From Worse to Worser

My thoughts on the beachside holiday village built by the IDF in Northern Gaza for the relaxation and rejuvenation of its exhausted, heroic soldiers

Photo by Hitesh Dewasi on Unsplash

Israel has raised the bar once again! No, I don’t mean the IDF’s recent destruction of Kamal Adwan Hospital (Gaza’s largest last functioning hospital out of 36), setting what was left of it on fire, sexually assaulting and arresting medical staff and abducting Director Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya to God-only-knows what fate. I don’t mean the beyond appalling conditions either, under which Israel’s genocidal campaign has recently caused seven Palestinian infants to freeze to death. And I don’t mean Israel’s latest massacre over 24 hours of more than 70 Palestinian civilians in locations that include the “humanitarian safe zone” of El-Mawasi, all of which are heinous enough.

Nope, I’m talking about the beachside holiday village—ya, you’ve read that right—a beachside holiday village that, according to The IDF’s Own Sickening ‘Zone of Interest’ in the Heart of Gaza by Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, the IDF Logistics Corps has built for the relaxation and rejuvenation of its exhausted, heroic soldiers. And get this: They built it—maybe, you should take a stiff drink first or a couple of Gravol—right next to the killing fields of Northern Gaza! In fact, the village is so close to the ghost refugee camp of Jabaliya that anyone who happens to glance out a window can see “pack after pack of stray dogs roaming around and hunting for scraps of food”.

In the article, Levy describes this village as a kind of wellness spa/Club Med set among synthetic lawns, (there being, I suppose, a severe shortage of naturally growing grass in an area the IDF has repeatedly mowed for decades). During their little vacation, war-weary soldiers can lounge on comfy cushions or relax in swaying hammocks; imbibe a foamy cappuccino or a bubbly glass of XL (a caffeinated, supplemented energy drink that enhances focus, alertness and reaction time!) on the rocks; help themselves to barbequed chorizos and steaks, Belgian waffles, popcorn and cotton candy; be treated to manicures, pedicures and massages (not mentioned is whether or not the lucky man receives a Happy Ending). Levy quotes IDF Sgt. Daniel Vakret, who never thought “there would be a place like that here.” Quite frankly, who in their right mind could?

Not to be missed is the cruel irony:

Ostensibly, this really is good news. The soldiers deserve to refresh themselves and to get a massage and a pedicure. And still there’s something tasteless about this vacation spa, something repulsive and infuriating, which even arouses harsh memories, mainly due to its location.

That location, namely several hundred meters from “a hell of their [the IDF’s] own creation” where displaced Palestinians are starving and freezing to death, Levy reminds us, is all too reminiscent of the idyllic home of Kommandant Rudolf Höss directly adjacent to the extermination camp of Auschwitz as depicted in Jonathan Glazer’s Academy Award-winning foreign film, The Zone of Interest. Though Levy writes that there are no extermination camps in Gaza, one could easily argue that Gaza itself is one extermination camp from battered end to battered end. So, ya, the comparison works!

“Even the most cynical and morbid of playwrights couldn’t have imagined such a script”, Levy writes. I’d venture to say that not even Aeschylus or Shakespeare could have pulled it off!

In an article, the like of which you’d never see in the estimable New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Globe and Mail, in any Western newspaper for that matter, Levy condemns Israel’s moral blindness, cynicism and heartlessness. But not so, Rabbi Shai Graucher, who boastfully extolls in a TikTok video the biggest “rejuvenation center” that he built 26 kilometers from Gaza in Ofakim. Graucher is so ebullient about how soldiers “can relax and get back the energy needed to win this war” that you’d think he was selling a luxury cruise or a trip to Disneyland! The only things missing in the video were the clowns, monkeys, ponies and elephants, the Ferris wheel and roller coaster. Oh ya, he left out the strippers and hookers, unless they’re the big welcome surprise! If you didn’t know what these brave, wholesome, strapping young Israeli men have been doing to deserve such loving indulgence, you’d be tempted to get your own brothers, sons and grandson to join the IDF so that they, too, could spend a week of amazing fun and incredible relaxation after a tour of strenuous butchering, bombing and bulldozing!

But hey, don’t soldiers need a break from the battlefield? I mean, who wouldn’t if what they’re doing every day is blowing up babies, sniping kids in the head and chest, razing hospitals and schools, burning entire families alive in plastic tents, making life a living hell for people they consider human animals? Couldn’t the IDF be a little more discreet, you might wonder. Hell, why bother all of a sudden with discretion? Why start now to disguise Israeli atrocities when their Western pals have got their backs no matter how many more civilians Israel’s going to kill and how much more land it’s intent on stealing? Why mount the slightest pretense, for cryin’ out loud, when despite damning report after damning report the International Court of Justice still hasn’t ruled after nearly a year if Israel is or isn’t committing genocide? No, what you do is party, party, party right in everyone’s faces because you can!

What pains me to imagine is the gross indignity of Palestinians having to scrounge around in the rubble for a scrap of rotting food or collect droplets of condensation from dirty, twisted metal while their tormentors, their torturers, the murderers of their children, are gorging themselves on sticky sweets and barbecued meat and wafting the tantalizing smells their way. But then, if Israelis could hold a music festival and dance on the other side of the wall like they did on October 7 within earshot of Palestinian youth who’ve lived caged up in Gaza since birth, I guess the IDF can build a spa for their soldiers close enough to let their victims know that Israelis, at least, are being pampered and having one helluva good time!

You have to be thicker than granite, dumber than a post, colder than a glacier and more insensitive than black mould not to be infuriated, repulsed, and sickened to the core by the sadism, bestiality, moral depravity and utter inhumanity that Israel has put on open display every fucking day for 454 fucking days and counting. I’m really running out of words to describe this slippery descent into Nietzsche’s abyss, hence my use in the title of the ungrammatical worser. Before you know it, I’ll be calling what Israel does next worsest! And the same goes for our “democratic” world leaders―these spineless, corrupt, lawless, moral vacuums and mental mites―who deserve to be permanently retired, not to an IDF-style luxury spa for rejuvenation, but to the nearest medieval asylum for the incurably insane! And no popcorn, no barbecued steak, no massage, and no Happy Endings for the bastards! ✊

(Here is the interview with Gideon Levy on Democracy Now.)

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