Whatever else might be said, this escalation and the promise of occupation guarantees that all survivors of Gaza will be Israel-haters bent on revenge, echoed in the West Bank, Lebanon and beyond. In the West Bank, Israeli settlers continue to grab Palestinian homes and land in the name of Biblical ownership rights. Taken together, the military orders and the provocations spell out a future of constant war.When Schwadron writes that Hamas will “continue to be the ultimate villains here,” it’s not clear whether he is meaning to state his expectation of Israel’s continuing position or is expressing his own judgement, or maybe both.
It is not even clear what the achievable goals are here. Some significant number of Hamas fighters have somehow survived everything the Israeli military has thrown at them, or Netanyahu would not be ordering more attacks. Netanyahu wants complete destruction of Hamas, who continue to be the ultimate villains here. (1)
It’s worthwhile giving credit at this stage to people like Raz Segal, a pro0fessor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University who wrote on October 13, 2023, not even a full week after the instantly-infamous October 7 attack by Hamas:
On Friday, Israel ordered the besieged population in the northern half of the Gaza Strip to evacuate to the south, warning that it would soon intensify its attack on the Strip’s upper half. The order has left more than a million people, half of whom are children, frantically attempting to flee amid continuing airstrikes, in a walled enclave where no destination is safe.And over a year and a half later, during which Israel’s war on Gaza civilians that experts in field like Segal and Omer Bartov have been describing as genocide, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is still escalating it further. And Israel’s message control isn’t working like it could for decades of recurring short wars. Naomi Beyth-Zoran writes:
As Palestinian journalist Ruwaida Kamal Amer wrote today [Oct. 2023] from Gaza, “refugees from the north are already arriving in Khan Younis, where the missiles never stop and we’re running out of food, water, and power.” The UN has warned that the flight of people from the northern part of Gaza to the south will create “devastating humanitarian consequences” and will “transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation.”
Over the past week, Israel’s violence against Gaza has killed more than 1,800 Palestinians, injured thousands, and displaced more than 400,000 within the strip. And yet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised today that what we have seen is “only the beginning.” [my emphasis; paragraph breaks added] (1)
Over the last two years studying in the U.S., I experienced the ongoing war from afar – following international media, speaking with people from around the world and watching Israeli coverage and public events. The gap between what the world sees and what Israelis are told is staggering. What passes for journalism in Israel often feels more like Hasbara: not meant to inform, but to reassure, explain and deflect. …This, of course, does not justify support for genocide by the Israeli public nor by the US and other government providing military aid to Israel during the ongoing horror.
For almost two years now, the Israeli public has been shielded from what's ongoing in Gaza. …
Concealing Gaza is a crime against the Israeli public, and it is a very slippery slope. Soon, our horrors will no longer be explained as they are. Young soldiers will be described as entering battle in jubilation, as imagined by some. Dead soldiers will no longer "fall" in battle; they "ascend" as one Knesset Member put it. And if they leave Gaza traumatized and take their own lives, discussions online explain that this is but a leftist media effort to undermine Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government (the suicide itself is not the issue, only the report about it). This is how the public's right to know, think and decide is trampled upon.
The Israeli political analyst Dahlia Scheindlin provides a scathing description of Netanyahu’s latest war phase: no more negotiations “for the sake of Israeli lives” including those of the remaining living hostages; “to take land, because ‘Arabs understand land more than life’” (“the cabinet's new plan for Gaza City can reportedly pause if negotiations restart with Hamas, there's little sign Israel wants this to happen” [the latter a quote from far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich]); and, finally: “Annex and settle.” [emphasis in original] (3)
Donald Trump wants to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. But he supports the new Netanyahu plan:
[T]he US, a veto-wielding permanent member of the [UN] security council, offered support for Israel and accused those nations who supported Sunday’s meeting of “actively prolonging the war by spreading lies about Israel”.Miller’s comment is an illustration of Israel’s hasbara narrative, which comes down to: Israel can and should do whatever we want, it’s all the fault of Hamas, and because millions of European Jews were killed in the Holocaust during the Second World War the State of Israel today is justified in doing anything they want to anybody and nobody should criticize us for it.
“Israel has a right to decide what is necessary for its security and what measure measures are appropriate to end the threat posed by Hamas,” said the US envoy to the UN, Dorothy Shea.
Israel’s military offensive has killed at least 61,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, most of them civilians. The figure does not include the thousands believed to be buried under rubble or the thousands killed indirectly as a consequence of the war.
Israel’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Jonathan Miller, said: “Pressure should not be placed on Israel, who suffered the most horrific attack against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, but on Hamas.” (4)
This English-language report from Deutsche Welle features an interview with a supporter of Netanyahu’s plan, Hans-Jakob Schindler of the Counter Extremism Project in Berlin: (5)
Notes:
(1) Schwadron, Terry (2025): Escalation in Gaza. DC Report 08/10/2025. <https://www.dcreport.org/2025/08/10/escalation-in-gaza/> (Accessed: 2025-11-08)
(2) Beyth-Zoran, Naomi (2025): Hasbara at Home: When Israel's Gaza Carnage Can't Be Defended, Propaganda Fills the Void. (“Hasbara” refers to official Israeli information operations.) Haaretz 08/11/2025. <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025-08-11/ty-article-opinion/.premium/hasbara-at-home-when-israels-gaza-carnage-cant-be-defended-propaganda-fills-the-void/00000198-9361-d85a-ad9b-b77177ec0000> (Accessed: 2025-11-08).
(3) Scheindlin, Dahlia (2025): Land, Not Life: The Deadly Security Paradigm Behind Netanyahu's Gaza Takeover. Haaretz 08/08/2025. Link to full article: <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-08-08/ty-article/.premium/land-not-life-the-deadly-security-paradigm-behind-netanyahus-gaza-takeover/00000198-88db-df91-a3bc-b8ff34560000?gift=08e2d357a83c499c90be17b691981051> (Accessed: 2025-11-08).
(4) Tondo, Lorenz (2025): Netanyahu defends Gaza City plan as UN warns of ‘calamity’ and starvation. Guardian 08/10/2025. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/10/netanyahu-defends-gaza-city-plan-as-un-warns-of-calamity-and-starvation> (Accessed: 2025-11-08).
(5) Netanyahu says Israel's new Gaza plan is 'the best way to end the war'. DW News YouTube channel 08/11/2025. <https://youtu.be/fs-RtZ_44BQ?si=eY0Mlt-OjPhTEOAh> (Accessed: 2025-11-08).
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