Palestinian woman reacts as she cradles a wounded boy after Israeli bombardment in central Gaza City, last week.Credit: AFP
Israel wants war. More and more war, as much as possible, and perhaps even more. Gone are the days of our childhood, when they told us Israel wants peace more than anything else. We saw ourselves as peace seekers, a naive people.
Gone are the days when we boasted to every visitor from abroad that our common greeting is “peace.” What other nation says “peace” wherever it goes? Only us, the peace seekers. That’s what we were told and that’s what we believed. Oops, the Arabs and Muslims also say salaam. But that they didn’t bother to tell us back then.
We are the greatest peace seekers in the world, and look what those villains did to us. When we appeared in youth delegations before the Jewish communities in the United States, we danced the hora with embroidered shirts to the sounds of “Song for Peace” – for what else would Israeli youths dance? – and the excited Jews wiped a tear.
What a nation. What a yearning for peace. We are the peace seekers, and the Arabs are warmongers. That’s what they told us when we were children. That’s what we told ourselves and the world, that for a moment even believed it.
Israel wants war. Now it is being said explicitly, without pretense and without whitewashing. As much war as possible in the government’s words, as much war as possible in the opposition’s words. More of this war even from the mouths of the protesters in the squares, who are certainly not crying out for the opposite. They only want a halt in the war to release the hostages and kick Benjamin Netanyahu out, and then as far as they’re concerned we can return to the killing fields forever.
More and more killing, more and more destruction. The lust for revenge and thirst for blood are wrapped in a host of guises, excuses, and considerations. Some of them can be understood after October 7, which brought us out of the closet.
The picture may be complicated, but one cannot blur the crushing fact that the whole world wants to end this war, except for one single state. The amount of blood this state wants to shed hasn’t been fulfilled yet. This desire, wrapped in the cause of destroying Hamas, won’t be accomplished anyway. What else is there but to think Israel wants to kill and destroy in Gaza for the sake of killing and destroying? This is the goal.
One can argue that if we don’t destroy Hamas, the war will continue forever, and anyway it’s a war for peace. But one cannot buy this when there’s no strategic plan behind the lust for war. So what remains is the bare truth: Israel simply wants war. Left and right and center too. Everyone.
Israeli soldiers on a tank in the Gaza Strip in the February.Credit: DYLAN MARTINEZ/ REUTERS
This is an awful situation. First we did away with peace as a value, as a goal and vision, and now we’ve turned the war into a value we must fight for against the whole world. The few against the many, we’ll fight for our right to war. The few against the many, we’ll fight for our right to kill and destroy indiscriminately.
The greatest threat to Israel now is stopping the war. Where will we go? That war is the most satanic human invention has been forgotten. Make peace, not war – that’s for the gullible and the stupid. Continuing the war is what unites Israel in a tight bond. We’re ready to pay any price to continue the war, including ruining relations with the United States, not exactly a renowned peace seeker, which is also demanding: Enough.
It’s the lust for war, and nothing else. Not only is nobody forcing it on us, not even the horrific October 7 – we chose it, of all the nations. And we of all the nations choose to continue doing it, without any resistance in Israel. We must have Rafah, and then Baalbek, and then we’ll return to the north of the Gaza Strip because we must. We have to do it. And then Tehran will be a must as well, because there’s no other choice.
Why, what do you suggest? Surrender? Annihilation? Holocaust? Israel wants more and more of this war. It’s allowed, we think, and it’s doing us good.
Gideon Levy