Discussion on Innocence in Gaza Conflict

Do you think there are innocent people in Gaza?

Yes.

Who?

I think there are children who were born in Gaza this morning.

Okay, and—

Okay, and what—

This morning, this morning, fine. Starting tomorrow, they begin teaching them how

to hate us, how to murder us, and that's all they think about until they grow

up and become terrorists.

I'm with you.

Okay.

Okay, and for the sake of our conversation, let's assume you're right. So what do you want to do about it?

Okay, they were born today,

but tomorrow they're already taught,

so tomorrow are they already... still innocent?

I'm telling you, I'm with you.

Okay.

I know there are textbooks and religious institutions

that are very, very inciting against you and me in Gaza right now.

Let's assume, for argument's sake, from day one.

Mm-hmm.

And...?

And what?

Because you asked whether there are innocent people in Gaza. So what's the conclusion?

That everyone should be killed? That it's permissible to kill everyone?

I think the question was more—

Yes.

whether you think we're committing genocide in Gaza.

I don't think we're committing genocide in Gaza.

First of all, I don't want to evade her question, and now the film and the abuse

and everyone. I don't think we're committing genocide.

Genocide is systematic, it's deliberate. We know that from history, we

know that from our own history. I don't think we're committing genocide in Gaza.

Do you think it should be done?

I don't want there to be even—what is it?

Do you think it should be done?

I'm really asking. I really, really am.

No, no, it's a serious question.

I'll answer you seriously.

No, following Charlotte's question, about the innocent people.

I know what your first question was, and I know how

you tried to sugarcoat things in your second question, and here you're giving

me an opportunity to say what I think. The noise you heard here

just now was a lot of people

who were astonished, or a little uncomfortable,

or objected to my question.

Amazing.

I, I

understand why you asked what you asked. I understand why you're

asking me with a half-smile whether I think there's

one innocent baby from Gaz— in Gaza.

Okay.

I understand.

How old are you girls, 17?

Seventeen.

Meaning, this government was thrust on you at age 13

and October seventh at age 14.

Okay.

I understand. You had a government minister who suggested dropping a nuclear bomb—

He said it was

an option to drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza. You had ministers

in the government and people in the media and on social media

who explained to you that there isn't a single innocent person in Gaza,

that everyone deserves to die and they all need to be killed.

And at the same time

you had sirens, runs to shelters, and nights upon

nights upon nights for nearly three years, when you couldn't sleep a single night

straight through. And when the education system is a question, it's

a riddle whether there will be school tomorrow morning or not.

I understand. That's why I came. There are innocent people

in Gaza, and a newborn baby or a child of

seven or five, pick a number, whom they begin

to incite, brainwash, and make want

to murder Israelis, that still doesn't give you, me, or anyone

the legal or moral right

Kill him. There are rules about who may and who

may not be killed.

There are rules. Even in war, there are rules.

The laws of war are an entire field of law dealing precisely

with these situations. I won't lecture you now, and we won't get into

every—person

who is about to kill, who is a ticking bomb, a person

proven in court to have killed, and so on and so on and so on.

I understand the fear, I understand the hatred.

I just want to say one simple thing. These voices

in the media, from the government, online

and around you, that you hear,

"There are no innocent people there.

We need to kill them all. Today's babies are tomorrow's terrorists."

That's not who you are. These voices turn

us into them. Everything you, at age seventeen,

here at a school in Tel Aviv,

are saying about them now is on the path

to becoming our moral decline, that thing you're so

afraid of and hate. We are not

Hamas, we are a democratic state, and I would add,

as a secular Jew,

that it includes not only the Chief Rabbinate or political parties

corrupt, racist Haredi women in the Knesset. That also includes

Jewish morality. It also includes the history of our people.

We are a democratic, law-abiding

and Jewish state,

which, no matter what incitement there is in Gaza's textbooks

against us,

cannot act by the same methods, because then we will have

nothing left.