gideon levy in tel aviv, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. it s such a pleasure to be back in hardtalk with you, stephen. well, it s a pleasure to have you on the show. let s begin with a very basic fact you are one of your own israeli government s fiercest critics. you have been for a long time. you ve certainly been an arch critic of the israeli military strategy in gaza. given all of that, i just wonder how you feel sitting in tel aviv watching the international court ofjustice consider the case of genocide filed against israel. i was watching it with a lot of sadness, depression
there was a horrible thing happening on the 7th, and we have to get up, get back to our values, because those are the only universal moral values i know. i don t know other moral values. i don t know revenge as a value. i don t know hatred as a value. and i don t think that it will lead us to anywhere. the fact that vivian was killed, does it help now that we kill 1,000 vivians in gaza? does it help to anyone? one of the most recurrent messages in your columns in haaretz since october 7th and since the israeli military operation was launched has been this increased alarm you seem to feel at the dehumanisation of palestinians by the mass of israelis, and you seem to see a total lack of empathy. but don t you exaggerate when you say, as you ve said recently, that israel, quote, is going mad. mccarthyism and fascism reign. you are.you are devaluing
ways as questionable? stephen, israel was alwaysjudged on different criteria. we have to admit it, but it goes both ways. it goes for the good and for the bad. israel feels and is part of the west. israel is considered the only democracy in the middle east. we don t want to be compared neither to sudan nor to syria, nor to libya. we are something else. and, yes, stephen, there is a special sentiment toward thejewish people throughout israel. the story of israel is a very unique one. you cannot compare it to any other country. and still, nothing will make it easierfor me, and for any man of conscience, any person of conscience, what s going on now in gaza. nothing of those things about the special case of israel, the special history of israel, obviously the barbaric attack
it doesn t lead to any good place, neither for israel nor for the palestinians, by the way, and. so when ghazi hamad, a senior hamas official in beirut, just a couple of months ago says, the al aqsa flood 0peration their name for what they did on october 7th is just the first. there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve and the capabilities. you re just saying, oh, you know what? we lljust ignore that. that s just rhetoric. we won t take that seriously. and stephen, do you think if we continue now and kill another 20,000 people in gaza and destroy the left, the left of what s left in gaza, then this will not happen? you really think that we can avoid everything and prevent everything and retaliated? no. there are limits to what we can do by power, by force. and we reached this point and now it s time to try something else. first of all, negotiation about the hostages. and, yes, we are facing a very complicated reality. i don
wasn t being heeded then. but the whole dynamic has shifted since. you actually visited kibbutz be eri, one of those kibbutz hardest hit by the hamas horrors. and you said, i ve never in my life seen such difficult sights. it is impossible to let them pass without settling accounts with everyone responsible. those the words of peacenik gideon levy. so i come back to this practical point you ve got to. to be credible, you ve got to have an idea of how these people that you want to hold to account can be tackled, if it s not by the idf s current strategy. we should tackle them, we should punish them. we cannot punish 2.3 million people. it s unacceptable in any case. but if hamas is woven into the fabric of gaza as not just a military network, but a social, economic and political network, if they are ingrained and figuratively and literally entrenched in gaza, how else do you eliminate them? first of all, you can t eliminate them because for israel,