By Daniel Sokatch, NIF International CEO
Moshe Yaalon, who served as the IDF Chief of Staff during the second intifada, and as Prime Minister Netanyahu’s defense minister during the 2014 Gaza war, is no leftist, and certainly no friend of the Palestinians. But last weekend, in a series of interviews, he called it like it is. This is how he spoke of Netanyahu and his extremist coalition partners on multiple Israeli television and radio channels:
The path they’re dragging us down is to occupy, annex, and ethnically cleanse — look at the northern strip … There’s no Beit Lahia. There’s no Beit Hanoun. They’re now operating in Jabaliya. They are basically cleansing the territory of Arabs.
This is a “breaking the silence” moment for Yaalon. A top army general, former defense minister under Netanyahu, was saying explicitly: What we are doing isn’t right. This has to stop. And on this, I agree with him.
The scale of human suffering in Gaza is immense. Civilians are starving and dying as the world watches on TV and follows along on social media. But many Israelis are not seeing the images the rest of the world cannot unsee. In some cases, they are not seeing them because they — and the mainstream media — are choosing not to see and show them. In other cases because they are using social media like Telegram that reinforce hardline positions. And in a lot of cases, as my friend Dahlia Scheindlin suggests in Haaretz this week, they are psychologically exhausted.
But no matter the reason, Israelis need to know. And act. Because what is happening in Gaza is something that not only Palestinians but also Israelis will be dealing with for years to come — for generations. Michael Sfard’s painful essay “What Was I Doing While My Country Was Killing Civilians in Gaza?” is a question that should resonate with us all.
That is why our grantees, for many many months, have been speaking out, working to shine a light on what is happening in Gaza. When the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant last week, it generated a conversation that reverberated around the world. The ICC was immediately vilified in Israel and indeed, the crimes enumerated by the Court were shocking, including starvation as a method of warfare, and the intentional targeting of the civilian population. But it’s one thing to dismiss the ICC. It is quite another to dismiss a former Likud party member and defense minister of the State of Israel. That’s not so easy. And now, Yaalon has joined this chorus of truth-telling. “Ethnic cleansing is effectively being carried out,” he said in a separate interview with Israel’s Channel 12. “I don’t have another word for it … I purposely used this term to ring the alarm bells.”
And alarm bells are what we should all be hearing right now. Netanyahu is leading his government — and the state of Israel — down the path of cronyism, messianism, autocracy, and now, war crimes.
Let me tell you what I mean. On November 5, Netanyahu fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and replaced him with Bibi loyalist Israel Katz, despite Katz’s woeful lack of military experience and expertise. This was an example of blatant cronyism.
There is a growing movement for Gaza resettlement. Groups of settlers are actively preparing to enter and settle parts of the Strip at any given moment. And recently, longtime settler leader Daniella Weiss was able to enter Gaza with the help of IDF officers to tour the Netzarim corridor and scout it out for settlements. This has raised to fever pitch concerns that, despite Netanyahu’s denials, this government is moving towards a full reoccupation – and resettlement — of Gaza. This is an example of extremist messianism.
After just three weeks of the new Knesset session, 38 new bills are on the table that the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and others have categorized as “undermining Israeli democracy.” Justice Minister Yariv Levin, the architect of the judicial coup, still has not enabled the appointment of a new Supreme Court Justice and continues to try and slash the power of the courts wherever and whenever he can. Add to this a concerted campaign by ministers in the government to fire the Attorney General — the woman responsible for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s personal corruption trial at which he is set to testify in just a few days — and this government’s path to autocracy becomes ever clearer.
And with all of this bad news, it can be hard to imagine a better future. But that is why we at NIF are here. It is why and how we get up in the morning.
We know that two of the most important things that will determine the future of the people who live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea are (1) how and when this war concludes and what happens next, and (2) whether Israel will continue to slide further and further away from its founding democratic values. NIF works directly on these two issues day and night because — for both peoples, Israelis and Palestinians — there is no other land, no other place, no other home. And that is why we need your help, now more than ever.
We stand alongside, and actively support, powerhouse activists like Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan remains captive in Gaza, and whose question — what is more important? Getting the hostages out of Gaza or building settlements there? — more and more Israelis need to hear. She recently very publicly told Minister of National Security Ben Gvir the following:
There are bodies of hostages, buried dozens of meters below ground, and you want to pave roads and erect outposts and settle the Gaza Strip upon their blood. If Matan is alive, if he survived, who are you to prevent me from getting him home?
Zangauker, who received NIF’s “Truth to Power” award this year and whose story we have helped tell over and over again, was listed this week as one of the BBC’s top 100 influential women. We are so proud to stand with Einav. Your financial support helps us do that.
And when it comes to Israel’s future as a democracy, the role of civil society cannot be understated, nor can our role as the primary funder, partner and support network for organizations like ACRI, Adalah, Yesh Din, Sikkuy, or Standing Together (to name just a handful). Amidst a hurricane of challenges, we are choosing our battles strategically. For example, this government has put forward a blatantly anti-democratic bill that would make it much harder for Arab parties to run for the Knesset. I spoke to our Director in Israel this week about it, and he confirmed that the main opposition to this law is coming from… us. Civil society is the place where the most important battles — the battle for something as basic as the ability of 20% of Israel’s population to have their votes counted and their voices heard — are and will continue to be fought.
Help us by making your end of year donation today, and ensuring that we can keep doing this work.