The Moral Injury of Genocide
Soldiers confess to killing children on command, military operations escalate in the West Bank, and Israeli leaders search for Jewish history in specks of dirt.
Quick editor’s note for new readers: I aim to send this out every Saturday or Sunday. It opens with a short reflection on what’s been on my mind, followed by a weekly news roundup organized by region: Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, the US, and occasionally elsewhere.
I spent part of the week in Washington, D.C., embedded with the families of Americans abducted or killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers, as they walked the halls of power in search of justice. I’m working on a piece about it now—stay tuned for that soon—so for today, no long reflection, just a few photos and videos from the week before diving into the news roundup.
Zeyad and Kamel deliver a message to their hometown senator, Rick Scott, from outside his office after being refused a meeting:
If you find my writing valuable, I ask two things:
Here’s this week’s roundup.
Gaza
Forever War
IDF chief Eyal Zamir reportedly yelled at cabinet ministers to take the hostage deal rather than push ahead with the offensive, and warned lawmakers that Netanyahu is keeping the army in the dark about the next stages. (Haaretz, ToI)
At a joint press conference in Jerusalem with Netanyahu, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said a diplomatic end to the Gaza war “might not be possible,” echoed Netanyahu’s vow to “eliminate” Hamas—who he called “barbaric animals”—and brushed off US anger over Israel’s airstrike in Qatar. (NYT)
Hours later, Israeli tanks rolled into Gaza City as the ground invasion stage of the offensive officially began. (Axios)
As Israeli airstrikes lit up Gaza City, Trump warned Hamas on Truth Social that if hostages were being used as human shields, then “ALL ‘BETS’ ARE OFF,” calling it a “human atrocity.” Netanyahu quickly thanked him for “unflinching support.” (Ynet)
Israel launched more than 150 strikes on Gaza City in 48 hours and used explosive-laden robots to demolish buildings, as those who evacuate face a “trail of bombs and death.” At least 500,000 remain in the city, and the UN warned food would run out within days. (Haaretz, NYT, New Arab)
Qatar is conditioning its return as mediator on a public Israeli apology for the Doha strike—potentially framed as regret for inadvertently killing a Qatari security officer—and a pledge not to violate Qatar’s sovereignty again. (TOI)
Confessions
Haaretz reports that Israeli soldiers are breaking down from “moral injury,” exhausted by orders to carry out arbitrary killing. One conscript says he “sprayed hundreds of bullets” and later found “the bodies of two children, maybe 8 or 10 years old… it was all on me,” while his commander shrugged, “They entered an extermination zone, it is their fault.” Another said that every morning, he and other soldiers were ordered to police an invisible line near a humanitarian aid site—“A line that if they cross it, I can shoot them. It’s like a game of cat and mouse. They try to come from a different direction every time, and I’m there with the sniper rifle, and the officers are yelling at me, ‘Take him down, take him down.’ I fire 50–60 bullets every day, I’ve stopped counting kills. I have no idea how many I’ve killed, a lot. Children.” (Haaretz)
Modes of War
The Israeli army and Shin Bet are recruiting Gaza-based militias, paying them cash and granting control over territory in exchange for carrying out combat missions. (Haaretz)
Aid workers in Gaza spent nine hours negotiating with the Israeli army before rushing to load thousands of UNESCO-protected artifacts—including mosaics, coins, and pottery from the 4th-century—onto open-bed trucks without the careful packing such fragile objects normally require, after the army said the warehouse doubled as a Hamas intelligence site and planned to demolish it as part of its Gaza City offensive; the building was later flattened, and the artifacts now sit outside, still exposed to destruction. (AP)
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation confirmed that new Israeli regulations now require all Gaza food aid to be sourced and packaged exclusively by Israeli companies, though products are often relabeled. (JNS)
The Toll
The Gaza Health Ministry reports the confirmed death toll is 65,283, up from 64,803 last week, including at least 19,424 children. Another 166,575 have been injured. At least 440 people have died from Israel’s imposed starvation, including 147 children. (AJ)
A report from the independent violence-tracking organization ACLED found that 15 of every 16 Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza since March were civilians. (Guardian)
A year-long investigation by The New Humanitarian found that 2,957 aid seekers were killed between January 2024 and 9 September 2025, with nearly 20,000 others wounded. (New Humanitarian)
An Israeli airstrike near a tent camp killed Doctors Without Borders nurse Hussein Alnajjar, a father of three, and wounded his sister-in-law and nephew; he is the thirteenth staffer and at least the 540th aid worker killed by Israel. (JPost)
Israeli attacks have killed ten children from a professional football academy in Gaza City. (AJ)
Doctors at Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital are refusing to abandon patients despite Israeli tanks encircling it. (AJ)
The UN warned that women in Gaza are being forced to give birth in the streets without doctors or clean water. (MEM)
Reuters profiled women in Gaza who lost their frozen embryos when an Israeli airstrike destroyed a fertility clinic. (Reuters)
Ethnic Cleansing
Smotrich declared that Israel has finished Gaza’s “demolition phase” and is now negotiating with the US on a business plan to divide up Gaza’s land, calling it a “real estate bonanza” and boasting that the plan is already “on President Trump’s desk.” (Haaretz)
