
With ‘broken heart,’ author David Grossman calls Israeli actions in Gaza ‘genocide’ – The Times of Israel
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Diverging Reports Breakdown
Israeli writer Grossman denounces Gaza ‘genocide’
US envoy visits distribution site in Gaza as humanitarian crisis worsens. US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff visited southern Gaza on Friday. Food scarce and parcels being airdropped, with starving people scrambling for scarce aid. Hundreds have been killed by either gunfire or trampling, witnesses and health officials say. The Israeli military says it has only fired warning shots at people who approach its forces, and its armed contractors have only used pepper spray or fire warning shots to prevent deadly crowding. Gaza City: We want the American envoy to come and live among us in these tents where there is no water, no food and no light,” they say. “Our children are hungry in the streets.” “We were met on the ground where crowds were congregating where gunfire ricocheted off the ground’’ “The worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in Gaza,’ Human Rights Watch says. ‘Near impossible for Palestinians to follow the instructions issued by GHF, particularly in the context of ongoing military operations’
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff visited southern Gaza on Friday amid international outrage over starvation, shortages and deadly chaos near aid distribution sites.
With food scarce and parcels being airdropped, Witkoff and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee toured one of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s distribution sites in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city. Chapin Fay, the group’s spokesperson, said the visit reflected Trump’s understanding of the stakes and that “feeding civilians, not Hamas, must be the priority.”
All four of the group’s sites are in zones controlled by the Israeli military and have become flashpoints of desperation during their months of operation, with starving people scrambling for scarce aid. Hundreds have been killed by either gunfire or trampling.
The Israeli military says it has only fired warning shots at people who approach its forces, and GHF says its armed contractors have only used pepper spray or fired warning shots to prevent deadly crowding.
Witkoff’s visit comes a week after US officials walked away from ceasefire talks in Qatar, blaming Hamas and pledging to seek other ways to rescue Israeli hostages and make Gaza safe.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that Witkoff was sent to craft a plan to boost food and aid deliveries, while Trump wrote on social media that the fastest way to end the crisis would be for Hamas to surrender and release hostages.
Officials at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza said they have received the bodies of 25 people, including 13 who were killed while trying to get aid, including near the site that US officials visited. GHF denied anyone was killed at their sites on Friday and said most recent incidents had taken place near United Nations aid convoys.
The remaining 12 were killed in airstrikes, the officials said. Israel’s military did not immediately comment.
Human Rights Watch: ‘Near impossible’
International organizations have said Gaza has been on the brink of famine for the past two years. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the leading international authority on food crises, said recent developments, including a complete blockade on aid for 2 1/2 months, mean the “worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in Gaza.”
Though the flow of aid has resumed, including via airdrops, the amount getting into Gaza remains far lower than what aid organizations say is needed. A security breakdown in the territory has made it nearly impossible to safely deliver food to starving Palestinians, much of the limited aid entering is hoarded and later sold at exorbitant prices.
At a Friday press conference in Gaza City, representatives of the territory’s influential tribes accused Israel of empowering factions that loot aid sites and implored Witkoff to stay several hours in Gaza to witness life firsthand.
“We want the American envoy to come and live among us in these tents where there is no water, no food and no light,” they said. “Our children are hungry in the streets.”
In a report issued Friday, Human Rights Watch called the current setup “a flawed, militarized aid distribution system that has turned aid distributions into regular bloodbaths.”
“It would be near impossible for Palestinians to follow the instructions issued by GHF, stay safe, and receive aid, particularly in the context of ongoing military operations, Israeli military sanctioned curfews, and frequent GHF messages saying that people should not travel to the sites before the distribution window opens,” the report said. It cited doctors, aid seekers and at least one security contractor.
Since the group’s operations began in late May, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in shootings by Israeli soldiers while on roads heading to the sites, according to witnesses and health officials. The Israeli military has said its troops have only fired warning shots to control crowds.
Responding to the report, Israel’s military blamed Hamas for sabotaging the aid distribution system but said it was working to make the routes under its control safer for those traveling to aid sites. GHF did not immediately respond to questions about the report.
The group has never allowed journalists to visit their sites and Israel’s military has barred reporters from independently entering Gaza throughout the war.
International condemnations have mounted as such reports trickle out of Gaza, including from aid organizations that previously oversaw distribution.
A July 30 video published Thursday by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs showed an aid convoy driving past a border crossing as gunfire ricocheted off the ground near where crowds congregated.
“We were met on the road by tens of thousands of hungry and desperate people who directly offloaded everything from the backs of our trucks,” said Olga Cherevko, an OCHA staff member.
