Israeli soldiers during an operation in Gaza on March 31, 2024. Photo / Avishag Shaar-Yashuv, The New York Times
I will leave it to historians to debate whether Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.
But what is absolutely clear to me right now is that this Israeli government is committing suicide, homicide, and fratricide.
It is destroying Israel’s standing in the world. It is killing civilians in Gaza with seemingly no regard for innocent human life.
And it is tearing apart Israeli society and world Jewry, between those Jews who want to still stand with Israel no matter what and those who can no longer tolerate, explain, or justify where this Israeli government is taking the Jewish state and now want to distance themselves from it.
I was struck by this paragraph in the New York Times’ story from Israel yesterday about the Israeli strikes on a hospital in southern Gaza, killing at least 20 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry — including five journalists who worked for international media outlets, plus medics and several others.
“The Israeli military said it had carried out a strike in the area of Nasser Hospital, without saying what the target was. The statement said the military regretted ‘any harm to uninvolved individuals,’ adding that its chief of staff had ordered an immediate inquiry.”
Obviously sensing that many around the world were appalled by this explanation — I mean, how many times have we heard this? — the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a rare statement of contrition, saying that “Israel deeply regrets the tragic mishap”.
The truth is, though, what Netanyahu called a “tragic mishap” is the inevitable byproduct of his policy of stringing out the war in Gaza in order to stay in power, to avoid his criminal trials and to avoid any Israeli inquiry commission into his profound complicity in the failure to prevent the surprise attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
For Netanyahu to stay in power, he needs the support of far-right ministers, such as Bezalel Smotrich, who is engaged in an effort to carpet the West Bank with as many Jewish settlements as he can to prevent any Palestinian state from emerging there.
Smotrich is also encouraging the eviction of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, to pave the way for Israel to absorb both.
But here’s the problem: Israel has already devastated Hamas as a military force and killed virtually all of its top commanders who planned the October 7 attack.
So now, to justify the continued war effort, it must go after lower-level commanders, who are living and hiding among civilians.
It is one thing for a country at war to justify collateral damage when going after the enemy’s top leaders.
It is something entirely more sinister when you are killing and wounding dozens of civilians to try to kill, say, the deputy to the deputy commander.
It is also devious and sinister when you use your military to move hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians from one part of Gaza to the other — under the guise of evacuating them from fighting zones — and then deliberately bulldoze the homes they left behind for no real military reason but with the clear ulterior motive of making life so miserable for them that they will leave the area entirely.
And it is shameful when you stop and start humanitarian aid, with the hope that people will get hungry enough to leave.
But as I said, this is not just homicide pure and simple; it is also suicide and fratricide.
Israel is now well on its way to making itself a pariah state — to the point that Israelis will think twice about speaking Hebrew when travelling abroad.
Consider these recent news items from around the world:
Unfair, says the Israeli Government. The world seems to have forgotten, it argues, that Hamas murdered some 1200 people; kidnapped some 250, including women, children and elderly; and is still holding some alive in inhumane conditions in tunnels and elsewhere in Gaza.
Hamas’ leadership could have ended all of this suffering by agreeing to quit Gaza and release all its hostages. By perpetuating this war, Hamas has also engaged in its own heinous crimes — the murder of Israeli hostages and the human sacrifice of thousands of Palestinians to Hamas’ mad dreams.
It’s all true — and relevant.
So why is the world ganging up only on Israel now?
Because it holds Israel to a higher standard than Hamas, because Israel has always held itself to a higher standard.
And because the world can tell the difference now between a war being waged for the survival of the Jewish state and a war being waged for the political survival of its prime minister.
And finally, because the world can no longer look the other way, as it did for months, at the loss of Palestinian civilian life in Gaza as the inevitable byproduct of a war in which — it hoped — Israel was trying to expel Hamas from Gaza and replace it with an Arab peacekeeping force in partnership with the Palestinian Authority.
The PA has recognised Israel and could, if reformed, be a partner for a two-state solution.
But because Netanyahu has now made it crystal clear that he refuses to let Gaza be ruled by either Hamas or the PA, the war increasingly looks like what it now is: a war to extend Israel’s occupation from the West Bank to Gaza.
So it appears to many around the world that Palestinian civilians are being killed by the dozen almost daily as the inevitable spillover not from a just war for Israeli survival and an attempt to produce a better Palestinian partner in Gaza but rather from an effort to ensure that Israel has no Palestinian partner in Gaza.
Is it any wonder Israel is losing so many friends around the world — as well as potential regional partners like Saudi Arabia — for whom this is becoming obvious?
As for fratricide, if this war continues this way, it is going to rip apart many, many synagogues around the world during the Jewish High Holidays this year.
Between those who feel the need to stand with Israel, right or wrong, and those who simply can’t stand this Israeli government’s awful behaviour in Gaza any longer, especially when they see hundreds of thousands of Israelis themselves taking to the streets against this government.
It is also going to rip apart the Democratic Party, between those who are afraid to defy the influential Israeli lobbying group AIPAC, for fear of losing campaign funding to their Republican opponents, and those who just can’t stand it any longer.
Alas, if this is geopolitical suicide, as I believe, it has become assisted suicide.
There is one person who could stop it all right now, and that is US President Donald Trump.
I hope that I am wrong, but I fear that — just as Trump was duped by Russian President Vladimir Putin into giving up on a ceasefire in Ukraine and opting instead for the chimera of total peace — Trump has been duped by Netanyahu into giving up on a ceasefire in Gaza in pursuit of Bibi’s fantasy of “total victory”.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Thomas L. Friedman
Photograph by: Avishag Shaar-Yashuv, Saher Alghorra
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES