I have been agonizing over this appeal to every Israeli: why are you remaining silent in the face of the heinous crimes being committed in your name by your government against the masses of innocent Palestinian men, women, and children in Gaza?

By Dr. Alon Ben-Meir

No human being with a conscience can deny the excruciating pain and desolation many of you have endured stemming from Hamas’ unfathomable savagery and the piercing pain you have and continue to bear about the dead and the fate of the remaining hostages.

But then, because you know how it feels and are grappling to grasp what has befallen you, and are still haunted by the memory of the Holocaust, surely you can imagine the depth of agony and the torment that so many innocent Palestinians have and continue to endure.

Imagine that you are living under Palestinian rule and experiencing the unfathomable disaster and ruin being inflicted on you, on your family, on neighbors and friends, surrounded by utter ruin and desolation. Only the gates of hell are opened to engorge you.

Imagine you are a young woman who has just been pulled from underneath the rubble of your bombed home, regaining consciousness only to realize that your entire family of 22 is all dead under the wreckage.

Imagine that you are displaced time and again, with fellow Israelis who have lost everything, destined to live in a concentration camp, never to see your home again, in danger of being forcibly exiled from your country, never to set foot in it again.

Imagine being a mother watching her young son dying from a gunshot by a sniper, bleeding out in the middle of the road, while her daughter is shot as she comes to help her dying brother. Seeing your brothers, cousins, uncles, fathers, and grandfathers looking at the mutilated bodies of their children, only wishing to be buried alive with them to end their gut-wrenching grief.

Imagine that you have been ordered to vacate your home, with minutes to gather a few of your belongings. Then, you are forced to march, shambling along a dirt road, not knowing where you are going. But there will be no home to return to; only a pile of rubble that was once your hallowed sanctuary will be left behind.

Imagine being a starving child, grappling with thousands of other ravenous boys and girls for any scraps of anything—anything—to eat in piles of garbage. Often, you give up, despairing, feeling the other’s insatiable hunger. You have no tears left to shed, no voice to scream, and no strength to stand on your feet.

Imagine that you strayed away from the designated area for food distribution, not armed but simply ravenous, clamoring for a meager ration to survive just for another day. You pose no threat, but are randomly shot, along with many others who are killed or injured. The soldier’s only form of communication with you is gunfire.

Imagine that 15 Israeli paramedics were shot in the head when responding to an emergency call. Their Palestinian killers dug a deep trench with bulldozers and buried them along with their ambulances to hide an unspeakable atrocity.

Imagine that an Israeli militant is shooting at a few Palestinian soldiers. Instead of trying to kill or capture the fighter, the Palestinian commander ordered the bombing of the whole building from the air, knowing that over 100 innocent Israeli civilians would also be killed.

Imagine a Palestinian commander giving several of his fighters a box of grenades to toss from the car. When asked why they needed to do that, the commander said, ‘we want the Israelis to live in fear, in awe and constant dread, to drain them psychologically and make them know who owns this land.’

Imagine, every day, the Palestinian government murders, maims and buries Israeli corpses with their arms tied behind their backs, livers and brains shattered. This macabre scene is repeated time and again as the Palestinians’ appetite for more Jewish blood remains unquenched.

Imagine that more than two million Israeli Jews living in Gaza are enduring the worst calamity of their lives. You cannot measure their tragedy by how many were killed, which exceeds 58,000, but by the thousands of orphans and widows, the famine, the disease, and most notably, the loss of an entire generation’s future.

Imagine that you are living in Gaza, where international law does not apply, fundamental human rights are ignored, and the Geneva Convention is disregarded. All rules of conduct are tossed aside, replaced by raw, arbitrary, and transcendent violent force.

Your so-called “most moral military in the world,” the Israel Defense Forces, has become the Israel Destructive Forces, denigrating the value of human life. Your army has lost its moral compass, killing erratically, terrorizing, demolishing, devastating, and decimating at will, until nothing is left to spare but a wasteland, and an eerie void engulfs you.

Jean-Pierre Filius, a noted French historian who entered Gaza in December 2024, said, “Even though I have been in a number of war zones in the past, from Ukraine to Afghanistan, via Syria, Iraq, and Somalia, I have never, but never experienced anything like this.”

The indiscriminate, unrelenting bombing for 18 months of nearly every city, town, and village, leveling nearly every standing structure – schools, universities, hospitals, mosques, government institutions, cultural heritage sites, water treatment plants, and parks – undeniably is meant to make the entire Strip unlivable.

To add an unimaginable layer of inhumanity, your government stopped the supplies of food, fuel and medicine, causing mass deprivation, disease, and death.

The smell of death, the spooky silence, and the immensity of trauma are paralyzing. No one is talking, just staring aimlessly, confounded as to what has struck them and why.

