A Conversation with Boaz Bismuth

Pamela Paresky: Tell me about the speech that you had planned to give in Strasbourg and then the speech that you did give.

Boaz Bismuth: On one hand, I’m very pleased. On the other hand, I’m frustrated. I worked on my speech, and it was an important speech that I wanted to give in Strasbourg. But when I went there, I saw the report they prepared. They did condemn the 7th of October, but then you see the linkage between humanitarian principles and the ceasefire, and we know exactly what ceasefire means. The third point was concerning the violence in the West Bank, Judean Samaria, and the violence of settlers. Then you had another fourth point about the two-state solution, which again is awkward because you don’t give a prize to a terrorist organization by speaking about the two-state solution. I felt frustrated. I felt it was unfair. But then at the European Parliament, we heard the speeches of the Irish representative and then the guy from Cyprus and the guy from Turkey and I think Belgium, and I felt it was outrageous. They were not only speaking about genocide but about the Holocaust, like we are doing a Holocaust in Gaza now when what has happened in Israel, what has happened in the kibbutzim around Gaza, was exactly a page in the Shoah, a page in the Holocaust. So it was for me very frustrating.

PP: What was your speech going to say?

BB: That the Jew can defend himself. He’s entitled to it. If he defends himself, he’s not committing genocide. I took, for example, I don’t know if I would have had time, you speak only for three minutes, but I will tell you. When I was in high school, my parents sent me here to Israel to a school in Jaffa. We learned about Shakespeare, and we learned The Merchant of Venice, and I remember the speech of Shylock ever since I was a kid that if you hurt me, won’t I bleed, and if you tickle me, won’t I laugh, and if you do me harm, can’t I revenge? It’s exactly the same thing. Every nation, everyone can defend himself. When it comes to Israel, immediately they say ‘genocide.’

And then, the Belgian member of parliament in one of the sessions over there said that maybe we should stop arming Hamas and Israel. That’s forgetting that Israel is not only at war with Hamas but also Hezbollah, Houthis, and who knows who else tomorrow. So you see that this is pure antisemitism like in the past, with one big difference and that’s what I also said in my speech. Yesterday, during the Second World War, during an inquisition, during the Kishinev pogrom, what did the Jew do? He ran away. What does he do today? He defends himself. But when he should defend himself, immediately we speak of genocide. And this brings me also to the ICJ [International Court of Justice], which is also shocking because try to imagine eighty years ago, that you have an ICJ, Great Britain is fighting against the Nazis, and Great Britain is being summoned to court. That’s exactly what happened.

PP: Some of the evidence that was presented about Israel committing a genocide had to do with what some of the politicians in Israel said, including you. Can you just talk about what your Amalek comment was and what it means?

BB: We all know what genocide is and unfortunately there is good and evil. Although we’ll try to paint everything in bright colours, there is good and evil. Those who are committing genocide are evil and those who penetrated our country, if they could they would have committed genocide because when you kill kids, when you kill elderly people, you kill anyone and everyone. If you give them a chance they will commit genocide, so those who are committing genocide it’s them. You know, in 1949, when UNRWA was created, UNRWA, the agency for the Palestinian refugees, they were talking about 500,000 Palestinians. Today they speak of seven, eight, nine million, I don’t even know how many. I’ve never seen a genocide when populations grow, to show you how absurd that genocide accusation is. Another thing about genocide is when you kill people in a vicious way, in a blind way, you don’t even see it and you just throw your bombs. Israel in Gaza, before we strike, we tell the people we’re going to attack. Sometimes even we call them on the phone. And I’m not even talking about the humanitarian aid that is coming in all the time. This is why I was so upset and angry and said what I said.

Another thing I said in my speech was that I did not come to Strasbourg to justify myself. Even today, when I face my friends in the international community, the last thing I’m doing is justifying myself. I come as the accuser because I accuse you of not allowing me to win this war. I accuse you, for example, the Red Cross, it’s almost 130 days of captivity and you haven’t seen yet the hostages.

