Tel Aviv
19.2.2024
Shlomo’s gray hair falls to the back of his neck; he wears his reading glasses on a chain around his neck. He was sitting with other regulars at an outdoor table of the Russian restaurant across from my hotel in Tel Aviv. He came over to sit at my table after learning that I am German. It is a beautiful, warm evening, a pleasant change from the cold that greeted me that morning as I made my way from Düsseldorf to Amsterdam airport. It is the first day of my first trip to Israel.
Shlomo is originally from Russia and was a professional boxer. He is a confident, open-minded guy, and like all the Israelis I come into contact with, he seems to harbor no resentment toward Germans — quite the contrary. After ending his active career, he was one of the trainers of Israeli boxer Hagar Shmoulefeld Finer, who lost a world championship bout against Regina Halmich in Karlsruhe in 2007. Shlomo shows me a short video of the fight on his phone.
Afterward, we chatted for a few more minutes. He tells me that the hotel where I will be spending the first two nights in Israel still houses families who were evacuated after the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. I said goodbye to him and went to my hotel room. The encounter with Shlomo will be the first of many encounters with Israelis during this trip. Precisely because these encounters are so pleasant, friendly, and harmless, they often feel surreal and unsettling.
The Reduction to Group Membership
I know that a large majority of Jewish Israelis support the carnage in the Gaza Strip. Moral outrage is a dangerous emotion that can easily turn into self-righteous anger, making one arrogant and manipulable. I often think of a sentence I heard Norman Finkelstein — son of Holocaust survivors and author of the book Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom — say in an interview: “I am not on the side of the Palestinians; I am not on the side of the Israelis. I am on the side of truth and justice.”
I can only agree with him. Tribal thinking, the reduction of individuals to their group membership, and blind loyalty perpetuate the problem. The conflict in Palestine is not a football match. It is not about hanging one of the two flags in your living room. It is about approaching the ideals of truth and justice and distancing oneself from one’s tribal instincts.
Controlling the Outrage
That was the greatest challenge during my stay in Israel, and it is a great challenge in writing this text. It is exhausting but possible to keep one’s moral outrage in check and to be guided not by emotions but by reason, and to face the facts.
I use publicly accessible places such as the “Eretz Israel” and “Palmach” museums as anchor points to make the analysis more concrete and easier to understand. This also gives every reader the opportunity to verify my descriptions themselves. I made the decision to focus on Zionism because too little is reported about it in Germany and because the Israeli government, guided by Zionist ideology, is committing a genocide.
This does not mean that I deny the existence of Palestinian nationalism or glorify the terrorist tactics of the Palestinian resistance. I cannot imagine committing such acts. However, I also cannot imagine having been violently expelled from my homeland and being treated as a second-class human being by the perpetrators for my entire life.
I cannot imagine having witnessed, as a nine-year-old, the arbitrary execution of my uncle by the Israeli army, as Hamas co-founder Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi did. I cannot imagine having to spend my life in a refugee camp and repeatedly being the victim of airstrikes by the occupying power’s army, as happens to the Palestinians in Gaza at regular intervals.
The Israeli Air Force bombed the Gaza Strip in 2008, 2012, and 2014. Between 2008 and 2014, 44 people in Israel were killed in rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza, including 30 civilians and 14 soldiers. The Israeli operation “Protective Edge” in 2014, according to UNRWA, cost the lives of more than 2,000 Palestinians. The Israelis have a name for these punitive expeditions. They call them: “Mowing the lawn.”
I cannot imagine what it is like to have to endure so much suffering and injustice, but I am certain that most people who must endure such experiences will not choose to turn the other cheek. Oppression breeds resistance. The religion of the victims is irrelevant.
The Ideal of Objectivity
An important step toward approaching the ideal of objectivity is to introduce a clear, as neutral as possible definition of the term “terrorism.” The academic discussion of the definition of terrorism is extensive, and the scholarly community has so far failed to reach a universally accepted definition of the term. A report by the Bundestag’s scientific service states the following: “A universally valid and accepted definition of terrorism cannot be found. There exist different perspectives on the matter. In particular, the boundary between the terms terrorism and freedom struggle is often fluid.” ²
In this essay, I will use the clear, easily understood definition from the Cambridge Dictionary: “The use of violence for political purposes.” According to this logic, terrorism is a tactic for achieving a goal, for which nonviolent means can also be employed.
The term originated in Russia. The first modern terrorists were Russian anarchists who used violence to resist the brutal oppression of Tsarist rule. The story of the trial of the Russian terrorist Vera Zasulich illustrates that the term “terrorist” has not always carried a negative connotation.
