"Kill all men in Gaza": Netanyahu ally

The lack of Western media reporting on this underlines how anti-Palestinian racism is endemic

The fact that almost the Western media hasn’t reported on this tells you all you need to know.

Now sure, the deluge of genocidal statements coming from Israeli leaders, politicians, officials, media outlets, journalists, soldiers, ordinary citizens is so vast, so incessant, that it is very difficult to keep track of.

That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be reported on. After all, it speaks to Israel’s genocidal intent, which is crucial in establishing that Israel is perpetrating genocide, which of course it is. It also speaks to how a genocidal atmosphere is created in Israel: we know there is overwhelming evidence of Israeli soldiers restating or graffitiing genocidal statements from Israeli politicians as they commit war crimes.

Now, meet Nissum Vaturi, the deputy speaker of Israel’s Knesset, which is their parliament. He’s also a member of Likud, the main governing party, whose leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is prime minister. Vaturi is a very loyal defender of Netanyahu, once declaring:

Thanks to Netanyahu, we still exist; if he had listened to Defense Minister [Yoav Gallant], we could have reached destruction.

It is striking that he sees Gallant as too moderate, given the now former defence minister is, alongside Netanyahu, a wanted man by the International Criminal Court, with an arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In an interview on a Haredi radio station in Israel, Kol BaRama, which was reported on by Israeli investigative outlet The Seventh Eye two days ago, he said:

Who is innocent in Gaza? Civilians went out and slaughtered people in cold blood … We need to separate the children and women and kill the adults in Gaza, we are being too considerate.

He described the people in Gaza as “scum and subhumans”, claiming “no one in the world wants the civilians in Gaza”. Referring to Jenin in the West Bank - currently subject to a 5 week Israeli siege - he said: “We will soon turn Jenin into Gaza”, adding: “Erase Jenin. Don’t start looking for the terrorists ... if there's a terrorist in a house, take it out."

All of this is straightforward genocidal incitement. He specifically calls for the killing of all Palestinian men in Gaza: it should be noted that the Srebrenica Massacre in the Bosnian war - when Serb forces slaughtered Bosniak men - was judged to be a genocide.

As the Seventh Eye notes:

Reminder: Incitement to violence and calls for murder and crimes against humanity are prohibited by law.

But they add: “The prosecutor's office and the police will do nothing.”

Indeed, specifically the public incitement of genocide is a criminal act. The Genocide Convention of 1948 criminalised the public incitement of genocide. Israel then legislated to make that Convention law in 1950, and believe it or not the public incitement of genocide remains a capital offence in Israel.

Last year, one of the provisional rulings of the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take action against the public incitement of genocide. On this point alone - given the incessant stream of genocidal rhetoric in the state - the failure to take legal action itself leaves Israel in violation of the Genocide Convention.

And yet his latest genocidal statement has, at the time I recorded this, received no meaningful coverage in the Western media that I can find. Middle East Eye, who have done consistently brilliant coverage, have reported on it, but not mainstream newspapers or broadcasters.

And indeed this Likud politician is a repeat offender. Last month, Vaturi said that every child born in Gaza is “already a terrorist, from the moment of his birth.” There is a repeated pattern of children and babies being described as incipient terrorists on Israeli television, thus helping to justify their slaughter - at least 17,000 children and 1,100 babies have been killed according to the official statistics, which are, according to repeated expert analyses, underestimates.

Last May, Vaturi bragged about personally blocking aid deliveries to Gaza, in an effort to starve its population of the essentials of life - like food, fuel, and medicine - with the inevitable aim of killing its people.

In November 2023, Vaturi declared:

All of this preoccupation with whether or not there is internet in Gaza shows that we have learned nothing. We are too humane. Burn Gaza now no less!

Even Twitter suspended his account for that, until he apologised and deleted the tweet. He deleted it, but didn’t apologise. Quite the opposite: two months later, he said in a radio interview:

I stand by my words… It is better to burn, to destroy buildings than for soldiers to be hurt.

When asked about innocent Palestinians in Gaza, Vaturi said:

We saw their celebrations before the army came in, and we saw their crocodile tears after the army came in. I have no mercy for people like that.

Now throughout the genocide, the Western media has consistently failed to report on genocidal statements by the likes of this politician. The Israeli media has done a better job of reporting on it.

This includes genocidal statements from the very top, from the very start. In a video published on 10th October 2023, addressed in part to “the residents of Gaza”, fronted by Major General Ghassan Alian - then in charge of COGAT, the civilian arm of the Israeli army - declared:

Hamas became ISIS and the citizens of Gaza are celebrating instead of being horrified. Human beasts are dealt with accordingly. Israel has imposed a total blockade on Gaza. No electricity, no water, just damage. You wanted hell - you will get hell.

There was no pretences here. He’s clearly referring to the civilian population of Gaza as human beasts, he’s declaring they have collective guilt, and he’s also declaring they will accordingly suffer collective punishment - in the form of the illegal deprivation of the means of survival, as well as as getting “just damage” and “hell.”

That’s a slam dunk example of genocidal intent, and it was barely reported on by Western media outlets at the time. This is deceit by omission, because Western media outlets did not explain to their readers and viewers what Israel’s publicly stated intent was at the start, instead framing this as so-called ‘self defence’ and simply an attempt to rescue hostages and defeat terrorists.

The link between genocidal statements and genocidal behaviour is straightforward - which is why the Genocide Convention criminalised the public incitement of genocide in the first place, on the grounds that all genocides begin with words.

Indeed, the Israeli president Isaac Herzog, at the start of the genocide, declared in a press conference:

It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.

And Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israeli soldiers:

“You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.”

This is the biblical story of how the nation of Amalek attacked the Israelites, and the Israelites responded by killing all their men, women, children and livestock.

In South Africa’s case alleging genocide against the Israeli state, the legal team showed a video of Israelis soldiers joyously chanting and regurgitating both Netanyahu’s reference to Amalek, and Herzog’s reference to uninvolved civilians

https://news.sky.com/video/south-africa-brings-genocide-case-against-israel-at-icj-13046226 (1:16 onwards)

The failure of the Western media to report on these genocidal statements, which reveal Israeli intent, is one key feature of the complicity of the Western media in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.

Yet right now, the Israeli state is acting on its genocidal intent. That’s what has led to the mass slaughter of so many civilians - including, we must emphasise, in the West Bank, where Israel’s deputy speaker declares he wants to make another Gaza.

Now Sky News, to their credit, have actually reported on Israeli snipers killing a 10-year-old Palestinian boy, Saddam Rajab.

He was shot for no reason by Israeli snipers, and left to die in pain. The ambulance was deliberately obstructed by Israeli soldiers, ensuring that this little boy died.

This sort of atrocity is made possible because of dehumanisation and genocidal incitement. These children are simply not regarded as humans. And that includes the Western media, because the vast majority of that media refuse to report on the absolute horror of thousands and thousands of Palestinian children being butchered.

There was far more outrage over the fictional beheading of Israeli babies than the actual mass slaughter of so many Palestinian babies, toddlers, teenagers, you name it.

And indeed overnight, three Palestinian babies in Gaza have reportedly frozen to death, because of Israel’s continued refusal to allow in enough shelter and fuel, as Gaza suffers its coldest day in 20 years.

All of this is made possible by an atmosphere of genocidal mania in Israel, which goes unchecked because Western media outlets and politicians do nothing to challenge it. There is total impunity for Israel. And that impunity has led to one of the worst crimes of our age.