Understanding Israeli Society: A Rebuttal to Menachem Klein

Introduction: This article is a rebuttal to Menachem Klein’s article, How Israeli Society Became Genocidal.1  The title of his article presupposes that Israeli society is genocidal but are they?

How can we assess if most Israelis are genocidal?   One way is to interview them.  The best way to understand if the Israeli government is genocidal is to listen to what the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has to say and to evaluate his policies.  Finally, when evaluating the actions of individual soldiers or their commanders it is important to evaluate them in terms of their environment, and the choices open to them.  If they are being shot at and shoot back and civilians get hit, that doesn’t mean they are genocidal.  It is also important to provide some historical background to the conflict in order to understand why Israelis think the way they do.

History:

Menachem Klein makes some wild claims about Israeli history and then gives references that don’t support those claims.  For example, he wrote that: “Homes, mosques, community institutions, and entire neighborhoods were systematically destroyed with the aim of restoring Jewish supremacy in both the Israeli collective imagination and in fact.”1  He gave two references to support that statement one reference stated that Israel cleared a buffer zone on the border with Gaza and the Philadelphi corridor on the border with Egypt. The other reference was of a soldier saying that some commanders told their soldiers to shoot people who entered no go zones in Gaza.2  Israel created a buffer zone with Gaza to make it more difficult for Hamas to strike its communities again.  Israel cleared the Philadelphi corridor because it was used to smuggle weapons from Egypt into Gaza.  Israel does have a longstanding policy of demolishing homes of terrorists.  The reason for that policy is not Jewish supremacy.  The reason is to deter terrorist attacks.3  Klein confuses Israel’s motivation to protect its citizens with a desire for Jewish supremacy.

In order to understand the choices, the Israeli government made after October 7, it is necessary to briefly review the history of Gaza.4  Much of the world sees the conflict as that between Israeli colonizers and the native Muslims but there was a Jewish community in Gaza 3,000 years ago, long before the first Muslims invaded the area in 638.  In modern times Jews were ethnically cleansed from Gaza during the Arab riots of 1929.

One of the ancient Jewish towns of Gaza was called Kfar Darom.  In 1946, a kibbutz was founded there.  Two years later during the war of Independence, the Egyptian lay siege to Kfar Darom, and drove out the last remaining Jews in Gaza.

Nonie Darwish grew up in Gaza.5  She is the daughter of the former head of Fedayeen intelligence Colonel Mustafa Hafez.  She spoke about the terrorist attacks launched by the Fedayeen of Gaza against Israel in the 1950s.  Nonie explained that the Fedayeen sacrificed themselves for the larger cause of Islam.6  As a Fedayeen she said, “You have to go into Israel and kill as many Jews as possible regardless of whether they are men, women or children.”  She said “that is what they did.”  Between 1951 and 1956, the Fedayeen launched raids across Israel’s southern border that killed many Israelis, the majority civilians.  Nonie said: “I remember when commandos of Israel were in my house.  They were looking for my dad.  They wanted to kill him, but they didn’t find him, he wasn’t home.  So they left us unharmed, they didn’t kill us.  The mercy they showed us I knew that we didn’t show them…  The Fedayeen went into the homes and killed everybody.”

In the Six Day War of 1967, Israel defeated Egypt and regained possession of Gaza.  In 1968, then–prime minister Yigal Allon proposed founding two Nahal settlements (pioneer agricultural settlements) in the center of the Gaza Strip, which he viewed as vital for Israel’s security in the area.  That area became known as Gush Katif.  Gush Katif settlers engaged in greenhouse farming and became major exporters of fruits and vegetables to Europe.  During the first Intifada (1987–1990), the residents of Gush Katif were subject to frequent stoning on the roads.  During the al-Aqsa Intifada (2000–2005), Gush Katif was the target of thousands of attacks by Palestinian terrorists, with over 6,000 mortars and Qassam rockets launched into the settlements.  Terrorist attacks included a bombing of a school bus and the murder of a pregnant woman and her four young daughters.    The Israeli government was faced with three choices.  Invade Gaza and attempt to finish off the terrorists which would have led to a high cost in Arab civilian and Israeli life, continue with the intolerable status quo, or forcibly remove all Jews living in Gaza and build a wall to keep terrorists from infiltrating Israel.  The Israeli government chose the third option and in August 2005 uprooted all the Israelis living in Gaza hoping that doing so would lead to peace.  The greenhouses of Gush Katif, computer equipment, irrigation pipes, water pumps, and plastic sheeting were bought for the Arabs at a cost of $14 million by private international donors. The Arabs destroyed all of it within days of the Israeli pullout and proceeded to shoot rockets at Israeli civilians.  Nonie Darwish wrote,7

“For decades, Arabs had demanded that Israel end the “occupation,” and in 2005, Israel did so, disengaging unilaterally from Gaza. With their demands met, there was no cycle of violence to respond to, no further justification for anything other than peace and prosperity. With its central location and beautiful beaches on the East Mediterranean, a peaceful and prosperous Gaza could have become another Hong Kong; a shining trade and commerce center. But instead of choosing peace, the Palestinians chose Islamic jihad. They rolled their rocket launchers to the border and started bombing Israeli civilians.”

In 2006 Hamas was elected to rule Gaza.  In 2007, in order to prevent rockets and the materials to make rockets from entering Gaza Israel imposed a partial blockade on goods entering Gaza as did Egypt.  Menachem Klein describes this blockade as a siege that was coupled with periodic military operations, systemic dehumanization, and policies of starvation and mass civilian casualties.1  Klein gives no evidence of such casualties.  In fact the evidence points in the opposite direction, the population of Gaza has grown at one of the fastest rates in the world, from 63,000 in 1950 to 823,000 in 2025.8  That’s more than a factor of 10.  Regarding Klein’s statement about starvation, Israel did restrict the importation of delicacies.9  Colonel Oded Iterman, a COGAT officer, explained the policy as follows: “We don’t want Gilad Shalit’s captors to be munching Bamba [a popular Israeli snack food] right over his head.”  Restricting the entry of delicacies is a far cry from a policy of starvation.

 In 2021 Israel completed a high-tech wall on its border with Gaza to keep terrorists out.  There were openings in the wall through which Gazans could enter Israel for jobs and medical care and through which food, building materials and other supplies could enter Gaza from Israel.  Although Israel allowed Gazans into Israel, Egypt did not allow Gazans into Egypt.  Egypt did however, allow smuggling of weapons across tunnels under its border wall into Gaza.10  On October 7, 2023, Hamas broke holes through the Israeli protective wall, invaded Israel and massacred and abducted civilians.11

Menachem Klein wrote that the Israeli approach to war has taken on biblical dimensions and that “Hamas for its part called its invasion Al Aqsa Flood”.  There is a big difference though.  Hamas called the invasion Al Aqsa Flood because supposedly it was revenge for desecration of the Al Aqsa mosque by Israel.  The Al Aqsa mosque along with the Dome of the Rock are on the Temple Mount which is a plateau on top of the ruins of Israel’s second temple and is held up by retaining walls.12  Jordan during its occupation of Jerusalem would not let Jews pray by the Western retaining wall.  Israel, when it regained Jerusalem in the Six Day War could have destroyed the mosques on the Temple Mount and rebuilt the second temple.  Instead, General Moshe Dayan decided to allow the Arabs to have control of the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock to avoid antagonizing the Muslim world.  Jews were forbidden by the Israeli government from praying on the Temple Mount and restricted to praying at the bottom of the western wall.  Yossi Klein Halevi wrote:13

“It is in retrospect an astonishing moment of religious restraint.  The Jewish people had just returned to its holiest site from which it had been denied access for centuries only to effectively yield sovereignty in its moment of triumph.  This perhaps was the moment that Israel could take permanent control of the Temple Mount.   After all it was a war and Israel was facing an existential threat but they did not and to this day Israelis still argue whether Dayan acted with wisdom or weakness.”

Israeli religious restraint did not prevent Muslims from gathering sticks and rocks and fireworks in the Al Aqsa mosque to throw at the Jews worshipping at the base of the Western wall below.14  This forced Israeli police to enter the Al Aqsa mosque on April 5, 2023.  This “desecration” became one of the excuses to attack Israel on October 7 2023.

The Interviews:

Menachem Klein wrote: “”In public discourse, calls for the extermination of Gaza’s civilian population have surfaced alongside demands for deportation and starvation, all rationalized as strategies to secure Israel’s political objectives and national security.”  In a democracy with millions of people that has been under attack from the Arabs as long as Israel has, and which recently had the worst massacre since the Holocaust, one would expect at least some people to raise their voices in this way.  The important question is what do the majority of Israelis think and what Israel’s policies are.

There have been groups such as Tsav 9 and Warrior Mothers that tried to block food from going into Gaza.15  Rachel Touitou, a spokesperson for Tzav 9, said “initially the group advocated for withholding aid to the Strip as a means of pressuring Hamas into releasing the captives.  But we understood as it went on, you need humanitarian aid.  We just don’t want the aid to go to Hamas.”  This is not a call to starve Gaza.

Many Israelis support the extermination of Hamas, and many don’t.  Demanding the extermination of a terrorist organization is not equivalent to demanding the extermination of the civilian population and is not genocidal.  There are thousands of Israelis who don’t want to fight Hamas any longer and who took to the streets to demand a ceasefire.  Regarding deportation a Peace Index survey from Tel Aviv University from March found that 62 percent of Israeli Jews supported “evacuating Palestinians from Gaza, even by force and military means.”16  Calling for expulsion of Arabs to other Arab countries in order to prevent them from committing another genocide, is not genocidal.

Menachem Klein wrote that “Prior to the October 7 attack, Israeli society…  established a single apartheid-style regime grounded in powerful ethnoreligious factors.”  Israel is a country where members of the Knesset and judiciary are Arab and Muslim.  Prior to the October 7 attack Israelis let Gazans in to work in Israel.  They helped them get medical care in Israel.  This is not the behavior of an apartheid country.17

Menachem Klein wrote1  “Many of those slaughtered, kidnapped, and driven from their homes on October 7 belong to the militaristic Zionist contingent.”  That is the opposite of the truth.  Most of those slaughtered on October 7 were peace loving Jews.  The best way to understand who those Jews were is to interview them which is what Bari Weiss did.

Bari Weiss is an award winning journalist18 who resigned19 from the New York Times because its staff was intolerant of her viewpoints and the viewpoints of others that they didn’t share.  Bari created her own media, The Free Press and interviewed Maya and Dvir Rosenfeld.  Maya and Dvir are two survivors of the October 7 massacre.  They lived in a kibbutz called Kfar Aza which was only 2 kilometers from the Gaza border.20  The Shoah Foundation and others interviewed many more survivors and although those survivors vary in their opinions about the possibility of peace with the Gazans, their stories confirm what Maya and Dvir said.21

Kfar Aza, where Maya and Dvir lived, was originally desert but the Israelis converted that desert into a beautiful green farming community.  Most of that community, including Dvir’s sister Hadar and her husband Itay, were murdered on October 7 but unlike most of the children of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, Hadar’s twin babies were not killed.  Bari asked Dvir and Maya about their opinions before and after October 7.  Here is a short, edited excerpt of that interview.

