Some Israelis Have Lost It

There is indeed a morality problem - but it's not what some claim

In the previous post, “Israelis are not Moral Monsters,” I explained why the vast majority of Israelis who welcomed Trump’s plan have not lost their moral compass. Given the unique horrors and national-suicidal nature of the Hamas regime, virtually unparalleled in human conflict, and the absence of any other way to address them, extreme measures are required and are justifiable - in the exact same way as the global community took such measures in similar circumstances.

In this post, I’m going to say something that might appear to contradict all that. Some Israelis have indeed lost their moral compass.

I had never heard of Kinneret Barashi, but apparently she is some kind of TV personality. Here is what she posted on X yesterday:

In translation, this reads:

The 2025 Holocaust survivors (i.e. the hostages who were released yesterday) are proof that we need to erase every remembrance from the murderous mutation that is Gaza, from the birthing wards until the last of the elderly in Gaza. 100% death sentence in Gaza.

The post received thousands of likes and hundreds of shares.

Now, some would say that this wasn’t a serious proposal. She doesn’t really mean it, she said it in the heat of emotion after the horrifying sight of seeing Jews who are emaciated, who were physically and mentally tortured, who have effectively experienced the Holocaust in 2025. Israelis don’t actually want to kill every person in Gaza.

If you know enough Israelis, however, you know that this isn’t true. There are Israelis who really do believe this, and who even act on it. Indeed, during the funeral of IDF soldier Shoval Ben-Natan, his brother Uriah eulogized him by declaring that “You entered Gaza to take revenge — as much as possible. [Against] women, children — everyone you saw. As much as possible. That’s what you wanted.”

These people exist and we should not deny or ignore their existence. And it’s not a few dozen or a few hundred or even a few thousand. It’s important to recall that Ben Gvir had a picture of Baruch Goldstein displayed in his living room. He later took it down and said that Goldstein was wrong, but one can’t help but suspect that he said this for political expediency. Someone like Ben Gvir used to be politically toxic, but Bibi (for his personal needs) mainstreamed him and he now enjoys much support. People post pictures of Hamas posing their children with guns and speak about the horror of a culture that glorifies killing for their children, but you can find photos of Israelis doing the same thing with their children.

So, there are Israelis who seriously want to kill every last person in Gaza. And with arguments similar to those that I presented in my previous post, some would argue that it’s justified. They would claim that Gaza is a thoroughly murderous and evil culture, and therefore extreme action is required. They would say that we are simply responding to their crimes and terrible nature.

It is difficult to believe that we actually have to explain why this is wrong, but evidently we do. I hardly know where to begin, but here are some important points.

First of all, it is simply not the case that every single person in Gaza is murderous. There are plenty of people who have no desire to kill anyone. And if you want to kill them, it means that you’re murderous. Then there are children who are too little to know anything - yes, they may well grow up to be terrorists, but that does not mean that they should be killed now. And even if people have an abstract wish to kill all the Jews, that is not justification for killing them if they’re not actually putting that wish into practice. If everyone who wished death on other people would be killed, there would barely be anyone left in the world!

It also boggles the mind that a public figure can declare that Israel should be the first country in history to completely eliminate every person in another country, in a genocide that would have absolutely no parallel.

(Counter-claims about Amalek or other such things in the Torah are irrelevant. Those were very different times and circumstances, and in our era Jews seek to reconcile such things with morality, not set them as the banner of morality. As Rabbi Dr. Raphael Zarum explains in his book Questioning Belief, which I plan to review, national identity was a very different phenomenon in Biblical times than it is today.)

All this is completely different from the sort of forced population transfer proposed by Trump, which is in turn completely different from the horrific ethnic cleansings of history. Trump’s plan is (A) largely about naturalizing refugees in countries of their own ethnicity and historic origin, (B) completely in line with what the global community has found acceptable under even less extreme circumstances, (C) in accordance with international law under a non-politicized interpretation, (D) designed and likely to improve the lives of innocent Palestinians, and (E) only being proposed in the absence of any alternative.

So, does the existence of murderous Israelis mean that there is no difference between Israel and Gaza? No, of course not. The murderous Israelis are still a very small fraction of Israeli society. They are opposed by the majority, by the policy of every government, by the courts and the laws of the country, by the IDF’s code of conduct, by religious and other leaders, as well as by virtually every Jew abroad. In contrast, Hamas are the government of Gaza, enjoy much support, and the idea of killing every Jew enjoys even broader support, both domestically and internationally. And the entire Israel-Palestinian conflict originated, developed and endured because Palestinian and Arab leadership have consistently chosen rejectionism and brutal war against civilians over compromise. There is no comparison with Israel.

Nevertheless, the existence of murderous Israelis is something that we need to acknowledge and try to counter. There is no genetic difference between humans in Israel or Gaza or anywhere else. There are different religions and cultures and ideologies. The Jewish People, and Judaism itself, as has developed since the Talmudic period, are largely peaceful, peace-seeking and compromising. However, we are not immune from creating a sub-culture of violence and murderousness. The Torah, including in Neviim and the Gemara, does not shy away from pointing out such instances and condemning them.

Hamas, and Palestinian rejectionism in general, does not only threaten our lives - they also threaten our spiritual wellbeing. R. Chaim ibn Attar (1696-1743), the Ohr HaChaim, says that even in a Divinely-commanded situation of destroying an idolatrous city, it takes special Divine assistance not to be morally corrupted. We must strive to remain moral, even in the face of enormous challenges.