In an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica on Aug. 1, Israeli author David Grossman said: “I speak as someone who has done everything in his power not to call Israel a genocidal state. And now, with immense pain and a broken heart, I have to see it happening before my eyes. For years I refused to use the word genocide. But now I can’t help but use it, after what I’ve read in the newspapers, the images I’ve seen, and speaking with people who were there.”
Grossman asked: “How did we come to be accused of genocide? Just uttering this word, ‘genocide,’ in reference to Israel, to the Jewish people, just the fact that there is this association, would be enough to say that something very bad is happening. Genocide is a word that can’t be ignored: once you say it, it just keeps growing, like an avalanche. And it brings even more destruction and more suffering.”
Grossman said that he is “desperately loyal” to a two-state solution, and said that he could see no other alternative. He also said that he could not comprehend the “hysteria” within Israel over French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to recognize the State of Palestine. Grossman is a longtime peace activist whose son was killed in service in the Israeli army in Lebanon in 2006. He joins a growing list of Israeli intellectuals and leaders who are calling for an end to the genocide, including Omer Bartov, an international expert on the holocaust; B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization; and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, to name a few.