US offcials visit Gaza aid depot, ex-EU envoy warns EU leaders they are ‘complicit in genocide’
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Israel’s international isolation has begun
Israel’s favorability has been sliding in global opinion and in the U.S. among Democratic voters. A poll shows that nearly four of five Democrats in NY say Israel is committing a genocide. “My people are starting to hate Israel,” Trump reportedly warned a “Jewish donor” The liberal Zionists are scrambling to get ahead of the shifting Democratic politics of the issue, but they ought to be challenged. The west could have ended the occupation a long time ago. The Israel lobby is exposed for its corruption. The liberal Zionist branch of the lobby is denied that there is a genocide– as it has denied for over a year. To that end, they have fostered delusions, keeping Democrats on board, that Israel is a bad policy and that antisemitism is a ‘democratic Jewish state’ There were fears that a century of Palestinian anger will just go away. There were also fears that the prospect of accepting a new structure of equality and full integration would go away as well.
These are steps that advocates for Palestinians thought might be years away. But today the world is shocked by Israel’s starvation of Gaza, and the mainstream press is at last reporting the charge of genocide.
Israel’s international isolation has begun.
These political changes were driven by the street. For years, Israel’s favorability has been sliding in global opinion and in the U.S. among Democratic voters. But party leaders defied the shift — and then Zohran Mamdani won the NY primary for mayor last month, in a groundswell that overwhelmed Cuomo’s $25 million in negative ads. A poll shows that nearly four of five Democrats in NY say Israel is committing a genocide. And Trump’s base is catching up. “My people are starting to hate Israel,” Trump reportedly warned a “Jewish donor”.
There are several lessons the left should recognize.
Pressure works
We always said that the way to stop Israeli war crimes is for western nations to sanction or abandon Israel. The change in official tone proves the point. Israel is now seeking to moderate its brutality, and reports from Israel say that some Israelis are ashamed by the front-page coverage of starvation. The west could have ended the occupation a long time ago.
Our media failed us
When the reckoning on genocide comes, it will include all the voices who explained away children buried in rubble by American bombs. Liberal voices in the Times, on the cables and NPR acted like Gaza was normal—then the people arose.
“Truthfully, it goes back decades,” Donald Johnson writes. “Israel has been an apartheid state for a long time, even by liberal Zionist standards. Jimmy Carter was right about apartheid in 2006 and the press didn’t want to listen.” (In fact, Carter was pilloried by Wolf Blitzer and Terry Gross and ostracized from the Democratic Party.)
The Israel lobby is exposed
Biden and Harris and Blinken and Power did nothing to stop a genocide, just sent more bombs—why? Democrats for years embraced the illegal settlement project, and Obama insisted on “undivided Jerusalem” language in the Democratic platform in 2012–why? Dem leadership in NY has failed to endorse Mamdani weeks after his victory—why?
There is only one factor that keeps leading Democrats “allegiant” to Israel, as James Carville phrased it, and that is the pro-Israel forces inside the Party, embodied by DMFI and AIPAC and the big donors.
The good news is that the corruption is now obvious. “Support for blocking bombs to Israel, recognizing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and holding Israel accountable for its violations of the law is not simply the opinion of the majority of Democratic voters, it is the vast, vast majority, and any Democrat who stands with AIPAC instead of their own voters is running the real risk of getting voted out of office,” says Margaret DeReus of IMEU.
While former Obama aide Tommy Vietor said on his podcast that the Dems’ policy of hugging Netanyahu is a failure, he pleads guilty, and — “there is no going back to a pre-October 7 Democratic Party”.
For years the lobby claimed that the U.S. was on Israel’s side because Israel served the American interest, and anti-Israel activists claimed that if Americans only knew they would abandon Israel. The anti-Israel activists were right. There is no American interest in racial oppression. There is no American interest in arming a country that bombs one neighbor after another creating instability across the world.
The liberal Zionist branch of the lobby is also vulnerable. For over a year it has denied that there is a genocide– as it has denied apartheid and ethnic cleansing and war crimes in years past. The liberal Zionists served a vital function for the lobby, keeping progressive Democrats on board. To that end, they have fostered delusions — that real pressure on Israel is bad policy and antisemitic, and that Israel is a “democratic Jewish state.”
Today the liberal Zionists are scrambling to get ahead of the shifting Democratic politics of the issue, but they ought to be challenged. For instance, J.J. Goldberg says Americans should sympathize with Israelis’ “fear at the prospect of accepting a new structure of full equality and integration, as though a century of Palestinian anger will just go away”. There were similar fears in the Jim Crow south and South Africa.
