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Classified IDF Intel Reveals 83% of Palestinians Killed in Gaza Are Civilians
The data show "a proportion of civilian slaughter with few parallels in modern warfare."
Aug 21, 2025
An investigation published Thursday belied Israeli government claims of a historically low civilian-to-combatant kill ratio in Gaza, as classified Israel Defense Forces intelligence data revealed that 5 in 6 Palestinians killed by the IDF through the first 19 months of the US-backed war were, in fact, civilians.
A joint investigation by Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham of +972 Magazine and Local Call and Guardian senior international affairs correspondent Emma Graham-Harrison revealed that, as of May, the Military Intelligence Directorate identified by name 8,900 fighters from Hamas—which led the October 7, 2023 attack—and Palestinian Islamic Jihad as "dead" or "probably dead."
At that time, the official Palestinian death toll in Gaza stood at 52,928, with the Gaza Health Ministry not differentiating between civilians and militants. Israeli officials and independent peer-reviewed studies have either concurred with the ministry's figures or called them an undercount.
The classified IDF data obtained by Abraham and Graham-Harrison show that at least 83% of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces through May were civilians, what Graham-Harrison called "an extreme rate of slaughter rarely matched in recent decades of warfare... even compared with conflicts notorious for indiscriminate killing, including the Syrian and Sudanese civil wars."
Israeli army database suggests at least 83% of Gaza dead were civilians Classified intelligence from May reveals Israel believed it had killed ~8,900 militants in Gaza, indicating a proportion of civilian slaughter with few parallels in modern warfare. www.972mag.com/israeli-inte...
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— +972 Magazine (@972mag.com) August 21, 2025 at 6:42 AM
According to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program at Uppsala University in Sweden, the 83% civilian kill rate in Gaza is far higher than in Bosnia in 1992-95 (57%), the Syrian civil war of 2012-24 (29-34%), the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine (10-22%), or the US-led war in Afghanistan of 2001-21 (8-12%).
One unnamed intelligence source who was in Gaza told Abraham and Graham-Harrison: "People are promoted to the rank of terrorist after their death. If I had listened to the brigade, I would have come to the conclusion that we had killed 200% of Hamas operatives in the area."
In one case, +972 Magazine and Local Call revealed how one IDF battalion stationed in Rafah killed around 100 Palestinians and labeled them all as "terrorists." However, an officer from the unit later testified that all but two of the victims were unarmed.
The new investigation adds to the body of research showing that Israel's assault and siege on Gaza—which is the subject of an ongoing International Court of Justice (ICJ) genocide case filed by South Africa—has, as Abraham put it, "killed civilians at a rate with few parallels in modern warfare."
A leaked Israeli intelligence report reveals what was obvious all along:The vast majority of Palestinians slaughtered by Israel in Gaza are civilians. There was never an excuse for not knowing the truth.This is a genocide. Not a war.
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— Owen Jones (@owenjones.bsky.social) August 21, 2025 at 9:59 AM
These studies destroy claims by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder and forced starvation—and members of his government of historically low civilian death rates in Gaza.
"Israel is setting the new gold standard for urban warfare with what appears to be the lowest civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio in history," Israeli government spokesperson Avi Hyman claimed in May 2024.
Israel's supporters around the world have parroted this false claim. John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the US Military Academy at West Point, said in January that "Israel's civilian-to-combatant ratio is still historically low," and that "Israel has done more and implemented more measures to prevent civilian harm than any military in the history of urban warfare."
However, the facts show a very different reality. Retired IDF Gen. Itzhak Brik told Abraham and Graham-Harrison that "there is absolutely no connection between the numbers that are announced and what is actually happening. It is just one big bluff."
"They lie non-stop—both the military echelon and the political echelon," Brik said. "In every raid, the IDF spokesperson's announcements said: 'Hundreds of terrorists were killed.' It's true that hundreds were killed, but they weren't terrorists."
Following the October 7 attack, the IDF dramatically loosened its rules of engagement, effectively allowing an unlimited number of civilians to be killed when targeting a single Hamas member, no matter how low-ranking. Numerous massacres ensued, including the October 31, 2023 killing of more than 120 civilians in a single IDF bombing targeting one Hamas member in the Jabalia refugee camp.
