indifference to the havoc they are involved in wreaking, are seen casually smoking as homes and buildings in Gaza are exploding behind them.
Mai Shahin, a Palestinian activist and therapist trained in conflict resolution, talked about the essential concern of water resources in the West Bank, specifically in Jericho. Shahin said,”Water is a source of life. One hundred Palestinian families depend on it. They won’t let the sheep drink. They block the way.” The settlers not only obstruct the water [al-Auja spring], they destroy pipes. It is clear, as a Palestinian man attests, “The goal is to displace us, to take over the land.”
MP Offer Cassif was present at a water protection action, along with Shahin, Iris Gur, and Chen Alon. A member of the Hadash political party, Cassif offers an explanation of the ongoing struggle and how it isn’t about Israelis and Palestinians. Rather, he said, “It is between those who do evil and those who struggle for justice. We are on the side of justice.”
The scene shifts to the 2024 Joint Memorial Ceremony staged by Combatants for Peace and the Parents Circle Family Forum. After fifty minutes of watching what results from hate and destruction, it is a balm.
Individuals spoke about “taking responsibility to stop the killing” and the goal of “turning opponents into people you can work with and live with.” Michal Halev, mother of Laor Abramov (killed at the Nova Music Festival), directed her comments to all mothers, referencing the “pain that cannot be healed” and “paving the road to peace.” When Halev learned that her son’s name had been written on a missile going to Gaza, she objected. “In my name, I want no vengeance.” Halev did not want her only son’s name on a piece of lethal ammunition.
Unable to attend the ceremony due to the closure of the West Bank, Ahmed Al-Helou sent a recording. When speaking of his hopes, he also told of the sixty dead members of his family in Gaza. “How does this bring security for Israel?” he asked.
Yonatan Zeigen emphasized “mutual bereavement.” His mother’s work was on the audience’s mind when he acknowledged that the torch had been passed to him. He said, “May it be extinguished on my watch so I don’t have to pass it on to my children.”
At the film’s close, statistics relating the deaths of Israelis and Palestinians, displacements of Gazans, and numbers of Israeli hostages (alive and assumed dead) are listed. The $18 billion in “weapons and military aid” given to the state of Israel since October 2023 is compared to the slightly more than $1 billion provided to the Palestinian people for humanitarian aid.
Chen declares definitively, “The most difficult thing in life, really, is to put yourself in the shoes of the other.”
On April 29, Combatants for Peace and the Parents Circle – Families Forum are holding their 20th Israeli-Palestinian Joint Memorial Ceremony: Choosing Humanity, Choosing Hope
Live Broadcast 20:30 Jerusalem | 19:30 Berlin | 13:30 New York | 10:30 Los Angeles
How does an individual make sense of what is happening to them and their lives when experiencing a period in history that defies explanation?
Rashid Mashasrawi, a Palestinian film director who was born in Gaza and grew up in the Shati refugee camp, initiated an anthology film project that stands as a testament to the realities experienced on the ground in Gaza after October 7.
Chosen through a committee process formulated to select work that delivered a cohesive message, the twenty-two entries feature stories ranging from documentary to animation. Running times are between three to six minutes.
The contrast between the utter destruction of decimated buildings with the beach and waves of the Mediterranean Sea is palpable. There is a metaphorical analogy between stark constriction and elusive freedom.
In “From Ground Zero,” numerous themes are ubiquitous in depicting daily routines while individualized and translated through each creator’s prism. People wait to use a toilet in a city of tents. They seek bread or canned goods that haven’t expired. Sorrow and suffering persist during the ongoing search for loved ones who are either buried beneath rubble or already deceased. Bombs are ever-present as people rush to find potential safety. The constant noise of overhead drones becomes an unrelenting buzzing in each Gazan’s head. With as many as two hundred dead in an hour, attempting to live a “normal” existence is barely possible. Yet, girls play hopscotch while singing. A mother engages in caregiving routines after tracking down and gathering water for drinking, cooking, and bathing her children. Previous displacement stories from cities like Jaffa and Haifa are shared.
For me, the most unsettling stories capture the faces of innocent children forced to accept the ongoing tragedy as their current fate.
“Soft Skin” by Khamis Masharawi shows youngsters creating an animated film. Masharawi is one of the organizers of the Fekra Foundation in Gaza, which uses film creation as an art therapy. The theme of “Soft Skin” is how mothers write the names of their kids on their body parts—arms and legs—so that in the event of death or dismemberment, their limbs can be identified. The children can’t sleep until they rub away these markings.
