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Their killer Benny Gantz
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Ziada family, july 20 2014 |
29 mar 2019
Israeli army chief Benny Gantz, center, photographed on 20 July 2014, is being sued by Ismail Ziada for the bombing of his family’s home in Gaza that same day, resulting in the deaths of seven people including Ziada’s mother
A Palestinian-Dutch citizen is suing two senior Israeli military commanders for the bombing of his family’s home during Israel’s 2014 attack on the Gaza Strip.
On 20 July of that year, without warning, an Israeli airstrike destroyed the house in the al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, killing six members of Ismail Ziada’s family and a seventh person who was visiting them.
Ziada, who lives in the Netherlands where he is married to a Dutch citizen, could not attend the funerals of his family members due to Israel’s blockade on Gaza.
He lost his mother, 70-year-old Muftia Ziada, three brothers, a sister-in-law and a 12-year-old nephew.
Ziada holds Benny Gantz and Amir Eshel, respectively the Israeli chief of staff and the chief of the air force at the time of the attack, responsible for the decision to drop the bomb.
This month, Ziada’s lawyers, Liesbeth Zegveld and Lisa-Marie Komp with human rights law firm Prakken d’Oliveira, filed a complaint in a Dutch court.
The same lawyers recently filed another case in the Netherlands on behalf of a Palestinian severely injured when the Israeli army used Dutch-trained dogs to attack him in the occupied West Bank.
In Ziada’s case, Gantz and Eshel have been summoned to appear on 27 June. If they don’t show up or send attorneys, the court could enter a default judgment in Ziada’s favor.
Ziada is suing the Israeli generals for more than $600,000 in damages plus court costs.
Among the witnesses the complaint cites is a neighbor of the Ziada family who described “how the image of the destroyed house and the mutilated bodies shocked him.”
Last year, Ziada sent a letter to Gantz and Eshel holding them liable for the devastating harm he suffered from the Israeli attack. Although the Israeli justice ministry confirmed receipt, it has still offered no substantive response.
Assault on Gaza
The attack on the Ziada home was part of what the complaint calls Israel’s “policy to bomb civilian residential buildings” in “breach of international humanitarian law.”
During 51 days in the summer of 2014, Israel carried out thousands of airstrikes on Gaza, including targeted attacks on residential and other civilian buildings, an independent investigation commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council found.
In total, 2,251 Palestinians were killed – about one in every 1,000 of Gaza’s residents – including 1,462 civilians, among them 551 children. More than 11,000 Palestinians were injured, the majority women and children.
The UN inquiry found that Israel’s destruction and killing often amounted to war crimes and “may have constituted military tactics reflective of a broader policy, approved at least tacitly by decision-makers at the highest levels of the Government of Israel.”
According to the complaint, Gantz and Eshel were among the top leaders who “designed the policy of bombing residential buildings” and are “fully responsible for the decision to bomb the Ziada family residence.”
Dutch jurisdiction
A key claim in the complaint is that the Dutch courts have jurisdiction over the case both because of Ziada’s connections to the Netherlands and because there is no way for him to obtain justice in Israeli courts.
It points out that Israel’s Military Advocate General (MAG) investigated the attack and concluded that the pilots who dropped the bomb would not be prosecuted, noting that they acted with the approval of military commanders.
The MAG claimed that the Ziada home served as a command center of the military branch of Hamas and that the “military advantage” of carrying out the attack without giving any warning outweighed the risk of civilian casualties.
But the complaint points out that MAG provided no evidence to support the decision not to open a criminal investigation and tried to use information allegedly obtained after the attack to justify it in retrospect.
International law requires that a decision about whether an object is a legitimate military target be made with information available before the attack.
The MAG’s handling of this case is part of its well-documented role in whitewashing hundreds of complaints filed by Palestinians through lawyers and human rights groups for alleged war crimes during the attack on Gaza.
As Ziada’s complaint notes, MAG cannot credibly investigate the Israeli army since it is not independent and directly advises the army on attacks in the midst of military operations.
The complaint also details how Ziada cannot gain justice in Israel’s civil and criminal courts since Israeli law doesn’t incorporate provisions to prosecute war crimes. Israel’s civil law also includes an “act of war” exception, which has been interpreted by judges to give the military blanket immunity for damage it causes to Palestinians.
