Fissures Appear In Israel’s United Front As World Rages Over Gaza Genocide

Two month ago when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu led the attack against Iran, his allies—the United States—hailed it as his greatest political moment. Even his enemies conceded that the Israeli PM was now flush with a political capital he had not commanded before. 

However, much has changed since June. As Israel’s talks with Hamas have stalled, again, and the starvation in Gaza has made front page news across the globe, even Netanyahu’s historical European allies are backtracking. In the past week alone, three key US allies have said they will recognise the state of Palestine, and others have said they will follow suit if the conflict in Gaza is not stopped. With about 75 per cent of United Nations countries recognising Palestine, Israel is, suddenly, relatively isolated on the global stage. 

Within the Jewish state, too, voices of dissent are getting louder by the day. Hostage families and peace activists wanted Netanyahu's government to secure a ceasefire with Hamas and free the remaining captives who were abducted during the October 7, 2023 attacks.

Last week, in a first, two Israeli human rights groups said Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Human rights groups B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, put out reports that said that not only is Israel committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, but that the country’s western allies have a legal and moral duty to stop it.

In reports published on July 31, the two groups said Israel had targeted civilians in Gaza only because of their identity as Palestinians over nearly two years of war, causing severe and in some cases irreparable damage to Palestinian society.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu is under pressure from the right-wing members of his cabinet, who want to seize the moment to occupy and annex more Palestinian land. 

This is the first time since its inception that the Jewish state is so divided. "As the war continues we become more and more divided," said Emanuel Yitzchak Levi, a 29-year-old poet, schoolteacher and peace activist from Israel's religious left who attended a peace meeting at Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Square.

"It's really hard to keep being a friend, or family, a good son, a good brother to someone that's—from your point of view—supporting crimes against humanity," he said, reported AFP.

"And I think it's also hard for them to support me if they think I betrayed my own country," Levi added. 

Rallies calling for ceasefire held in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem have been met with hostility, with some calling the attendees “traitors.” 

The raised voices in Tel Aviv reflect a deepening polarisation in Israeli society since Hamas's October 2023 attacks left 1,219 people dead, independent journalist, and former editor at the Haaretz, Meron Rapoport reportedly told AFP.

Rapoport pointed out that even prior to the conflict, Israel was divided over the corruption investigation into Netanyahu and the consequential anti-corruption protests against the Israeli PM along with protests against perceived threats to judicial independence. 

The October 7 attack actually triggered a moment of national unity, Rapoport said. But as the conflict has dragged on, Israel's conduct has come under scanner both nationally and amid the international community, and attitudes on the right and left have become divided and also calcified.

"The moment Hamas acted there was a coming together," Rapoport told AFP. "Nearly everyone saw it as a just war. As the war went on it has made people come to the conclusion that the central motivations are not military reasons but political ones."

A survey conducted between July 24 and 28 by the Institute for National Security Studies, with 803 Jewish and 151 Arab respondents shows that Israelis, by a narrow margin, see Hamas as primarily to blame for the delay in reaching a deal on freeing the hostages. It also recording that only 24 percent of Israeli Jews are distressed or "very distressed" by the humanitarian situation in Gaza, where the UN has flagged a famine and recorded starvation deaths. The UN said, "a famine is unfolding" and Palestinian civilians are often killed while seeking food.

Many of the families of the Israeli hostages have accused Netanyahu of prolonging the war artificially to strengthen his own political position. "In Israel there's a mandatory army service," Mika Almog, 50, an author and peace activist with the It's Time Coalition told AFP. 

"So these soldiers are our children and they are being sent to die in a false criminal war that is still going on for nothing other than political reasons," he added. 

In an open letter published on Monday this week, 550 former top diplomats, military officers and spy chiefs urged US President Donald Trump to tell Netanyahu that the military stage of the war was already won and he must now focus on a hostage deal.  

"At first this war was a just war, a defensive war, but when we achieved all military objectives, this war ceased to be a just war," said Ami Ayalon, former director of the Shin Bet security service.

The conflict "is leading the State of Israel to lose its security and identity", he warned in a video released to accompany the letter

"At first this war was a just war, a defensive war, but when we achieved all military objectives, this war ceased to be a just war," said Ami Ayalon, former director of the Shin Bet security service.

The conflict "is leading the State of Israel to lose its security and identity", he warned in a video released to accompany the letter.

Amid all this, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is considering whether to rule on a complaint that the country has breached the Genocide Convention. This has also led to some fear in Israel. While only a few are distressed about Gaza’s starvation crisis, many citizens have children in the IDF who would then be considered war criminals when abroad. 

Israel and Netanyahu -- with support from the United States -- have denounced the case in The Hague.

온라인 카지노 사이트 has been covering the Gaza genocide since October 7, 2023. In its issue January 11, 2024 issue We Bear Witness our reporters and columnists provided reportage and analysis of the conflict. Written at the height of Israel’s airstrikes on the strip, 70-year-old activist and lawyer Zainab Al Ghonaimy's war diary sheds light on the inhuman conditions in which Gazans are surviving each day.

In Gaza is Our Home, researcher, writer and translator Yousef Aljamal highlighted the human impact of the political situation through his mother’s and sister’s stories. Also in the issue, Zak, a Palestinian man who worked in a mall close to the Al Shati refugee camp shared his harrowing story of escape from the Israeli attacks. Ali Abu Yaseem, a Palestinian author recalled the long minutes of war, saying that “In war, you will pass over the most important things unnoticed or without emotion, like talking about martyrs.”

And, Iftikhar Gilani wrote on Jewish-Muslim Relations over the decades, saying before the 20th century, Jewish history books were replete with accounts of the generosity of Muslim rulers who had granted them religious and social freedoms and saved them from the savageries of the West.

온라인 카지노 사이트 revisited Gaza in its January 11, 2025 issue War and Peace, in which the magazine ran a blank pagein lieu of an article by Motasem Dalloul who is a journalist covering the impact of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. He lost his two sons and wife to Israeli attacks in 2024. Dalloul was to write a note on life under siege for 온라인 카지노 사이트's 2024 Anniversary issue 'War and Peace' and even managed to share some updates with 온라인 카지노 사이트's Editor before we lost contact. The despatch remained incomplete. The blank page is to symbolise his story and the precarious lives of journalists and citizens in Gaza. It also symbolises the hope with which we wait for the rest of the despatch, just as we hope for an end to violence in Gaza and elsewhere. 

In a separate piece, two authors across time zones—Naveen Kishore, founder of the independent 온라인카지노 publishing house Seagull Books, and Palestinian poet and author Ghassan Zaqtan—wrote to each other about the human cost of war. And Shahina KK wrote profiled Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah who became the face of the resilience of Gaza in the face of relentless violence looks back on his experiences and how being exposed to a war-altered biosphere changes people’s well-being. 

As 온라인 카지노 사이트’s editor Chinki Sinha put it: “온라인 카지노 사이트’s twin editions at the beginning of 2025 are about who we become when we are at war and we have almost always been at war with each other, even the oldest and the biggest democracies. We have been spectators and consumers of war. Few have gone in and told the stories that are hard to cover and to report. Here, we have tried to listen.”