A human rights lawyer representing influential Israeli journalists, academics, scientists, and other public figures who have demanded an end to the government's open declarations of genocidal intent in Gaza said Wednesday that he was shocked that such a call needed to be made in the Middle Eastern country.
"The fact that this type of talk has completely left the far, unimportant fringes and came into the mainstream in such a massive way, for me it's incomprehensible," attorney Michael Sfard told The Guardian following the group's decision to send a letter to the attorney general and state prosecutors raising concerns about recent comments by top government officials that they say have normalized genocidal language.
"Explicit calls to commit horrific crimes against the citizens of Gaza began [on October 7] and have since become a legitimate and normal part of the Israeli discourse," wrote the group, decrying "calls for destruction; for ethnic cleansing; for executions of prisoners; to drop an atomic bomb; to 'Nakba 2'; to starve; to create a deliberate humanitarian crisis and to use epidemics as a means of military pressure."
The signatories accused right-wing lawmakers aligned with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of incitement to genocide within Israel by repeatedly calling for Gaza's population of 2.3 million people to be wiped out or forcibly removed from the blockaded enclave—using a variety of language.
Examples of the government's promotion of "the discourse of annihilation, expulsion, and revenge" include a comment made in November by Yitzhak Kroizer, a member of the Knesset representing the Jewish National Front party, in which he called for Gaza to be "flattened" and said that for all residents "there is but one sentence, and that is death."
"What will we be after the war? What kind of Israeli society is being cast at present?"
The normalization of such rhetoric was evident in journalist Shimon Riklin's call for Gaza to be "wiped off the face of the Earth," said the signatories, and members of Netanyahu's own Likud party have called for the use of a nuclear bomb for "strategic deterrence" and have echoed the prime minister's references to the biblical massacre of the people of Amalek, which has been evoked in the past by far right Israeli leaders to justify the killing of Palestinians.
The attorney general's office, the public figures noted, is fully equipped to hold people to account for inciting genocidal violence.
"It actually enforces vigorously, but it seems that almost only against Arabs," the letter reads, pointing to 269 investigations that were opened by Israel between October and November, and 86 indictments that were filed, against ordinary citizens whose speech had been interpreted as supporting Hamas.
"But when it comes to the statements of Jews instigating mass deportation and even genocide—the legal adviser to the government, the state attorney, and the entire prosecution system are silent," wrote the group. "No notice, no instructions, no condemnation, no warning, no opening of an investigation, nothing."
As if to prove the signatories' point about the normalization of genocidal rhetoric, another Knesset member from the Likud, Moshe Saada, said Tuesday that the fact that calls to "destroy" Gazans have become increasingly commonplace in Israeli society shows that the far right was right to make such statements after Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel.
"My friends at the prosecutor's office, who fought with me on political matters, in debates, tell me, 'Moshe, it is clear that all the Gazans need to be destroyed,' and these are statements I have never heard," Saada toldChannel 14 in Israel.
In an op-ed in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Sfard wrote last week that the aftermath of the October 7 attack—with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) massacre of at least 22,313 Gaza residents, the displacement of 90% of the enclave's population, and the government's explicit calls for genocidal violence while officials claim that the IDF protects civilian lives—has forced many Israelis to confront "a terrible insight" and an urgent question about their country and the occupied Palestinian territories.
"What will we be after the war? What kind of Israeli society is being cast at present?" wrote Sfard. "What will be the image of a society that in its endless and axiomatic rightness killed tens of thousands, most of them children, women, and the elderly? Indeed, they were killed in the aftermath of a horrifying and unforgivable crime. And yet. My grandmother, who survived the Holocaust after escaping with her mother and sisters from the actions in the Warsaw ghetto and hid until the end of the war in attics and cellars, wrote in her memoirs, that the greatest challenge in the face of the extreme inhumanity was to maintain humanity."
"What will our deeds in recent weeks etch into our souls—the destruction of cities, towns, villages and refugee camps, the total demolition of residential neighborhoods and civilian infrastructure, the erasure of families and leaving hundreds, if not thousands, of children orphaned?" Sfard continued. "How many tons of coldness and indifference have settled inside us in order for us to turn high-rise buildings into dust, promenades and plazas into ruins, and a million and a half people into displaced people who have nothing? Is there a way back from the hardness we have decreed on our hearts in the face of hundreds of thousands of people who because of our war are fighting like animals for pieces of food, a safe place where their children can lay down their heads, medicine, clean water, and dignity?"
Sfard toldThe Guardian that the attorney general has the responsibility "to make clear that comments inciting genocide were unacceptable, amount to incitement, and had become normalized."
The group sent its letter just before South Africa filed a motion at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), asking the body to formally declare that Israel has breached its obligations under the Genocide Convention and citing some of the same comments referenced in the letter.
As Common Dreams reported Monday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry held a hearing this week regarding how the government should proceed after legal advisers warned top officials that the ICJ could issue an injunction to stop Israel from committing genocidal violence in Gaza.