On January 24, 1878, Vera Zasulich shot General Fyodor Trepov, the governor of St. Petersburg, in retaliation for the torture of the tsarist regime’s many political prisoners. Trepov was wounded in the attack, while Zasulich was arrested and put on trial. Asked why she hadn’t fired again to finish the job, she replied: “I am a terrorist, not a murderer!” After proudly identifying herself as a terrorist, Vera Zasulich was acquitted by the court in St. Petersburg, to the delight of much of Russian society.
Approaching the ideal of objectivity also means acknowledging that a whole range of political movements have used terrorist tactics, including Nelson Mandela’s ANC, the French Resistance, the liberation movements in Ireland and Algeria, and the Zionists in Palestine. The use of terrorist tactics can be successful — one could argue, for instance, that the Zionist terrorist group Irgun’s attack on British headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem prompted the British to withdraw from Palestine more quickly, enabling the founding of the state at a favorable moment. More than 90 people were killed in the July 1946 bombing.
Similar to Zionism, Palestinian nationalism has gone through various phases. The religious component was not always in the foreground; the ideology of “Fatah,” the most influential Palestinian resistance organization of the 1960s and 1970s, was a secular nationalism, and the “Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine” (PFLP), founded by Christian Palestinians, defines itself explicitly as an organization committed to Marxist-Leninist principles.
Current support for Hamas in Gaza thus does not reflect a passionate popular enthusiasm for an Islamic theocracy, but rather stems from the failure of its secular predecessors.
The Duty to Face the Facts
Zionism and Palestinian nationalism share an important commonality: they arose, at least in part, as reactions to injustices suffered. Zionism emerged as a reaction to the antisemitic pogroms in Russia in the late nineteenth century; Palestinian nationalism emerged as a reaction to British rule in Palestine and the Zionist colonial project.
In Gaza and the West Bank, a technologically heavily armed occupying army — financed and supported by the United States, the richest and most powerful state in the history of humanity — faces a guerrilla group that possesses no heavy weapons. This guerrilla group is supported by Iran, a regional power that does not yet possess nuclear weapons and therefore has only limited deterrent potential. In Washington, bizarre but high-ranking and influential figures such as Republican Senator Lindsey Graham have been demanding for years that the USA should do Netanyahu’s bidding and “neutralize” Iran.
Iran, the regional power, is accused by the American superpower and Israel, its satellite in the Middle East, of wanting to rule the world and impose Sharia law on humanity. This sounds like the plot of a bad James Bond film, and yet it is a story that convinces many, especially in the United States of America.
Hamas is a movement that, much like Nelson Mandela’s ANC (African National Congress), has both a civilian and a military component. The “Qassam Brigades,” the military arm of Hamas, is a locally operating guerrilla force.
Here is a description from a report for the Australian Parliament. The Australian government stands firmly on the side of Israel and is not suspected of any sympathy for Hamas: “As the military arm of Hamas, the goals of the Brigades are subordinate to the general political goals of Hamas. Their essential goal is the unification of Israel and the Palestinian territories under Islamic rule — a goal that entails the destruction of Israel as a political entity. Due to the imbalance between the military resources of Israel and Hamas, the Brigades employ terrorist tactics to defeat Israel. Best known are their suicide bombings, which they refer to as the ‘F-16’ of the Palestinian people. The Brigades have never indicated any intention to carry out attacks outside of Israel and the Palestinian territories or to target countries other than Israel.” ³
For the al-Qassam guerrillas, Islam serves the function of a legitimizing myth — much as Marxism did for the Vietnamese revolutionaries, and much as Judaism does for the Zionists — with the difference that, unlike the Zionist leadership elite, Hamas fighters probably do actually believe in God. The claim that Hamas is a globally operating terrorist group in the style of ISIS is absurd.
It is a grotesque caricature, a mixture of the imagery of MAD magazine and that of the Nazi propaganda magazine Der Stürmer. This grotesque caricature should be easy to see through, yet its absurdity goes unnoticed in the current climate of narrowing discourse to a battle between good and evil. These are the facts that anyone who makes a serious attempt to understand the problem must face.
Everyone Can Form a Judgment
I traveled to Israel to complete my research. I wanted to understand why the majority of the Israeli population supports the massacre of the Palestinian civilian population, and how it is possible that freeing the hostages through a prisoner exchange is not the government’s top priority. According to one survey, 39% of Israelis consider the military campaign in Gaza appropriate, while 34% say it doesn’t go far enough.
