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"I Cannot Let People Say that Israel Is Targeting Civilians, because That Is Wrong"

(Telegraph-UK) Bernard-Henri Levy interviewed by Celia Walden - French philosopher, war reporter and documentary-maker Bernard-Henri Levy described the scene at what was left of Kibbutz Kfar Aza in Israel on Oct. 10. "The bodies of the victims had been buried by that point, but there were still pieces of bodies that hadn't been assigned yet. They were stacked in a corner of a vegetable shed that was being used to house unidentified body parts. And that image? There is not a day or a night when I do not see it in my head. It follows me around constantly." We're speaking on Zoom. For the past year, he has been living in an undisclosed location under very heavy police protection, after intelligence officials discovered that the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had paid an Iranian drug dealer $150,000 to assassinate Levy, who has been critical of the country's leadership. He says that after Oct. 7, "there's a realization not just that things will never be the same again, but that things were not what we thought they were before....Hours after the attack, there were...actual, veritable explosions of joy. Professors at U.S. universities with huge online followings recorded and broadcast messages of absolute joy. This, when the bodies of the dead had not even all been buried." He points out that even many of those who did offer early support began to fall away within the ensuing weeks and months. Asked if he still believes Israel's response has been just, he doesn't have to think about it for a second: "Yes. I still don't think the response has been disproportionate." When filming the liberation of Mosul in 2016, he says, "I saw what indiscriminate hits looked like, what the desire to destroy a place from top to toe looks like, and let me tell you: that is not what is happening in Gaza." He also stands by the assertion that Israel "has done everything to avoid civilian casualties....I've been covering wars for 40 years, and it's the first time in my life that I've ever seen an army open up a corridor every day between 6 a.m. and noon in order to warn civilians that they are going to hit an area where they are. The Israeli army is the first army in the world that I have seen say: 'We're going to hit here - please move'." "I cannot let people say that the hits are indiscriminate and targeting civilians, because that is wrong. And I cannot allow it to be said that there has been a genocide, because that is wrong."
2024-09-15 00:00:00
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