This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Gideon Levy into this conversation in Tel Aviv. Gideon, if you could start off by responding to — there was a latest text from the Israeli negotiator Gershon Baskin, who wrote, “The ceasefire agreement which went into effect today is good news. The agreement is between Israel and the Government of Lebanon, not between Israel and Hezbollah. It seems that Hezbollah has been weakened enough,” it says — it seems that it’s been weakened enough that — let’s see if I can find this — that it’s “been weakened enough to end the war in Lebanon before the war in Gaza has ended.” Your response to this? And also, the response in Israel right now to — I think was about 4 a.m. that the ceasefire or the cessation of hostilities went into effect.
GIDEON LEVY: Yes, I wish I could tell you that Israel is happy about the ceasefire. I wish I could tell you that there is even a relief in Israel. But, unfortunately, in Israel, everyone — almost everyone is critical about this agreement. I guess many Israelis did not have enough — for sure, the right-wingers, for sure, most of the inhabitants of the north. They would like to see more blood and more destruction in Lebanon. And therefore, they are so sour today. And the other camp, as usual, is saying nothing. And even one of the opposition leaders, Benny Gantz, even criticized the ceasefire. He thought the war should go on. In other words, Israel wants wars. That’s the inevitable conclusion when you see reactions to a ceasefire which puts an end, at least partial end, to suffer in both sides, suffer which didn’t lead to anywhere. Israel didn’t achieve anything in this war. It will not achieve anything in the war in Gaza, 10 times or 1,000 times worse.
And here I must emphasize that nobody should have any illusions. Netanyahu has no intention to put an end to the war in Gaza. What happened in Lebanon will not happen soon in Gaza, because if he goes for an agreement in Gaza, he loses his government, and that’s his top priority. And Israel, at least part of Israel, has very serious intentions to resettle Gaza. Don’t underestimate those seculars. The sky is the limit for them. They just wait for Donald Trump to get into the office. And I will not be surprised if we’ll very soon, later, see settlements in Gaza.
In other words, nothing was solved yesterday except of the punishment of Lebanon, which came to its end, but also this is for a very limited time. I mean, when the prime minister speaks about the agreement, and all he has to say are threats about Lebanon and Hezbollah, that if any violation will take place, immediately Israel will attack again, so we are going from one war to the other and from one violent confrontation to the other, without even suggesting any other alternative. Nothing. Nobody speaks about diplomacy. Nobody speaks about touching the core issues, both in the north and in the south. Our friend from Lebanon, our Lebanese friend, just mentioned violations of the sovereignty of Lebanon. Anyone speaks about the fact that Israel, I’m sure, will continue to fly over Lebanon for intelligence, this will be kosher. This will be legitimate. And only the violation of Israeli sovereignty is never forgiven.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Gideon Levy, I wanted to ask you — in terms of the toll on the IDF now, over 800 soldiers have been killed in Gaza, about — the estimates are about 73 or 74 in Lebanon. And those are the only ones — the ones publicly acknowledged. What is the impact on Israel of continuing this war, on the economy of Israel, on migration, on tourism and the other aspects of economic life in Israel?
GIDEON LEVY: The price is enormous, but somehow Israelis accept it. This is this unbelievable phenomena in which people are ready to sacrifice their dearest ones — I mean, who is more than your son? — without seeing a real purpose. I mean, they all tell themselves that they were killed, sacrificed for the defense of Israel. But what kind of defense is it if you bomb a refugee camp in Gaza? What does Israel benefit out of it?
The economical crisis is one thing. I mean, you mentioned tourism. There is no tourism whatsoever. There are hardly any international airlines who fly in here. But there is a much heavier price: namely, turning Israel into a pariah state. [inaudible] very well from the United States, but everywhere else. It’s not only that Netanyahu and Gallant are now wanted all over the world. Every Israeli will feel it when he will go abroad now. Every Israelis everywhere will feel at least discomfort in the presenting himself, identifying himself as an Israeli. And still Israelis are ready to take this, only because they were told that we have to live from war to war, to live on our sword, and there is no other option, which is a total lie, because Israel never tried an alternative. But brainwash like brainwash.