Maya: I fell in love with the Kibbutz I really loved the place, it was paradise.  I used to live in Tel Aviv before, so all my friends told me are you crazy why are you going to live there but every time we invited them over and when they came and saw the kibbutz they right away understood because it was just a beautiful place.  We used to call it, everybody used to call it 95% paradise and 5% hell, cause it was paradise when everything was OK, everything is green, there are lawns and grass and flowers.  Everything is very family oriented, kids oriented but then when there is an escalation, when Hamas starts to shoot rockets that’s hell so that’s the 5% hell usually the people just leave their homes for a few days, go up north, they stay over with friends or at hotels just wait until things calm down and then come back but it was really paradise.  It was the most beautiful place in Israel I think. 

Bari: One of the things that struck me the more I was reading about Kfar Aza is about how peace loving this community is.  You could look at some of the images coming out after October 7 and there were literally peace now, Shalom Achshav stickers in some of the windows.  Tell us about the world view of the people who chose to live in Kfar Aza.
Maya: I think you can tell the story with one thing, ironically on October 7 there was supposed to be something called the Afifoniada, like a kite festival that was organized by the Kutz family.  The whole message of the Afifoniada was “They will throw rockets at us, we will throw kites in order to show them that we want peace that we want to be in good relations with one another, we want them to see that.  Now the Kutz family, a family of 5 was murdered on October 7 and again they were the organizers of this festival which was supposed to take place on October 7.  A lot of the people on our Kibbutz and also in the area used to organize transportation for people from Gaza who came into Israel to get medicine, to get medical treatment, to get surgeries.  You know Israel used to let in people from Gaza, for them to get the treatment that they need.”

Dvir: “We used to go to the border, take them wherever they need and take them back because otherwise they either walk or wait for buses or who knows what.”

Maya: “In every escalation round we used to talk about it and used to say that we didn’t feel sorry for ourselves even though we weren’t in our homes we moved from our home and it wasn’t so comfortable for us, we were feeling so sorry for the people in Gaza, for the kids, for the families, for the civilians who are not involved and we know they are firing rockets right from the middle of schools…

Dvir: from their gardens, their balconies and they don’t have anything to do about it.  If they say no they will be killed.

Bari:  Lets go to October 7.  Take me back to that morning and how you started to know that something was amiss. 

Maya: At the beginning we just thought it was another escalation that’s starting. So, we went straight away to our safe room. Then friends started to write, “We can hear gunshots.” “We’re starting to hear Arabic.” Dvir said people were exaggerating. But then after a few minutes, we started to hear Arabic and gunshots. We didn’t even imagine this could happen. Our house was right in the middle of a battlefield. The shooting didn’t stop the whole time.

Dvir: I held the door for 20 hours straight, and Maya held Ziv for 20-some hours, just like in the Holocaust. Dummy in his mouth, a hand on his mouth, so he won’t make any noises. Each one of us knew exactly what we needed to do. The first thing was to keep Ziv safe. During that time, we are getting these messages from other people:

“He got shot, he needs help.”

“They’re burning me alive.”

“They killed my parents.”

Maya:  Someone wrote:

“She died in front of her kids.”

“Someone needs to go and help him, he’s wounded.”

Dvir: And you have to understand that when you get a message of “Please, he’s dying,” this is someone you grew up with and is 50 to 100 meters from your home. We couldn’t go save our friends. They were stuck 50 meters from our home. My sister Hadar and her husband, Itay, were only a three-minute walk from my house. We couldn’t do anything.

DR: Then around 8:30 p.m., we got a phone call from Maya’s friend, who is in the Special Forces, that said, “The twins are rescued. They’re out, they’re healthy, they’re alive, they’re out.” And we asked him, “What about Hadar and Itay?” And his answer was, “They’re not on the kidnapped list.” Okay. . . what are you not telling me?

DR: Around 15 minutes later, my brother rang me. And he told me, “I’m sorry. They are not with us anymore.” This was the breaking point.

DR: Later, we understood that they found Hadar’s body on the kitchen floor with two bottles in her hand. She went out to make bottles for the twins. The window in Hadar’s kitchen is facing the street, so they probably saw her because she was making the bottles in the kitchen. And we know that they shot her through the window.

Maya: Then, they went inside and shot Itay in the head.

Bari: My understanding is that there were many attempts made to save the two twins. But ultimately it was the 13th Battalion of the Golani Brigade under the command of a man named Tomer Grinberg that managed to save the babies.

Maya: They told the whole rescue story, how they couldn’t believe their eyes. They came into the house, and they saw these two babies. They dressed them with the help of the neighbor. They gave them bottles. They took them to an armored vehicle. And these are tough men, right? They said not a single eye in the car stayed dry, like they all cried inside. They couldn’t believe what they just saw. Especially Tomer.

Dvir: Because Tomer and Itay knew each other. They had been in the same platoon.

Bari: One of the turns of this story that I really couldn’t imagine is that the twins recently turned one, and on the day of their birthday, Tomer Grinberg, the commander that rescued them, fell in battle in Gaza.

Dvir: Tomer and his soldiers gave the babies their second chance, rescued them, and then fell on the same date that the twins had their one-year birthday. And Tomer himself has family, kids, and it’s hard. The funeral was two days ago. My family went there. . . and it’s hard.

This is what we came here to say. And I think the most important thing we came to say is that we have hostages there, and no one can go on with their lives until they are home. These people have done nothing wrong. They need to be back home. And all the international organizations, all the governments, everyone in the world needs to focus now on getting these civilians back because this is the worst war crime that’s ever been committed—

Dvir: —since the Holocaust.

Maya: These people need to be back home, and that’s it. That’s the most important thing…   I want to believe that the common person in Gaza is like me. He wants peace. He wants, at the end of the day, to go home to his kids. He doesn’t want to have missiles around him. He doesn’t want to be in a war zone. He just wants to live and to provide for his family.

Bari: So you still believe that after October 7?

