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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman in Los Angeles, with Juan González in Chicago.
As we continue our coverage of the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran and the widening regional war, we go now to Israel. On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proclaimed a new Middle East as Israel escalates its attacks on Iran and Lebanon.
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] Even now it can be said with certainty: This is no longer the same Iran, this is no longer the same Middle East, and this is also not the same Israel. We are not waiting. We are initiating. We are attacking. And we are doing so with a force the like of which has not been seen before.
AMY GOODMAN: We go now to Tel Aviv, where we are joined by the award-winning Israeli journalist Gideon Levy. He writes for Haaretz and is a member of its editorial board. His latest pieces include “Everyone in This Country Has Gone Insane” and “The Israeli Media Are First and Foremost IDF Soldiers.” Levy’s latest book is titled The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe.
Gideon, welcome back to Democracy Now! I know you’ve just come out of a bomb shelter, an air shelter. If you can describe the scene inside there, and then why you say your country has gone crazy? And also talk about the media coverage.
GIDEON LEVY: Well, first of all, going to the shelter is always a very strange experience. We kind of got used, and we never get used. And it kind of became routine, and it will never be a normal routine. Day and night, we are going quite often now, also at night. I can’t foresee how this can last for many weeks or months, God forbid. But, you know, in Ukraine, they hardly have shelters. So at least in part of Israel, not all over Israel, but at least in part of Israel, we gain this privilege of being protected.
Now to your other questions. There is a strange phenomenon in which this war is so highly popular in Israeli public opinion, or in Jewish Israeli public opinion. I never saw such a thing. Ninety-three percent of the Israeli Jews, according to a last survey by the Israel Democracy Institute — 93% of the Israelis support this war. Those are North Korean figures. In no democracy there is such a figure in a survey about any kind of question. Ninety-three percent support the war.
And this comes after two-and-a-half years of another war, which didn’t conclude with big success. I mean, the war in Gaza, 70,000 victims, 1,000 babies killed. What for? What did Israel gain exactly?
But let’s put it aside. Where are we aiming now? Where does this lead us? Nobody knows. I mean, all kind of slogans and clichés in the air, changing regimes.
And meanwhile, there are 6 million — I just made now the count, when you mentioned it, Amy — 6 million human beings are now homeless because of Israel. Can you imagine yourself? Three-point-two in Lebanon, 800 — 800,000 in Lebanon, 3.2 in Iran and another 2 million in Gaza. This should shake us. This should really lead us to some questions. Do we have the right to do all those things? Do we achieve anything? Where are we aiming? What will be the morning after?
But, unfortunately, the discourse and the Israeli media as a whole are not ready even to discuss those questions. When you speak about 93% of the population which supports this war, you have to understand that they are exposed to 100% of agreeing with the war in the media, mainly in the TV. There’s no room for any question marks or doubts about this war. And the more it develops, the more suspicious it seems. So, here we are, Amy.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Gideon, at the same time, though, you say that the overwhelming percentage of the Israeli Jews, but there’s 21% of Israel that is — that are Arabs, of the citizens of Israel. We’re not talking about the Occupied Territories. So, there obviously has to be a different perspective among those Arabs who are citizens of Israel, doesn’t there?
GIDEON LEVY: So, first of all, nobody counts them. I mean, their voice has no influence, neither in the parliament, even though they vote and can be elected, nor in the public discourse. Nobody counts them. Nobody listens to what they have to say. So they are totally irrelevant, and many times not legitimate.
But if you want the figure, the figure was 23% of them support this war — I mean, a tiny minority relative to the vast majority of Jews. And this is quite understandable. I even wonder who are those 23% who support this war, but this is the figure.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Right. I wanted to ask you also about the level of, it seems to me, overextension of the Israeli military machine. We’re talking about Israel is now involved in hostilities not just in Iran, and still in attacking Gaza. There are — in the West Bank, obviously, there are Israeli soldiers deployed there, in Lebanon, in Syria. There are still Israeli troops in Syria, and conceivably even in Iraq, because there have been attacks now — it’s not clear whether it’s from Israel or the United States — on Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq in the past few days. How is it possible for the leaders of Israel to think they can continue this on any kind of long-term basis?
GIDEON LEVY: The fact is that they can. And maybe they’re implementing the vision of your ambassador, your official ambassador, Mike Huckabee, who just said recently in an interview that Israel should between the Nile and the rivers of Iraq. In other words, he believes that Israel — that the entire Middle East belongs to Israel. Maybe we are on a stage of implementing the vision of his excellency, the ambassador of the United States of Israel, who I can’t understand on which behalf did he speak. Does he represent your administration, your public opinion, your president? Who exactly in the United States thinks that Israel should rule the entire Middle East because some god in ancient times promised it to the Jews? I mean, quite weird for me to see that such an ambassador continues to represent the United States in Israel.