AMY GOODMAN: Gideon, I don’t know if you can respond to this, but the Israeli Cabinet has unanimously voted to sanction your paper, Haaretz, saying its editorials, quote, “have hurt the legitimacy of the state of Israel and its right to self defense,” unquote. Under the move, the Israeli government will stop advertising in the paper, cut off all communications with Haaretz. Haaretz has slammed the decision, saying it, quote, “[is] another step in Netanyahu’s journey to dismantle Israeli democracy. Like his friends Putin, Erdoğan, and Orbán, Netanyahu is trying to silence a critical, independent newspaper. Haaretz will not balk and will not morph into a government pamphlet that publishes messages approved by the government and its leader,” unquote. This all comes six months after Israel banned Al Jazeera from operating in Israel and as the president-elect here in the United States, Donald Trump, threatens to go after major U.S. broadcasters and publications, calling the media the enemy of the people. Gideon, you serve on the editorial board of Haaretz. I know you can’t speak specifically about the sanctions against your paper, but can you talk broader about these threats to the press?
GIDEON LEVY: Sure. It’s not that I can’t, but we decided that this message that you just read now is our reaction as a newspaper. But I think that those sanctions tell much more about Israel and Israel’s government than about Haaretz.
And here, I think especially in the United States, who always speaks about the shared values, about the only democracy in the Middle East — so, first of all, it’s questionable if a state which rules in such a brutal way, in 5 million people, can it all be defined as a democracy? But let’s put the occupation and the apartheid aside. Even for us Jews in Israel, who used to live in a quite liberal democracy, things are changing right now, from day to day, from week to week. Legislations against freedom of speech, against the legal system, against any kind of human rights, against any minority are being ruled, and nobody says a word, and nobody can stop it, at least as long as this government is there.
So, what I would like to stress here, Amy, is that you have to also look at what’s going on within the Jewish Israel. It is changing while we are speaking. And the war in Gaza and Lebanon has a lot to do with it, because those two wars, with all the lack of legitimacy and brutality, also influence the domestic structure and the domestic system of Israel. And you see the outcome. I don’t take my freedom of speech — and I have freedom of speech, total freedom of speech, but I can’t take it for granted anymore.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us. And I want to give Lina Mounzer — just we have 30 seconds — but the last word on what you expect to happen from here, as you watch what has happened to your country, at least for this moment, from afar.
LINA MOUNZER: Look, we’re very terrified of the day after. Mr. Levy talked about the effect on internal Israeli politics. We’re also very afraid. Lebanon is a very fragile, you know, pluralist state. But at the same time, the Israelis also have known very much how to work on that, so they’ve been specifically bombing where the refugees have gathered. We’ve seen over the last few months that people have been turning away refugees. These refugees are largely Shia from south Lebanon and from the southern suburbs of Beirut. So, there’s been a lot of hostility that has incurred. So we’re really, really afraid of the day after in terms of, you know, the internal stability of the country and what’s going to happen to it.
And I just want to say, you know, to go back to this idea of collateral damage, this is something that the United States normalized in our region, in Iraq, the way to punish an entire country in order to change some sort of internal mechanism, which then devastates the country, because, of course, they have no idea what they’re doing, and this is not how you bring about change. So, we’re all also very afraid of now what’s going to happen to Lebanon internally as we go on and as the pieces are picked up, and a lot of anger and recrimination is going to start coming to the surface among the population. So, you know, as we say in Arabic, Allah yostor. Like, we have no idea what’s going to happen.
AMY GOODMAN: Lina Mounzer, we want to thank you for being with us, Lebanese writer and senior editor of the arts and literature magazine The Markaz, and Gideon Levy, award-winning Israeli journalist at Haaretz, author of the new book The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe. We thank you so much both for joining us, from Montreal and from Tel Aviv.
Coming up, we speak to ACLU attorney Chase Strangio. Next week, he will become the first openly trans attorney to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Stay with us.