Maya: Yes

There are those who no longer believe that Israel can live in peace with the civilians of Gaza.  Adele Raemer is another survivor of October 7.  Like Maya and Dvir she has a mission to tell the world what happened and to get the world’s help getting the hostages back.  She lived in Kibbutz Nirim.  This is what she had to say.22

“Before I went to bed on October 6th, I told my son, who was visiting that if he doesn’t see me in the morning, it’s because I am going to get up early to take pictures of a field of wildflowers that are in bloom. I wanted to catch it at sunrise. Thank G-d I was too lazy to get up at six the next morning because at 6:30 we started getting incoming rocket warnings…a massive barrage which was really very unusual…

The whole time we’re in the safe room, we have this internal messaging service. And we see people’s messages. We see people’s frantic calls for help, and we see them saying, the terrorists are in our house… They’re burning our house from the inside. They’re trying to open the safe room. And we see this all happening live. So you’re just sitting there petrified, waiting for you to be next…

it’s either us or them. I cannot live next door to those neighbors anymore. They must be evicted or destroyed. I prefer destroyed. And, I mean, it’s hard for me to say that, because there are people that I’m in touch with in Gaza, even today. But I’ve lost faith. I don’t know who to trust anymore. There are people who I know who have escaped from Gaza, and these are people who I’ve been in touch with for years already. And I know that they believe there can be a different way. And my hope is that when we destroy Hamas, these will be the people that are going to lead the Gazans and reeducate the Gazans to a different way of life, so that we can be good neighbors eventually… On October 7, something in my DNA switched and now I realize that before we can make peace, we have to make war.”

Mia Schem was taken hostage and held in an underground tunnel in a cage with other Israeli women.23   Part of the time she was held above ground and abused by civilians.  When asked about her attitude toward Gazans she said “I don’t want to use vile words but there isn’t a single innocent person in Gaza.  They just don’t exist.”24 

When hostages were taken into Gaza, it was ordinary civilians who spat on them or their corpses as they were paraded through their streets, and it was they who directed or permitted their children to torment the Israeli kids whom Hamas had taken captive, for all the world to see.25  On October 7 more than a thousand civilians from Gaza participated in the rapes, abductions, burnings and massacres of Israelis and furthermore, when the hostages were being dragged back, deep into Gaza, those “ordinary Gazans” beat them as they lay helpless and half-naked on the back of flat-bed trucks or flung on the handlebars of motorbikes.26

Among the people they abducted were Shiri and her two babies, Kfir and Ariel.  They are now dead.27  One hostage, Judith Raanan told how she was taken to a hospital and that the nurses were cheering when Hamas bought in captured hostages.28  Hamas used hospitals connected to their tunnels for their terror network and to imprison hostages. 29

The Israeli Military:

Menachem Klein wrote that “The scale of physical and rhetorical violence and the war crimes committed by all sides have been unprecedented.”1   The Israeli military, like the American army has rules of engagement to prevent soldiers from engaging in war crimes.  Targeting civilians and taking hostages are war crimes and that’s what Hamas did on October 7.   If you are not targeting civilians but civilians get killed as you target you enemy that isn’t a war crime according to international law.30  War crimes are against the Israeli rules of engagement but there are Israeli soldiers who have violated those rules of engagement.  This is partly the fault of Hamas terrorists who by wearing civilian clothes and using white flags to approach Israeli soldiers before firing at them, make it more likely that Israelis will fire at civilians who they fear are Hamas.

One way to evaluate the behavior of Israeli soldiers is by what Gazan civilians say.  A reporter from Israel’s channel 12 entered Gaza and interviewed Gazans.31  Here is an excerpt:

Woman 1 yells in Arabic: “Damned Hamas government, Hamas terrorist government.  Please, wipe Hamas off the face of the earth!”… “(Hamas) brought disaster on us.  If I see a Hamas terrorist I’ll rip him to shreds.  They took my son Hamas.  Where did they take him?…Hamas took away our humanitarian aid, they took everything.  Damned Hamas government, Hamas are terrorists.  Wipe Hamas off the face of the earth!  We’re with you, we’re with you, we’re with you.”
Interviewer: You’re with us?  Meaning the Israeli people?
Woman 1: The Israeli people, everything good comes from you.
Woman 2: “May God settle the score with Hamas.  May God take revenge on Hamas.  They destroyed our lives, our children’s lives.  They destroyed our houses; we used to have a life.  We want you to rule here.  We don’t want Hamas.  The whole nation hates Hamas.  They’ve hurt all of us.”
Man 1: “You know the whole world is against Israel, The world says Israel destroyed Gaza.  No, you’re the humane ones, not them.  You bring in food and they steal it.  They sell it.”

The Israeli military as a whole, has gone to great lengths to avoid Gazan civilian casualties.  John Spencer chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point; served for 25 years as an infantry soldier and two tours in Iraq.  In an interview with Sharri Markson he said:32

There is no genocide… there is actually the opposite its like wierd counterfactuals when Israel sends hundreds of trucks in daily, does these evacuations then gets accused of doing something wrong when it’s like this tiny nation under attack from all these different directions who is actually doing everything anybody has ever tried in war to prevent civilian harm to get them out of harms way but yet this is war…

I’ve been to Gaza 3 times since October 7 I was last there in July.  I can tell you that the now Hamas Gaza Health Ministry number of 42,000 killed in Gaza is a lie, it’s just not true, there is no way you could know the number but that number itself isn’t those who have been killed that’s anybody who has died since October 7 it included anybody who died of natural causes anybody who died by Hamas’s hands who murder people trying to flee when they get the notices.  It includes anybody who is missing they just don’t know the name.  It includes people that died years ago.  I can tell you from being on the ground that that number is a lie.