The Jewish community is in turmoil and it should be
The American Jewish community is the most reactionary force in the Democratic Party on Israeli apartheid. Leading Jewish organizations sought to kneecap any politician who stepped out of line. These politics among the most liberal highly educated voting bloc in the U.S. should have produced an internal Jewish crisis a long time ago. Yes, horror over Israeli actions generated Jewish Voice For Peace and IfNotNow 10 and 20 years ago, but today is a revolutionary moment. As Arielle Angel writes, “The Gaza genocide has made plain what many leftist Jews have long feared: that virtually the entire enterprise of Judaism—and nearly every organization charged with stewarding it—is infected with a voracious rot.” (This rot sadly extends to Bernie Sanders, the leading moral voice for Democrats, whose refusal to call a genocide a genocide surely reflects his youth volunteering at an Israeli kibbutz.)
It’s understandable that many Americans are so afraid of the antisemitism label that they won’t call out Jewish organizations’ role in oppressing Palestinians. But Jews can do so freely—and young Jews must take down the pro-genocide establishment.
The root cause of the Israel/Palestine conflict is Zionism
An ideology that grants Jews greater rights to land and to civil freedoms is inherently hateful and will always produce the sort of revolt we saw on October 7 (horrific war crimes against civilians took place in Algeria and South Africa too).
It is great that European politicians are finally trying to give Palestinians sovereignty. The effort is way too late, but it demonstrates the truth that political freedom is all that will guarantee security in the land.
The recognition and denunciation of Zionism must accelerate. Zionism might have made sense 100 years ago (or even 80) as a liberation from European persecution. But over and over as they gained power, Zionists took the wrong path. They chose ethnic cleansing, occupation, and apartheid. They chose disdain for their neighbors in favor of superpower politics. They bragged of their “villa in the jungle” – a racist fantasy of Jewish supremacy that even liberal Zionists like J Street promoted.
Can Israel be reformed? I don’t know. But Zionism cannot be. Know it by its fruits. It is apartheid genocide and famine, and the American people have awakened.
With ‘broken heart,’ author David Grossman calls Israeli actions in Gaza ‘genocide’
Israeli author David Grossman called the country’s campaign in Gaza a “genocide” for the first time. He said he uses the term with “immense pain and a broken heart,” in conversation with the Italian daily La Repubblica. His comments came amid rising global alarm and anger over widespread hunger in the war-torn territory due to the insufficient entry of food. “This word is an avalanche: Once you say it, it just gets bigger, like an avalanche. And it adds even more destruction and suffering,’ he said. Grossman also said that he thought French President Emmanuel Macron”s recent announcement that France would recognize a Palestinian state was “a good idea.“Perhaps dealing with a real state, with actual responsibilities, instead of an ambiguous entity like the Palestinian Authority, will have its advantages, he said, while adding that there would need to be specific conditions, including demilitarized elections in which “anyone who supports violence against Israel is banned”
His comments came amid rising global alarm and anger over widespread hunger in the war-torn territory due to the insufficient entry of food.
“For many years, I refused to use that term, ‘genocide,’” the prominent writer and peace activist told the newspaper. “But now, after the images I have seen and after talking to people who were there, I can’t help but use it.
“This word is an avalanche: Once you say it, it just gets bigger, like an avalanche. And it adds even more destruction and suffering,” he said. “Even just saying that word — ‘genocide’ — in reference to Israel, to the Jewish people, the fact that such a comparison is even being made, tells us that something very bad is happening to us.”
Grossman’s works, which have been translated into dozens of languages, have won many international prizes.
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He also won Israel’s top literary prize in 2018, the Israel Prize for Literature, for his work spanning more than three decades.
Grossman noted that “Israel cannot be solely blamed for all the atrocities we’re witnessing” and that the death toll figures are “controlled” by the Hamas terror group.
However, he said it was “devastating” to “put the words ‘Israel’ and ‘famine’ together,” because of the Holocaust and the Jewish people’s “presumed sensitivity to human suffering, the moral responsibility we’ve always claimed to have towards all human beings, not only toward Jews.”
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He argued that both Israelis and Palestinians have been unable “to resist the temptation of power.”
Following the victory in the Six Day War in 1967, Israel “became very strong militarily, and we fell into the temptation that comes with absolute power — the idea that we can do whatever we want,” Grossman said.
“The occupation has corrupted us. I’m absolutely convinced that Israel’s curse began with the occupation of the Palestinian territories in 1967,” he continued.
At the same time, he said the Palestinian leadership had made similar errors, noting that its “great mistake” was not rebuilding Gaza following Israel’s unilateral withdrawal in 2005, and that it instead “gave in to fanaticism and used [the territory] as a launching pad for missiles against Israel.”
