Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the fight against “barbarism” a central argument in his address to the United Nations General Assembly last Thursday, presenting the Israeli occupation entity as waging a battle in defense of “global civilization.”
In an article published by Haaretz, the Zionist journalist and writer Gideon Levy argues that Netanyahu has lost the right to speak about barbarism while “Israel” refuses to confront what it has done itself.
Levy notes that this rhetoric is not new for the Israeli prime minister. In 2024, Netanyahu spoke of “savage enemies,” a characterization Levy says reflects a broader view within Israel that sees the country as perpetually confronting “barbarians.”
But Levy turns the question around: If “Israel” claims to be fighting in the name of civilization, what does that say about its political and social reality—and about its actions in Gaza and the West Bank?
From Occupied Lands to Gaza
Levy begins at home, referring to the directors of the film Naza, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Zor, who had not returned to the occupied lands amid a campaign of incitement and threats that followed the film. Abraham said he feared he might not be able to return.
Levy places this alongside political and electoral rhetoric that he says has increasingly accommodated calls for killing, expulsion, and displacement, asking how such language can become normalized in a state presented as a democracy, whether in parliament or on the streets.
He then turns to Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons, noting that more than 100 Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli custody since the beginning of the war. He points to malnutrition and hunger, the spread of scabies, shortages of medical care and hygiene supplies, and physical assaults, stressing that most of these detainees have not been tried.
Levy thus returns the same word to those who use it: If this is not barbarism, then what is?
Gaza, however, is where Levy’s article levels its strongest accusation. He rejects the idea that the October 7 attack can serve as an open-ended warrant justifying everything that followed. Citing the scale of civilian deaths and the widespread destruction in the Gaza Strip, he argues that the war was not merely an unrestrained military response but a moment in which constraints that had curbed a degree of violence were removed, until what had once been considered exceptional became part of the ordinary.
Levy also places some responsibility on the political camp seeking to replace the government and on much of the media, arguing that silence and habituation have helped normalize this reality. As a result, he says, “Israel” can present itself abroad as a guardian of “civilization” while these developments pass internally without scrutiny commensurate with their gravity.
Haaretz’s Levy argues that the Israeli occupation’s portrayal of itself as a defender of “civilization” is increasingly at odds with realities inside the occupied Palestinian territories. He contends that the normalization of violence, detention conditions, and the devastation in Gaza raise fundamental questions about who gets to define barbarism and who is held accountable for it.