Cultivating feeling of revenge
Israeli media: “Gaza is one of the cases in which collective punishment is moral” ■ “Gaza must be levelled to the ground” ■ “Expel all Palestinians from Gaza; And then expel the Palestinians from the West Bank as well”
By Oren Persico • the7eye.org • Translated by Sol Salbe
[ excerpt only ]
[Haaretz’s senior military correspondent, Amos Harel] whose writing in recent months has also spilled over into political, diplomatic and social commentary, mentioned this morning the words of Carmit Palty-Katzir, a born-and bred kibbutz Nir Oz person. In an interview with Ilana Dayan on Army Radio, Palty-Katzir expressed concern that the appearance of the returned coffins “could be exploited to nurture feelings of revenge in the Israeli public in order to leverage those feelings to crush the exchange deal.”
This morning, after it became clear that Hamas had returned a wrong body in place of the Israeli one it had kidnapped, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement that ended with the words, “may God exact retribution for their blood, and so will we.”
But even before it became clear that only three Israelis were in the four coffins, the very sight of the coffins and the information about the death of the two youngster of the Bibas family had already led to the reaction that Paltyi-Katzir feared. The calls for revenge in the Gaza Strip and its inhabitants, which were common in the days following Hamas’s murderous surprise attack, are once again in vogue.
This time, alongside calls for total annihilation, there are many advents of the demand of the Transfer of the population, inspired by the “Trump Plan.”
Take, for example, the columnists of Israel Hayom, the most widely circulating newspaper in Israel [It’s a freebie-tr].
“The population in the Gaza Strip, which supported the murder, rape and burning of our brothers and sisters, and who still supports the murderers of Hamas and their causes, has lost the right to remain there, hundreds of metres away from our communities that were the object of the massacre,” writes Israel Hayom columnist Dror Idar.
The former Israeli ambassador to Italy, who shortly after the massacre called for the “extermination of Gaza” (and after an international scandal arose, explained that he meant Gaza as a “concept”), is now content with a population transfer. According to him, emptying the Gaza Strip of its Palestinian residents is not only a desirable and fair outcome, but also a moral one: “The transfer of the population will prevent unnecessary death and miserable lives for both sides.”
Nadav Shragai, a columnist for the newspaper, argues that “Gaza is one of the cases in which collective punishment is moral, because the collective itself has supported or identified with terrorism or dealt in or engaged in terrorism for years.” According to him, “Our war is not only against Hamas, but also against the State of Gaza and its residents,” and therefore he is definitely in favour of Trump’s “migration” plan.
His colleague in the paper, columnist Moshe Klughaft, has an entire slew of suggestions: kill every terrorist at the scene of an attack, so that they don’t end up in jail and from there be released in a deal; expel all Gazans from Gaza (with US$10,000 each); And then expel the Palestinians from the West Bank as well. As befits a Madison Avenue type, Klughaft has a catchy slogan: “Let me live without the Philistines.” “תחיה נפשי בלי פלשתים”.
Yoaz Hendel, another columnist for the paper, is a moderate. Therefore, he only wants to “make sure that anyone connected to Hamas is dead or exiled.” In other words, only a few hundred thousand, and not almost two million people.
Matti Tuchfeld, Israel Hayom’s Hayom seniotr political correspondent, writes that “Gaza must be levelled to the ground,” while Gideon Dukov’s column at the top of the opinion section of Makor Rishon, the other newspaper in Miriam Adelson’s media group, is titled “Revenge Now”.