PP: And to get back to the comment about Amalek, can you just say who Amalek was in the Bible and what this idea is?

BB: Amalek was, of course, evil and wanted to destroy Israel. When we say it, it’s like a term, it’s like a saying in Israel. Even the President mentioned it, and you can’t say that the President is an extremist. It’s like a metaphor of an enemy but a vicious one. This is Amalek. Now, with all respect, because I am not afraid to face my tweet, I said there were no naive citizens in brackets. The third wave that came inside our kibbutzim, our towns, on the 7th of October, were civilians from Gaza with kitchen knives and they not only slaughtered babies, they even took the babies’ toys. Yet, despite this, I am at war against terrorism, never civilians. The
difference between me and them is, as Golda Meir said in 1973, I shall maybe
one day forgive you for having killed my children, but I will never forgive you
for having made me kill yours. If we kill, God forbid, a civilian it’s by mistake and believe me my soldiers will not sleep at night when they do it. Hamas celebrate it and this is the difference between us and them. So they will not give me moral lessons and they will not give me grades and my tweet was 100 percent legitimate and if they took us to court because of quotes and not because of actions, it shows everything.

PP: It makes me think of the position that we’re in in the United States where people have started to say that speech is violence.

BB: America is important as well. We had more than 300 planes coming from America with support. We had, of course, the veto of American public opinion. America is my best friend and thank God in a changing world, I want America to stay the number one power. This is very important because we saw also who the competitors of America—China and Russia—are. Now I share with America the same values. I want America to be proud of my friendship. I’m not a burden to America.

A few days ago, three American soldiers were killed on the border between Syria and Jordan. How did America react? React by force. I was a journalist before being a politician. I covered wars. I covered the war in Iraq. I covered the war in Afghanistan. What did America do in Mosul after terrorists attacked America? It took them nine months, but they came to fight against terrorism. What is Israel doing right now? Exactly the same thing. What did France do after Bataclan? They attacked Raqqa in Syria. That’s exactly what we do today. You defend yourself against terrorism. So what other countries are doing, we’re doing the same thing. That’s it.

PP: So what is your assessment of how this genocide accusation made it all the way to how it went? Why was it not just rejected out of hand?

BB: First of all, I’m happy about public opinion in Israel because you can be secular, religious, you can be left or right and everybody knows how absurd it is. Everybody is proud of our soldiers. Everybody knows exactly the instructions. My daughter went to the army two weeks ago. I see she got instructions. She’s talked to me about how before you shoot there’s all the restrictions you have. I am proud of my army.

I want to tell my audience, the people who are watching me, trust us. We don’t do it only for you. We don’t do it only because we’re afraid of the ICJ. We do it for ourselves. We respect people. My God, I mean, if a Palestinian kid now has a problem, I have a problem. He’s important to me. Let me be very personal now. I have four kids. Among them there is one that has some heart problems, tough ones. So we go to hospital. Many times I go there, and I have to wait because the doctors are dealing with little kids from Gaza. When he had his open-heart surgery, just beside him was a little kid from Gaza, having his open-heart surgery. For us, a kid is a kid. It can be from Germany, it can be French, it can be from Gaza. He’s a child.

I wish, before talking to us and bringing us to the ICJ, why don’t you put some pressure on the other side? Let’s take the Palestinian Authority for example. Why does nobody put pressure on the Palestinian Authority to condemn what has happened on the 7th of October? When you have a survey in the Palestinian Authority saying that 73 percent of the Palestinians approve of 7th of October, why don’t you go and see them? It’s always Israel and the same pattern again and again and again, but as I said before I don’t need to justify myself because I know I am moral. I do it for me, I do it for my ancestors, I do it for my descendants. I will always keep my dignity. I will always respect international law; I will always respect humanitarian law. Not for you, for me.