The IDF's use of massive ordnance, including US-supplied 1,000- and 2,000-pound "bunker buster" bombs capable of leveling entire city blocks,w and utilization of artificial intelligence to select targets has resulted in staggering numbers of civilian deaths. United Nations human rights officials have said that Israel's use of 2,000-pound bombs likely violates international law by deliberately targeting civilians in disproportionate attacks.
The indiscriminate slaughter is also taking place on the ground, where volunteer American surgeons have described treating—or sending to morgues—young children who appeared to be deliberately shot in the chest and head by IDF snipers. More recently, IDF whistleblowers said they were ordered to shoot or launch artillery shells into crowds of starving Palestinian civilians at aid distribution points run by the US-based Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Responding to the new investigation, the IDF confirmed the existence of the Military Intelligence Directorate database, but claimed that "figures presented in the article are incorrect," without further explanation.
However, in a recording published last week, Aharon Haliva—a former IDF general who was in charge of intelligence operations on and after the October 7 attack—is heard approvingly accepting the official Gaza Health Ministry death toll at the time.
"The fact that there are already 50,000 dead in Gaza is necessary and required for future generations," Haliva said. "It doesn't matter now if they are children."
Similar statements by Israeli officials are a key component of South Africa's ICJ case, where applicants must prove intent to commit genocide under Article II of the Genocide Convention.
The most recent Gaza Health Ministry figures show that Israel's 685-day assault and siege on Gaza have left at least 62,122 Palestinians dead—most of them women and children—and more than 156,700 others wounded, with thousands more missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. At least 271 Palestinians, including 112 children, have starved to death.
The dire situation for civilians in Gaza could be about to deteriorate even further as Israel intensifies Operation Gideon's Chariots II, which aims to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse Palestinians in numbers exceeding even the Nakba, or "catastrophe," during which more than 750,000 Arabs were forcibly expelled, sometimes via massacre and death march, during the establishment of Israel in 1948.
Israeli officials have repeatedly indicated that they would approve of such an annihilation, with Haliva asserted that Palestinians "need a Nakba every now and then to feel the price" of resisting more than a century of dispossession and displacement.
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Israel Releases Hamdan Ballal, Palestinian Filmmaker Beaten by Settlers
"After being handcuffed all night and beaten in a military base, Hamdan Ballal is now free and is about to go home to his family," said No Other Land co-director Yuval Abraham.
Mar 25, 2025
Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal, who earlier this month won an Academy Award for No Other Land—a documentary about ethnic cleansing in the illegally occupied West Bank—was released from Israel Defense Forces custody Tuesday after being brutally attacked by Israeli settlers and violently detained by army troops.
Yuval Abraham, one of two Israeli co-directors of No Other Land, said on the social media site X that "after being handcuffed all night and beaten in a military base, Hamdan Ballal is now free and is about to go home to his family."
On Monday, Israeli settlers attacked the village of Susya in the southern Hebron Hills, injuring numerous residents and activists, according to Palestinian human rights activist Ihab Hassan, who posted video of the assault. Members of the activist group Center for Jewish Nonviolence who went to Susya to document the attack said they were assaulted by settlers who smashed their car windows, punched them, and hit them with sticks.
"The sickening reality is this is what many Palestinians face and we don't even hear about it."
Abraham said that settlers beat Ballal, injuring his head and stomach. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers then "invaded the ambulance he called" and seized Ballal, according to Abraham.
Lamia Ballal, the filmmaker's wife, told The Associated Press that she saw three men in uniform beating Ballal with their rifles and another person in civilian clothing who appeared to be recording the attack.
"Of course, after the Oscar, they have come to attack us more," she said. "I felt afraid."
The IDF claimed that Ballal and two other Palestinians were detained on suspicion of throwing rocks during the settler attack. One Israeli was also detained.
Lea Tsemel, an attorney for the three detained Palestinians, said the men spent the night on the floor of a military base and received the bare minimum of medical care.
Responding to Monday's events, Basel Adra, No Other Land's second Palestinian co-director, said that "this is how they erase Masafer Yatta," the collection of 19 West Bank hamlets whose ongoing ethnic cleansing is documented in the film.
The international film industry led condemnation of Ballal's detention and demands for his release.
"Such treatment of an internationally acclaimed filmmaker gravely undermines artistic freedom, human rights, and freedom of speech—core values vital to democratic societies," a Change.org petition by "members of the global film community" said.
