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href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-election-ad-boasts-gaza-bombed-back-stone-ages">https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-election-ad-boasts-gaza-bombed-back-stone-ages</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Israeli election ad boasts Gaza bombed
back to "stone ages"</h1>
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<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah">Ali
Abunimah</a></span> <span class="field field-blog">-</span>
<span class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single"
content="2019-01-21T17:17:40+00:00">21 January 2019</span></span>
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<p><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/benny-gantz">Benny
Gantz</a>, the former Israeli army chief, is
bragging about how much killing and destruction he
committed in Gaza in a series of campaign videos for
his new political party posted on YouTube and social
media over the weekend.</p>
<p><font size="-2"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=Hg3j7OQwY5I">https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=Hg3j7OQwY5I</a></font><br>
</p>
<p>Gantz hopes to replace Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel’s
prime minister in elections scheduled for April.</p>
<p>One of the videos, above, shows drone footage of a
devastated neighborhood in Gaza in August 2014,
following Israel’s 51-day assault on the territory.</p>
<p>The video’s title includes the words “Parts of Gaza
were returned to the stone ages.”</p>
<p>Against the swell of dramatic music, captions on
screen announce, “6,231 targets destroyed,” and “1,364
terrorists killed.”</p>
<p>The ad then claims that this carnage brought “3.5
years of quiet.”</p>
<p>A <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEUQId3oTNo">second
video</a> displays a kill-counter on screen racking
up bodies until the number 1,364 is reached. In the
background Palestinians are seen conducting funerals.</p>
<p>The video is another depraved celebration of killing.</p>
<p>All the videos contain the words “Only the strong
win.”</p>
<p>And they close with Gantz’s campaign slogan “Israel
before everything,” which could just as well be
translated as the Trumpian “Israel first.”</p>
<h2>Admission of war crimes</h2>
<p>In fact, the 2014 attack on Gaza, which Gantz
commanded, killed 2,251 Palestinians, including 1,462
civilians, among them 551 children, according to an <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/balance-un-gaza-report-cant-hide-massive-israeli-war-crimes">independent
investigation</a> commissioned by the UN Human
Rights Council.</p>
<p>More than 11,000 Palestinians, including 3,540 women
and 3,436 children, were injured with almost 10
percent suffering permanent disabilities.</p>
<p>Thus according to the independent report, fewer than
800, or about a third of those killed, were combatants
– far fewer than the 1,364 “terrorists” about whose
killing Gantz brags.</p>
<p>This means that Gantz considers Palestinian civilians
to be legitimate targets – effectively an admission to
war crimes.</p>
<p>That is potentially useful information for the human
rights lawyers who are <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/adri-nieuwhof/netanyahu-challenger-benny-gantz-faces-dutch-war-crimes-case">suing
Gantz and another top Israeli officer</a> in a Dutch
court for slaying six members of the family of
Palestinian-Dutch citizen <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ismail-ziada">Ismail
Ziada</a>.</p>
<p>A key finding of the UN-commissioned report was that
the mass destruction and killing inflicted by Israel,
often amounting to war crimes, “may have constituted
military tactics reflective of a broader policy,
approved at least tacitly by decision-makers at the
highest levels of the Government of Israel.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pLIvtsWVQU">A
third video</a> brags about the 2012 <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/why-doesnt-israeli-press-office-share-byline-new-york-times-gaza-coverage">extrajudicial
execution</a> of Ahmad al-Jabari, a Hamas military
leader in Gaza.</p>
<p>The <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCBEEI0YGao">final
video</a>, after three others celebrating slaughter,
presents Gantz as a statesman who hopes for “peace.”</p>
<p>According to <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/netanyahu-s-top-challenger-launches-campaign-revealing-long-awaited-election-slogan-1.6849611">opinion
polls</a>, Gantz’s brand new Hosen Le Yisrael
(Israel Resilience) party stands to win about 13 of
the 120 seats in Israel’s parliament.</p>
<p>Polling also shows that 31 percent of Israelis favor
Gantz as prime minister compared with 42 percent who
view Netanyahu as more suitable.</p>
<p>Netanyahu’s Likud Party is predicted to come out on
top with about 31-32 seats.</p>
<h2>Variation on a violent theme</h2>
<p>Gantz’s campaign slogan “Only the strong win” is a
variation on an infamous tweet from his main rival
Netanyahu, who last summer declared that “The weak
crumble, are slaughtered and are erased from history
while the strong, for good or for ill, survive.”</p>
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<blockquote data-width="550">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">The weak crumble, are
slaughtered and are erased from history while
the strong, for good or for ill, survive. The
strong are respected, and alliances are made
with the strong, and in the end peace is made
with the strong.</p>
— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) <a
href="https://twitter.com/IsraeliPM/status/1034849460344573952?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August
29, 2018</a></blockquote>
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<p>Miko Peled, activist and author of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/book-review-miko-peled-sets-record-straight-palestines-dispossession/11950"><em>The
General’s Son</em></a>, said of Gantz’s new ads
that it would be “hard to imagine a more violent
neo-fascist campaign than this one, by the new kid in
Israel’s elections, war criminal general Benny Gantz.”</p>
<div id="file-73746">
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<blockquote data-width="550">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">Would be hard to imagine a
more violent neofascist campaign than this one,
by the new kid in <a
href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Israel?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Israel</a>
elections, war criminal general <a
href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BennyGantz?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BennyGantz</a>.
All about death, destruction, power. And all he
did was kill people who never had an army. <a
href="https://t.co/dkUyepYoTz">https://t.co/dkUyepYoTz</a></p>
— Miko Peled, (@mikopeled) <a
href="https://twitter.com/mikopeled/status/1087022632304816136?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January
20, 2019</a></blockquote>
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<p>It is “all about death, destruction, power,” Peled
added.</p>
<p>Indeed in that respect Gantz, like Netanyahu, is
accurately reflecting the desires and fantasies of an
Israeli public that views the willingness to shed the
blood of defenseless Palestinians caged in ghettos
after decades of expulsion and military occupation as
the truest measure of leadership.</p>
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