Video and transcript available at: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-looming-catastrophe-in-the-middle
It has become quite rare to hear any meaningful accountability for Israel’s actions from Israeli citizens themselves. Israeli journalist Gideon Levy is an anomaly in Israel by today’s standards, as for his entire career he has challenged the apartheid and occupation of the Israeli state. On today’s episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Levy joins host Christ Hedges to discuss his book, The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe, and explain the spiritual destruction, both of Israel and Palestine, that the current genocide in Gaza is causing as well as the implications of new military operations in Lebanon.
The worst change, according to Levy, is that Israel has lost its humanity. “Everything is acceptable,” Levy tells Hedges as he describes the ongoing slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, the brutal killing of prisoners, the censorship at the hands of the state and the overall indifference to it all.
“There is practically only one camp in Israel, the camp which supports apartheid and occupation,” Levy says.
There isn’t even any room left for empathy of the innocent victims in Gaza, according to Levy. Teachers have been subject to interrogation and termination because they “express[ed] empathy with the children of Gaza, with the victims of Gaza. Even this is not legitimate anymore in Israeli society 2024,” Levy contends.
Although the horrors following October 7 are devastatingly unprecedented, Levy asserts that this entire catastrophe was years in the making and the meaningless gestures of advocating for a two-state solution, for example, will perpetuate it further.
In the first years following the war in 1967, the occupation of Palestinians as a way of life quickly became normalized, according to Levy. “[Palestinians] clean our streets, they build our buildings, they pave our roads and they will never have citizenship. The only people in the world without any citizenship of any state,” Levy says.
As Israeli society attempts to continue this way of living, only disruptive movements and moments, such as the First Intifada, the Yom Kippur war and now October 7, will bring meaningful attention to the Palestinian struggle most of the world is okay with ignoring.