It is clear why your government is refusing free access to the international press and why scores of Palestinian journalists were deliberately killed, fearing the world will see that your government’s wanton destruction, desolation, devastation and mounting death, unfolding before their eyes, is tantamount to genocide.

This is what your criminal government has inflicted on Gaza and its inhabitants.  You will have to carry the stigma, the stain, for generations. The international community looks at Israel with contempt, baffled by how such a country with an incredible capacity for good becomes a ruthless pariah state, and a brutal power that commits heinous human rights violations with impunity.

Yes, Hamas’ attack is unforgivable, and there is no denying that the Palestinians have made many colossal mistakes; there is no refuting Hamas committing myriad atrocities against you, no argument about Fatah’s repeated missed opportunities to make peace. But then, should all Palestinians be eradicated for their own governments’ misdeeds and erased as a nation?

For decades, you have been deceived and duped by your villainous leaders like Netanyahu, who misled you into believing that the Palestinians are an irredeemable foe. He exploited Hamas’ savagery to support what he has manipulated you to believe in.

Your indifference and disdain towards the Palestinians are not solely connected to Hamas’ horrific attack, but tragically is a product of decades of systematic dehumanization of the Palestinians. You have come to believe that they are beasts that feed on Jewish blood, and death must be their fate.

You did not want to seek the truth, which cannot be passively attained and is often latent below the surface. Your criminal Prime Minister has often concocted external threats, amplified the danger, and fabricated new perils to justify his position while presenting himself as the savior of the nation.

He and his fascist government blame the oppressed for their own suffering, a customary psychological manipulation tool used to maintain control, while cloaking themselves as the redeemer. They twist history to ensure ideological conformity to discourage you from understanding the conflict’s humanitarian dimension and its long-term, simmering, ominous implications.

The Netanyahu government’s intention is copiously clear: rendering Gaza uninhabitable, displacing its Palestinian population, and concurrently embarking on a systematic creeping annexation of the West Bank to realize its dream of greater Israel. Netanyahu’s government will not rest until every Palestinian in Gaza is dead, disabled, or displaced.

Tragically, the occupation has become a natural phenomenon as eighty percent of you were born after 1967. You have been manipulated to believe that maintaining the occupation is critical to your national security. Wrong! The never-ending bloodshed in the West Bank, the recurrent violence and battles against Hamas, culminating in the horrific war in Gaza, rendered you anything but secure.

Where do you go from here? Remember, after 77 years of conflict, today’s relations with the Palestinians have reached an unprecedented new low. Remember, a total of seven million Palestinians live in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel, roughly equal to the Jewish population.

You cannot now or ever destroy, disable, or displace all the Palestinians. They are around and within your communities. You have been ordained to coexist, no matter what your zealot messianic government tells you. The Palestinians are here to stay.

Whether or not God bequeathed this land to the Jews, the Palestinians, too, can make their rightful claim, rooted in their religious belief, and moral and legal rights enshrined by the UN, to establish a state of their own, on their land where they lived and buried their dead for centuries.

Your military can win every battle handily and inflict unimaginable death and destruction, but remember, the appearance of the Palestinians’ defeat is an optical illusion that obscures the deeper reality. This is a generational war that you cannot win, not now, not ever.

Your misguided government has already planted the seeds of another generation of militant Palestinians who will rise and never rest until they reclaim their stolen dream.

Do not confuse your military prowess with safety and security. This has proven to be a fallacy. You would have become much safer had you respected the Palestinians’ rights, much more secure if you had unshackled them from their servitude, and much better protected had you treated them with dignity.

Netanyahu betrayed you by prolonging the war. His acts are treasonous by any definition. The blood of hundreds of Israeli soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians who died in vain is on his hands. He must pay for the crimes against humanity that he sadly committed in your name.

You will always coexist with the Palestinians. You must choose between continuing bloodshed and enduring horrific losses for decades, clinging to the notion that one day you can have it all, only to realize that it was nothing but a delusion, bequeathing naught but death and ruin to your next generation.

Or choose instead a prosperous future together with the Palestinians, using your combined human ingenuity and resourcefulness to usher in a new dawn, an unimaginable renaissance that can transform the region into an oasis of riches that permeates every facet of life, never imagined before.

Rise. Pour into the streets en masse and demand the immediate resignation of this corrupt, cowardly, and craven government led by a criminal who led you astray.

I believe in your fortitude of spirit, your radiance of soul, and your resolute strength and courage to choose the right path. Only you can end this debilitating, draining, and ever more destructive conflict. It is in your hands to chart a new historic path that will usher in peace.

If you will it, it is not a dream.

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Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations, most recently at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.