By Gideon Levy
Aug 6, 2025

For the first time in Israel's history, the security cabinet is slated to make a decision on annihilation on Thursday. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plan to occupy the Gaza Strip, which clearly no one in the security cabinet will challenge, means confirming the killing of thousands of people, demolishing the living conditions of more than two million walking dead and carrying out the final destruction of a busy, crowded strip of land where people once lived, but will no longer.

If this plan is implemented in full, Thursday will be remembered as the day in which the annihilation order was issued. People may yet learn about this day in history class, just as they learn other dates on which a people's fate was decided. The names of the decision makers will go down in disgrace.

This time, the last remaining masks will be removed. Nobody will take the prattle about destroying Hamas or freeing the hostages seriously any longer. The annihilation order that will be issued on Thursday will be a sentence of destruction, but not for Hamas. The first victims will be the handful of living hostages. And immediately after that, the fate of all the powerless people in Gaza will be sealed.

If any Hamas members are left in Gaza, they will be the last to suffer. The Israel Defense Forces hasn't had any military clashes with them in a long time.

When IDF tanks race through the ruins of Gaza City and when planes bomb the rubble of Rafah, the ones who will suffer are the children, the elderly, the women, the sick, the amputees and those with other disabilities who have managed to survive until now. They will have nowhere to shelter from the indiscriminate artillery and drone fire.

Hamas' fighters, if there are any left, will remain in their hideouts, which the IDF hasn't managed to find in 22 months. It's unlikely that it will manage to do so now. But what difference does it make any longer?

Hamas was defeated militarily, but grew stronger politically. The next round won't change this unequivocal fact. When the poet Yehuda Amichai wrote in "A Song for the Eve of Sabbath" about a war that was never enough, I doubt he ever imagined the extent to which it would never be enough.

The 60,000 people killed in Gaza weren't enough, nor were the 20,000 Gazan children or the 1,000 babies that have been killed or starved to death there.

The roughly 1,000 soldiers who have been killed weren't enough. The suffering of the hostages and their families wasn't enough. The destruction, the starvation and moving hundreds of thousands of desperate people from place to place weren't enough.

They weren't enough for the war, and they weren't enough for its instigators – Netanyahu and his partners, the IDF chief of staff and his officers. Proof of this will be presented in the security cabinet on Thursday.

The army's order of the day will be "Move, move, end." Move, move, until Gaza has been ended as a place where it's possible to live, for at least another generation. And that is how the ethnic cleansing plan will also be implemented.

Thursday's decision will herald a population transfer. The security cabinet that decides on reoccupying Gaza will also be deciding to ethnically cleanse the occupied territory.

This will also be the first such decision in Israeli history. Unlike the ethnic cleansing that occurred during the previous Nakba, in 1948, this time there will be no need to spend years digging through archives to find an explicit order. It will be issued on Thursday, even if indirectly.

Given the living conditions in Gaza, a decision to reoccupy it will confront its residents with a choice between death and expulsion. That's what the government is aiming for, with support from both Washington and a sizable swath of Israelis.

The security cabinet will make the decision to approve it, and the full cabinet will follow suit. The courageous IDF officer who would turn in his rank tabs over the crimes about to befall the army has yet to be born. The media will applaud and cover up the next act in this horror show just as it has the previous ones.

The only question that remains unanswered is what will the world do. Will it continue issuing condemnations and "recognizing" Palestine without lifting a finger to stop this campaign of annihilation? Only the world has the power to stop it. In Israel, nobody will do so. And Netanyahu? He may yet be nostalgic for those happy days when his trial took place in Judge Rivka Friedman-Feldman's courtroom.

Source : Haaretz

Link : https://archive.md/ajGpo#selection-1183.0-1183.401

This war was always about creating the conditions where only that one final choice remained for Palestinians.

It was methodically planned and carried out, with the aid of the naive/gullible and the willing and complicit and the perversion and manipulation of international law, taking advantage of the crowded urban nature of Gaza and its tunnel system.

How anyone can look at Gaza today and with a straight-face claim this was self-defence or the rescue of the hostages, or that Israel had no choice - is beyond me.

Though I've noted that those who unceasingly defended and rationalized Israel's actions and pushed its absurdly illogical and immoral talking points are now silent about the announced ethnic cleansing. Now that "self-defence" has been clearly shown to be a pretext and a ruse for at least 16 months - where is the outrage about being duped or outrage and concern on behalf of the "walking dead" and starved Palestinians soon to be expelled too??

Surely all Democrats and liberals care about things like ethnic cleansing!? Though surely they would have cared about a genocide too, no? But ethnic cleansing is a continuation of a genocide...so...

Western leaders too are showing us who they are and what the West stands for. I have lost all faith that they are going to stop this. They didn't stop the first half of the genocide. I don't think they can change their colours, their worldview or their selfish motivations, interests or ideology even in the face of this. And the US under Trump will threaten and blackmail anyone who doesn't tow the line.

Gideon Levy was right about everything from the start. People should read him to understand what the left in Israel is up against and why they are in despair.

Haaretz Editorial
Aug 8, 2025

The security cabinet met Thursday night to discuss yet another expansion of the war in Gaza, another link in a long chain that will surely get its own name. The names change but the song remains the same: occupation, destruction and the forcible transfer of tens of thousands of Palestinians. Additional soldiers will be sacrificed on this altar, and the remaining Israeli hostages will be lost. The Netanyahu government has turned both groups into collateral damage.