The Berlin Film Festival, where No Other Land premiered and won best documentary last year, called Ballal's ordeal "very distressing" in a Tuesday Instagram post.
"It is vital in open democracies that we safeguard the role of journalism and documentary filmmaking and protect its makers from reprisal and violence," the organization said.
U.S. actor and activist Mark Ruffalo, a longtime Palestine defender,
wrote on Instagram: "Every filmmaker and Academy [of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences] member should be acting together in protest. No matter where you stand on this issue this is an attack on our beloved art form of filmmaking. Hamdan Ballal is a political prisoner and this is an international incident and violation of human rights."
"Many of us are not surprised by this behavior from the lawless settlers and the IDF at this point," Ruffalo added. "Kill[ing] journalists and abducting filmmakers is not an accident but a design for the eradication of a people and their culture. Free Ballal!"
Israel has illegally occupied the West Bank including East Jerusalem for 58 years. Today, more than 700,000 Israelis live in over 140 settlements built and expanded on Palestinian land. Last year, the International Court of Justice—which is hearing a genocide case against Israel led by South Africa—issued an advisory opinion that Israel's occupation is an illegal form of apartheid that must end immediately.
Assaults on Palestinians by Israeli settlers, who are protected and sometimes joined by IDF troops, have increased dramatically since the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel led by Gaza-based Hamas, with more than 900 West Bank residents killed and thousands more wounded over the past 17 months,
according to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
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Palestinian Filmmaker Hamdan Ballal Taken by Israeli Soldiers After Attack by Settlers
The condition—and whereabouts—of the Academy Award-winning "No Other Land" co-director are currently unknown.
Mar 24, 2025
Hamdan Ballal—the Academy Award-winning Palestinian filmmaker who co-directed the documentary No Other Land about the ongoing Israeli ethnic cleansing of Masafer Yatta in the illegally occupied West Bank—was brutally attacked Monday by far-right settlers and then taken away by Israel Defense Forces troops, according to one of the film's Israeli co-directors.
"A group of settlers just lynched Hamdan Ballal, co-director of our film No Other Land," Yuval Abraham wrote on social media. "They beat him and he has injuries in his head and stomach, bleeding. Soldiers invaded the ambulance he called, and took him. No sign of him since."
Citing local residents, the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz reported that the soldiers who detained Ballal "were members of a rapid-response unit composed of settlers from nearby settlements," who "then handed him over to other soldiers."
Basel Adra, the film's other Palestinian co-director, posted, "I'm standing with Karam, Hamdan's 7-year-old son, near the blood of Hamdan's in his house, after settlers lynched him," adding that Ballal was "still missing after soldiers abducted him, injured and bleeding."
"This is how they erase Masafer Yatta," Adra added.
Palestinian human rights activist Ihab Hassan posted video showing what he said was "the moment Israeli settlers launched a violent pogrom on the village of Susya in Hebron, injuring numerous residents and American activists" and Ballal.
Hassan said that "settlers raided homes, hurled stones, smashed windows and vehicles, and violently assaulted residents and solidarity activists," adding that "several people were injured" in the attack.
"When the ambulance arrived for Hamdan, Israeli soldiers stormed it and took him," he added. "There has been no sign of him since."
Israel has occupied the West Bank including East Jerusalem since 1967, and today, more than 700,000 Israelis live in over 140 settlements there. Under international law including the Fourth Geneva Convention, both Israel's 58-year occupation of Palestine and its settlements are illegal. Last July, the International Court of Justice—where Israel stands accused of genocide—issued an advisory opinion that Israel's occupation is an illegal form of apartheid that must end immediately.
Enraged by the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel carried out by Gaza-based Hamas-led militants and seeking to fulfill their long-standing mission of conquering all of Palestine, Israeli settlers—who are protected and sometimes aided by IDF troops—have launched multiple deadly pogroms targeting Palestinian people and property in the occupied territories in recent years.
No Other Land focuses on Israeli efforts to ethnically cleanse Masafer Yatta, which is made up of 19 hamlets in the South Hebron Hills. It has been designated part of "Area C" by occupation authorities, meaning Israel has full military and civilian control there. The IDF designated Masafer Yatta as a military training zone where live-fire exercises take place, in what Israeli officials have admitted is a bid to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their villages.
