By Diana Buttu\Zeteo
Photos: Wikimedia Commons
Eighty-two. That’s the percentage of Jewish Israelis who support the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza, as revealed in a survey commissioned earlier this year by Pennsylvania State University. Yes, 82%.
In the same survey, 56% support the ethnic cleansing of those Palestinians who live as “citizens” inside Israel, including 66% of those under the age of 40 supporting the idea. That means that of 10 of my neighbors in Haifa, nearly six of them want to see me and my family gone, and eight of them want to see Gaza ethnically cleansed.
At the same time, nearly half of Jewish Israelis (47%) agree that “when conquering an enemy city, the Israel Defense Forces should act as the Israelites did in Jericho under Joshua’s command – killing all its inhabitants.”
Genocide fever has now reached its logical conclusion: “If we can get rid of all of them, why not?” (To be clear, there have been attempts to downplay the Penn State survey to claim that only 53% support the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, pointing to another poll around the same time. Even still, that’s more than half of Israelis.)
Am I surprised? Absolutely not. Since it’s founding as a state, Israel has always been a society that is based on the dehumanization of Palestinians. As I have said time and again, there is no way that a person can live in the home of another, on the land of another, and destroy the homeland, communities, and lives of others without some deep-rooted dehumanization.
I can see this in the ways in which Israeli news media’s coverage of Israel’s genocide and the official statements of the Israeli government have evolved over time.
For example, I recall in the early days of Israel’s attack on Gaza the ways in which the Israeli army tried to explain away its home destruction policy. “A missile was fired from the site” or “It was the home of a Hamas member” were the (always unquestioned) excuses that the Israeli army gave not only to the foreign press but also to Israelis. Over time, the excuses have been completely dropped, and instead, we have now proudly seen Israelis post picture after picture, video after video, of entire areas in Gaza, completely flattened. “Just as we leveled Rafah, we will level all of Gaza,” Israeli ultranationalist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said. There are no excuses offered any longer – just unadulterated crushing of Palestinian homes as though they are simply obstacles. Israelis conveniently ignore that these homes had people living in them, that they were places of refuge and carried in them years of memories. So too, as we once saw denials or excuses for Israel’s bombing of Palestinian hospitals, 20 months later, all of Gaza’s 36 hospitals have now been bombed; no excuses needed any longer.
Similarly, I have watched with amazement the build-up to Israel’s starvation plan in Gaza. At the start of Israel’s attack on Gaza, we heard then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, now wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges, speak of cutting off water, fuel, food, and electricity supplies. There were no expressions of horror by Israelis.
As time has passed, we have heard commentators rationalize the starvation of Palestinians to an ever-nodding set of journalists and to an unquestioning public. Again, no expressions of outrage or horror. To the contrary. Global concerns about famine in Gaza are met with statements like “don’t start wars you can’t win” or “tell them to release the hostages” as though children start wars or are holding anyone captive. Write about Palestinian children being incinerated in their tents by Israeli bombs, and you are met with, “Good news! They deserve it. Keep it coming!” Many Israelis have truly come to believe that “there are no innocents in Gaza,” as many commentators and public officials have expressed. Indeed, anything can be justified today, and the poll results show it. Israeli soldiers are not refusing illegal orders – whether those orders are to starve Palestinians, or gun them down while in search of food, or to bomb residential areas. Only 9% of men under 40 did not support deportation and extermination in the Penn State poll. It’s little wonder we see what we are seeing.
Over time, I have watched as Israelis have gone from being (in a best-case scenario) indifferent to the genocide they are perpetrating to rejoicing in it. In the early days of Israel’s attack on Gaza, for example, I noted that Israeli media led the way by using the phrase the “Hamas-run Ministry of Health” to downplay the number of people Israel killed, coupled with the word “terrorists” to describe each and every person they killed in Gaza. Soon, the numbers disappeared entirely from our screens. Lately, however, there has been a different way of reporting the numbers: Israelis rejoice in them. On May 16, when Israel killed more than 100 Palestinians, an Israeli parliamentarian, as in elected official, took to the airwaves to exclaim, “tonight we killed nearly 100 in Gaza and no one cares because everyone has become used to the fact that 100 Palestinians can be killed in a single night during war.” Yet, using the term “genocide” elicits extreme anger and charges of antisemitism. Israelis scoff at the idea, for genocide only happens against them. It doesn’t matter that Israel has killed at least 55,998 Palestinians; it doesn’t matter that Israel has flattened 90% of homes in Gaza; it doesn’t matter that the Israeli military has destroyed the water and sewage infrastructure; it doesn’t matter that Palestinians are being gunned down while in search of a bag of flour – all of this is irrelevant to them.
So, while rejoicing in the killing of Palestinians, with bumper stickers that have flourished across the country that read “Finish Them,” we are not allowed to label Israel’s actions as…well…anything. New bumper stickers, including one on the back of the scooter of a long-haired, dreadlocked, tattooed food delivery guy, read, “Resettle Gaza Now,” referring to the right-wing plan to build Israeli settlements in Gaza. Israelis are either genocide apologists or genocide deniers, just as they were Nakba supporters or Nakba deniers.
Some of the “kinder” ways of supporting ethnic cleansing are disguised as gaslighting: “Gaza is unlivable, so it is better for them elsewhere,” goes the thinking. Of course, they ignore that Gaza is unlivable BECAUSE of Israel’s actions.
But it would be a mistake to tie this 82% support for ethnic cleansing simply to this genocide. It has long been Israeli policy to somehow will us away. Late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (who by Israeli standards was considered “left-wing” but by all other standards would be labeled a fascist) once said, “I wish the Gaza Strip would sink into the sea, but that won’t happen and a solution must be found.” It seems that the solution has been found: ethnic cleansing and widespread support for it, both among the religious communities and among those who are secular. For example, 70% of those polled in the Penn State survey who identified as being “secular” said they support the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
“Oppressors cannot stop, especially after crossing the point of no return, of committing unforgivable crimes – they must dehumanize their victims that remind them day and night of their crimes.”-A friend recently told me
Just as worrying,65% of Jewish Israelis believe in a modern-day Amalek, which is the existence of an enemy that must be completely wiped out – including babies, including their property, including the animals – everything. Of those, 93% say the biblical command to destroy Amalek remains relevant today. Shocking – and yet not. This is why Netanyahu invoked the biblical references to Amalek, to justify Israel’s genocide.
As a friend recently told me, “oppressors cannot stop, especially after crossing the point of no return, of committing unforgivable crimes – they must dehumanize their victims that remind them day and night of their crimes.” Indeed, our mere presence continues to remind them that they are not indigenous to the land; that we are – and therefore, in order to live in our place, we must be erased.
Diana Buttu is a Haifa-based lawyer and analyst who was a legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team in the early 2000s and is a frequent commentator and writer on Palestinian and Israeli issues. She writes Zeteo’s ‘A Diary from a Palestinian in Israel.’
