Israel’s assault on Gaza is a war without victories or victors, according to a respected journalist.
The Middle East is a labyrinth for which no one has a map, and finding an escape path has become immensely more difficult since the Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023. The Israeli counterassault on Gaza ratcheted conflict to a new level. Levy, an award-winning Israeli journalist, has long been a voice of dissent about many aspects of Israeli policies, and his columns in the newspaper Haaretz are widely read. This book collects his columns from mid-2014 to mid-2024. Levy is clear about his love for Israel but acknowledges that the country has often failed to live up to its ideals in both its domestic politics and its treatment of the Palestinians. He was horrified by the ferocity of Hamas but says, “I cannot help but feel a profound shame over what my country is doing to Gaza.” He understands that Israelis wanted retribution but believes that an all-out invasion was morally and strategically wrong and turned Israel into “a pariah state.” Many of his recent columns deal with the innocent victims of Israel’s attacks, and some of the stories he tells are heart-rending. But it must be said that sometimes Levy’s idealism and compassion seem to blur into naïveté. Important as it is for a journalist to report accounts of atrocities, it’s possible to wonder whether endlessly doing so fuels the fire more than douses it. In fairness to Levy, it’s difficult to know where the point of balance lies. The Killing of Gaza is an important book, but readers hoping for a way to break the cycle of violence will not, unfortunately, find it here.
Shines an important light on a brutal conflict, without pretending to have a resolution for it.