In 2022, Israel's High Court of Justice upheld an order to expel Palestinians from eight Masafer Yatta hamlets, paving the way for forced expulsions. Israeli soldiers and settlers have repeatedly attacked the hamlets and their residents, as vividly shown in No Other Land.
In one September 2021 attack, a mob of as many as 100 masked settlers invaded the village of Khirbat al-Mufkara, wounding 12 Palestinians including a 3-year-old child. Settler children have participated in the attacks.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, nearly 900 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since October 2023. Thousands more have been injured.
During a Monday press conference in Washington, D.C., a reporter asked State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce about the attack on Ballal and wider settler violence in the West Bank.
"It's obvious... that we care very much about that and want it to end," Bruce said.
However, the Trump administration has been even more supportive of Israel than that of former President Joe Biden, who repeatedly affirmed his "unwavering support" for the key Mideast ally even as credible evidence of its genocide mounted. Both Biden and Trump have lavished Israel with billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic backing.
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Palestinian Filmmaker Demands End to US-Backed 'Ethnic Cleansing' of Gaza, West Bank in Oscar Speech
"There is a different path, a political solution without ethnic supremacy," said Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham. "The foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path."
Mar 03, 2025
The winner of the 2025 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film has been unable to obtain distribution in theaters or on streaming platforms in the U.S.—despite being the highest-grossing Oscar-nominated documentary in the rest of the world—but American viewers were able to hear directly from its filmmakers on Sunday night in speeches that condemned the U.S.-backed "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians.
The directors behind No Other Land, Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham and Palestinian activist and lawyer Basel Adra, accepted the Oscar while speaking out about the subject matter of their film, which was filmed between 2019-23, before Israel began its bombardment of Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack.
"When I look at Basel, I see my brother, but we are not equal," Abraham said. "We live under a regime where I enjoy freedom under civil law, and where he is governed by military laws."
Adra and Abraham made the film to tell the story of Masafer Yatta, a collection of towns in the occupied West Bank where Adra lives and where Israeli authorities and settlers have been attacking and evicting residents for years—claiming Israel has a right to use the land for a military training facility. The film chronicles Israeli soliders' killing of Adra's brother and their attacks on West Bank communities by demolishing homes, tearing down playgrounds, and filling water wells with cement so Palestinians cannot rebuild.
In his Oscar acceptance speech, Adra spoke as a new father of a two-month-old.
"My hope to my daughter is that she will not have to live the same life I am living now, always fearing violence, home demolitions, forced displacement that my community, Masafer Yatta, is facing every day," said Adra. "No Other Land reflects the harsh reality we have been enduring for decades and still resist as we call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people."
Journalist Mehdi Hasan said he was "stunned" that the direct condemnation of "ethnic cleansing" targeting Palestinians was "supportively applauded" by the elite Hollywood audience.
"Times are changing," said Hasan.
Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, agreed, saying the success of No Other Land despite the refusal of U.S. distributors to bring it to U.S. audiences, and the enthusiastic applause that Abraham and Adra garnered, "must scare [the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee AIPAC] and its allies," naming the powerful pro-Israel lobby that holds sway with both Democrats and Republicans.
"They are winning politically but losing culturally," said Beinart. "Their attack ads can't stop Blue America's shift in collective consciousness on the question of Palestinian freedom. If politics really is downstream from culture, they're in trouble."
Abraham, who has reported extensively for +972 about Israel's rules of engagement in Gaza and its targeting of civilian infrastructure, called for an end to "the atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people."
"There is a different path, a political solution without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people," said Abraham. "And I have to say, as I am here, the foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path."
Israel, which is set to receive $3 billion in weapons in a package approved by President Donald Trump last week, has forcibly displaced Palestinians from the West Bank since January, when a temporary cease-fire was reached in Gaza.
Over the weekend, Israel once again began blocking all humanitarian aid to the enclave, where more than 48,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israel Defense Forces since October 2023.
Just before Abraham and Adra accepted the Oscar, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Israeli soldiers had detained three people in one of the villages in Masafer Yatta and settlers threw stones at residents, destroyed solar panels, and damaged water tanks.
No Other Land has received international accolades including at the Berlin International Film Festival last year, where Abraham condemned "apartheid" in his acceptance speech and subsequently received death threats.
On Democracy Now! on Monday morning, Adra repeated his call for the international community to "take measures and act seriously to end these demolitions and ethnic cleansing that is happening everywhere in Gaza and the West Bank."