Moreover, Israel imposes insurmountable legal and practical restrictions on Palestinians pursuing justice, including an unrealistically short 60-day period in which to file a complaint, exorbitant and discriminatory financial guarantees and bans on travel that prevent Palestinians meeting with lawyers or appearing as witnesses.
“Unpoliticized justice”
Shortly after the deadly attack on the Ziada family home, 91-year-old Dutch citizen Henk Zanoli expressed his shock and pain by returning his Righteous Among the Nations medal to Israel.
Ziada is married to Zanoli’s great-niece.
Zanoli and his mother were given the medal by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial for hiding a Jewish child from Nazi occupation forces from 1943 until the Netherlands was liberated in 1945.
They took a great risk because they were already under suspicion from the Nazis. Zanoli’s father was sent to a concentration camp in 1941 for opposing the German occupation. He died at Mauthausen a few months before the war ended.
“It’s a political statement,” Zanoli, a former judge, told Dutch media in 2014. “I want to show that I disagree with the actions of the Israeli government towards the Palestinians.”
In a letter he sent to the Israeli embassy along with the medal, Zanoli wrote that Israel’s actions in Gaza had already resulted in serious accusations of war crimes.
He added that as a retired jurist, “it would be no surprise to me that these accusations could lead to possible convictions if true and unpoliticized justice is able to have its course.”
Ziada’s lawsuit will test whether that kind of justice, unavailable in Israel, can be found in the Netherlands.
A Palestinian-Dutch citizen is suing two senior Israeli military commanders for the bombing of his family’s home during Israel’s 2014 attack on the Gaza Strip.
On 20 July of that year, without warning, an Israeli airstrike destroyed the house in the al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, killing six members of Ismail Ziada’s family and a seventh person who was visiting them.
Ziada, who lives in the Netherlands where he is married to a Dutch citizen, could not attend the funerals of his family members due to Israel’s blockade on Gaza.
He lost his mother, 70-year-old Muftia Ziada, three brothers, a sister-in-law and a 12-year-old nephew.
Ziada holds Benny Gantz and Amir Eshel, respectively the Israeli chief of staff and the chief of the air force at the time of the attack, responsible for the decision to drop the bomb.
This month, Ziada’s lawyers, Liesbeth Zegveld and Lisa-Marie Komp with human rights law firm Prakken d’Oliveira, filed a complaint in a Dutch court.
The same lawyers recently filed another case in the Netherlands on behalf of a Palestinian severely injured when the Israeli army used Dutch-trained dogs to attack him in the occupied West Bank.
In Ziada’s case, Gantz and Eshel have been summoned to appear on 27 June. If they don’t show up or send attorneys, the court could enter a default judgment in Ziada’s favor.
Ziada is suing the Israeli generals for more than $600,000 in damages plus court costs.
Among the witnesses the complaint cites is a neighbor of the Ziada family who described “how the image of the destroyed house and the mutilated bodies shocked him.”
Last year, Ziada sent a letter to Gantz and Eshel holding them liable for the devastating harm he suffered from the Israeli attack. Although the Israeli justice ministry confirmed receipt, it has still offered no substantive response.
Assault on Gaza
The attack on the Ziada home was part of what the complaint calls Israel’s “policy to bomb civilian residential buildings” in “breach of international humanitarian law.”
During 51 days in the summer of 2014, Israel carried out thousands of airstrikes on Gaza, including targeted attacks on residential and other civilian buildings, an independent investigation commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council found.
In total, 2,251 Palestinians were killed – about one in every 1,000 of Gaza’s residents – including 1,462 civilians, among them 551 children. More than 11,000 Palestinians were injured, the majority women and children.
The UN inquiry found that Israel’s destruction and killing often amounted to war crimes and “may have constituted military tactics reflective of a broader policy, approved at least tacitly by decision-makers at the highest levels of the Government of Israel.”
According to the complaint, Gantz and Eshel were among the top leaders who “designed the policy of bombing residential buildings” and are “fully responsible for the decision to bomb the Ziada family residence.”
Dutch jurisdiction
A key claim in the complaint is that the Dutch courts have jurisdiction over the case both because of Ziada’s connections to the Netherlands and because there is no way for him to obtain justice in Israeli courts.
It points out that Israel’s Military Advocate General (MAG) investigated the attack and concluded that the pilots who dropped the bomb would not be prosecuted, noting that they acted with the approval of military commanders.
The MAG claimed that the Ziada home served as a command center of the military branch of Hamas and that the “military advantage” of carrying out the attack without giving any warning outweighed the risk of civilian casualties.
