“Are Israelis Willing To Live in a Country Fueled by Blood?”

The headline above is the question asked by Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy in a column dated Sept. 15. His horror at what his country has become is shared by growing numbers in Israel, despite the controlled environment that the government has put into place, as well as internationally. But not nearly quickly enough. As seen in the brief testimonies we provide below, the longer an ongoing genocide is tolerated, the more barbarous the entire world community becomes.

“Israel is turning, with alarming speed, into a country that lives on blood”, Gideon Levy begins. “The daily crimes of the occupation are already less relevant. Over the past year, a new reality of mass killing and crimes of an entirely different scale has emerged. We are in a genocidal reality; the blood of tens of thousands of people has flowed.”

“This is the time that all Israelis should ask themselves if they are willing to live in a country that lives on blood. Just don’t say that there is no choice –of course there is — but first we must ask whether we are even prepared to live like this. Are we, the Israelis, willing to live in the only country in the world whose existence is based on blood? The only vision that is widespread in Israel now is to live from one war to another war, from one bloodletting to the next, from massacre to massacre, with intervals spaced as widely as possible. No other vision is on the table.”

The New Normal for War. Well known American journalist Seymour Hersh presented Sept. 19 on his Substack site, the horrifying account of a Canadian woman, who wished not to be identified, who has been working in Gaza as a researcher. She gives notice that “The military campaign in Gaza has opened up a new terrain of violence against civilians.” In the next war, wherever it may be, seeing hospitals systematically targeted, or schools, or journalists, and seeing children blown up into pieces will no longer be so shocking – because we’ve seen them all now in Gaza, often on livestream. “People don’t understand that what the Israelis are getting away with in Gaza is setting the stage for wars to come – everywhere”, she warns. The visual element of this war, “is a part of setting the normalization”.

This researcher goes on to blast the United States, in particular, for refusing to exert pressure on Israel, and she does not expect the next government, regardless of who wins, to do so either.

An American Physician’s Horrifying Experience in Gaza. On Sept. 16, Dr. Mark Perlmutter joined U.S. Senate candidate Diane Sare and U.S. Congressional candidate José Vega, both members of the Schiller Institute, on a campaign call to discuss the events he had witnessed in Gaza. Dr. Perlmutter, president of the World Surgical Foundation, has taken part in 40 lifesaving missions internationally over the past 30 years, but “all those experiences combined didn’t exceed what we saw in our first week in Gaza; just the first week”. Because of the lack of journalists on the ground, who are prevented from entering to replace those who have been killed, he and his fellow doctors took the decision to report to the world what reality looks like for the population.

“The overwhelming thing that shocked us”, he commented, “was that the disproportionate density of the patients were children. Gaza is 50% high-school kids or younger; therefore, when a bomb — which is indiscriminate — drops on a tent city or an apartment building or a playground, 50% of those or more who were killed were at least going to be children.” He confirmed that there were kilometers of trucks lined up, waiting to deliver to Gaza food, water, medical supplies and other vital necessities, that the Israeli forces prevented from entering. “The overwhelming opinion of every doctor who was there, ergo every journalist who was there, was that this is a definitive genocide.”

On Sept. 19, two organizers of the José Vega campaign went to the UN Headquarters in New York to distribute leaflets to delegates with testimony from Dr. Perlmutter. But before allowing the delegates to enter the UN premises, officials of the UN security service confiscated their leaflets – on orders of their higher-ups, as they explained. The relevant office later claimed they had a right to restrict any documents entering the complex…