“Soft Skin”
Ahmed Al Danaf’s “A School Day” was particularly poignant. A young boy puts his schoolbooks into a bag. He walks through wreckage and debris, ostensibly to attend classes. Rather, his destination is the grave of his teacher, killed on December 1, 2024. There, he takes out a book and begins to read. Later, after returning home, he is shown struggling to obliterate the day’s memories through bedtime
“A School Day”
In “Overload” by Alaa Islam Ayoub, the main character must decide what to take with her on the “trip north’ in November 2023. As she wonders which items to bring, she questions, “What could be heavier than my grief?” She compares herself to Ruqayya in the novel “The Woman from Tantoura,” who is also “trapped” in her own story. Pondering her unfolding circumstances, she questions, “What is heavier than oppression?”
“Taxi Wanissa” by Etimad Washah begins with a shot of a goat-drawn cart that takes people around the Gaza Strip, beginning an initial storyline before the screen goes black. The director appears and explains that as she was filming, she learned about the death of her brother and his children. Washah lost the desire to continue the work. She states, “It shattered me.” Feeling alone and unable to do anything, she describes her intended arc of the main character dying in a bombing and the donkey returning home alone. Her testimony provides the conclusion to her piece.
“Taxi Wanissa”
Hana Elevia presents a story of joy in “No,” underscoring the healing power of music by singing a song dedicated to love and hope, “to pursue your dreams and build Palestine.” Her approach stands in contrast with the portrayals of unrelenting destruction. As Alla Damo explains in “24 Hours,” he was subjected to attacks three times within one day. He comments, “Every stage of my life was demolished in front of my eyes.”
“No”
“Hell’s Heaven” by Karim Satoum offers a solution that would be at home in the Theatre of the Absurd. After figuring out how to requisition a white plastic body bag from an outpost that offers free washing and burial for the dead, Satoum uses it to sleep in at night because it keeps him warm. The reality of death is a constant companion for those in Gaza. Satoum takes a measure of agency over his situation by preparing himself for what may become an inevitability.
Throughout this collage of Palestinian voices and identity, a strong sense of attachment to the land comes through, along with the refusal to relive the Nakba of 1948. Director Aws Al Banna (“Jad and Natalie”) relates, “I feel such oppression, I can’t even cry.” In “Flashback,” a comment that should land with recognition (and hopefully empathy from Jews) is the statement of Islam Al Zeriei: “I always have a bag packed.”
Michael Moore is the film’s Executive Producer, an official Toronto International Film Festival selection, and a 97th AcademyAwards® Shortlist Nominee for International Feature Film: Palestine. On his role in amplifying the project, Moore noted, “It’s an honor to stand in solidarity with them and help share their stories with the world.”
With Trump and Netanyahu meeting in Washington, D.C., now couldn’t be a better time for Americans (and others) to pick up Gideon Levy’s book, The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe. It covers the period of 2014 through June 2024, and presents a clear-eyed vision of what transpired before and after October 7, 2023. For those brave enough to listen to what Levy says, it might help them reframe the Israeli-Palestinian narrative moving forward.
Gideon Levy was one of the first Israeli journalists I began reading with regularity when I subscribed to the English version of Haaretz five years ago. He never failed to report uncomfortable truths and continues to defy Israeli hasbara in his columns, which cover the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank—his beat for thirty-six years. Not one to shy away from asking the hard questions, at the center of his manuscript is the theme, “Can a society exist without a conscience?”
The Killing of Gaza is divided into two sections. The first part is broken down by years, 2014 through 2023. The second begins with October 2023 and delves into each month through June 2024. By the time Levy reaches April, the subheading is, “In Six Months in Gaza, Israel’s Worst-Ever War Achieved Nothing but Death and Destruction.”
The book’s tone is anger and frustration, laced with sarcasm. Levy traces the series of missteps and bad choices that he posits have dogged Israel’s leaders from its earliest days.
Levy begins by grounding his readers into his whereabouts on that fateful October 7. It was a warm Shabbat coinciding with Simchat Torah. He was out for a run in a park near his home in the northern district of Tel Aviv. As he sits down to write his column for the Sunday edition in response to the initial reports of an attack, his first thoughts are about the fall of Berlin. However, after being informed by his editor of the murders and abductions of Israeli citizens, he shifts his premise.
He writes: “Behind all this lies Israeli arrogance; the idea that we can do whatever we like, that we’ll never pay the price and be punished for it. We’ll carry on undisturbed.”
Levy last visited Gaza eighteen years ago, before the government prohibited Israeli journalists from entering. He had been a regular visitor from 1987 through 2006. His goal was to serve as an interlocutor on “life and death under Israeli occupation—where freedom and basic human rights were denied.”