Spencer wrote:

“In my long career studying and advising on urban warfare for the U.S. military, I’ve never known an army to take such measures to attend to the enemy’s civilian population, especially while simultaneously combating the enemy in the very same buildings. In fact, by my analysis, Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history—above and beyond what international law requires and more than the U.S. did in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The international community, and increasingly the United States, barely acknowledges these measures while repeatedly excoriating the IDF for not doing enough to protect civilians—even as it confronts a ruthless terror organization holding its citizens hostage. Instead, the U.S. and its allies should be studying how they can apply the IDF’s tactics for protecting civilians, despite the fact that these militaries would almost certainly be extremely reluctant to employ these techniques because of how it would disadvantage them in any fight with an urban terrorist army like Hamas.”33

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quoted Colonel Spencer in a speech he gave at the United Nations General Assembly on September 26, 2025.34  The prime minister said:

 The head of urban warfare studies, Col. John Spencer, he’s probably the world’s expert on urban warfare, says, “Israel is applying more measures to minimize civilian casualties than any military in history.”

And because we’re doing that, the ratio of non-combatant to combatant casualties is less than 2 to 1 in Gaza.

That’s an astoundingly low ratio, lower than NATO’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially when you consider that Gaza is one of the most densely populated urban areas on earth. It has hundreds of miles of terror tunnels underground, and it has countless terror towers above ground, and thousands of terrorists embedded in these tunnels and in these towers in civilian areas.

If you want to see what measures Israel takes to avoid civilian casualties in this war, just look at what we’re doing now in Gaza City, the last Hamas stronghold, one of the two last strongholds.

For three weeks, Israel dropped millions of leaflets, sent millions of text messages and made countless phone calls urging civilians to leave Gaza City before our military moves in. At the same time, Hamas implants itself in mosques, schools, hospitals, apartment buildings and tries to force these civilians not to leave, to stay in harm’s way. It often threatens them at gunpoint if they try to do so.

For Israel, every civilian casualty is a tragedy; for Hamas, it’s a strategy…

Now, I want to ask you a simple question. A simple logical question. Would a country committing genocide plead with the civilian population it is supposedly targeting to get out of harm’s way? Would we tell them to get out if we’re trying to commit genocide? We’re trying to get them out. And Hamas is trying to keep them in…

Israel is accused of deliberately starving the people of Gaza, when Israel is deliberately feeding the people of Gaza. Since the beginning of the war, Israel has let into Gaza more than 2,000,000 tons of food and aid.

That’s one ton of aid for every man, woman and child in Gaza; Nearly 3,000 calories per person, per day. Some starvation policy!

If there are Gazans who don’t have enough food, it’s because Hamas is stealing it. Hamas steals it, hoards it and sells it at exorbitant prices to fund its war machine.

When Hamas invaded Israel, they knew that Israeli soldiers would walk into the trap they had set for them in Gaza.  They expected Israeli soldiers to fight house to house and be killed.  Hamas had the advantage.  Hamas had tunnels deep underground in which it could hide.  It had exits from those tunnels through which it could emerge, shoot at Israelis and then disappear from view.  Hamas had cameras in buildings along with remote control booby trap bombs.  When Israeli soldiers entered the buildings, Hamas would set off the bombs which caused the buildings to collapse on them.  Hamas also set up bait for the Israeli soldiers, tape recordings of children talking in Hebrew.35  The idea was to deceive Israeli soldiers into thinking there were Israeli hostages nearby.  The Israelis would be lured to the recordings and killed.

Israel could have bombed buildings from the air instead of fighting house to house, but Israel risks the lives of its own soldiers in order to avoid killing Gazan civilians.  Israel phones civilians and warns them to evacuate so they won’t get hurt when Israel goes after the terrorists.36  Those phone calls alert the terrorists that the Israelis are coming which gives them the time to prepare ambushes and to flee to fight another day if necessary.  Israel could save the lives of a lot of its young men if it didn’t try so hard to avoid killing civilians in Gaza.  One of the young men who died in one of Hamas’s booby traps was Moishe, the son of Israeli ambassador to the United States, Yehiel Leiter.  Ambassador Leiter said that his son was killed in Gaza because Israel avoids harming civilians.37  He said: “If we were doing what we’re accused of, maybe he’d be alive today.”

There are widely conflicting estimates regarding the civilian to terrorist kill ratio in Gaza.   Menachem Klein wrote: “The scale of casualties—both physical and psychological—surpasses that of any of the previous Israeli Arab wars. International experts estimate that the number of Gazans killed is perhaps as much as double the 55,202 deaths recorded by the Gaza Health Ministry.”

Considering that Israel takes precautions that no other army takes it is highly unlikely that the scale of casualties is double the inflated number of deaths reported by the Gaza Health Ministry.   In March 2024 Abraham Wyner wrote an article titled “How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers: The evidence is in their own poorly fabricated figures”.38  He explained that the increase in deaths with time was almost linear whereas one would expect more variation in the real world.  In addition, he wrote that there was no correlation between the number of child casualties and the number of women casualties reported.  Andrew Fox, in an article titled Questionable Counting wrote that analysis of Gaza Ministry of Health fatality data reveals repeated instances of men being misclassified as women and adults being misclassified as children.39  Natural fatalities such as from cancer were reported as war casualties.  When Hamas killed civilians that was reported as war fatalities.

There are brutal equations that soldiers and commanders face in war.  Menachem Klein mentioned one which is “it’s either us or them”.1  Menachem Klein writes “The perception that the war constitutes an apocalyptic, existential struggle—”us or them”—has moved from the militant right’s racist fringes into the political mainstream, even finding traction among circles on the left.”  The implication that thinking it is “us or them” is racist, is outrageous.  The thinking before October 7 was “if we’re nice and show them we want peace maybe they’ll be peaceful too.”  The result of that thinking was 1200 dead and 250 hostages tortured in the tunnel hell of Gaza many to death.  A little more “us or them” thinking might have prevented that from happening.

