Retired IDF Gen. Eiland 'Wants to Starve and Displace Gaza’s Civilians'

Conditions incl. Ethnic Cleansing, No Distinction between 'Civilian/Military/Gov't', National/Racial Discrimination, and the Threat of Nuclear Annihilation

Some time ago—it seems ages, but it’s merely been 10 weeks—I argued that there’s a clearly amoral, less-than-enlightenened self-interest that might compel ‘the collective West’ to support, however tentatively, Israel:

As Anti-Semitism and Anti-Moslem Sentiment Increase in the West, Hard Questions Emerge About Mass Immigration and #standwithisrael

None of the caveats have been addressed in any meaningful way, and while I acknowledge John Mearsheimer’s (slow) coming around to my positions, there is little to add in terms of his—or mine—moral sentiments. They don’t matter anyways, but here’s what I shall state ‘for the record’:

• I am appalled by the unconditional support by ‘the collective West’ for Israel, if only the former still couches it in moralising terms.

• I am similarly appalled by the plight of the Palestinians, if only ‘the collective West’ seems to make Distinctions (in an almost Bourdieu-esque fashion) between presumably ‘good’ (Moslems) and seemingly ‘irrelevant’ victims (Christians). This is disgusting.

• More recently, we see the conflation of (war) crimes—mass murder, torture, indiscriminate bombing—by calling for the indiscriminate killing and/or ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza. As if the entirety of post-WW2 international and humanitarian law, such as it exists (see the bottom lines for more on this), wasn’t contingent on this particular distinction.

Do I recant on my previously-voiced opinion?

Not yet (entirely), but I maintain that a certain toleration for disgusting abuses of whatever remains of the rule of law is gnawing on my conscience. I’d also state, similarly for the record, that much of this surely disgusting equivocation stems from my parental responsibilities. Sigh.

Forgive me for the preceding and following lines, if you may.

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As always, translations and emphases mine, as are the ‘bottom lines’.

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It's time to rip off the Hamas band-aid

Opinion: In the wake of recent events, Israel cannot be satisfied with any other goal than the elimination of Hamas in Gaza as a military and governing body; Anything less would be an Israeli failure

By Gen. (ret.) Giora Eiland, via Haaretz (10 Dec. 2023) [source]

In the wake of recent events, Israel cannot be satisfied with any other goal than the elimination of Hamas in Gaza as a military and governing body. Anything less would be an Israeli failure.

For twenty years, Israel refrained from formalizing this goal. Now, it is essential to define the strategies and understand the options…

Israel issued a stern warning to Egypt and made it clear that it would not permit humanitarian aid from Egypt to enter Gaza. Israel needs to create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, compelling tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands to seek refuge in Egypt or the Gulf.

In order for this to happen, Israel needs to demand four key points with greater determination than ever before:

1. The entire population of Gaza will either move to Egypt or move to the Gulf. From our perspective, every building in Gaza known to have Hamas headquarters underneath, including schools and hospitals, is considered a military target.

2. Every vehicle in Gaza is considered a military vehicle transporting combatants. Therefore, there is no vehicular traffic, and it does not matter whether it is transporting water or other critical supplies.

3. The UN secretary-general has initiated humanitarian aid to Gaza. The Israeli condition for any aid should be a visit by the Red Cross to Israeli hostages and especially the civilians among them. Until this happens, no aid of any kind will be permitted to enter into Gaza.

4. Intermediators with both diplomatic and military experience will be required to explain in detail these concepts to the rest of the world. It will not be possible to remove Hamas without exerting pressure and if the Americans do not receive a clear and detailed explanation from Israeli officials and understand that Israel has no choice. It is comparable to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which led to the launch of an atomic bomb in Japan.

As a result, Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist, and I say this as a means rather than an end. I say this because there is no other option for ensuring the security of the State of Israel. We are fighting an existential war.

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Intermission

This is bad, esp. as this retired IDF general—and I’m convinced of his continuous ties to ‘official’ circles—is calling on the Israeli gov’t to position itself outside the ‘rules’ and ‘norms’ governing the entirety of humankind since 1945.

