LogFAQs > #979692415

I mean, when the Hague was asked to judge the situation in Gaza and whether it constituted a genocide I'm pretty sure they had a lot of quotes from Israeli government officials that sure sounded like they were looking to either cast guilt by association on Palestinian civilians or otherwise wanted them out of Gaza.

I normally wouldn't use Wikipedia as a "source" but they seem to have the most concise collection of a lot of these quotes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_in_the_2023_Israeli_attack_on_Gaza#Alleged_genocidal_intent

This isn't all of them, but just some that I think might speak to "why" the Israeli government might do some of these things:

Avi Dichter, Israeli Minister of Agriculture, called for the war to be "Gaza's Nakba" on Channel 12.[79] Ariel Kallner, another Member of the Knesset from the Likud party, similarly wrote on social media that there is "one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of [1948]. Nakba in Gaza and Nakba to anyone who dares to join".[80] Amihai Eliyahu, Israeli Minister of Heritage, called for dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza.[79][81]

Israeli energy minister Israel Katz said "All the civilian population in Gaza is ordered to leave immediately. We will win. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world."[82][63]

President of Israel Isaac Herzog blamed the "entire nation" of Palestine for the 7 October attack.[21] He further said "It is not true this rhetoric about civilians being not aware, not involved. It is absolutely not true."[63]

Yitzhak Kroizer, representing the extreme-right Otzma Yehudit party in the Knesset, stated in a radio interview that the "Gaza Strip should be flattened, and for all of them there is but one sentence, and that is death."[83] Tally Gotliv of the Likud party called for the use of nuclear weapons against Gaza.[83]

Major General Ghassan Alian, Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, stated: "There will be no electricity and no water (in Gaza), there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell".[73]

IDF Major general Giora Eiland wrote "Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist".[74] He added "Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieving the goal."[74] Israeli historian and holocaust scholar Omer Bartov noted that no Israeli politician nor anyone in the IDF denounced this statement.[74]

The spokesperson for the Israeli army said, in regards to Israel's bombing of Gaza, "the emphasis is on damage not accuracy". This statement was interpreted by legal scholars as intention of destruction.[63]

Look, I'm not an expert or even really a novice on Israeli politics. But this sounds a bit more higher-up and official than, say, Marjorie Taylor Greene to use a US analogy. When you have cabinet ministers and the President of Israel saying thing like this it provides an answer to "Why would the Israeli government intentionally do [horrible thing] to civilians in Gaza?" just the answer isn't a very pleasant one.

Now, I wish this went without saying, but my criticism here extends only to the Israeli government. My sympathy lies with the civilians in Gaza, those in Israel who oppose the actions their government are taking, and Jewish people worldwide who are facing a rise in antisemitism as a result of everything that is happening in Gaza due to the actions of the Israeli government.

Criticism of the Israeli government is not, and should not, be taken as antisemitism or twisted to imply the speaker is referring to all of Israel or all Jewish people. I've largely tried to stay out of this discussion because it's just soul crushing in general and to be honest there have been some comments here the past half year that I'm a bit uncomfortable with in conflating the Israeli government with Israel as a whole - I'm extending the benefit of the doubt that they're using "Israel" to mean the government rather than the people as a whole in much the same way we commonly refer to actions by the US government as "The US did [x]" or "Florida just [y]" but I do feel a bit more clarity is warranted here specifically because of the rise in hate crimes that you generally don't see directed against - say - Floridians as a result of whatever shit DeSantis does.

I think shortly after the Oct 7th attacks someone (or multiple people) in this thread drew a parallel to 9/11 and America's response as a cautionary warning and I think that still rings true. 9/11 was a traumatic experience for the US and there was an understandable desire to strike back against those who attacked us. But in responding we ended up with massive civilian casualties and "lost sight" of the assumed objective and ended up - at the desire of the government we had at the time - invading an entirely unrelated country. And, especially in the early years, any domestic questioning of this had your patriotism questioned and international criticism was met with defiance and insults. By the time the national conversation had moved past the initial trauma enough to frankly discuss our response it was too late for us to really do anything without making things even worse than we had in some way.

Edit: Oh, I see some people beat me to my general points in a much more succinct way.