If Israeli soldiers who are ambushed in an urban environment shoot back, civilians are likely to get killed but they have no choice because of the equation “it’s us or them”.   Another equation the Israeli military has to evaluate is how much of a risk to civilians there is if they fire at a target.  Hamas knows this and puts civilians on top of rooftops to prevent Israeli pilots from bombing them.36  The U.S. army calls that equation a collateral damage estimate or CDE and has often approved attacks that put civilians at risk.30  Commanders need to also evaluate how much they should risk their own soldiers’ lives to insure that enemy civilians are not killed.   Another consideration is the question of deterrence.  How much damage should you do to the enemy so they will be deterred from shooting again?

Moshe Dayan, one of the great former generals of Israel, gave a speech in 1965, stating:

“The essence of Israel’s security in this region (Middle East) is deterrence.  When we formed the State in 1948-9, we were very weak. The Arab States had planes, tanks, heavy artillery and many more soldiers than us. We had very little heavy military equipment. In the period 1949-55, we absorbed almost a million immigrants. Tent cities sprung up all over the country. We were totally disorganized. Had the Arabs mounted another major invasion, we could have lost. We devised a solution to this problem. It was deterrence. Think about being lost in a forest and surrounded by hostile animals. If you light a torch, boldly approach them showing no fear — they will retreat. But, if you show fear — they will attack and you are lost.  We used this principle to save Israel during those early years. Every time we were attacked, we retaliated ten-fold. We showed daring and penetrated deep within their borders to attack our targets… You know the result. The Arabs were afraid and never attacked.  Deterrence worked.” 40

The Israeli Government

The Israeli government is faced with the following choices.

• Agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
• Agree to Hamas demands and withdraw all Israeli troops out of Gaza.
• Annihilate or expel Hamas so that Hamas can never repeat a gruesome massacre like October 7 again.

Menachem Klein describes the rejection of a two-state solution as motivated by a desire for Jewish supremacy when it is a really motivated by a desire to survive.  There are three problems with agreeing to giving up Israeli territory to create a Palestinian state.  The first is that it depends on the assumption that lack of a state is the cause of the conflict in the Middle East, when the cause is religious intolerance and desire for conquest.41  The second problem is that Israel would not be able to defend itself against an armed Palestinian state.42 The third is that defacto Palestinian states have been tried and did not result in peace.

In 1922 the British cut away three quarters of the Jewish National Home and gave it to Abdullah Hussein.43  That area became the country of Trans-Jordan.  In 1948 the day after Israel declared independence, Trans-Jordan along with Egypt, Syria and Iraq attacked Israel.  The Jordanian army crossed the Jordan river and seized Judea and Samaria, drove out or killed all the Jews living there and occupied the area.  There is a very significant lesson here that promoters of a two-state solution ignore.  Possessing a new state 3X the size of Israel did not make the Palestinians peaceful.  Even Jordanian possession of Judea and Samaria did not bring peace.   In 1949 Jordan signed an armistice agreement with Israel which referred to Judea and Samaria as the West Bank because it is located on the west bank of the Jordan river.  Calling the area Judea and Samaria would be to implicitly recognize that Israel has a legitimate claim to the area.  In 1967 Egypt and Syria built up an invasion force on their borders with Israel.  Israel struck first and wiped out 2/3s of Egypt’s air force.  Israel then issued a final offer to Jordan: if you stay out of the war, Israel will not retaliate – even though that meant that the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and other Jewish holy sites would remain under Jordanian control.  Jordan attacked and Israel won back Judea and Samaria.   The Arabs living in Judea and Samaria formed the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964 which proceded to commit acts of terrorism against Israel, and the Palestinian Authority in 1994.  The Palestinian Authority was given security and civil control of urban areas (area A) and civil control of rural areas (area B) as part of the Oslo accords but the terrorism continued.44

During the negotiations of the Oslo Accords Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin offered Arafat a state over 96% of the West Bank and an additional 4% of Israel as well as a capitol in east Jerusalem and 2 of the 4 quadrants of the old city of Jerusalem, but Arafat and the PLO rejected the offer and started another Intifada.  Bill Clinton who had acted as a facilitator of discussions between Arafat and Rabin, said that he thought that was because they did “not care about a homeland for the Palestinians they wanted to kill Israelis and make Israel uninhabitable.” 45  They still do and that’s the primary reason the two-state solution is not a solution.  It’s not about Jewish supremacy as Klein would have us believe, it’s about Jewish survival because the goal of the Palestinian Arab leadership is not peace.  Israel took a tremendous risk for peace when it offered 96% of Judea and Samaria to Arafat  A Palestinian state would have meant a Palestinian army in the hills of Judea and Samaria overlooking a 10 mile wide strip of Israel, a strip of land that would be indefensible according to American military experts.42  It is the threat of a Palestinian army in Judea and Samaria that is the primary reason prime minister Netanyahu opposes a Palestinian state there.

The conflict in Gaza is yet more evidence that creation of a Palestinian state will not bring peace.  The Israelis withdrew from Gaza, Gaza became a de facto state controlled by Hamas and that did not lead to peace.  Instead it led to the buildup of the Hamas terrorist army that invaded Israeli communities on October 7, 2023.

The second choice the Israelis had was to agree to a ceasefire and withdraw from Gaza.  Withdrawal from Gaza was the option Israel chose in 2005 with disastrous results.  A ceasefire would allow Hamas to regroup and rearm and attack again.

Israel chose the third option, attempting to annihilate Hamas while making every effort possible to minimize the killing Gazan civilians.

Netanyahu pointed out in an interview that if Israel wanted to commit genocide in Gaza it could do it in one afternoon.46  Israel is sacrificing its soldiers so as to not commit genocide.  The Israeli military has made over a million phone calls to civilians warning them to leave areas before attacking which cost the military advantage of surprise and enabled Hamas to set up ambushes in advance.  In addition, Israel has protected vast quantities of food sent into Gaza which put their soldiers in harm’s way.  This is not the behavior of a genocidal country.