I do get the notion that Israel is ‘fighting an existential war’, but as I’ve argued some weeks ago, this fight is essentially over. What the IDF is doing is a kind of ‘rearguard action’ to ensure, primarily, the for-time-being avoidance of ‘due process’ and likely ‘prison time’ for the incumbent PM Benjamin Netanyahoo. In the process, lots of civilians are massacred. By US-supplied ordinance, with the full, if ultimately ambiguous, support of ‘the collective West’.

If this retired IDF general is actually still tied into ‘his circles’, this is doubly bad as the longer this course of action is permitted, the worse the eventual outcome will be.

Yes, we could—and should—talk about all the notionally Moslem states who, while having absorbed, to certain extents, their ‘fellow’ Palestinian refugees since 1947/48, they also keep them in penury and a state of second-class citizenship that is appalling to say the least. Too bad no-one cares, least of all the Moslem gov’ts of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

What’s even ‘worse’, someone in Norway actually read the above op-ed by Gen. Eiland, travelled to Israel, and interviewed him about his statement. It is what follows here.

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Israeli Ex-General Wants to Starve and Displace Gaza’s Civilians

By Yama Wolasmal, Kristina Opheim, Ksenia Novikova, and Heidi Taksdal Skjeseth, NRK, 28 Dec. 2023 [source]

Gaza must become a place where no people can survive, Giora Eiland believes. NRK has met the Israeli ex-general.

‘Giora Eiland is one of the most respected retired generals in Israel. Here he meets with former US president George [W.] Bush.’

He is a highly respected ex-general in Israel. Giora Eiland has more than 30 years of service in the Israeli Defense Forces, IDF. He has been responsible for planning in the defence and led the powerful National Security Council in Israel for several years.

Now he has made international headlines with his suggestions about what he thinks his country should do in Gaza.

‘Israel must create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza that forces hundreds of thousands to seek refuge in Egypt. A serious epidemic will bring victory closer’, writes the ex-general in a column in the Israeli online newspaper Ynet.

During Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel on 7 Oct., 1,139 people were killed, according to Israeli authorities. Among them were 36 children. Since then, more than 21,000 people have been killed by Israeli attacks, according to health authorities in Gaza, which is ruled by Hamas. Over 8,000 of them are children. [at least these numbers—however arrived-at—don’t lie: for every Israeli child, the IDF killed in excess of 222 Palestinian children]

Will Hit Civilians

Israeli forces should not differentiate between Hamas fighters and civilians—not even women, he writes in a column published in Israel's largest newspaper, Yediot Ahronot:

Who are the ‘poor’ women in Gaza? They are mothers, sisters and wives of Hamas killers.

NRK meets the military strategist at his office in Tel Aviv. He is retired, and has no formal connection to the Israeli Defense Forces. The decorated general speaks as an independent military expert.

[NRK] How can a man who has been in a top leadership position in what Israel describes as the world's most moral army, say such things?

[Eiland] What I am trying to say is that the only effective pressure, and the only thing that matters to the Hamas leadership, is the people of Gaza. If they get very frustrated, very worried, very angry and hungry, then they will actually fight and rebel against Hamas.

[NRK] But it will lead to terrible civilian suffering for Gaza's 2.2m inhabitants?

[Eiland] Not necessarily. It will lead to a real frustration in Gaza that will mobilise the people to revolt against Hamas. They will not do that without suffering.

More common with extreme outbursts

Giora Eiland is not alone in putting forward proposals that cause stark reactions.

After the terrorist attack on 7 Oct., many leading Israelis, both in the government and in civil society, have advocated the same type of measures.

[Israeli] President Isaac Herzog has said that civilians in Gaza are legitimate targets because they have not rebelled against Hamas.

The Israeli Ministry of Intelligence has made theoretical plans on how Gaza’s 2.2m inhabitants can be moved to the Sinai desert in Egypt.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has tried to persuade EU countries to get Egypt to agree to such a plan.

Dahlia Scheindlin, one of Israel's foremost political experts, says that it has become more appropriate to say things that before the war were perceived as unacceptable:

I feel that more and more social debaters in Israel are pushing the boundaries of what is accepted. People like Eiland are highly recognised. He is not an extremist. His attitudes have become more ‘mainstream’ since the war began.

