We must face reality — the Gaza war is now a war of annihilation
Canceling Israel’s critics won’t change the reality of what is unfolding in Gaza
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in 2024. Photo by Getty Images
Contributing Columnist Jay Michaelson May 28, 2025
The gulf between Israel’s government and the rest of the world — including its allies, the Trump administration, the Israeli public, and the American Jewish community — is widening into a chasm. And yet some in Jewish leadership are hiding their heads in the sand.
Critics of the Netanyahu-Smotrich regime are no longer just campus protesters, or hostile-to-Israel regimes, or antisemites like the murderer of two young Jews at an AJC event in Washington, D.C., last week. They include former prime minister Ehud Olmert, who wrote in Haaretz that:
What we are doing in Gaza is a war of extermination: indiscriminate, unrestrained, brutal, and criminal killing of civilians. We are doing this not because of an accidental loss of control in a particular sector, not because of a disproportionate outburst of fighters in some unit — but as a result of a policy dictated by the government, knowingly, intentionally, maliciously, with reckless abandon. Yes, we are committing war crimes.
They include President Trump, who told reporters Monday that, “Israel, we’ve been talking to them, and we want to see if we can stop that whole situation as quickly as possible.” They include General Yair Golan, who made the factual observation that Israel is killing babies in Gaza, and has since been accused of spreading an “antisemitic blood libel.”
And they include, according to polls, a growing majority of the Israeli public, as well as reservists, including combat veteran Ron Feiner, who served in Gaza for 270 days, but who has refused to continue to serve, saying:
I told the battalion commander that I refuse to continue serving. I am motivated by the same values for which I came to serve and fight — I love the country and feel my future here slipping through my fingers. When the government openly declares that the hostages are at the bottom of the priority list … I am shocked by the never-ending war in Gaza, the neglect of the hostages, the incessant death of innocents, and the lack of political vision, and feel that I am morally unable to continue serving as long as this does not change.
What has prompted this change of mind from Israeli conservatives, veterans who served in Gaza, and hundreds of thousands of Israelis? Why have those of us who supported Israel’s actions in 2023 come to oppose Israel’s actions today? Are we the ones who have changed? Have we suddenly been overcome by a wave of internalized antisemitism?
Obviously, what has changed is the Israeli government’s policy. No longer is this war being carried out to free the remaining hostages and defeat Hamas. Now, the stated goal is to exile or eliminate the Palestinian population of Gaza.
“We are demolishing more and more homes; they have nowhere to return to,” Benjamin Netanyahu said during a Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting last week. “The only natural outcome will be a desire among Gazans to emigrate. Our main problem is finding countries willing to take them.”
This is a new, and dark, phase of the conflict.
And it is being put into practice. As part of the new offensive called “Gideon’s Chariots,” the IDF’s stated plan is to reoccupy 75% of the Gaza Strip, and cram all remaining Palestinians into three tiny zones. New heavy machinery has been moved into Gaza to grind the remains of its cities into dust.
And in the meantime, Israel has starved the population, bombed the last remaining hospital in the territory, and held up humanitarian aid, leading to horrifying images like this one and this one and this one and this one, all from the last few days. According to an Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report, 93% of Gazans are living with acute food shortages, and 12% (240,000 people) are experiencing “catastrophic” food shortages.
Yes, Israel is now set to allow some humanitarian aid into Gaza — though only enough to help 60% of the population. But even that is just a tactic. Pro-genocide minister Bezalel Smotrich said this week:
Truth be told, until the last of the hostages returns, we should also not let water into the Gaza Strip. But the reality is that if we do that, the world will force us to halt the war immediately, and to lose. It would be winning the battle, and losing the war. We are disassembling Gaza, and leaving it as piles of rubble, with total destruction [which has] no precedent globally. And the world isn’t stopping us. There are pressures. There are those who attack [us]; they are trying to [make us] stop; they are not succeeding. You know why they aren’t succeeding? Because we are navigating responsibly and wisely, and that’s how we’ll continue to do [it].
Echoing Netanyahu, Smotrich confirmed that the plan is to force all Palestinians into the southern tip of Gaza “and from there, God willing, to third countries, as part of President Trump’s plan. This is a change of the course of history — nothing less.”
As I wrote three weeks ago, the war of 2025 is not the war of 2023. And what Smotrich and Netanyahu have proposed violates the 1948 Genocide Convention.
After I wrote that article, I received numerous expressions of gratitude — mostly confidential, since some of the people thanking me hold positions of leadership in Jewish communities where they are not allowed to speak freely. I can certainly understand their position; after my article was published, a JCC in Indiana canceled a speaking engagement that it was hosting (on a completely different subject) and emailed an accusatory and inaccurate letter about me to their membership — without notifying me or my speaking agency that it had done so.