Bernard-Henri Levy pointed out: “A genocidal army doesn’t take two years to win a war in a territory the size of Las Vegas. A genocidal army doesn’t send SMS warnings before firing or facilitate the passage of those trying to escape the strikes. A genocidal army wouldn’t evacuate, every month, hundreds of Palestinian children suffering from rare diseases or cancer, sending them to hospitals in Abu Dhabi as part of a medical airlift set up right after Oct. 7”.   He concluded that “To speak of genocide in Gaza is an offense to common sense, a maneuver to demonize Israel, and an insult to the victims of genocides past and present.” 47

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech in which he explained the goals of Israel vis a vis the Arabs of Gaza and none of those goals were genocidal.  He said:

“No nation can accept a genocidal terrorist organization, an organization committed to its annihilation a stone’s throw from its citizens.   Our goal is not to occupy Gaza. Our goal is to free Gaza, free it from Hamas terrorists.  The war can end tomorrow if Gaza, or rather if Hamas lays down its arms and releases all the remaining hostages.   Gaza will be demilitarized; Israel will have overriding security responsibilities.  A security zone will be established on Gaza’s border with Israel to prevent future terrorist incursions.
A civilian administration will be established in Gaza that will seek to live in peace with Israel.  That’s our plan for the day after Hamas. And let me summarize it: Five principles for concluding the war:
One, Hamas Disarmed. Second, all hostages freed. Third, Gaza Demilitarized. Fourth, Israel has overriding security control. And five, non-Israeli, peaceful civil administration, by that I mean a civilian administration that doesn’t educate its children for terror, that doesn’t pay terrorists, and doesn’t launch terrorist attacks against Israel, that’s what we want to see in Gaza.” 48

There is hope that Netanyahu’s goals will come to fruition.  Many civilians in Gaza have turned against Hamas.  On September 22 2025 Ghassan Al-Dahineh, deputy head of the Abu Shabab militant group, did something no Gazan would have dared to do before Israel weakened Hamas.  He posted a Facebook message in Arabic offering holiday greetings to Israelis and the Jewish Diaspora.

“On the occasion of the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashana), I extend my sincere best wishes to our Arab Jewish brethren in particular,” Al-Dahineh wrote, apparently referring to Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews whose families lived in Islamic countries across the Middle East and North Africa for centuries.

He continued by wishing a happy new year “to the Jewish people in general and to all those celebrating this holiday around the world.”

The militant leader added that “we ask God that this new year be a year of peace, love, health, and prosperity for all, and that it be the beginning of goodness and renewed hope in the hearts of people wherever they may be.”

If Israel succeeds in liberating the Gazans from Hamas an era of peace and friendship may rise from the ashes of Gaza.49

Notes

Menachem Klein will be given an opportunity by Logos to respond to this article and further responses to Dr. Klein will be on the web page getinsight.pro/klein.htm

1 Menachem Klein “How Israeli Society Became Genocidal”, Logos, 2025, https://logosjournal.com/between-the-issues/how-israeli-society-became-genocidal/

2 Forensic Architecture, “A Cartography of Genocide,” https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/acartography-of-genocide; Alex Rossi “Israeli soldier describes arbitrary killing of civilians in Gaza”, Sky News, July 2025, https://news.sky.com/story/israeli-soldier-describes-arbitrary-killing-of-civilians-in-gaza-13393422

3 Ron Kampeas “Why does Israel demolish houses after terrorist attacks?”, Washington Jewish Week, February 2023, https://www.washingtonjewishweek.com/why-does-israel-demolish-houses-after-terrorist-attacks/

4 Gamaliel Isaac, A Gaza History Lesson, Part 1, https://getinsight.pro/schools/gaza_history.htm;  Gamaliel Isaac, A Gaza History Lesson, Part 2, https://getinsight.pro/schools/gaza_history2.htm

5 Nonie Darwish,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonie_Darwish

6 Nonie Darwish: My Father Founded the Original Hamas Militia | Stories of Us | PragerU, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSg4-fPJ6u8

7 Nonie Darwish, Roots of the Gaza Conflict, Islam Watch, January 2009, https://islam-watch.org/Nonie/Roots-of-Gaza-Conflict.htm

8 World Population Review, Gaza, https://worldpopulationreview.com/cities/palestine/gaza

9 Yotam Feldman and Uri Blau, Gaza Bonanza, Haaretz, June 2009, https://www.gisha.org/userfiles/File/HaaretzGazaBonanza.pdf

10 David Isaac, “A hollow peace? Cairo facilitated weapons smuggling to Hamas”, Jewish National Syndicate, https://www.jns.org/a-hollow-peace-cairo-facilitated-weapons-smuggling-to-hamas/

11 Gamaliel Isaac, “9.15 What Happened in Gaza on October 7, 2023?”, https://getinsight.pro/schools/gaza_what_happened.htm

12 Wikipedia, Temple Mount, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Mount

13 Yossi Klein Halevi, The Astonishing Israeli Concession of 1967, The Atlantic, June 7, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/06/israel-paratroopers-temple-mount-1967/529365/

14 Tsvi Joffre, Violent clashes erupt between police, Palestinians in al-Aqsa, The Jerusalem Post, April 4, 2023, https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-736430

15 Wikipedia, Israeli blockade of aid delivery to the Gaza Strip, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_blockade_of_aid_delivery_to_the_Gaza_Strip

16 The International MA Program in Conflict Resolution and Mediation, The Gershon H. Gordon Faculty of Social Sciences, Tel Aviv University., Findings – The Peace Index – March 2025, https://en-social-sciences.tau.ac.il/sites/socsci-english.tau.ac.il/files/media_server/social/peaceindex/2025-03-findings.pdf