Since June 2007, Israel has imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip (with the collaboration of Egypt), isolating two to three million people. Levy observes that when Hamas gained power, “the closure took on a new form, tighter and crueler.”
Levy takes the reader down the path of actions and attitudes that he sees as laying the groundwork for October 2023. He questions why Israelis believe that the inhabitants of Gaza would accept their living conditions and the blockade indefinitely. When referencing an operation put into play, named Protective Edge, Levy employs his acerbic wit to emphasize that the undertaking gave “no protection and no edge.” Rather, he underscores that in Israel’s continuous forays, “Nobody seems to learn anything, and nothing changes except the weapons.” When Levy outlines the devastation wrought by the military action, he adds as a postscript, “But that, too, prompted nothing more than a big yawn.”
Calling Hamas “a despicable organization,” Levy doesn’t step away from “the crimes committed by the invaders.” Yet, he emphasizes that there is a clear distinction between Hamas and the people of Gaza.” His mission is to underscore the humanity of those Gazans who have repeatedly been “dispossessed and expelled,” living under seventeen years of a blockade and seventy-five years of misery. As the months go by, Levy stresses that “the war has lost all reasonable proportion required for punishment, revenge or future deterrence.” He criticizes the absence of an endgame of strategy for “the day after.”
Levy references the 2012 United Nations report Gaza in 2020: A Livable Place?By January 2020, one to two million people lived where the norms were worse than the study had predicted. Levy writes, “There’s a Chernobyl in Gaza, an hour from Tel Aviv.” He also calls out the global community for their recurring no-teeth commissions of inquiries, which do nothing to help Gazans who are left to survive amid rubble while suffering from malnutrition. In February 2024, Levy called upon the international community to force peace on Israel.
Using individual stories as illustrations of facts on the ground, Levy points to how Israelis ignore the fate of Gazans unless “Gaza is shooting.” A combination of polluted water, sewage emptied into the sea, and limited electricity are the realities of everyday life in Gaza. The concept formulated in 2006 by Dov Weissglas of putting “Gazan residents on a diet” has reached the level of starvation. Levy defines the ongoing distress caused to Palestinian families that are separated because they live in different territories and are broken apart by Israeli laws. He writes of the father and brother who are both incarcerated in Israeli prisons, and recounts stories about Palestinians denied timely access to permits over crossings when they desperately need medical attention. Demolitions of civilian homes and buildings by missiles occur when the Shin Bet decides that there is a viable reason. One young, confused Palestinian asked when interviewed by Levy, “Why do they bomb us with missiles, especially when I am an ordinary resident and don’t belong to any party or organization?”
Throughout the book, Levy asserts that Gaza exemplifies the original sin of the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 and “shapes its [Israel’s] moral profile.” Exactly because Gaza is occupied, Israel is responsible for its fate. Levy calls for the Gaza Strip to be opened up and reconnected to the West Bank. Levy mocks the fence built around the Gaza Strip and the military bigwigs who attended the unveiling. The cost was astronomical, which Levy compares to the pittance of 3,200 shekels that the nation pays out to its disabled citizens.
“Israeli security” is the catch-all phrase for the reasoning behind the separation wall costing billions. Levy mocks the “security cult,” which has created Gaza as a cage. He lays out his solution: “The only way to deal with the threat from Gaza is to give Gaza its freedom.” He asks, “Who knows how much more Israel will entrench itself, surround itself with walls, fences, and barriers, and imprison its neighbors even more.”
Levy posits that Israel could have taken a different route post-1948. Compensation, rehabilitation, and assistance to counterbalance the expulsion of Palestinians from their lands. “Violence is always brutal and immoral,” Levy intones, whether it is by “terrorists” or by “state-sanctioned uniformed violence.” The first section ends with a series of questions posed by Levy. His top inquiry to his fellow Israelis is, “Do we want to continue living like this?”
Part II
In the aftermath of the October 7 attacks, Levy visits the south of Israel and describes it as “bloodcurdling, shocking, upsetting, and frightening.” He chronicles stories of horror and writes, “The smell of death is everywhere.” He bears witness to “the destruction, ashes, and devastation,” acknowledging how hard it was to observe—while expressing his hope that Israel will limit their response to a short-term air attack on Gaza. Rather, what is to follow is a nightmare of the “most turbulent [year] in Israel’s history since the state’s founding.” He comments, “I found myself more isolated than ever.”