But the complaint points out that MAG provided no evidence to support the decision not to open a criminal investigation and tried to use information allegedly obtained after the attack to justify it in retrospect.
International law requires that a decision about whether an object is a legitimate military target be made with information available before the attack.
The MAG’s handling of this case is part of its well-documented role in whitewashing hundreds of complaints filed by Palestinians through lawyers and human rights groups for alleged war crimes during the attack on Gaza.
As Ziada’s complaint notes, MAG cannot credibly investigate the Israeli army since it is not independent and directly advises the army on attacks in the midst of military operations.
The complaint also details how Ziada cannot gain justice in Israel’s civil and criminal courts since Israeli law doesn’t incorporate provisions to prosecute war crimes. Israel’s civil law also includes an “act of war” exception, which has been interpreted by judges to give the military blanket immunity for damage it causes to Palestinians.
Moreover, Israel imposes insurmountable legal and practical restrictions on Palestinians pursuing justice, including an unrealistically short 60-day period in which to file a complaint, exorbitant and discriminatory financial guarantees and bans on travel that prevent Palestinians meeting with lawyers or appearing as witnesses.
“Unpoliticized justice”
Shortly after the deadly attack on the Ziada family home, 91-year-old Dutch citizen Henk Zanoli expressed his shock and pain by returning his Righteous Among the Nations medal to Israel.
Ziada is married to Zanoli’s great-niece.
Zanoli and his mother were given the medal by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial for hiding a Jewish child from Nazi occupation forces from 1943 until the Netherlands was liberated in 1945.
They took a great risk because they were already under suspicion from the Nazis. Zanoli’s father was sent to a concentration camp in 1941 for opposing the German occupation. He died at Mauthausen a few months before the war ended.
“It’s a political statement,” Zanoli, a former judge, told Dutch media in 2014. “I want to show that I disagree with the actions of the Israeli government towards the Palestinians.”
In a letter he sent to the Israeli embassy along with the medal, Zanoli wrote that Israel’s actions in Gaza had already resulted in serious accusations of war crimes.
He added that as a retired jurist, “it would be no surprise to me that these accusations could lead to possible convictions if true and unpoliticized justice is able to have its course.”
Ziada’s lawsuit will test whether that kind of justice, unavailable in Israel, can be found in the Netherlands.
11 feb 2019
Justice Ministry says court lacks jurisdiction to rule on incident that killed plaintiff’s relatives, adding that it was in accordance with international law
The Justice Ministry on Monday said the government has asked a Dutch court to dismiss war crimes allegations against Israel Resilience party leader Benny Gantz, a former IDF chief of staff who is challenging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the April elections.
A Dutch-Palestinian man originally from the Gaza Strip last year sued Gantz and former Air Force chief Amir Eshel for their roles in a 2014 airstrike on his family’s home that killed six relatives. The dead included a 72-year-old woman and a 12-year-old child.
The airstrike on the Zeyada family home took place during Operation Protective Edge against terror groups in Gaza.
The ministry said Monday that an internal Israeli military investigation determined the airstrike had killed four terrorists, including three family members, hiding in the house. It said the attack was permissible under international law, and argued the Dutch court does not have jurisdiction. Terror group Hamas — which rules Gaza and openly seeks Israel’s destruction — has admitted that two of its members were in the building.
“Israel has several mechanisms in place and a robust legal system available to address allegations such as those raised by the plaintiff,” the ministry said.
“Litigating the lawsuit before a Dutch court would circumvent fundamental and long-recognized principles of state immunity. Accordingly, a motion to summarily dismiss the case has been filed in the Netherlands on behalf of the two former Israeli officials,” it added.
Hassan Zeyada, a Gaza psychologist, said his family had turned to the Dutch court because it does not believe the Israeli military is capable of investigating itself. His brother Ismail, who lives in the Hague, filed the lawsuit.
“The objective is accountability,” Zeyada said. “It’s possible that our case will be a model for all bereaved families to achieve justice and accountability.”
On the campaign trail, Gantz has touted his leadership of the 2014 war as a reason to vote for him. In a campaign ad, he boasted of killing “1,364 terrorists” in the fighting.
“If Gantz claims he enjoyed immunity because he was acting on behalf of the state, why he is bragging about destroying Gaza for his personal election campaign?” Zeyada said.
A UN report has claimed that over 1,400 Palestinian civilians were killed in the fighting and said war crimes may have been committed by both sides.