[The NRK website linked above contains a videotaped interview with Gen. Eiland.]

It is About Israel’s Survival

The ex-general says that the Hamas movement must be crushed at all costs because they pose an existential threat to Israel. He believes that military and humanitarian pressure is the only way to bring home the approximately 130 Israeli citizens who are still in Hamas captivity:

Israel is fighting for its survival. Right now we are fighting on six different fronts with enemies in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. Hamas, and all their supporters must be taken out.

Eiland believes that civilians in Gaza are partially complicit in the terrorist attack on Israel on 7 Oct. Therefore, they must accept the consequences of having taken part in and celebrated the killing of Israelis, believes the retired general.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands of so-called civilians stormed into Israel together with Hamas to rape, rob, and kill Israelis on 7 Oct. Then the people of Gaza must understand that there are far-reaching consequences for supporting such a regime.

There were several reports of sexual violence and rape during the terrorist attack. The UN has said it will investigate the allegations. There is no evidence that NRK has seen that Palestinian civilians participated in the terrorist attack.

‘Pure Evil’

Eiland believes Israel should stop the supply of food, emergency aid, water, and fuel into Gaza to make it unlivable there:

We are the only country in the world that has supplied the enemy with what they need to survive. We have the right to set up a blockade around the country we are at war with. If we do it together with military pressure, it can be much more effective.

Eiland’s plans have created strong reactions in social media, especially in Arab countries. In Israel, renowned commentators such as Gideon Levy in the newspaper Haaretz have described his plans as ‘pure evil’. Eiland rejects the criticism.

‘I am not saying this because I want to punish Gaza's civilians. This is not evil for evil's sake. But the end justify the means in this case’, writes Eiland in one of his chronicles.

The 71-year-old says that he has received almost exclusively positive feedback on the chronicles he has written:

I would say that 80% of those who have contacted me in Israel have supported my proposals.

Defying Criticism

Eiland believes that Israel must not care about the international reactions, and do everything to win the war on the Gaza Strip:

[NRK] How can a Jew, who probably has family who experienced the Holocaust nightmare, propose a plan that many will interpret as a call for genocide, collective punishment and the expulsion of millions of Palestinians from Gaza?

Listen. My entire family on my father's side was killed by the Nazis in Auschwitz. So I know exactly what happened there. [how is this relevant here?]

Most Israelis understand that Israel is fighting an existential war. If we fail, there will be no Israel. If the price we have to pay for survival is temporary misery in Gaza, then this is more than justified. Most Israelis agree with me on that.

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Bottom Lines: the Ukrainification of Israel

I don’t know if I should weep or admire the chutzpah of these statements: what’s a few tens of thousands of dead—and some 2+ million of displaced—for the survival of a nation?

I suppose we’re observing a, if not the, textbook case of Nietzsche’s admonishment of staring into the abyss. Apparently, if Gen. Eiland is to be believed, he has been staring into that particular abyss for quite some time.

I’m not here to defend Hamas, but I will point out that to claim the ‘moral high ground’, in particular by referencing the Holocaust, too, while displacing and killing the Palestinians from Gaza is quite something else.

Personally, I don’t doubt that Gen. Eiland isn’t speaking for a sizeable chunk of the Israeli population; at the same time, I doubt that Western support can be maintained at present levels.

In some ways, Israel is where Ukraine was some almost two years ago. Support for Israel is, of course, much stronger than it was for the Zelenskyy gov’t, but eventually it will run out, be it for logistical, economic, and/or political reasons.

At some point in the near future, though, it will subside to an extent that will actually bring about the demise of the Israeli state; before that will happen, though, other questions—such as, especially, where would millions of Israeli Jews evacuate to—will become more prominent.

I’m not writing these lines out of malice or ‘anti-semitism’. I don’t know if my intimation is on target or not, but I remain convinced of the fact that support for what Israel is doing right now derives primarily from the moralising lies we in the West (and IN Russia) tell about WW2, and the mounting contradictions about victimhood, morality, and, yes, geopolitics.

I do think that support for Israel will continue longer than it does for Ukraine, but the end result will be the same: a much-diminished, if not ‘gone’, country, run by corporations and occupied by someone else (my guess in both cases is ‘private military contractors and/or organised crime).