“Had they chosen the other path, perhaps that would have pushed Israel to also give up the West Bank and end the occupation years ago,” he said.
“The Palestinians were also unable to resist the temptation of power: They shot at us, we shot at them, and we ended up in the same old situation. If both we and they had been more politically mature, more courageous, reality could have been completely different.”
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Despite this, Grossman said he remains “desperately faithful to the idea of two states,” primarily because he sees no other options available.
Grossman also said that he thought French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent announcement that France would recognize a Palestinian state was “a good idea.”
“Perhaps dealing with a real state, with actual responsibilities, instead of an ambiguous entity like the Palestinian Authority, will have its advantages,” he said, while adding that there would need to be specific conditions, including a demilitarized state, and transparent elections in which “anyone who supports violence against Israel is banned.”
A dovish figure and longtime critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, Grossman has repeatedly attended and spoken at anti-government rallies.
According to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, 60,034 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive against Hamas, which began when the terrorist organization attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting 251, on October 7, 2023.
The Hamas figures cannot be independently verified and do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Hamas has claimed women and children make up about half the dead.
Israel said it had killed some 20,000 gunmen in Gaza as of January, its latest official estimate, and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023.
Israel also says it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
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Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 459.
Trump announces direct Iran nuclear talks during meeting with Netanyahu
Yinon Levi will be released from house arrest, an Israeli court ruled Friday. The video shot by a Palestinian witness shows Levi brandishing a pistol and tussling with a group of unarmed Palestinians. He can be seen firing two shots, but the video does not show where the bullets hit. The Israeli military is still holding Awdah Hathaleen’s body and says it will only be returned if the family agrees to bury him in a nearby city. The confrontation occurred on Monday in the village of Umm Al-Khair, in an area of the West Bank featured in “No Other Land,” an Oscar-winning documentary about settler violence and life under Israeli military rule. The judge said Levi did not pose such a danger as to justify his continued house arrest.
TEL AVIV: An Israeli settler accused of killing a prominent Palestinian activist during a confrontation captured on video in the occupied West Bank will be released from house arrest, an Israeli court ruled Friday.
The video shot by a Palestinian witness shows Yinon Levi brandishing a pistol and tussling with a group of unarmed Palestinians. He can be seen firing two shots, but the video does not show where the bullets hit.
Witnesses said one of the shots killed Awdah Hathaleen, an English teacher and father of three, who was uninvolved and was standing nearby.
The Israeli military is still holding Hathaleen’s body and says it will only be returned if the family agrees to bury him in a nearby city. It said the measure was being taken to “prevent public disorder.”
The confrontation occurred on Monday in the village of Umm Al-Khair, in an area of the West Bank featured in “No Other Land,” an Oscar-winning documentary about settler violence and life under Israeli military rule.
In a court decision obtained by The Associated Press, Judge Havi Toker wrote that there was “no dispute” that Levi shot his gun in the village that day, but she said he may have been acting in self-defense and that the court could not establish that the shots killed Hathaleen.
Israel’s military and police did not respond to a request for comment on whether anyone else may have fired shots that day. Multiple calls placed to Levi and his lawyer have not been answered.
The judge said Levi did not pose such a danger as to justify his continued house arrest but barred him from contact with the villagers for a month.
Levi has been sanctioned by the United States and other Western countries over allegations of past violence toward Palestinians. President Donald Trump lifted the US sanctions on Levi and other radical settlers shortly after returning to office.
A total of 18 Palestinians from the village were arrested after the incident. Six remain in detention.
Eitay Mack, an Israeli lawyer who has lobbied for sanctions against radical settlers, including Levi, said the court ruling did not come as a surprise.
“Automatically, Palestinian victims are considered suspects, while Jewish suspects are considered victims,” he said.
Levi helped establish an settler outpost near Umm Al-Khair that anti-settlement activists say is a bastion for violent settlers who have displaced hundreds since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Palestinians and rights groups have long accused Israeli authorities of turning a blind eye to settler violence, which has surged since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, along with attacks by Palestinians.
In a 2024 interview, Levi said he was protecting his own land and denied using violence.
Some 70 women in Umm Al-Khair said they were beginning a hunger strike on Friday to call for Hathaleen’s body to be returned and for the right of his family to bury him in the village.
Israel’s military said in a statement to the AP that it would return the body if the family agrees to bury him in the “nearest authorized cemetery.”
Hathaleen, 31, had written and spoke out against settler violence, and had helped produce the Oscar-winning film. Supporters have erected murals in his honor in Rome, held vigils in New York and have held signs bearing his name at anti-war protests in Tel Aviv.