The journey to the Holy Land is the strangest trip of my life: a short city trip, two cities in six days. A trip like the many I have taken before. It involves practical, trivial things: the weather, restaurants, hotel prices/location, transportation, sights, museum opening hours, etc. At the same time, it is a journey to a country whose army, with the support of the majority of its population, is currently committing a genocide.
In this, the Israeli government is supported by the German government — with weapons, ammunition, and diplomatic cover. I am not unbiased and objective — no one can be. Impartiality and objectivity are ideals I can only aspire to. I can only attempt to become aware of my bias in favor of the weaker party, in favor of the victims of the longest occupation in modern history, so as not to be guided solely by emotions but to critically reflect on my position.
The decisive prerequisite for approaching the ideal of objectivity is to clearly distinguish between personal sympathy and rational analysis. Personally, for example, I find all monotheistic religions deeply suspect, and I am not of the opinion that Islam is a religion of peace, although such passages can be found in the Quran.
However, I generally consider the significance of religious and ideological constructs as motivators for human behavior to be overestimated. The cognitive faculties of humans — that is, imagination and logical thinking — are not in themselves motivating for action. Emotions determine that something is done; the mind determines how it is done. Ideological constructs are not the cause of human behavior, but they can be more or less harmful. They can either keep the destructive tendencies of humans in check or amplify them.
Since humans apparently tend, for evolutionary reasons, to idealize their own group and demonize other groups, glorifying nationalist ideologies such as Zionism is particularly dangerous. One example: The Vietnamese did not wage a war of liberation because books by Marx and Lenin happened to fall into their hands. They resisted the injustice of colonization and, among other things, used Marxist ideology as a legitimizing myth.
They also referenced the American Declaration of Independence and even quoted it verbatim in the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence of 1945. The Vietnam War was not about a competition between two ideologies, but about pride, retribution, self-determination, and power.
The same applies to the situation in Palestine. The attempt to define the problem as a conflict between two religions is particularly absurd in this case, because modern Zionism is not a religious current of Judaism, but rather a utopian nationalism that arose in the nineteenth century as a reaction to humiliating experiences of its founding thinkers.
It is exhausting to approach the ideal of objectivity while the carnage that began as revenge for October 7th has been taking place before the eyes of the world for more than half a year. No one disputes that a mass murder of gigantic proportions is taking place, that the Israeli army is deploying tanks and the air force against the civilian population, and systematically destroying houses, schools, universities, and hospitals.
Putting a Tank in the Garage
In simplified terms, two camps can be observed in Germany: The camp of those who consider the carnage as a reaction to October 7th to be justified, because its victims are barbaric terrorists and their sympathizers, women and children included.
The reaction of a German test reader to a draft of my essay clearly expresses the attitude of this camp: “If I were Israeli, I certainly would not believe in the ‘live and let live’ promise, but would keep my M16 in my hand, and after October 7, 2023 (the day the Palestinians committed a mass murder of Israelis), I would probably have not just one M16, but ten, and a tank in the garage as well.”
The test reader wrote this comment after reading more than 20 pages in which I describe the background of the attack of October 7, 2023, and from which it should be clear that it is absurd to claim it was an unprovoked, purely antisemitically motivated pogrom. Reaching someone like this test reader with rational arguments is obviously not possible.
Cognitive Blockade
Ideological blindness, fueled by strong emotions and the dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims internalized over many years, evidently renders people blind and unable to absorb facts whose acknowledgment would require questioning their own worldview. Dichotomous thinking — the division of the world into “good guys” and “bad guys,” the good own group and the evil foreign group — causes a kind of cognitive disability.
Similar to how, on an individual level, the grandiose self-overestimation of a narcissist ensures that she is constantly searching for confirmation of her fragile castle in the air and her reality testing fails to function, the collective illusion of moral superiority apparently prepares the ground for an attitude shaped by resentment that actively resists acknowledging the humanity of the Other and would rather “put another tank in the garage.”
I have the hope of reaching the other camp: the Germans who refuse to dehumanize the Palestinians, who have preserved their humanity and intuitively know that what is happening in Gaza is a crime of the century.
Victims as Part of the Abstraction
At the time of my arrival in Tel Aviv, in February 2024, more than 30,000 Palestinians had fallen victim to the Israeli retaliatory campaign, more than half of them women and children; another 70,000 had been injured, and no one knows how many bodies remain buried under the rubble. 30,000 dead, 70,000 injured — these are horrifying numbers, but precisely this concentration on numbers instead of individual fates in reporting on Palestinians is part of the problem.