"The world just keeps watching and not taking serious actions," said Adra.
Last week, advocates rebuked the BBC for canceling plans to air another documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone.
The fact that Adra and Abraham's film "can't get a distributor in the U.S.," said Hasan, "tells you everything about censorship in the U.S."
Abraham told The New York Times last month that the filmmakers have heard from many Americans asking how they can watch No Other Land, prompting them to release it independently with plans to show the film in about 100 theaters in the United States.
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IDF Allowed 100 Civilian Deaths for Every Hamas Official Targeted by Error-Prone AI System
"The IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option," an Israeli intelligence officer said. "It's much easier to bomb a family's home. The system is built to look for them in these situations."
Apr 03, 2024
As the Biden administration issued its latest assurance that officials are pushing Israel to be "precise" in its selection of targets in Gaza, an investigation into the Israel Defense Forces' use of a previously undisclosed artificial intelligence system found that the mechanism has replaced "human agency and precision" with "mass target creation and lethality."
Four months after +972 Magazine and Local Call, detailed the IDF's use of an AI system called the Gospel, which generates dozens of buildings and structures for the military to target in a single day, the two Israeli media outlets revealed that another AI machine called Lavender, which has also played a part in Israel's slaughter of at least 32,975 Palestinians since October.
Unlike the Gospel, reported +972's Yuval Abraham, "Lavender marks people—and puts them on a kill list."
Abraham spoke to six Israeli intelligence officers who have served in the IDF during Israel's current assault on Gaza and have had "first-hand involvement with the use of AI to generate targets for assassination."
"Lavender has played a central role in the unprecedented bombing of Palestinians, especially during the early stages of the war," wrote Abraham. "In fact, according to the sources, its influence on the military's operations was such that they essentially treated the outputs of the AI machine 'as if it were a human decision.'"
"It was known in advance that 10% of the human targets slated for assassination were not members of the Hamas military wing at all."
The system was designed to mark suspected military operatives in Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) as potential bombing targets.
But the IDF gave "sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender's kill lists" in the early days of Israel's bombardment campaign, and gave "no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based."
Before bombing the houses of suspected armed group members, the intelligence officers did a brief assessment of the data to determine that the AI-selected target was male.
"A human being had to [verify the target] for just a few seconds," a source identified as B. told +972. "At first, we did checks to ensure that the machine didn't get confused. But at some point we relied on the automatic system, and we only checked that [the target] was a man—that was enough. It doesn't take a long time to tell if someone has a male or a female voice."
"I would invest 20 seconds for each target at this stage, and do dozens of them every day," B. added. "I had zero added value as a human, apart from being a stamp of approval. It saved a lot of time. If [the operative] came up in the automated mechanism, and I checked that he was a man, there would be permission to bomb him, subject to an examination of collateral damage."
B. and the other sources acknowledged that the system was prone to error.
If the target had given his phone, which Lavender used to identify Hamas and PIJ suspects, to "his son, his older brother, or just a random man," said B., "that person will be bombed in his house with his family. This happened often. These were most of the mistakes caused by Lavender."
The system marked 37,000 Palestinians—and their homes, with family members potentially inside—as targets in the first weeks of the war, when the IDF "almost completely relied on Lavender."
The intelligence officers told Abraham that the IDF was "not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity," despite Israel's persistent claims that they are targeting military outposts and other noncivilian infrastructure.
"On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option," an officer identified as A. told +972 and Local Call. "It's much easier to bomb a family's home. The system is built to look for them in these situations."
As a result of the military's reliance of Lavender, wrote Abraham, "thousands of Palestinians—most of them women and children or people who were not involved in the fighting—were wiped out by Israeli airstrikes, especially during the first weeks of the war."
The investigation also found that, according to two of the sources, the IDF decided in the early weeks of the war that "for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians"—an unprecedented approach by Israel to so-called "collateral damage."
"A ratio of 20 civilians killed for one target works out to about 95% civilian deaths," said enterpreneur Arnaud Bertrand.
For senior Hamas officials that were targeted, the army authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians.
IDF officers, including the sources, accepted that Lavender's calculations about targets were accurate only 90% of the time, +972 and Local Call reported.
"In other words, it was known in advance that 10% of the human targets slated for assassination were not members of the Hamas military wing at all," wrote Abraham.
