A Reply to Gamaliel Isaac

I am very thankful to Logos Journal editor Gregory Zucker and Gamaliel Isaac for the opportunity to add more information and references to my article.

Neither my article nor this response aims to justify the horrific war crimes of Hamas. Following this, I find it unnecessary to argue with Gamaliel Isaac on Israel’s justification for reacting violently to Hamas’ crimes. As Michael Waltzer wrote in his book Just and Unjust Wars, justification for opening a war or a national liberation struggle does not justify committing war crimes. Regretfully, since October 7, 2023, Israel’s defenders have used the justified cause of launching an attack to clean Israel’s criminal operations. This method guides Gamaliel Isaac to escape long narratives unrelated to my article subject.

In my article I did not aim to convince those who warmly endorse Israelism, the civil religion of many Jews living outside Israel [Arie M, Dobnov, As US Jews Reexamine Their Ties with Israel and Zionism, Right-wing Academics Are Manipulating The Discourse, Haaretz November 29, 2024 in https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-11-29/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/as-u-s-jews-reexamine-ties-with-israel-right-wing-academics-manipulate-the-discourse/00000193-763d-da01-a1b3-f73dd5eb0000 ]. I find it useless to argue with defenders of collective faith. Rather, I wrote it for openminded people who do not follow Hebrew-Israeli social media discussions and wonder what happened to Israel that they admired, Israel that had subscribed to the post-World War 2 Western community vow of Never Again. The short answer is that Israel has changed. A longer answer is provided in my article.

Gamaliel Isaac did not disprove the reliability of the many sources I related to in my article, in particular note numbers 4, 5, 6, 9, 18. He ignores them, as he ignores other reports on the Israeli genocide and systematic destruction of the Gaza Strip published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. Moreover, Gamaliel Isaac ignored Lee Mordechai’s digital project Bearing Witness [https://bearing-witness.com/] that I mentioned in note 9. Dr. Mordechai systematically collected primary sources on Israeli operations, including IDF soldiers’ and commanders’ original reports.

Based on these reports, I suggested seeing the way Israel operated in the Gaza Strip in the context of Israel’s elite transformation from militaristic Zionism under the Labor Party leadership to Jewish supremacy of the current national-religious coalition rather than an uncontrolled war of revenge of society traumatized by October 7.  I analyzed this transformation in Logos Vol. 23 No. 3 and in number 2 of the same volume, how the state of Israel transformed Judaism.

Since I wrote my article, two Israeli journalists to whom I refer in my article, Nir Hasson of Haaretz and Yuval Avraham of 972 Magazine and the Hebrew Local Call, published more detailed investigations based on primary sources. In addition, hereafter are a few new databased studies on Israeli operations during the war that further base my argument on Israel’s war methods.

Professor Yaakov Garb from Ben Gurion University, published in Harvard Dataverse on Gaza spatial after the September 16, 2025 Israeli re-invasion [  https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/GMDQET ]

Professor Dov Waxman from UCLA explained why he changed his mind regrading the Israeli genocide [https://medium.com/@dov.waxman/why-i-changed-my-mind-on-the-genocide-charge-against-israel-897c9e043b9e ]

For Hebrew readers, I recommend reading the Facebook pages of John Brown [https://www.facebook.com/john.brown.3591] , Idan Landau [https://www.facebook.com/idanlandauBlog] Ron Gerlitz [https://www.facebook.com/ron.gerlitz ] the general director of eChord research group at the Hebrew University where he informs on Israeli public opinion polls. Among them the most relevant to my article is in https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DjE7ydGDuCrvx4nN1HWdyVUVJl3D2z-t/view?fbclid=IwY2xjawNhHi5leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFUYkYzRmZHeVN3YTRqYTU4AR5Lpm6veUlgrxVH_nKGlttodieJp1m_EIeEKlNHQ1WMT7QFHse2bBjpgOwSbA_aem_Sm7PudIEMBG35q8BMs4qeQ