This is a shocking data point. The Israeli Democracy Institute released a survey this week showing that over 2/3 of Jewish Israelis – 68% that is – opposed “the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza residents at this time.”
It gets even worse – the survey lowered the bar to exclude any possible opposition to either UNRWA (which Israel has been inciting against) or the Hamas authorities (which Israel considers terrorists). To no avail. Over two-thirds still oppose humanitarian help “via international bodies that are not linked to Hamas or to UNRWA… A majority of Jewish respondents (68%) oppose the transfer of humanitarian aid even under these conditions,” the survey notes.
The numbers are worse when it comes to right-wing Jewish Israelis, where the opposition is at 80% – four out of five. And consider that about 2/3 of Israeli voters are considered right-wing.
One really has to pause here. We are in a situation where Palestinians in Gaza are starving, people are consuming animal feed in their desperation. The week the UN’s World Food Programme reported people in Gaza are “already dying from hunger-related causes,” and a UNICEF nutrition screening in north Gaza found that 1 in 6 children under two years old are acutely malnourished. Israelis are not completely ignorant of this. They are supporting genocide by an overwhelming majority.
It is now mainstream within Israeli society to discuss from which age it is acceptable for children to be starved. A recent discussion on the mainstream public broadcaster news program reached a consensus between a former Mossad official and the veteran host that children over the age of 4 were legitimate to starve.
Much of the world, including the United States, seems to be in denial at quite how murderously and explicitly genocidal Israeli society is. Nancy Pelosi keeps talking about Israel as “the only democracy in the region” while Israelis themselves are supporting the starvation of children. People just don’t seem to get it.
Humanitarian help was one of the main points of the January 26 International Court of Justice order that was issued when the court found it plausible Israel was committing genocide, as charged by South Africa. It was point 4 of the 6, stating that:
“The State of Israel shall take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
Even the ad-hoc Israeli judge Aharon Barak, who voted against 4 out of the 6 urgent measures, voted for this one (it was passed 16-1, with the Ugandan judge Julia Sabutinde, who voted against absolutely all measures, being the outlier).
This is such a basic thing, such a basic requirement – even in war. When you oppose such a basic matter, it becomes something else than war – it becomes genocide. As we are seeing.
This poll only seems to confirm what we already have been seeing. Israeli protesters have been holding up aid trucks at the southern border near Rafah. One could be tempted to frame these as fringe extremists – but the poll shows they are in the mainstream. The poll also affirms that Israeli leaders like Defense Minister Yoav Galant, who said at the beginning of the genocide, “I have ordered a full siege on the Gaza Strip – no power, no food, no gas, everything is closed – we are fighting human animals and we act accordingly,” are representative of the wider population.
This is the worst level of dehumanization in Israeli society that I can remember since I was born there 52 years ago. Of course, this dehumanization didn’t start on October 7, it existed way before I was born and even before the state existed. But now it seems to be culminating. Israelis don’t seem to care anymore about even maintaining a semblance of liberalism – they’ve gone into full genocide mode. And when I say dehumanization, it’s not only the Palestinians who are being dehumanized in this process. Israelis are reducing themselves to a level of barbarism. It’s something that we have done to ourselves while convincing ourselves that taking tens of thousands of Palestinian lives will somehow redeem us from this abyss. It won’t.
“Israel has reached an unimaginable peak of evil”
“The only possible conclusion must be that Israeli evil has nothing to do with Judaism and that what is manifested in Israeli behavior is not Jewishness. It is pure colonialist nationalist and chauvinistic racism and should be treated as such.”
Nurit Peled-Elhanan
Award-winning Israeli professor, author
and Human Rights activist
What can you say? This seems to be a nation of mostly heartless and soul- less, people, who are incapable of feeling compassion or sympathy, for fellow human beings, especially children. Their minds are filled with hatred, preventing them from being able to differentiate militants and helpless civilians. We have seen the comments BLAMING civilians for what the militants did. We have seen the comments calling them animals in every form, and we have seen the vicious comments saying they should all pay for it with their lives. So I guess we should not be surprised that they want little children to die of starvation. After all in the eyes of the zionist nation, they are future terrorists, right?
The questions they should be asked are:
Are the people in Israel responsible for the war crimes committed by the IDF, or for the sexual abuse of women and girls?
Are the people in Israel responsible for the settler terrorists who go on killing sprees, slaughtering unarmed civilian with the assault weapons given by their government, attacking homes and burning an entire family, including a little baby, and for the stealing of Palestinian homes?
Are they all to be punished for what has been done in their name?
It does seem by their words and action, that inflicting pain and suffering on those THEY have collectively punished, is part of the zionist psyche. The poll is believable.
State Dept downplays reports of Israeli soldiers sexually abusing, slaughtering Palestinian women
WYATT REED – February 23, 2024
”While falsely claiming to have received “independent confirmation” of since-debunked assertions of mass rape by Hamas, the State Department’s spokesman said he “cannot independently verify” allegations by UN human rights experts that Israeli soldiers have sexually abused and systematically slaughtered Palestinian women and girls in the besieged Gaza Strip.
The US State Department has downplayed the findings of UN human rights experts who received “credible allegations” that Israeli soldiers have raped, tortured, and executed Palestinian women and girls amid their siege of Gaza.”
https://thegrayzone.com/2024/02/23/state-dept-israeli-soldiers-sexually-abusing-slaughtering-palestinian-women/
Sad in so many ways. I think part of the reason for this level of barbarism is due to the sophisticated level of propaganda these days. Israelis have access to the internet, but many have be ‘captured’ by the media propaganda machine. They don’t care to even see what is going on in Gaza and the West Bank. They are taught in school from a young age to view Israel as a Jewish state, and to view Arabs as subhuman. Michael Benz- former cybersecurity expert at the US State Department recently was interviewed by Tucker Carlson. I was to a degree aware of what is going on, but this interview blew my mind. After seeing this interview, I find it not at all surprising that so many people could be reduced to this level of barbarism.
Israel reminds me of Trump. Particularly when it comes to Projection. If Trump thinks the election is rigged, he is rigging the election, when he says he says he is the least racist president in history, it really means he’s the most racist. Likewise, when Israel demands Palestinian children are reared to hate, it just means Israeli children are being indoctrinated in hate. When Israel claims Palestinians are animals, it only means that they will behave like animals. Evidence is abundant, in the case of racism, Israeli investigators have found that Palestinians are far more likely to be Ok with a Jewish neighbor than the other way around. And if anything is clear about Arabs as animals, it’s the starvation, Apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and utter dehumanization of Palestinians by Israel. Also to note in the NYT, the most popular posts in the comments section are usually the ones where “death to the Arabs” is implied or stated by full throttled support for this genocide. I’m from NY and for most Jewish folks I am friends with, this type of attitude couldn’t be further from the truth. But I spent summers on the West Bank. While knowing more than a few kind Israelis in my life, the vast majority are brainwashed into both a ethno superior mindset combined with a worldview in which Israel is both the most moral country that ever was, at the same time Jews the center of our world and its desire to kill them.
Clearly there is anti-semitism but I’m also quite sure the people protesting against genocide now are the same types who resisted in Germany back in the 1930’s. I suspect the genocide in Gaza will cause a permanent realignment within the US. And as much as I loath a second term of Trump, I think a non-vote for Biden and the re-election of the worst person to ever serve as president will force democrats to pay attention to human rights activists.