One source defended the military's use of Lavender, saying investing "manpower and time" in analyzing whether a suspected junior militant is a legitimate target was not worthwhile.
"In war, there is no time to incriminate every target," said the intelligence officer. "So you're willing to take the margin of error of using artificial intelligence, risking collateral damage and civilians dying, and risking attacking by mistake, and to live with it."
While collateral damage has long been a reality in violent conflicts, parties are bound by international humanitarian law that states they must distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Alex Hanna, director of research for the Distributed AI Research Institute, said the report illustrated the possible "future of AI warfare" for the U.S. and other powerful countries.
Bertrand suggested the "disturbing" report called to mind the Nazis' methodical massacre of Jewish people during the Holocaust.
"It's industrialized extermination," said Bertrand, "the likes of which we haven't seen since... you know when."
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Filmmaker Jonathan Glazer Speaks Out Against Israel's Hijacking of Holocaust to Justify Gaza War
"Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst," said Jonathan Glazer, director of The Zone of Interest.
Mar 11, 2024
The 96th annual Academy Awards on Sunday evening were marked by a number of statements—some vocal and some sartorial—in favor of Palestinian rights and against Israel's occupation and bombardment of Gaza, with filmmaker Jonathan Glazer directly addressing Zionists who have "hijacked" the Holocaust to justify relentless attacks on civilians.
Glazer accepted the award for Best International Feature Film for The Zone of Interest, his film about a Nazi commander who lives with his family just outside the walls of Auschwitz concentration camp, where gunshots and other sounds of the extermination of Jewish prisoners are audible from the commander's garden.
Glazer and producer James Wilson were adamant as they accepted the award that The Zone of Interest should not be viewed as a film about past events, but one that was "made to reflect and confront us in the present."
"Not to say, 'Look what they did then,' rather 'Look what we do now,'" said the director. "Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst."
"We stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict, for so many innocent people.”
'Zone of Interest' director Jonathan Glazer spoke out about Israel's weaponisation of the Holocaust in his Oscar… pic.twitter.com/SM9JfhxvrO
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) March 11, 2024
Glazer then noted that both he and Wilson are among many Jewish people who object to the Israeli government's perennial claim—supported by Western countries including the U.S.—that Israel's occupation of Palestinian land and subjugation of Palestinian people is necessary to provide Jewish people with safety from the kind of persecution that ultimately led to the Holocaust.
"Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people," continued Glazer. "Whether the victims of October 7 in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization—how do we resist?"
Glazer's comments were immediately decontextualized by right-wing commentators including Newsweek opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon, who claimed the director displayed "moral rot" by telling the audience he refuted "his Jewishness."
"You're lying about what they said by adding a period in the middle of their sentence,"
said Yonah Lieberman, co-founder of the Jewish-led Palestinian rights group IfNotNow, which has frequently been accused of antisemitism by pro-Israel groups for objecting to Israeli apartheid. "They clearly meant they refute the way their Jewishness has been hijacked. You're supposed to be a journalist."
The Israeli group Breaking the Silence (BtS), run by veterans of the Israel Defense Forces who now object to the occupation, compared the outraged reaction to Glazer's speech to the aftermath of Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham's comments at the Berlin International Film Festival, where he spoke out against the subjugation of Palestinians in the West Bank.
Abraham was immediately denounced as antisemitic by Israeli media and received death threats, while the German government announced it would open an investigation into the filmmaker's comments.
"These 'misunderstandings' aren't new," said BtS regarding the response of Ungar-Sargon and others.
"It's possible to oppose the killing of innocent civilians in Gaza and still care for the safety of Israeli hostages," added the group. "One can worry about Israelis who were evacuated from their homes after October 7 and still be horrified by the conditions in which so many are currently living in Gaza. We refuse to let this harsh reality make us less human, and that we refuse to accept the ease with which the blood and lives of civilians is used as a justification for political ideologies, or as a bargaining chip. Empathy is not a zero-sum game."
Other than Glazer's speech, most commentary about Israel's assault on Gaza—now in its sixth month and having killed at least 31,045 Palestinians as the Israeli government blocks nearly all humanitarian aid from reaching the population—was made through Oscar attendees' clothing choices.