This contrast becomes particularly clear in the reporting on October 7th and the subsequent genocide. Palestinian intellectual and activist Hanan Ashrawi puts it this way: “Take, for example, an Israeli soldier who is on Palestinian territory, shoots Palestinians, and is then injured or killed. Immediately, you become aware of the full extent of his humanity. You go to his funeral and see his grieving mother, wife, or child. You learn his name, his hopes, his dreams, where he came from, and so on. At the same time, hundreds and thousands of Palestinians were killed. And you never learn their names. You never see a funeral.
You don’t witness the family’s grief. You don’t know that these children, probably many of them, were shot in their own homes and backyards or on their way to school. It doesn’t matter. They become part of the abstraction. You know: ‘400 Palestinians killed,’ that’s it, it’s a number.”
The quote comes from the transcript of a 2004 panel discussion in the USA. Nothing has changed since then; only the numbers of the dead and wounded have continued to rise.
The Story of Hind
To counteract this effect and give a face to the Palestinian victims, I tell here the story of the Palestinian girl Hind Rajab and her family, standing in for the thousands of Palestinian children murdered by the Israeli army. In January 2024, five-year-old Hind tried to escape the horror together with her family. Their flight from Gaza City ended abruptly when an Israeli tank opened fire on their vehicle. Hind’s aunt, uncle, and three cousins were killed instantly; only Hind and her fifteen-year-old cousin, Layan Hamadeh, survived the initial attack.
Frightened and injured, Layan picked up the phone and contacted the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS). “They’re shooting at us. The tank is right next to us,” she reported through tears. During the call, Layan was hit by further shots and died. Hind, now alone, picked up the phone and pleaded: “I’m so scared, please come. Get me out of here.” For three hours, she remained in the destroyed vehicle while the PRCS desperately tried to organize a safe rescue.
Hind Rajab
Despite intensive efforts and coordination with Israeli authorities, the PRCS rescue team itself became a target while attempting to reach Hind. Twelve days later, after the withdrawal of Israeli troops, Hind’s family found the vehicle. The windows were shattered, the body riddled with bullets. Hind lay dead beside her relatives. Nearby, they discovered the destroyed ambulance; the two paramedics, Yusuf al-Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun, had also been killed. Hind had also spoken by phone with her cousin, Mohammed Hamada, while waiting for rescue.
The 28-year-old described the phone call in an interview with the Guardian: “Hind said: ‘Please help me. Please come and save us. Save me.’ She told me she was injured in the leg. I was crying because I couldn’t do anything, and I think my whole family was in the same situation. My wife said to her: ‘Sweetheart, don’t be afraid, God loves you and He will take care of you.’ And she just answered ‘OK.’ I think Hind was braver than all of us put together.”
South Africa’s Intervention
At the time of my arrival in Tel Aviv, the document that South Africa filed with the International Court of Justice was publicly available. That it was specifically the South African government that chose to accuse Israel of genocide carries particular significance: the two countries were long-standing allies. Israel maintained close, though discreet, relations with South Africa during the apartheid era. The two states engaged in intensive military cooperation and numerous economic ties.
The problem with proving genocide is that the intent of the perpetrators must be demonstrated. In the case of the genocide committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip, the ultimate written proof — the explicit order for genocide — is still missing. Nevertheless, proving genocide is possible. Demonstrating genocide without explicit written orders is based on the careful collection of witness statements, forensic evidence, and circumstantial evidence.
In the case of Srebrenica, for example, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) analyzed the targeted killing of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims. In addition to witness statements and forensic examinations of mass graves, the court relied on intercepted communications and military documents to establish the perpetrators’ intent. In “Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstić,” General Krstić was convicted of aiding and abetting genocide, with the systematic nature of the crimes and the targeted annihilation of a group making the proof of genocide possible.
These examples show that genocide can be proven even without direct written evidence through comprehensive chains of evidence. The Srebrenica genocide occurred in 1995. General Krstić was arrested in 1998 and indicted in 2000. These proceedings are time-consuming, and the Palestinian civilians in Gaza do not have time. What is already available are statements by Israeli decision-makers that clearly and unambiguously express the intent to carry out collective punishment and to starve the population of Gaza.
Here are some excerpts from South Africa’s petition: In an address to the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, on October 16, 2023, Benjamin Netanyahu described the situation as “a battle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.”
The Israeli Prime Minister returned to the theme in his Christmas message, declaring: “We are dealing with monsters, monsters who murdered children before the eyes of their parents. This is not only Israel’s battle against these barbarians; it is a battle of civilization against barbarism.”