Why? The reason is his commitment to questioning the across-the-board incitement to equate the Hamas atrocities with a justification for the “loss of all restraint.” He sees Israelis moving toward the nationalist right-wing agenda, spurred on by the media (which Levy qualifies as a tool of the government and “an agent of nationalistic and militant emotions”), riling up citizens via tales of “kitsch and death.” Meanwhile, for Israelis, either Jewish or Arab, expressing concern for Palestinian lives in Gaza on social media, in jobs, or in universities results in questions from the police—as well as arrests.
While the rest of the world witnesses the ongoing decimation of Gaza, Levy asserts that the Israeli broadcasting networks consolidated into “a voice that supported, justified, and refused to question the war.” A disregard for coverage of bombed Gazan infrastructure, dying children, and a starving populace is nowhere to be seen.
Levy takes the Israeli left to task with the same anger he directs to those on the right. Their post-October 7 responses of “growing numb’ and “wising up” don’t cut it for him. He demands that they accept their “responsibility and guilt and silence.” Levy demands that they prepare to ask themselves, “Where were you when it all happened? Where? You were still sobering up? It’s time for that to end, because it’s already getting late. Very late.” Levy questions “their seriousness and resilience.” While he’s at it, Levy destroys the assertion that there is a difference between the Labor Party and the right-wing leadership. He claims that for all of Israel’s governments, the “DNA [for] baseless wars runs deep.”
Castigating the journalists who refer to Hamas as Nazis in what he labels “a repulsive display of Holocaust trivialization and denial,” Levy’s analysis is crystal clear: “This is the dark time. The time of the barbaric attack by Hamas and the time of the lost conscience and sense of reason in Israel.”
Less than two months after October 7, Levy has already surmised that Israel has prioritized the destruction of Gaza over saving the hostages. At this juncture, he is already seeing Israel’s goals receding and its crimes accumulating.” He observes, “A Hanukkah gift of humiliated Palestinians. What could bring more joy?”
By February 2024, Levy reiterates, “The Israeli public must wake up, and with it, the Biden administration.” He despairs at the potential incursion into Rafah, “the world’s biggest displaced persons camp.” He implores Israel, its leaders, and its people to finally “recognize the limits of force” and to come to terms with the horrors of October 7 and why it doesn’t justify every potential military move in their playbook. In March 2024, Levy writes, “Five months should be enough for you to get over not only your reaction, but also your conclusions.” On April 10, the six-month anniversary, Levy concludes that the ongoing destruction of Gaza is the “worst war” in Israel’s history, with no benefits.
While Levy drives home over and over the irreparable damage to “Israel’s moral reputation” and international standing, he doesn’t hesitate to stress that Israel had the choice to “punish the perpetrators and October 7…and move on.”
Levy delves into the Israeli psyche like a therapist trying to understand the dysfunctionality of a patient. Denial is at the top of Levy’s list when describing Israeli psychological coping strategies. He underscores that “Israel ignores international law” and states that until Israel is called to account and punished, nothing will change. Throughout the chapters, Levy laments that “nothing has been learned in war after war.” Public debate and national self-examination are non-existent. Levy bitterly suggests that the Israeli public is more concerned with the price of apartment acquisitions and hit pop singers. Arrogance and complacency are Levy’s depiction of the Israeli fallback position. Yet, he doubts that Israel will learn anything. He underscores that principle by proposing, “The threats of flattening Gaza prove only one thing: We haven’t learned a thing.”
Occupation and apartheid. For Levy, these are the two elements “which characterize the essence of the Israeli regime more than anything else.” Levy understands the term Zionism in its current iteration to mean “a belief in Jewish superiority between the [Jordan] river and the [Mediterranean] sea. Regarding “democracy,” Levy writes, “When an occupation stops being a temporary one, it defines the regime of the entire country.” With Israel only counting votes of part of the population under its rule, he asks, “How can one say that this is not what apartheid looks like?” In a difficult passage, Levy expresses, “It is not easy to say this, it’s hard to write it, but any vote for a Zionist party is a vote for a continued tyranny posing as a democracy.”
The need for the “moral imperative to look reality straight in the eye” is a continuous theme for Levy. In the section titled “A Population Transfer Under the Cover of War,” he delves into the unrestrained actions of Israeli settlers who terrorize Palestinians with threats to “leave their village within twenty-four hours, otherwise they would be killed.” Israeli activists who volunteer to sleep in those villages to protect families from daytime violence and nighttime invasions are attacked as well—beaten, pepper-sprayed, and bones broken.
