After the October 7, 2023, horrific attack on Israel, which left around 1.200 Israelis dead, and about 5,431 more injured, the U.S. and all other civilized nations condemned the terrorist attacks. They expressed their support for Israel and its right to defend itself against such heinous terrorist attacks.

Unfortunately, Israel’s claim to the moral high ground in the ensuing Gaza conflict has seriously eroded. The former head of military intelligence for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), Ahron Haliva, can be heard in a newly released audio clip saying that the deaths of 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza are “necessary and required for future generations.”^[1] Haliva explains in the audio that “50 Palestinians must die, even if they are children,” for every Israeli death on October 7.^[2]

It appears that many members of the IDF who were part of Israel’s military response in Gaza and southern Lebanon agreed with the view that Israel’s retaliation against Hamas and the Palestinian people must, of necessity, be disproportionate to deter future attacks on Israel. There are numerous reliable reports of Israeli soldiers ignoring the accepted rules of military engagement when civilian populations are present. During the recent funeral of IDF reservist Shuvael Ben-Natan, a settler from the West Bank settlement of Rehelim who was killed fighting in Lebanon, his brother, Uriah Ben-Natan, proudly noted that his brother had also fought in Gaza in order “to take revenge-as much as possible – [against] women, children – everyone you saw.”^[3] One of Ben-Natan’s fellow soldiers also praised  him for setting a Palestinian home in Gaza on fire without authorization to “boost morale.” ^[4]

Military action by the Israeli armed forces has resulted in the deaths of more than 62,000 Palestinians in Gaza,^[5]with about one-half of those being women and children. Tens of thousands more Gazans have been injured. In addition, at least 128 journalists, mainly Palestinian, have been killed by IDF military forces in Gaza and southern Lebanon, and Israel has attempted to prevent critical reporting by banning Al Jazeera from reporting from Israel and the occupied West Bank. The majority of Gaza’s buildings and infrastructure have been damaged or destroyed.  Indeed, Israel seems to have successfully carried out the promise of Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to impose “a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed.^[6]

Israel’s failure to enforce military discipline and the indiscriminate killing of Palestinians in Gaza formed part of the basis for the International Criminal Court to indict Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minster Yoav Gallant in November 21, 2024 on war crime charges relating to the “use of starvation as a method of warfare and of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts …”^[7].

The origins of the growing starvation in Gaza can be traced mainly to Israel’s ban, as of January 2025, of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the leading humanitarian organization in Gaza, from operating there. ^[8] Without the UNRWA providing relief to starving Palestinians in Gaza, Israel, by default, assumed the responsibility for providing relief to Gazans, with disastrous results. By July 2024, UN experts reported that famine was spreading throughout the Gaza Strip.^[9] The experts said that “when the first child dies from malnutrition and dehydration, it becomes irrefutable that famine has taken hold.”^[10] As of August 17, 2025, it was reliably reported that the death toll from starvation in Gaza had climbed to 197, with four additional deaths reported in the previous 24 hours.^[11] Local authorities said that half of the victims were children. The World Health Organization documented that 21 children younger than five died of causes related to malnutrition in 2025, and the World Food Program said around 100,000 women and children needed urgent treatment for malnutrition.^[12] The situation in Gaza has reached alarming levels, with one in three people going without food for days. According to the UN, over 500,000 people are currently facing starvation, and the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) has indicated that two out of three famine thresholds have been met, including plummeting food consumption and acute malnutrition. As of early August 2025, the death toll from starvation has risen to 197, with many of the victims being children.

UN Assistant Secretary-General Miroslav Jenca expressed alarm over Israel’s reported planning to expand military operations and occupation of all or part of the Gaza Strip and urged Israel to allow the immediate and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief to prevent further suffering and loss of life. Meanwhile, in a recent meeting with President Donald Trump. Prime Minister Netanyahu denied the undeniable, claiming that there was “no starvation” and “no policy of starvation” in Gaza.^[13] However, Israeli officials have been unable to adequately explain why hundreds of humanitarian aid trucks lined up outside the entry points to Gaza are being prevented from entering and distributing aid.