Spare No One
On October 28, 2023, as Israeli forces prepared their ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, the Prime Minister invoked the biblical story of the total annihilation of the Amalekites by the Israelites, declaring: “You must remember what the Amalekites did to you, says our Holy Bible. And we remember.” The Prime Minister again referenced the Amalekites in a letter sent to Israeli soldiers and officers on November 3, 2023. The relevant Bible passage reads: “Now go, attack Amalek, and devote to destruction all that they have. Spare no one, but kill men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”
On October 12, 2023, President Isaac Herzog made clear that Israel does not distinguish between fighters and civilians in Gaza, declaring at a press conference before foreign media — referring to Palestinians in Gaza, more than a million of whom are children: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true… and we will fight until we break their backbone.”
On October 9, 2023, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant informed an Israeli army briefing that Israel had “imposed a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” He also informed the troops at the Gaza border that he had “released all restrictions.”
Quote: “The Gaza Strip will not return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything. If it doesn’t take one day, it will take a week. It will take weeks or even months, but we will reach every place.”
Even If Thousands of Bodies Lie in the Streets
Giora Eiland, Major General of the Israeli army, former head of the Israeli National Security Council, and advisor to the defense minister, has repeatedly called in the media for making the Gaza Strip uninhabitable.
In an interview on November 6, 2023, he said: “If a military operation against Al Shifa Hospital is intended, which in my view is inevitable, I hope the CIA director has been given an explanation of why this is necessary and why the United States must ultimately support even such an operation, even if thousands of bodies are lying in the streets afterwards.” He further suggested that “Israel must create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza that forces tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands to seek refuge in Egypt or the Gulf… The Gaza Strip will become a place where no human being can live.”
Echoing the words of President Herzog, he has repeatedly emphasized that there should be no distinction between Hamas fighters and Palestinian civilians. Quote: “Who are the ‘poor’ women of Gaza? They are all mothers, sisters, or wives of Hamas murderers. On the one hand, they are part of the infrastructure that supports the organization, and on the other hand, if they experience a humanitarian catastrophe, then it can be assumed that some of the Hamas fighters and the younger commanders will begin to understand that the war is hopeless. … The international community is warning us about a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and about severe epidemics. We must not shrink from this, however difficult it may be. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer. … A civilian collapse will bring the end of the war closer. When senior Israeli figures say in the media, ‘Either them or us,’ we should clarify who ‘them’ means. ‘Them’ are not just the armed Hamas fighters, but also all ‘civilian’ officials, including hospital and school administrators, and the entire population of the Gaza Strip who supported Hamas and cheered its atrocities on October 7th.”
Germany Delivers Weapons and Ammunition
Israeli soldiers in uniform were filmed on December 5, 2023; they danced and chanted, “May their village burn, may Gaza be wiped out.” Two days later, on December 7, 2023, they danced, sang, and chanted in Gaza: “We know our motto: There are no uninvolved civilians!” Up to this date, 17,177 Palestinians in Gaza had been killed — an estimated 70 percent of them women and children.
December 7 and 8, 2023, were particularly devastating for the Palestinians: Within 24 hours, 350 people were killed — approximately every four minutes, a Palestinian fell victim to the Israeli retaliatory campaign. All figures and quotes are from the South African petition before the International Court of Justice. ⁴
These are, as mentioned, only excerpts. The statements of Israeli politicians, media personalities, and soldiers that leave no doubt about the intent of the Israeli campaign fill seven pages of the South African petition. The representatives of a state government are announcing here that they will carry out collective punishment and slaughter the civilian population.
It is incomprehensible to me how anyone who makes even the slightest attempt to read the 80-page, meticulously researched and referenced South African document with an open mind could come to a different conclusion. Collective punishment is prohibited under international humanitarian law. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 states: “No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed.”
Such acts are considered war crimes because they violate fundamental principles of justice and individual protection. Whether this crime can be declared a genocide at this point or not is obviously less relevant than the fact that thousands of people, living defenseless in densely populated refugee camps, are being murdered by the army of a state during a collective punishment campaign.
It is astonishing that this fact alone is not enough to speak out against it. That for many, the question now seems to be primarily whether it constitutes a genocide under the narrow definition of the Convention or not is grotesque and gives the perpetrators and their supporters the opportunity to shift attention from their crimes to a debate among lawyers.
Germany supports the Israeli retaliatory campaign, delivers weapons and ammunition, and Chancellor Scholz, as of my writing in August 2024, has not even called for a ceasefire. On the contrary, Germany has officially stated that the “accusation of genocide against Israel is without any basis” and constitutes a “political instrumentalization” of the UN Genocide Convention.
