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Israeli novelist David Grossman has, in the teeth of the evidence, leveled the charge of “genocide” at his own country: “Israeli author David Grossman says his country is committing genocide in Gaza,” by Lorenzo Tondo, Guardian, August 1, 2025:
Grossman’s comments come days after two major Israeli rights groups said Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, amid growing global alarm over starvation in the besieged territory.
The author, who has long been a critic of the Israeli government, told La Repubblica he was using the word “with immense pain and with a broken heart”.
“Reading in a newspaper or hearing in conversations with friends in Europe the association of the words ‘Israel’ and ‘hunger’ – especially when this comes from our own history, from our supposed sensitivity to human suffering, from the moral responsibility we’ve always claimed to hold toward every human being, not just toward Jews – this is devastating,” said Grossman, who won the country’s top literary prize, the Israel prize, in 2018 for his work spanning more than three decades.
“The occupation has corrupted us,” he said. “I am absolutely convinced that Israel’s curse began with the occupation of the Palestinian territories in 1967. Maybe people are tired of hearing about it, but that’s the truth. We’ve become militarily powerful, and we’ve fallen into the temptation born of our absolute power, and the idea that we can do anything.”
But what Grossman calls an “occupation” is nothing of the sort. The Jews of Israel do not “occupy” their ancestral land, where they have lived for the past 3500 years. They do not “occupy” the territory that the League of Nations assigned to the Mandate for Palestine, in the expectation that that territory would become the independent Jewish state. They do not “occupy” land that they were entitled to retain in order that, as specified in UN Security Council Resolution 242, Israel would have “secure and defensible” borders.
What does David Grossman think Israel should have done in June 1967, after Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser had closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, made the UN’s U Thant remove peacekeeping troops from the Sinai, and sent tens of thousands of Egyptian troops northward through the now wide open Sinai, where they were in danger of invading Israel? Wasn’t Israel justified at that point to strike first, destroying virtually the entire Egyptian air force while the planes were still on the ground? And after the war was over, has Grossman forgotten that Israel had offered to give up the territory it had won if the Arab states were in exchange to make peace, and the Arabs offered their answer at an Arab League meeting in Khartoum in September 1967: “No peace with Israel, No negotiations with Israel, and No recognition of Israel.” What would he have had Israel do at that point? Unilaterally withdraw from all the territory it had won in the June war, so that the Arabs could launch another war of aggression from those very territories?
Grossman appears indifferent to Israel’s historic claims to Judea and Samaria, claims reinforced by both the League of Nations’ Mandate for Palestine, and by UNSC Resolution 242. He seems to think that Israel should be squeezed back within the 1949 armistice lines, which Lord Caradon, the author of UNSC Resolution 1942 described as a “rotten line,” nothing more than the line that marked where, when the guns fell silent on a certain day, the Israeli and the Arab armies stood. Does he really think Israel could survive a future war, given the enormous increase, thanks to oil, in Arab arsenals, if it were forced back within those 1949 armistice lines?
Asked what he thought of France and the UK being among the latest countries preparing to formally recognise a state of Palestine, Grossman said: “I actually think it’s a good idea, and I don’t understand the hysteria around it here in Israel….
And just how does Grossman think that the demilitarization of this future “state of Palestine” could be maintained? Would Israel have to constantly monitor, with its forces on the ground inside “Palestine,” whether arms were being smuggled in? Wouldn’t the Palestinian Arabs find ways to launch attacks against those IDF troops inside “Palestine,”and against the state of Israel, now so greatly reduced in size?
The kindest thing that you can say about Grossman is that in spite of all the awards that his novels have won, he is a dope. When it comes to international affairs, and the security of his own country. no one knows less, or is more unrealistic.Grossman’s son saw the fatuousness of his father’s political thought and served eagerly in the IDF, where he died a 20-year-old hero in Lebanon. His father essentially pissed on his grave several days later when he addressed a huge crowd of Israelis and condemned the army’s efforts to defend the country from the monsters on her borders.
There is the following history,even given in the Bible:
1. The land called LEBANON and ISRAEL and PALESTINE today was occupied by a group called the CANAANITES.
who were Semitic in language. Those of Lebanon was later called Phoenicians and later on,when established in north Africa,called CARTHAGINIANS. Different names for the same group with the same language. The Carthaginians-Canaanites later went to war against Rome,almost conquered them under Hannibal,one of the greatest generals in history.
2. The Canaanites were the original inhabitants who were there before the Jews.In the Bible the Jews went to war against them trying to take their land. In the book of JUDGES it talks of how like a DOZEN times the Jews accepted the Canaanite gods and intermarried with them.
3.Later the Jewish kingdom appeared under David and the Canaanite’s DNA became part of the Jewish group.The Canaanites in what is now Israel and Palestine disappeared as an ethnic group.
4. Later the SAMARITANS appeared, half-Jewish ( 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel)who worshipped Yahweh,accepted the Law of Moses. So in Jesus’ time there were TWO groups,Jews and Samaritans and BOTH had what?
CANAANITE DNA.
5.The Jews revolted against the Romans in 66-70 AD and later in 132-135 AD under BAR KOKHBA who claimed to be who?
The MESSIAH,was accepted as him by AKIBA, the greatest Jewish rabbi of his time and had an army of 200,000 to 400,000. Cassius Dio,(150-235),Greek,wrote 80 volumes of ”History of Rome” in Greek, says 580,000 Jews were killed.