17 Gamaliel Isaac, Is Israel an Apartheid State?, https://getinsight.pro/schools/apartheid.htm

18 Bari Weiss, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bari_Weiss

19 Bari Weiss, Bari Weiss on Why She Left the New York Times,  July 14, 2020, https://nypost.com/2020/07/14/bari-weiss-on-why-she-left-the-new-york-times/; https://x.com/jeremymbarr/status/1283058025654366209/photo/1; Joseph Wulfsohn, Bari Weiss blasts New York Times after staffer involved with Tom Cotton op-ed resigns, December 11, 2020, https://www.foxnews.com/media/bari-weiss-new-york-times

20 Bari Weiss, Miracle in Hell: The Baby Twins Who Survived a Massacre, The Free Press, December 22, 2023, https://www.thefp.com/p/miracle-in-hell-the-baby-twins-who

21 Gamaliel Isaac, An Israeli Couple Speaks About the Hamas Attack on Their Kibbutz
on October 7, 2023, https://getinsight.pro/schools/israelis_rosenfeld.htm

22 The Times of Israel, November 2023, What Matters Now to Oct. 7 survivor Adele Raemer: Telling the world, https://www.timesofisrael.com/what-matters-now-to-oct-7-survivor-adele-raemer-telling-the-world/

23 Mia Schem Talks About Being Captive in Gaza, https://rumble.com/v6z6ahy-mia-schem-talks-about-being-captive-in-gaza.html

24 The Myth of Innocent Palestinian Civilians, https://rumble.com/v4l42w9-the-myth-of-innocent-palestinian-civilians.html

25 Israel National News, How Innocent are Gaza’s Civilians?  January 2024, https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/383209

26 Hugh Fitzgerald, The International Association of Genocide Scholars’ False Claims About Israel, September 2025, https://jihadwatch.org/2025/09/the-international-association-of-genocide-scholars-false-claims-about-israel

27 Gamaliel Isaac, What About the Accusations of Genocide Against Israel, Part 3?, https://getinsight.pro/schools/gaza_civilians_part3.htm

28 Happy Nurses of Gaza, https://rumble.com/v4kugce-happy-nurses-of-gaza.html

29 Hamas Operations in Hospitals, https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/hamas-operations-in-hospitals/

30 Tom Bowman, The brutal calculus of war: Is the killing of civilians ever justified?, November 2023, https://www.npr.org/2023/11/11/1212326333/proportionality-israel-gaza-war-war-crimes

31 Gamaliel Isaac, When Gazans No Longer Fear to Speak Their Minds, https://getinsight.pro/schools/gazans_speak.htm

32 John Spencer and Sharri Markson DEBUNK Hamas’s Lies – Gaza Casualty Numbers Are Completely False!, October 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-624sEyF3Ak

33 John Spencer, Israel Has Created a New Standard for Urban Warfare. Why Will No One Admit It? | Opinion, Newsweek, March 2024, https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286

34 Full text of Netanyahu’s speech: We won’t let the world shove a terror state down our throat, September 26, 2025, The Times of Israel, https://www.timesofisrael.com/full-text-of-netanyahus-speech-we-wont-let-the-world-shove-a-terror-state-down-our-throat/

35 Yoav Zitun, IDF uncovers Hamas ambush utilizing children’s cries in Hebrew, Ynet Global, December 15, 2023, https://www.ynetnews.com/article/rj0qiptia

36 Israel Defense Forces Web Site,  How is the IDF Minimizing Harm to Civilians in Gaza?, July 16, 2014, https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/the-hamas-terrorist-organization/how-is-the-idf-minimizing-harm-to-civilians-in-gaza/

37 Gamaliel Isaac, What About the Accusations of Genocide Against Israel?, https://getinsight.pro/schools/gaza_civilians.htm

38 Abraham Wyner, How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers, Tablet, March 2024, https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers?dicbo=v4-KtNG4Ov-1088236730

39 Andrew Fox, Questionable Counting, Henry Jackson Society Centre for New Middle East, December 2024, https://getinsight.pro/schools/Questionable-Counting-%E2%80%93-Hamas-Report-web.pdf

40 Gamaliel Isaac, In Defense of Benevolent Imperialism, https://getinsight.pro/schools/poldefenseimperialism.htm

41 Gamaliel Isaac, Determining the Cause of Conflict in the Middle East, https://getinsight.pro/schools/mideastcause.htm

42 Gamaliel Isaac, Why Creating a Palestinian State Would Be Suicidal for Israel, https://getinsight.pro/schools/minsecureborders.htm4

43 Jewish Virtual Library, When Churchill Severed Transjordan From Palestine, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/when-churchill-severed-transjor2an-from-palestine

44 Yifa Yaakov, The Times of Israel, May 1, 2014, Bill Clinton: Israel offered Temple Mount to Palestinians in 2000, https://www.timesofisrael.com/bill-clinton-palestinians-were-offered-temple-mount-in-2000/;  Lt. Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch, JNS, Is It Time to Declare the Failure of the Oslo Accords?, March 3, 2025, https://www.jns.org/is-it-time-to-declare-the-failure-of-the-oslo-accords/

45 Bill Clinton REVEALS Arafat’s LIES, Hamas’s REAL Agenda and DEFENDS Israel’s History!, Youtube, November 1, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MtOovP_oEM

46 Asking Benjamin Netanyahu The Tough Questions, Triggernometry, August 20, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I56MjHDl5k

47 Bernard-Henry Levy, Three Big Lies About the Israel-Hamas War, Wall Street Journal, Sept, 3, 2025, https://www.wsj.com/opinion/three-big-lies-about-the-israel-hamas-war-17288572

48 Prime Ministers Office, PM Netanyahu at a press conference for foreign media, August 10, 2025, https://www.gov.il/en/pages/event-press-conference100825

49 World Israel News, Hamas rival leader Yasser Abu Shabab speaks out, July 7, 2025, https://worldisraelnews.com/watch-hamas-rival-leader-yasser-abu-shabab-speaks-out/