In the face of this nightmare vision, which is driven by personal and Jewish messianic considerations, we cannot remain indifferent. We must not be silent. That is why more than 2,000 artists and cultural figures signed a petition that called for ending the war, titled "Stop the Horror in Gaza." This held up an important mirror to the public, even if many Israelis would rather break it or look away.

The artists' petition reflected a basic human truth that the government seeks to silence: Harming innocent people is wrong. Consequently, the petition said, it's impossible to accept "the killing of children and civilians, policies of starvation, mass displacement and the senseless destruction of entire cities." Illegal orders must not be given, and if they are they must not be obeyed, the petition added, reiterating what ought to be self-evident. But not in Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.

Ever since the petition was released, a systematic campaign has been waged to silence the signatories. Participants include cabinet ministers and politicians outside the government, collaborators in the media, far-right activists and many other cultural figures. Mayors have also announced that they won't commission performances by artists who signed the petition, whom they claim "incited against IDF soldiers." Over and over, it has become clear that in today's Israel, only one opinion can be voiced in the space between opposition leader Yair Lapid and far-right rapper Yoav "the Shadow" Eliasi. The fraudulent consensus is a chorus singing in unison.

The pressure on the petition's signatories has been only partially successful. Some of them (Assaf Amdursky, Alon Oleartchik) couldn't withstand the pressure and the threats and retracted their signatures. In Oleartchik's case, his public recantation paid off: A performance of his that had been canceled was reinstated. That shows not only the power of censorship, both official and unofficial, but also the fact that some people choose to collaborate with it.

In the face of this silencing campaign, we must not blink. The plan Netanyahu is pushing will lead to the complete destruction of Gaza, and also of Israel's moral foundations. In opposing the war and its crimes, the cultural figures joined people with similar views in academia, nongovernmental organizations and even within the army itself. All of them are essential to forge an alternative to the government's death cult.

Now of all times, after so many days of unprecedented killing and when Israel is just a step away from sliding into perpetual war, every Israeli must speak out loud and clear against it. Silence is surrender.

The above article is Haaretz's lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.

Link : https://archive.md/FDqeq#selection-1057.0-1057.107

It's a very ugly song that chorus is screeching. And it is fraudulent, with neither facts nor morality on its side.

It is good to see the artists speak up. I hope they will stand firm but honestly would not be surprised if more do not give in to so much pressure- societal, economic, career etc. When a society is so homogenously hell-bent on a course of action that is supported by a large majority, it would take years to break down that concensus. A lot of brave souls standing their ground and not allowing themselves to be silenced.

It's deep denial at work in Israeli society and it seems to be contagious.

The only thing I see that might get through the denial is shock therapy. Israelis must be exposed to the grave consequences of their "concensus". World disapproval seems to make them more defiant, more entrenched in denial. Feeling more "victimized".

Would severe sanctions - economic, trade, diplomatic - break through the denial? 0

Gideon thinks so :
Ref https://archive.md/Jksek

I think its too late .
This government is hell bent on annexing the West Bank and now Gaza , and dont believe a word Bibi
said during his interview with Fox news of all places

What could work is a mass refusal by reservists especially those in the Air Force .
He cant continue this without the manpower and their are many in the Army against it .

while we are chatting

I read threads like this one :

https://democraticunderground.com/100220544475

Something that none of you that live in the Middle East probably realize is
how hot it is over here right now .
see : https://www.ynetnews.com/environment/article/hyhwgq0wll

Extreme heat stress .

We Israelis head to the beaches and the Kinneret , to water parks with the kids , or as many do
on Kibbutzeem to our large private swimming pools .

We have air conditioners in every room and roof fans outside .

We have electricity and abundant water .
Enough to drink and enough to play with and enough to water our lawns
and wash our cars . !!!!!

And in Gaza ???

Me too vanessa_ca me too .

This is from last year

Children are drinking from puddles and wading through sewage pools, as Israel pummels water systems in Gaza
By Billy Stockwell and Sana Noor Haq, CNN Aug 23, 2024

(CNN) — Guns swinging from their hips, two soldiers in black combat boots and green tactical clothing appear to wire explosives to pumps at the Canada Water reservoir in Rafah, southern Gaza.

-snip-

The blast was captured in a now deleted video, which was reportedly shared by an Israeli soldier on Instagram and geolocated by CNN. Satellite imagery shows that the reservoir was damaged between July 26 and July 27. Destroyed buildings are visible in the surrounding area.

-snip-
Extreme summer heat in Gaza is making a desperate shortage of water even worse for Palestinians already stalked by famine and struggling with repeated displacement.

-snip-

More than 1.7 million cases of infectious diseases have been recorded in Gaza, according to the Ministry of Health there. Traces of the highly infectious polio virus – transmitted through faeces, and contaminated water or food – were found in a 10-month-old child in the central Gazan city of Deir al-Balah earlier this month. The child was later paralyzed due to the disease, the UN said on August 23.

World Health Organization (WHO) testing discovered the virus in sewage samples in Gaza in July, putting thousands of Palestinians at risk of contracting a disease that can cause paralysis.

-snip-

https://www.komu.com/news/nationworld/children-are-drinking-from-puddles-and-wading-through-sewage-pools-as-israel-pummels-water-systems/article_9a801e45-cde2-50c7-915e-4a30b0be2688.html

all Gazans are now forbidden access to the ocean.
Is there a military rational for that?