PP: That survey, that 73 percent, what was most interesting, I think, was that in the West Bank, the number was 85 percent and in Gaza, it was 52 percent. But in Gaza, the approval for October 7th has gone down. It’s 52 percent. It lends credence to the approach that the IDF and that Israel is taking, that it is actually having an effect on the thinking of the people in Gaza, that maybe that October 7th wasn’t such a good idea. Is that your impression?

BB: I believe in people. I have this tendency of trusting people. Because I trust people, I hope, according to this survey, that people in Iran, for example, head of all evil, Palestinians in Gaza, Palestinians in the Palestinian Authority, will understand and they will really take over. Because I hope, because I really want to be optimistic, and we need peace in this region. We can’t continue like this. Enough is enough. But this will come, not from up-bottom, but bottom-up. This is my hope. According to the survey, you said 52 percent in Gaza, you know how many I want? Zero percent. I’m naive, but that’s what I want.

PP: Most recently, we’ve seen that an Al Jazeera journalist turned out to be a Hamas commander. There were ‘journalists’ from Al Jazeera who participated in October 7th. We know that UNRWA [the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East] had Hamas operatives inside, and underneath the UNRWA headquarters was the sort of intelligence command centre with its power being derived from the UNRWA headquarters right above. These are the sorts of things that Israel has been complaining about for a very long time. Why have these things not been addressed until now?

BB: Excellent question.

We’re not perfect. We have made mistakes. It comes to public relations. I wouldn’t come to me for a course on public relations. People are surprised by UNRWA and who they are. I think that I failed, and I’ll explain why.

What is UNRWA in fact? This agency was created in December ’49, I think, for the Palestinian refugees exclusively. For all the others, for everyone else, you’ve got UNHCR, but UNRWA is for Palestinians only. Their real aim is not really to solve the problem, it’s to maintain it. The real problem is to keep the Independence War of 1948 as it is. The real thing, the real issue, is to allow the right of return at the end of Israel, if you want. This is UNRWA. But now UNRWA went one stage further and this is why only yesterday, my law passed the Committee of Ministers for Laws. I have a bill in which I demand to close UNRWA in Jerusalem. There’s no reason whatsoever why UNRWA will function in Jerusalem, in my eternal capital.

Now UNRWA, we have proof of twelve people who were involved with Hamas. We told, of course, the UN who are checking it now. I think that it’s Ms [Catherine] Colonna now, used to be Minister of Foreign Affairs of France, who’s going to be at the head of this committee. I think that the numbers will be bigger. Many that came were educated in UNRWA schools, so it’s much wider. UNRWA, I hesitate between calling them terrorists’ support or a terrorist group, because members of them came to break our sovereignty and came to kill.

So, UNRWA is not doing their job. Someone else will do it. World Food Programme, for example. Not UNRWA. I don’t trust them. When you say UNRWA people are going to meet Sinwar, what is this? This is shocking. This is outrageous.
No country would have accepted it.

You also mentioned the journalist who came from Al Jazeera. I was a journalist, I covered war. I never remember me covering the Iraqi war, the Kosovo war, the Afghanistan war, and going with soldiers and cheering or being happy to see corpses. Here they filmed themselves. You can see that they were part of it.

Now, my God, on the 7th of October, people were beheaded. Babies were slaughtered, killed. I was shocked by this image where there is this car and
they were coming back from a party, from a music festival, and this woman was
lying there. You can see the cuts in the legs from her being tortured and she
had been burned. And yet, my God, she was beautiful. They could not take the
beauty out of this woman. When you see this, any person will have the sentiment
of penetrating Gaza and destroying everything. And this is not Israel. We shall
not do it because this is not us. And in the name of this woman lying there,
this beautiful woman, I deserve to stay who I am, but I deserve to make sure
that no other woman will have this. This is what Israel has to do. This is what
Israel is doing, with humanitarian law, with international law, we’re respecting human beings, we’re respecting civilians, we’re respecting the life of women in Gaza. But we also respect our people, and we shall make sure it will not happen again. In 2024, the difference to in the 40s, 1940s, a Jew can defend himself, as I said at the Strasbourg, whether those members of parliament like it or not. That’s it.