But, look, Israel is doing as much as it can. And it can. As long as the American support is so massive, so blind and so automatic, this will go on. The moment that the United States will see it in a different way, this will stop. And it’s very clear that the [inaudible] are not. Almost I could say that I have more complaints now to the United States, which enabled all this, rather than to Israel, which tries as much as it can to conquer more, to govern more and to launch more wars.
AMY GOODMAN: Gideon Levy, you recently wrote a piece in Haaretz about the Abu Alla family, who live in the town of Qabatiya in the Jenin district of the occupied West Bank. Two sons of the family were killed almost exactly 10 years apart by Israeli soldiers. Both were 17 years old at the time of their deaths. You write that in December, Rayan was walking down the street in his neighborhood when he was killed, the shooting caught on security footage that you published in your reporting. In the video, you can see two Israeli soldiers waiting behind a wall. Rayan enters the frame, walking in their direction. The soldiers step out and shoot him at close range, less than six feet away.
GIDEON LEVY: Yes. And, you know, I published this story, Amy, a few weeks ago, and already this week I bring another story of two brothers, but this time they were both shot at the same time, not 10 years. Those brothers were killed in a gap of 10 years, less than a week, by the way, to be very precise. This week, I was in another village, and there, some settlers in uniform shot two brothers on their private land, which is in Area B, which is not being controlled by the PA, and still a settler shot them. One is dead, and one is severely injured. And the main question you should ask, Amy: Was there any investigation? Did one of those shooters — or may I call them murderers? — was ever or will be ever brought to justice? And I think you know the answer.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Gideon, I wanted to ask you about the press coverage, both by the Israeli press, as well as by the international press, on the damage within Israel, because we’re seeing U.S. reporters who are based in Tel Aviv giving us great footage of the destruction in the Gulf states and of the bombs in Iran, but very little of what is actually going in Israel in terms of the structural damage that the missiles and the drones from Iran are causing within Israel.
GIDEON LEVY: Unfortunately, the Israeli media or the mainstream media stopped being press or a journalistic organ a long time ago. You are talking about not showing the damages in Tel Aviv. What did Israeli TV show about what Israel has been doing for two-and-a-half years in Gaza? Nothing. Any potato grower in Idaho saw more of Gaza than someone in Tel Aviv who watches only Israeli TV.
Now, when it comes to this war, they show here and there also the damaging in Israel. There are some censorship restrictions, quite limited, so they will not direct their bombing according to the place that the missiles fall, but this is marginal. We don’t have a free press — I mean, we have a free press. This is much worse. But this free press puts itself under self-censorship and thinks that in times of war, and also in other times, the press is just an agency of the government and of the military establishment. And this is very worrying.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s accepted that Israel does not allow international journalists into Gaza, and it’s not talked about. CNN always prefaces their reporting from their journalist who is in Tehran, Iran, as saying it’s controlled, though it’s not controlled editorially, they say. They do not continually repeat the same thing for their reporters in Israel. It’s critical to talk about Gaza. Your next book, Gideon Levy, is about Gaza, and also your continued coverage, which we hear very little about, of the West Bank. You also talk about the communities of Susya there. If you can talk about that as an example of what’s happening and the terror Palestinians are facing there?
GIDEON LEVY: Under the cover of the war, the West Bank is changing dramatically, and only for the bad. What the setters, together with the army, did in the last two years is unprecedented and irreversible. They really changed the life. You can just go in the roads and understand that this is not the occupied, oppressed West Bank that you knew before, because it’s much worse now.
Right now almost all the villages and towns in the West Bank are locked. And when I say “locked,” I mean locked by metal gates, like real prisons. The whole West Bank looks like a collection of concentration camps — no other way to describe it. People are not allowed — ever since the war started, people are not allowed to get in; people are not allowed to get out. In a few cases, the checkpoints are open for few hours, but you never know if you’ll be able to come back. Nothing is planned. And the whole attitude of the army dramatically changed ever since the war in Gaza.
In the same time, the settlers saw the war in Gaza, and now in Iran, as a huge historical opportunity for them. They took over tens of thousands of acres all over the West Bank by force. And they kicked out, and they are kicking out, the population, the farmers, the shepherds, one community after the other. After months and months of tyranny of violent settlers, many times in uniforms, they have no other choice but to give up, to surrender and to leave their homes, their villages and their fields. This is a process. It’s not one incident here and one incident here. Pogroms are a daily thing now. Nobody brings people to justice after those pogroms. And the West Bank is changing dramatically. I know already about dozens of villages which were evacuated, because the people cannot take it anymore, the Palestinians.
AMY GOODMAN: Gideon Levy, we want to thank you for being with us, award-winning Israeli journalist, writes for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and is a member of the editorial board there. His latest opinion pieces, we’ll link to, “Everyone in This Country Has Gone Insane” and “The Israeli Media Are First and Foremost IDF Soldiers.” Gideon Levy’s latest book is titled _The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe.”
This is Democracy Now! Coming up, Jeffrey Sachs. He says the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran is also an assault on the United Nations. Stay with us.
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AMY GOODMAN: Deerhoof’s “Come Down Here and Say That.”