Israel has claimed the actual civilian toll is half of that and blamed Hamas for the civilian casualties, saying the group hid fighters and launched attacks from residential neighborhoods.
Gantz, who left the military in 2015, has burst onto the Israeli political scene and quickly emerged as the top challenger to Netanyahu in the April vote.
Liesbeth Zegveld, the Dutch lawyer handling the case, said it was filed last year and is still in the procedural phase as the court decides whether it has jurisdiction.
The family “is arguing that they do not have access to an Israeli court, that is highly discriminatory against them, that there are so many obstacles that they never get a ruling,” she said. “So we are arguing that they should be given permission to plead their case before a Dutch court.”
Zegveld said there is no precedent for such a case, but she hopes the Dutch court will agree to take it.
The Justice Ministry on Monday said the government has asked a Dutch court to dismiss war crimes allegations against Israel Resilience party leader Benny Gantz, a former IDF chief of staff who is challenging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the April elections.
A Dutch-Palestinian man originally from the Gaza Strip last year sued Gantz and former Air Force chief Amir Eshel for their roles in a 2014 airstrike on his family’s home that killed six relatives. The dead included a 72-year-old woman and a 12-year-old child.
The airstrike on the Zeyada family home took place during Operation Protective Edge against terror groups in Gaza.
The ministry said Monday that an internal Israeli military investigation determined the airstrike had killed four terrorists, including three family members, hiding in the house. It said the attack was permissible under international law, and argued the Dutch court does not have jurisdiction. Terror group Hamas — which rules Gaza and openly seeks Israel’s destruction — has admitted that two of its members were in the building.
“Israel has several mechanisms in place and a robust legal system available to address allegations such as those raised by the plaintiff,” the ministry said.
“Litigating the lawsuit before a Dutch court would circumvent fundamental and long-recognized principles of state immunity. Accordingly, a motion to summarily dismiss the case has been filed in the Netherlands on behalf of the two former Israeli officials,” it added.
Hassan Zeyada, a Gaza psychologist, said his family had turned to the Dutch court because it does not believe the Israeli military is capable of investigating itself. His brother Ismail, who lives in the Hague, filed the lawsuit.
“The objective is accountability,” Zeyada said. “It’s possible that our case will be a model for all bereaved families to achieve justice and accountability.”
On the campaign trail, Gantz has touted his leadership of the 2014 war as a reason to vote for him. In a campaign ad, he boasted of killing “1,364 terrorists” in the fighting.
“If Gantz claims he enjoyed immunity because he was acting on behalf of the state, why he is bragging about destroying Gaza for his personal election campaign?” Zeyada said.
A UN report has claimed that over 1,400 Palestinian civilians were killed in the fighting and said war crimes may have been committed by both sides.
Israel has claimed the actual civilian toll is half of that and blamed Hamas for the civilian casualties, saying the group hid fighters and launched attacks from residential neighborhoods.
Gantz, who left the military in 2015, has burst onto the Israeli political scene and quickly emerged as the top challenger to Netanyahu in the April vote.
Liesbeth Zegveld, the Dutch lawyer handling the case, said it was filed last year and is still in the procedural phase as the court decides whether it has jurisdiction.
The family “is arguing that they do not have access to an Israeli court, that is highly discriminatory against them, that there are so many obstacles that they never get a ruling,” she said. “So we are arguing that they should be given permission to plead their case before a Dutch court.”
Zegveld said there is no precedent for such a case, but she hopes the Dutch court will agree to take it.
29 jan 2019
Like Israel’s former politician generals, from Yitzhak Rabin to Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon, Gantz is being portrayed – and portraying himself – as a battle-hardened warrior, able to make peace from a position of strength.
Before he had issued a single policy statement, polls showed him winning 15 of the 120 parliamentary seats, a welcome sign for those hoping that a centre-left coalition can triumph this time.
But the reality of what Gantz stands for – revealed this week in his first election videos – is far from reassuring.
In 2014, he led Israel into its longest and most savage military operation in living memory: 50 days in which the tiny coastal enclave of Gaza was bombarded relentlessly.
By the end, one of the most densely populated areas on earth – its two million inhabitants already trapped by a lengthy Israeli blockade – lay in ruins.
More than 2,200 Palestinians were killed in the onslaught, a quarter of them children, while tens of thousands were left homeless.
The world watched, appalled. Investigations by human rights groups such as Amnesty International concluded that Israel had committed war crimes.
