Israeli author David Grossman says his country is committing genocide in Gaza | Israel-Gaza war

The award-winning Israeli author David Grossman has described his country’s campaign in Gaza as a genocide and said he now “can’t help” but use the term.

“I ask myself: how did we get here?” the celebrated writer and peace activist told the Italian daily La Repubblica in an interview published on Friday.

“How did we come to be accused of genocide? Just uttering that word – ‘genocide’ – in reference to Israel, to the Jewish people, that alone, the fact that this association can even be made, should be enough to tell us that something very wrong is happening to us.”

Grossman said that for many years he had refused to use the term. “But now I can’t help myself – not after what I’ve read in the papers, not after the images I’ve seen, not after speaking with people who’ve been there. This word is an avalanche: once you say it, it just gets bigger, like an avalanche. And it adds even more destruction and suffering,” he said.

Grossman’s comments come days after two major Israeli rights groups said Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, amid growing global alarm over starvation in the besieged territory.

The author, who has long been a critic of the Israeli government, told La Repubblica he was using the word “with immense pain and with a broken heart”.

“Reading in a newspaper or hearing in conversations with friends in Europe the association of the words ‘Israel’ and ‘hunger’ – especially when this comes from our own history, from our supposed sensitivity to human suffering, from the moral responsibility we’ve always claimed to hold toward every human being, not just toward Jews – this is devastating,” said Grossman, who won the country’s top literary prize, the Israel prize, in 2018 for his work spanning more than three decades.

“The occupation has corrupted us,” he said. “I am absolutely convinced that Israel’s curse began with the occupation of the Palestinian territories in 1967. Maybe people are tired of hearing about it, but that’s the truth. We’ve become militarily powerful, and we’ve fallen into the temptation born of our absolute power, and the idea that we can do anything.”

Asked what he thought of France and the UK being among the latest countries preparing to formally recognise a state of Palestine, Grossman said: “I actually think it’s a good idea, and I don’t understand the hysteria around it here in Israel. Maybe dealing with a real state, with real obligations, rather than a vague entity like the Palestinian Authority, will have its advantages. Of course, there would need to be very clear conditions: no weapons, and the guarantee of transparent elections from which anyone who advocates violence against Israel is excluded.”

He said he remained “desperately committed” to the two-state solution. “It will be complex, and both we and the Palestinians will need to act with political maturity in the face of the inevitable attacks that will come.” He added: “There is no other plan.”