The letter read, in part, that:
Accusing Israel of wanting to commit genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza — a libelous claim that has no factual basis — is beyond the pale and unacceptable, no matter who is making the accusation. Moreover, the portrayal of Israel as a genocidal state is not simply a matter of words. It is this libel — that Israel is a genocidal state — that has been seized upon by foes of Israel on U.S. college campuses and beyond to intimidate, harass and commit violence against Jewish students.
Indeed, continued the JCC letter:
allowing our JCC and by extension our Jewish community to be associated with — and to be perceived by some as endorsing — someone who claims Israel is committing genocide further normalizes and legitimizes these dangerous and false claims. And we would be complicit.
Libel is a serious charge, of course, as is complicity in causing harassment and violence. And canceling a scheduled lecture without any opportunity for dialogue or even notice is a serious decision. But perhaps most serious is the fact that a self-identified Zionist rabbi who lived in Jerusalem for three years, who defended Israel’s actions in these pages in numerous articles, and who reached a reasoned, reluctant, and mournful conclusion after legal research and personal reflection — is now beyond the pale.
Of course, the JCC (which, again, did not notify me before, during, or after it sent its letter) did not speculate as to my motives for reaching that conclusion. They characterized my article as an “accusation,” “libelous claim” and “portrayal” rather than what it is, and was: a legal argument.
Now, we can debate the letter of the law — in this case, the Convention on Genocide — which requires an “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” As I argued on Oct. 20, 2023, and again on May 9, 2025, that intent was not present in the initial phase of the war. But after the statements above from Smotrich and Netanyahu, and many others like them, it is present in 2025. Ultimately, Palestinians must either leave Gaza; live permanently in a minuscule refugee zone which, at present, has no hospitals, schools, jobs, or food; or die.
That reading of the Genocide Convention may be incorrect. But I am hardly alone in this conclusion: Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy think tank, told Vox two weeks ago that the organization “has not used the term genocide before. We do now.”
And it is obviously not “a libelous claim that has no factual basis.” Forcibly expunging a population from an area — “ethnic cleansing” in the neologism invented by Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic to make it seem more palatable — has been determined in past cases, including Bosnia itself, to constitute the crime of genocide, when it carries with it the requisite intent. This isn’t libel; it’s case law.
But while we can argue about the right legal classification of Israel’s actions, let’s not lose sight of the reality: the leveling of Gaza, the ethnic cleansing of an entire territory, or in the words of Olmert, Golan, and Netanyahu and Smotrich themselves: war crimes, never-ending war, a war of extermination, “total destruction [which has] no precedent globally.”
That is the reality.
And in light of that reality, I ask: Who is really harming Israel here? It’s not those of us trying to pull the country back from the brink of indelible disaster. It’s the donors, and those dependent on them, who continue to cover their ears, close their eyes, and shut our mouths.
Echoing Feiner, Olmert, and others, a friend of mine recently posted on social media that “Both for moral and practical reasons, I am adamantly opposed to this latest phase of the war in Gaza. Yet I remain an ardent Zionist and a patriot. Which is why I have to protest this phase of the war with all my might.”
I feel similarly. We oppose this far-right regime not out of anti-Zionism, but out of Zionism; out of concern for the Jewish state that American Jews of all political persuasions have supported for decades. And because that state is endangered by a far-right regime that is bringing about the mutual assured destruction of Israel and the Palestinian cause alike.
Of course Israel has the right to defend itself. Of course Hamas is evil, and Oct. 7 was a hideous act of mass murder. Of course terrorism on the streets of America is to be condemned without qualification. Of course missiles still raining down on civilian populations in Israel is outrageous and is, itself, a war crime.
But it is just as morally and legally clear that it is wrong to bomb, immiserate, and starve an entire population with the stated goal of driving them out of their homes and their country. And that is now the government’s goal, whether a JCC board member admits it or not.
We can put our heads back in the sand. We can say that this war is still a war of necessity, self-defense and liberation of innocent hostages still being tormented by Hamas. But to do so, we must ignore the actions and statements of Israel’s leadership.
And our own humanity.
Who are we, as Jews? What have we become? How have we allowed our trauma, and the evils of our enemies, to poison us so? As the pro-Israel, pro-peace organization J Street put it in a recent social media post, “the generations that follow us will be right to ask where we were as Gaza was leveled, why we did not speak out and why we did not do what we could to stop it.”
Where am I? Hineni. I am here. I am speaking out. I will do what I can to stop this slaughter. And I know that I am not alone.