One might have assumed that during the election campaign Gantz would wish to draw a veil over this troubling period in his military career. Not a bit of it.
One of his campaign videos soars over the rubble of Gaza, proudly declaring that Gantz was responsible for destroying many thousands of buildings. “Parts of Gaza have been returned to the Stone Age,” the video boasts.
This is a reference to the Dahiya doctrine, a strategy devised by the Israeli military command of which Gantz was a core member. The aim is to lay waste to the modern infrastructure of Israel’s neighbours, forcing survivors to eke out a bare existence rather than resist Israel.
The collective punishment inherent in the apocalyptic Dahiya doctrine is an undoubted war crime.
More particularly, the video exults in the destruction of Rafah, a city in Gaza that suffered the most intense bout of bombing after an Israeli soldier was seized by Hamas. In minutes, Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment killed at least 135 Palestinian civilians and wrecked a hospital.
According to investigations, Israel had invoked the Hannibal Procedure, the code name for an order allowing the army to use any means to stop one of its soldiers being taken. That includes killing civilians as “collateral damage” and, more controversially for Israelis, the soldier himself.
Gantz’s video flashes up a grand total of “1,364 terrorists killed”, in return for “three-and-a-half years of quiet”. As Israel’s liberal Haaretz daily observed, the video “celebrates a body count as if this were just some computer game”.
But the casualty figure cited by Gantz exceeds even the Israel army’s self-serving assessment – as well, of course, as dehumanising those “terrorists” fighting for their freedom.
A more impartial observer, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, estimates that the Palestinian fighters killed by Israel amounted to 765. By their reckoning, and that of other bodies such as the United Nations, almost two-thirds of Gazans killed in Israel’s 2014 operation were civilians.
Further, the “quiet” Gantz credits himself with was enjoyed chiefly by Israel.
In Gaza, Palestinians faced regular military attacks, a continuing siege choking off essential supplies and destroying their export industries, and a policy of executions by Israeli snipers firing on unarmed demonstrators at the perimeter fence imprisoning the enclave.
Gantz’s campaign slogans “Only the Strong Wins” and “Israel Before Everything” are telling. Everything, for Gantz, clearly includes human rights.
It is shameful enough that he believes his track record of war crimes will win over voters. But the same approach has been voiced by Israel’s new military chief of staff.
Aviv Kochavi, nicknamed the Philosopher Officer for his university studies, was inaugurated this month as the army’s latest head. In a major speech, he promised to reinvent the fabled “most moral army in the world” into a “deadly, efficient” one.
In Kochavi’s view, the rampaging military once overseen by Gantz needs to step up its game. And he is a proven expert in destruction.
In the early stages of the Palestinian uprising that erupted in 2000, the Israeli army struggled to find a way to crush Palestinian fighters concealed in densely crowded cities under occupation.
Kochavi came up with an ingenious solution in Nablus, where he was brigade commander. The army would invade a Palestinian home, then smash through its walls, moving from house to house, burrowing through the city unseen. Palestinian space was not only usurped, but destroyed inside-out.
Gantz, the former general hoping to lead the government, and Kochavi, the general leading its army, are symptoms of just how complete the militaristic logic that has overtaken Israel really is. An Israel determined to become a modern-day Sparta.
Should he bring about Netanyahu’s downfall, Gantz, like his predecessor politician-generals, will turn out to be a hollow peace-maker. He was trained to understand only strength, zero-sum strategies, conquest and destruction, not compassion or compromise.
More dangerously, Gantz’s glorification of his military past is likely to reinforce in Israelis’ minds the need not for peace but for more of the same: support for an ultranationalist right that bathes itself in an ethnic supremacist philosophy and dismisses any recognition of the Palestinians as human beings with rights.
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His new website is jonathan-cook.net.
Other posts by Jonathan Cook.
Related: 10 dec 2018 Senior Israeli Lawmaker: “The Israeli army has enough bullets for every Palestinian.”
19 oct 2018 Ex-Israel PM: We killed 300 Palestinians in 3 minutes
Before he had issued a single policy statement, polls showed him winning 15 of the 120 parliamentary seats, a welcome sign for those hoping that a centre-left coalition can triumph this time.
But the reality of what Gantz stands for – revealed this week in his first election videos – is far from reassuring.
In 2014, he led Israel into its longest and most savage military operation in living memory: 50 days in which the tiny coastal enclave of Gaza was bombarded relentlessly.