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Epilogue: How ‘the West’ Changes Course

If you care to figure out how this change of heart (sic) in ‘the collective West’ will manifest itself, here’s what Norwegian PM Støre told NRK before Christmas (via newsinenglish.no; emphases mine):

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre sharply increased his criticism of Israel’s warfare in Gaza on Saturday, calling it ‘totally unacceptable’. He claims Gaza is now, in reality, without any functioning hospitals and that Israel risks losing any sympathy it has left.

‘The manner in which Israel’s warfare is affecting the health care sector and the entire humanitarian system is totally unacceptable and must stop’, Støre told Norwegian Broadcasting Corp. (NRK) as the country headed into the Christmas holidays.

The bombing of hospitals in Gaza, he added, ‘means that more than 2m people who have a very large need for medical help are in a vulnerable situation that we simply can’t accept’…

Israeli leaders, Støre said, should ‘think through this. They can lose the sympathy they had after the gruesome terrorist attack on October 7 if this continues.’ News bureau NTB reported that the number of protests against Israel and reports of anti-Semitism has doubled since last year, according to the Norwegian police, with half of the reports filed after the war began…

Støre noted how his government condemned the terrorist attack by the radical Palestinian organization Hamas, calling it ‘a terrible incident that killed civilians in Israel’. The war Israel quickly declared on Hamas, however, ‘has developed in a manner that we can’t accept. The health care system must be protected. Civilians must be protected’…

‘When Israel says that Hamas is hiding under a hospital, that doesn’t make it legal (under the Geneva Convention) to bomb the hospital’, Dr Erik Fosse told newspaper Dagsavisen on Saturday. He also leads the Norwegian Aid Committee (Norwac) in Gaza and knew many Palestinian doctors who’ve been killed along with their families.

Fosse noted how most hospitals have tunnels underneath their buildings, also in Norway, and that ‘Israel knows well where Hamas leaders are, and they’re not in Gaza’. [they’re in Qatar] Attacking the hospitals in order to attack Hamas, he claims, is part of Israel’s goal to also destroy Gaza itself. He said all of Norwac’s employees have already lost their homes.

NRK also ran video on its nightly national newscast Saturday [23 Dec. 2023] showing Israeli troops beating journalists, dozens of whom have also been killed since Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza began. The state broadcaster also reported how a former US State Department official, Josh Paul, has urged Norway to raise its voice in talks with the US, an important NATO ally.

Paul, who quit in protest over US weapons delivery to Israel, is glad Norway has criticized Israel warfare and issued calls for a ceasefire and ‘the enormous suffering in Gaza’, but claims that’s not enough. ‘I believe the US has lost its moral compass when it comes to the conflict between Israel and Palestine’, Paul told NRK, adding that’s why ‘we need US allies to speak up, and remind us of our values’.

Norway’s foreign ministry responded that it has ‘a good and close dialogue with the USA’ regarding the war in Gaza. ‘American authorities are well aware of our views…and that it’s necessary to launch a political process with the goal being a two-state solution. We will continue this dialogue until there is an agreement on a ceasefire.’ Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide stated that he thinks there’s been ‘an international movement’ in recent weeks ‘in which more countries have moved closer to our position. That applies also to the USA.’

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Epilogue

The clock is ticking.

The lies we’re being fed will come to haunt us in ‘the West’ above all.

I’ve written about WW2 Remembrance before, and the above piece functions as a kind of confirmation, as far as this can be said, for my musings:

In These Times: An 8-9 May 2023 Column

There’s not much runway left for the Israeli-Western ‘Empire of Lies’, which cannot continue if present rates of lying, self-delusion, and insanity continue much longer.

With Ukraine, virtually everyone outside ‘the collective West’ sided with Russia.

In the current Hamas-Israeli conflict, the same is true, but there’s hundreds of thousands of people in West—not all of them Moslems—who side with the Palestinians.

If anything, this fact along will move Western governments in the long run.

The ‘new’ issue here becomes: where will it be (relatively) ‘safe’ for Jews/Israelis to live once Israel falls?

I wouldn’t bet on (Western) Europe.

We do live in interesting times. Shudder.