The section on the abuse of Palestinian prisoners held at the Sde Teiman military base is stomach-churning. Hundreds of the prisoners, workers from Gaza who had permits, were arrested on October 7 without cause. They were blindfolded, hands zip-tied, and held without hearings. Levy underscores the “terrible competition over the magnitude of evil. There are no winners, only losers.” When Haaretz asks for a comment from the Prison Authority, they respond, “We are not familiar with the claims described [in your article], but to the best of our knowledge, they are not correct.”
Levy deconstructs military language and euphemisms used in responding to incidents, which has inured Israelis to the reality around them. Quoted IDF responses are numerous, disingenuous, and pro forma, along the lines of: “The circumstances of the case are currently being clarified.” When October 7 and Hamas are invoked, Levy counters that “none of this gives Israel the right to act similarly.” After expressing these views on an Israeli television show, Levy was promptly fired.
“Apathy” enrages Levy. His language is unfaltering, but he doesn’t desist. He writes, “Bloodthirstiness and sadism have come out of the closet in the past six months and are considered politically correct in Israel.” On the debate about war crimes, Levy suggests that “all decent Israelis must ask themselves if their country is guilty.” After sharing statistics on structural physical damage and the number of civilian casualties, Levy asks rhetorically, “Is it possible that these horrific figures can be without the commission of war crimes?” Levy doesn’t sidestep the answer he demands from logic: “Individuals are responsible for them, and they must be brought to justice…we can only hope that the International Criminal Court in the Hague will do its job.”
Levy believes that Israel, at its current nadir, “is a country without honor.” Ignoring the truth may alleviate the reality of disgrace, but it doesn’t change the facts. He references the February 2024 vote in the Israeli parliament to approve a proposal that would reject the “unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state.” Objecting to the fact that Israelis “only feel compassion for ourselves,” the country has never “provoked such hatred as it has today.” By March of 2024, Levy had pegged that Israel would become an international pariah, with outcast status, damage to its economy, and the demise of its very soul.
With his final entry in June 2024, Levy hammered home the lost path of Israel and the “consciencectomy” it underwent in October 2023. He writes of his country:
“It had been sick for years; now it is dead…But every Saturday comes to an end, with warmongers emerging from their Shabbat lairs.”
In Levy’s afterword, composed when the number of deaths was above 36,000 (Reports state the number as approaching 47,000.), he asked his fellow citizens to acknowledge what was going on in Gaza in “their name” and to recognize the devolution of Israel’s moral character. Finally, in a paragraph of exhaustion, he asks, “What gives us the right to do all this? Where does it come from? What is it all for? Do we want to continue living like this?” He paints a picture of the whole spectrum of Israelis, from left to right, permeated with a poison that has infected their souls. He concludes, “Another war or two, and everyone will be Kahane.”
Levy believes that the multitude of Israelis remain locked into their narratives of what he describes as being “united in an eternal sense of victimhood.” He calls on Israel “to look inward, at long last, to see its own portrait.”
Children are less physically able to withstand and survive severe weather occurrences. Ironically, they contribute the least to factors creating the climate crisis while suffering the most significant impacts.
With a shift in American and Israeli leadership, the armed hostilities between the Israeli government and Hamas in May, and street riots within mixed Israeli cities, Diaspora Jews are beginning to question the traditionally...
“The Bibi Files”: Corruption vs. Morality Meets Survival.
Netanyahu evades his interviewers, slams his hand down in rage and antagonism, and for ninety-five percent of the time does not recall events. He refutes inquiries with retorts such as, “You are asking me a delusional question.”
Greenblatt’s ADL bio asserts that the objective of the ADL is “to secure justice and fair treatment to all.” It’s evident that in his lackluster response to the performance at Madison Square Garden, Greenblatt failed his objective.
The amendment language states that it will protect the right to abortion for all New Yorkers. It will also close all loopholes in the State Constitution to ensure that no New Yorker can be discriminated against by the government, regardless of gender, age, ethnicity, pregnancy status, disability status, or whether someone is LGBTQ+.
“Children of Peace” raised the question of why it is so much easier for people to dismiss the concept of a joint society grounded in co-equality than to live with ongoing combat and destruction.
Khouri and Wilkinson advocate for a commitment to “deep listening,” stressing that engaging with stories from the other side will allow a shift from prioritizing internalized viewpoints to being open to new perspectives despite the angst it triggers.
As de Bethune wrote, “In the 1970s, Harvey Milk encouraged queer people to come out wherever they were, to increase awareness not only of the ubiquity of LGBTQ folk but also our incredible diversity and ordinariness. In my own fashion, I’m answering Harvey’s call.”
