Courtesy of Verso Books

Part I

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.”