A distinguished Israeli journalist who covers Gaza for Haaretz, Gideon Levy (The Punishment of Gaza) is a skilled messenger alerting his fellow citizens to the moral reckoning confronting their nation in Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe. Levy's provocative second book places the attacks by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent war at the core of its riveting narrative and collects his coverage--originally published in Haaretz from 2014 to 2024--of the Israeli occupation. Levy paints an unsettling portrait of generations of people deprived of basic freedoms and human rights.
The reality of Gaza, Levy contends, is "hidden from the eyes of the Israeli public" by a propaganda-driven media that dehumanizes Palestinians and encourages its audience to believe that their suffering and their rights are the only ones that matter. He urges Israelis to "sober up" to the horrors being committed in their name.
Beginning in 1987, Levy traveled regularly to Gaza for his reporting until the Israeli government revoked press access in 2006, after an Israeli tank shelled a nursery school minibus filled with Palestinian children. As he expands on this critical and haunting historical context, Levy passionately advocates for a one-state solution that is, in his learned opinion, the only viable option left to pursue. "The two-state solution," he states bluntly, "is dead. Seven hundred thousand Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem killed it."
Levy gracefully reminds readers that "it's always darkest before the dawn" and that they have a collective stake in ending both the Israel-Hamas war and the untenable occupation of Palestinian lands. --Shahina Piyarali