Several actors and filmmakers wore red pins in support of Artists4Ceasefire, which told The Hill that members showed "collective support for an immediate and permanent cease-fire, the release of all of the hostages, and for the urgent delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza."
Musician Billie Eilish, director Ava DuVernay, and actors including Ramy Youssef, Mark Ruffalo, Riz Ahmed, and Mahershala Ali were among those who wore the red pins.
Billie Eilish, Ramy Youssef, Ava DuVernay and other celebrities wore red pins at the Oscars in support for a cease-fire in Gaza. The design featured a single hand holding a heart and was organized by the group Artists4Ceasefire. pic.twitter.com/sj6HBzsoYi
— The Associated Press (@AP) March 11, 2024
"We're all calling for an immediate and permanent cease-fire in Gaza," Youssef told reporters. "We're calling for the safety of everyone involved, and we really want lasting justice and peace for the Palestinian people... We really want to say, just stop killing children."
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Israeli Filmmaker Faces Death Threats, German Probe After Condemning Apartheid
The German government's threat to investigate Yuval Abraham "for simply acknowledging the apartheid under which his Palestinian co-director lives, is both chilling and completely absurd," said one film critic.
Feb 26, 2024
Despite facing death threats, Israeli documentary filmmaker Yuval Abraham said Monday that he stood "behind every word" of his condemnation of Israeli apartheid and the bombardment of Gaza, which he expressed while accepting the award for Best Documentary at the Berlin International Film Festival, also known as Berlinale.
Abraham stood alongside his co-director, Palestinian lawyer and activist Basel Adra, on Sunday as they accepted the award for their film No Other Land, about the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) demolition of homes in the occupied West Bank and eviction of people living there.
"I am free to move where I want in this land, Basel is, like millions of Palestinians, locked in the occupied West Bank," said Abraham. "This situation of apartheid between us, this inequality, it has to end."
Adra followed Abraham's remarks by calling on Germany to "respect the [United Nations] calls and stop sending weapons to Israel," garnering applause from the audience, as he noted that the support of Western countries has allowed at least 29,782 Palestinians in Gaza to be "slaughtered and massacred" by Israel.
The Israeli public broadcaster, Kan, promptly labeled Abraham's remarks an "antisemitic speech," while Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner denounced the statement and those of several other Palestinian rights supporters at the awards ceremony.
Abraham's statement, filmmaker Ben Russell's decision to wear a traditional Palestinian keffiyeh, and filmmaker Eliza Hittman's call for a cease-fire—a demand supported by international human rights groups, the vast majority of member states at the U.N. General Assembly, and numerous U.N. agencies—were reduced to "an intolerable relativization," according to Wegner.
The city's culture minister said the awards ceremony was "characterized by self-righteous anti-Israeli propaganda," while the federal commissioner for culture and the media said Monday that the government will open an investigation into the filmmakers' statements.
The outrage over the calls for an end to Israel's bombardment and oppression of Palestinians amounted to "authoritarian insanity," said journalist Mehdi Hasan.
Mickey Gitzin, director of the Israeli social justice group New Israel Fund, posited that the reaction to Abraham's comments in the country's news media "indicates more than anything else the great embarrassment of most Israelis about the reality of life we are creating in the West Bank."
"It is impossible to be a person with conscience and morals, to look at reality and live with it in peace," said Gitzin. "Therefore, most of us simply prefer to close our eyes, and those who are really careful, seek to kill the messenger."
After the film festival, Berlinale's official Instagram page was hacked by activists who posted messages including: "Genocide is genocide. We are all complicit."
In a statement about the Instagram incident, which the Berlinale said shared "antisemitic" rhetoric, the festival also distanced itself from the award winners who spoke out in favor of a cease-fire and criticized Israel's assault on Gaza and suggested that they should have also made supportive comments about Israel.
"We understand the outrage that the statements made by some of the award winners were perceived as too one-sided and, in some cases, inappropriate," said executive director Mariëtte Rissenbeek. "From our point of view, it would have been appropriate in terms of content if the award winners and guests at the award ceremony had also made more differentiated statements on this issue."
Film critic Siddhant Adlakha denounced the festival's response as "incredibly cowardly."
Germany's threat to investigate Abraham "for simply acknowledging the apartheid under which his Palestinian co-director lives, is both chilling and completely absurd," said Adlakha. "Just one of the many ongoing acts of institutional cowardice the film world sorely needs to recognize."
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