Other evidence supporting the view that Israel has lost its moral compass can be found in the sharp increase in attacks by West Bank Israeli settlers on Palestinian villages in the West Bank. ^[14] Israeli settlers, with the apparent complicity of Israeli security forces, have begun to particularly target predominantly Christian West Bank villages, such as the village of Taybeh, where the Byzantine church there was burned to the ground.^[15] Israel’s anti-Palestinian campaign seems to have broadened to include an anti-Christian component, fueled by growing belief among many ultra-Orthodox Israelis that Christians and their religion no longer have a place in the Holy Land. Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem and elsewhere have been publicly vilified and spat upon by Jewish zealots, and an Israeli air strike destroyed the Holy Family Catholic Church, Gaza’s only Christian church, killing three people who were seeking refuge inside the church.^[16]

For perhaps 2000 years, the Jewish people have been subjected to discrimination, oppression, and genocide. Even before the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust took place, the U.S. and every other Western country were shocked by the massacre of 49 Jews in April 1903 in Kishinev, a southwestern city in czarist Russia.^[17] Sympathy for the Jewish people resulting from reports of this and other horrific examples of antisemitism played a key role in the U.S.’s decision to ease immigration restrictions against Jews from Europe and elsewhere. Now, for perhaps the first time in history, the Jewish people’s image of being an oppressed people with a well-deserved reputation of being of generally high moral character and values has been tarnished, perhaps irrevocably. The victim has now become the vengeful oppressor, with disastrous consequences for both Israel’s image as well as its long-term security.

But there is hope that Israel’s slide into a state-sponsored policy of revenge and destruction may be reversed. On Sunday, as many as 500,000 people took to the streets across Israel, demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and the return of the remaining hostages.^[18] Thousands of protesters gathered in Tel Aviv on August 9, 2025, demanding an end to the Gaza war and the release of hostages held by Hamas. Similar rallies calling for the end of the Gaza war also took place in New York, London, and cities all over the world. Israel can reverse course and start to act once again as the upright and moraTl example to the rest of the world that it has been for so many decades since it was initially established in 1947.

[1] The Independent, “It Doesn’t Matter now if they are children,” ex-IDI chief says 50 Palestinians deaths for every 7 October victim was “necessary,” August 18, 2025.

[2] Id.

[3] The Times of Israel, “Reservist eulogized for desire to take revenge against Gazans, setting home on fire to “boost morale;” October 27, 2024,

[4] Id.

[5] Associated Press, “Hamas accepts an Arab ceasefire proposal on Gaza as Palestinian death toll passes 62,000,” August 19, 2025, Victoria Eastwood, Samy Magdy and Melanie Lidman.

[6] Id.

[7] ICC Release dated November 21, 2024

[8] BBC, “What is Unrwa and why has Israel banned it?,”  Oct 29, 2024.

[9] UN Press Release, July 9, 2024, “UN Experts Declare Famine Has Spread Throughout Gaza Strip.”

[10] Id.

[11] Vatican News, August 17, 2025.

[12] Id.

[13] Id.

[14] New York Times, August 14, 2025, With Arson and Land Grabs, Israeli Settler Attacks in West Bank Hit Record High: Extremists are carrying out one of the most violent campaigns against Palestinian villages since the U.N. began keeping records.

[15] NPR, July 24, 2025, “A wave of Israeli settler attacks reaches a Christian village in the West Bank.”

[16] Christianity Today, “Israeli Strike on Gaza Church Leaves Three Dead,” July 25, 2025

[17] Stanford Report, April 23, 2018, “Stanford scholar illuminates how 1903 Kishinev pogrom happened, and its cultural impact today.”

[18] RNS, August 18, 2025, “Israel took to the streets. Here is why.”

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Kenneth Foard McCallion is an international human rights and plaintiffs’ attorney based in New York who was lead counsel in the French Holocaust litigation and counsel in several other Holocaust and genocide-related cases. His best-selling legal biography, “Saving the World One Case At a Time” (Bryant Park Press), has become a “must-read” book for a generation of law students, lawyers, and anyone else interested in how civil and human rights cases, as well as environmental disaster cases, can be successfully pursued through the judicial system.

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