6. All the historians of the time say that in the two revolts the SAMARITANS,who had Canaanite DNA, did NOT revolt, told the Romans they were NOT Jews and were SPARED by the Roman armies,who left them alone,no Samaritans were killed.
What happened to the Samaritans, scholars tell us: they later converted to what?
To CHRISTIANITY then later little by little to ISLAM and adopted Arabic as their language.The Samaritans were 1 million at the time of Jesus,in their own Roman province of SAMARIA,between the regions of Galilee in the north and Judea in the south.They never left the region.
My comment about CANAANITE DNA is based on genetic studies.
In a 2025 article by ”Bible Archeology Today” this was stated:
1. Canaanite culture was dominant in the Southern Levant during the Bronze Age (3,500-1,200 B.C.) As Iron Age I began, the Canaanite city-states faded.
What happened around 1000 BC?
The creation of the FIRST Jewish state with a KING.
2. After examining the DNA of 93 ANCIENT bodies recovered from archaeological sites around the southern Levant, the land of Canaan in the Bible, researchers have concluded that MODERN populations
of the region are DESCENDANTS of who?
The ancient Canaanites. Arabic-speaking groups ,that is to say PALESTINIAN for instance, and modern LEBANESE,
from the region show AT LEAST how much?
At least HALF of their ancestry, their DNA, as Canaanite.
3. In the study, published in Cell in May, 2020, the researchers explain that they used existing DNA analysis of 20 individuals, from ANCIENT SITES in
Israel and Lebanon, and then added 73 more, taking DNA from the bones of individuals found at Tel Megiddo, Tel Abel Beth Maacah and Tel Hazor (Northern Israel), Yehud (central Israel) and Baq’ah (central Jordan).
By first eliminating individuals closely related to other individuals in the sample, then comparing the remaining 62 DNA samples against a dataset of 1,663 modern individuals, they were able to
ESTABLISH
the GENETIC LINK
to the MODERN populations. The ethnic groups either still living where Canaan once dominated, or from that area prior to moving elsewhere, are
LARGELY descended from the Canaanites. And when not largely,the MAJORITY of the DNA,then
at least HALF of their DNA from the ANCIENT Canaanites there before who?
Before the Jews. Now I want to state that the 120,000 Jews who entered Israel from IRAK in 1950 have the large Canaanite DNA but NOT who?
The ASHKENAZIM, who make up 80% of Jews in the world,they are largely EUROPEAN in DNA, with little Canaanite DNA.
That doesn’t mean all the DNA of the Palestinians is Canaanite.The Arabs arrived in the 7th century and conquered, there was intermixture later when the population little by little converted to Islam.
Many Palestinians have the last name MISRI.
It means EGYPTIAN in Arabic.
In the first part of the 19th century the ruler of Egypt modernized the army along the Western model and instituted CONSCRIPTION.
30,000 Egyptian men fled to Palestine. They were SINGLE Egyptian men,not married.
Assuming most married who did they marry? They married LOCAL women who had Canaanite DNA,local Palestinian women.
Years from now more and more information will come out as facts,real facts,the truth. But there are people today who have contacts,friends in intelligence positions,friends,contacts who have access to secret information and are making statements.
One of them is the chairman of the World Zionist Organization.
One of the HEADS of Zionists,and also a Jew,since many Zionists are Christian.
It is a Black Swan event,meaning something totally unexpected. There are 15.8 million Jews of which 7,3 million are ISRAELI,leaving 8,5 million in the Diaspora.
Of which 350,000 are MESSIANIC Jews,meaning they believe Jesus was the Messiah,died and resurrected.
Sadly yet another of far too many examples of what I call “the self-gassing Joo.”
it is beyond comprehension that a fool like grossman would barrack for oct. 7 to happen to the rest of his countrymen and women . he is certainly no historian and obviously has never read the bible . being a fool and an ignoramus go hand in hand . the hamasites will eventually go the way of all of israels enemies . its just that it will be costly and wont happen overnight . the country is divided and the division will condemn them more than the gentile world .
It is NOT an “occupation.”
It isn’t even a copulation.
Yet another idiot attempting to represent our Jewish people using the same stupidity. He would most certainly gas our people in allegiance with Hitler back during WWII as he is now doing with Hamas. Apparently, he and others like him in Israel are responsible for giving legitimacy to the behaviors of these savage supporters called Gazans.
He and others like him should be sent to Syria under Al Sharaa. As a minority, non-Muslim, he would receive treatment like the Druze, the Christians, the Yezidis and it would be done regardless of his BS.
Go ahead Grossman, take your simpering, cowardly, Beta male self to a place in Syria where you will be hated and your wealth will be confiscated, and you will enter Dhimmitude as a way of life. You can rest upon your ignorance in both poverty and rejection and perhaps be captured and tortured while you try to convince them of your respect for them.
You are one of many useful idiots they continue using to propagandize the still ignorant world.
And all the left-leaning Israelis living in the Kibbutzim, they should have been exempt from all of this since they hold the same views as you do. Oh, that’s right they don’t live in Tel Aviv and both Hamas and all the Gazans supporting them cheered as the slaughter of innocents commenced and the only thing that mattered to them at all was massacring Jews.
Just another elitist who should have his Israeli citizenship revoked, be expelled from the land and then he can live among the nations where he belongs as a JINO. A really disgusting man.
Grossman wants his books to sell in the rest of the world because the inner Israeli market is relatively small. So the way to achieve it is to say all the ‘right’ things that would appeal to a fellow progressive reader.
Maybe some Islami’s should occupy his house and place of work