By the end, one of the most densely populated areas on earth – its two million inhabitants already trapped by a lengthy Israeli blockade – lay in ruins.
More than 2,200 Palestinians were killed in the onslaught, a quarter of them children, while tens of thousands were left homeless.
The world watched, appalled. Investigations by human rights groups such as Amnesty International concluded that Israel had committed war crimes.
One might have assumed that during the election campaign Gantz would wish to draw a veil over this troubling period in his military career. Not a bit of it.
One of his campaign videos soars over the rubble of Gaza, proudly declaring that Gantz was responsible for destroying many thousands of buildings. “Parts of Gaza have been returned to the Stone Age,” the video boasts.
This is a reference to the Dahiya doctrine, a strategy devised by the Israeli military command of which Gantz was a core member. The aim is to lay waste to the modern infrastructure of Israel’s neighbours, forcing survivors to eke out a bare existence rather than resist Israel.
The collective punishment inherent in the apocalyptic Dahiya doctrine is an undoubted war crime.
More particularly, the video exults in the destruction of Rafah, a city in Gaza that suffered the most intense bout of bombing after an Israeli soldier was seized by Hamas. In minutes, Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment killed at least 135 Palestinian civilians and wrecked a hospital.
According to investigations, Israel had invoked the Hannibal Procedure, the code name for an order allowing the army to use any means to stop one of its soldiers being taken. That includes killing civilians as “collateral damage” and, more controversially for Israelis, the soldier himself.
Gantz’s video flashes up a grand total of “1,364 terrorists killed”, in return for “three-and-a-half years of quiet”. As Israel’s liberal Haaretz daily observed, the video “celebrates a body count as if this were just some computer game”.
But the casualty figure cited by Gantz exceeds even the Israel army’s self-serving assessment – as well, of course, as dehumanising those “terrorists” fighting for their freedom.
A more impartial observer, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, estimates that the Palestinian fighters killed by Israel amounted to 765. By their reckoning, and that of other bodies such as the United Nations, almost two-thirds of Gazans killed in Israel’s 2014 operation were civilians.
Further, the “quiet” Gantz credits himself with was enjoyed chiefly by Israel.
In Gaza, Palestinians faced regular military attacks, a continuing siege choking off essential supplies and destroying their export industries, and a policy of executions by Israeli snipers firing on unarmed demonstrators at the perimeter fence imprisoning the enclave.
Gantz’s campaign slogans “Only the Strong Wins” and “Israel Before Everything” are telling. Everything, for Gantz, clearly includes human rights.
It is shameful enough that he believes his track record of war crimes will win over voters. But the same approach has been voiced by Israel’s new military chief of staff.
Aviv Kochavi, nicknamed the Philosopher Officer for his university studies, was inaugurated this month as the army’s latest head. In a major speech, he promised to reinvent the fabled “most moral army in the world” into a “deadly, efficient” one.
In Kochavi’s view, the rampaging military once overseen by Gantz needs to step up its game. And he is a proven expert in destruction.
In the early stages of the Palestinian uprising that erupted in 2000, the Israeli army struggled to find a way to crush Palestinian fighters concealed in densely crowded cities under occupation.
Kochavi came up with an ingenious solution in Nablus, where he was brigade commander. The army would invade a Palestinian home, then smash through its walls, moving from house to house, burrowing through the city unseen. Palestinian space was not only usurped, but destroyed inside-out.
Gantz, the former general hoping to lead the government, and Kochavi, the general leading its army, are symptoms of just how complete the militaristic logic that has overtaken Israel really is. An Israel determined to become a modern-day Sparta.
Should he bring about Netanyahu’s downfall, Gantz, like his predecessor politician-generals, will turn out to be a hollow peace-maker. He was trained to understand only strength, zero-sum strategies, conquest and destruction, not compassion or compromise.
More dangerously, Gantz’s glorification of his military past is likely to reinforce in Israelis’ minds the need not for peace but for more of the same: support for an ultranationalist right that bathes itself in an ethnic supremacist philosophy and dismisses any recognition of the Palestinians as human beings with rights.
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His new website is jonathan-cook.net.
Other posts by Jonathan Cook.
Related: 10 dec 2018 Senior Israeli Lawmaker: “The Israeli army has enough bullets for every Palestinian.”
19 oct 2018 Ex-Israel PM: We killed 300 Palestinians in 3 minutes