At a police ceremony, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir vowed to build a “splendid” high-rise neighborhood for Israeli police “on the seashore” in Gaza, alongside Jewish settlements and “encouraged emigration” of Palestinians. (Haaretz)
Netanyahu asked Trump to pressure Cairo to scale back its military buildup in Sinai, which Egypt says is aimed at preventing forcibly displaced Palestinians from being pushed into its territory. (Haaretz)
Consensus
A UN commission declared Tuesday that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, citing “extensive and deliberate” targeting of children—including direct gunshot wounds to the head and chest—total siege tactics, and the destruction of hospitals, housing, and aid systems as evidence of intent to physically destroy Palestinians. Israel denounced the report as fake and antisemitic. (NYT)
The UN Human Rights Commissioner responded to Israel’s criticism: “Israeli responses are becoming so boring. They say the same thing every time—they’re producing the responses by ChatGPT these days. They spend so much money in the foreign ministry on propaganda, you’d think they’d come up with something original. They never engage with the evidence.” (Drop Site)
Bernie Sanders became the first senator to accuse Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, in a statement on his website that opened with the claim that the war began when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. (NYMag)
The genocide debate has broken into Israeli public life as a handful of historians, writers, and NGOs now openly call the Gaza war a genocide, while the government and most Israelis fiercely reject the label, branding critics antisemitic or traitorous. (Le Monde)
Hostages, Abandoned
Israeli security officials privately admitted to hostage families that they “do not know where the hostages are being held,” contradicting public claims of caution as the army pushes into Gaza City. (JPost)
Hamas warned that Israel’s invasion of Gaza City means it will not receive any hostages, alive or dead. (JPost)
Hamas released an image showing the faces of all 48 remaining hostages in Gaza, each renamed “Ron Arad” after the Israeli Air Force navigator who disappeared in Lebanon in 1986. The poster warned the captives could “disappear” like Arad as the military pressed its Gaza City offensive. (TOI)
Trump claimed that “nearly 40” Gaza hostages are dead and “maybe fewer than 20” alive, contradicting Israel’s official count of 48 total hostages remaining in Gaza. (Ynet)
Israeli Casualties
A roadside bomb in Rafah’s Jenina neighborhood killed four Israeli soldiers and wounded three others, pushing the army’s post-October 7 death toll to 469. (TOI)
West Bank
Silent Annexation
Finance Minister Smotrich wrote on X, “I will act, with the help of God, using all the tools at my disposal to prevent the danger of the Palestinian state and, in general, this includes dismantling the PA... by means of economic strangulation.”
The UAE, despite once calling annexation a “red line,” now says it won’t quit the Abraham Accords if Israel proceeds—though it might “downgrade diplomatic ties”—removing the biggest guardrail against West Bank annexation. (Reuters)
MK Tzvi Succot introduced a bill that would empower the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee to declare diplomatic agreements null and void if deemed violated, explicitly targeting the Oslo Accords. (INN)
Rubio inaugurated the newly excavated Pilgrims’ Road in the City of David theme park beneath the Palestinian village of Silwan in a closed, media-barred ceremony alongside Netanyahu. (ToI)
US Ambassador Mike Huckabee said international moves to recognize a Palestinian state have given Israel reason to declare sovereignty, even though Israel has been working toward it for many years. (INN)
Israel inaugurated its first “archaeological dirt-filtering facility” in the settlement Shavei Shomron, where soil from sites like Sebastia will be sifted by archaeologists and visitors. The Minister of Heritage, Amichai Eliyahu, said in his remarks: “Every speck of dirt that we filter out reveals anew the simple truth that Israel lives here. This is not just an archaeological project, but a live encounter with the soul of the nation.” Environmental Minister Idit Silman called it “an actual act of sovereignty, strengthening the historical affinity of the Israeli people to the land of Judea and Samaria.” (Facebook)
In case you missed it, be sure to read my explainer on what could unfold this week: Israel might annex the West Bank—what would that actually mean?
Military Raids
As Israeli military operations escalate across the West Bank, authorities claim Hamas is moving fighters and funds into the area to build “terror infrastructure” and plot attacks. The military is reportedly bracing for potential West Bank unrest amid Gaza fighting, UN statehood moves, possible annexation, and its dismantling of the PA. (JPost)
The Israeli military will deploy eight more companies across the West Bank through mid-October, bringing the “Judea and Samaria Division” to roughly 23 battalions. (TOI)
Israeli forces arrested more than 75 Palestinians across the West Bank this week, including three in Kafr Ni’ma near Ramallah, suspected of manufacturing rockets and attempting a launch, while seizing dozens of explosives and improvised rockets. (JPost)
Less than two weeks after settlers stormed Khalet al-Daba in the South Hebron Hills—stabbing a resident, beating his wife and children, and carrying out what defense officials called one of the worst nationalist crimes in recent memory—Israeli forces returned with bulldozers to demolish the village’s cave homes, solar panels, and water lines, including the house of the man who was attacked, while no suspects have been arrested. (Haaretz)
Palestinian authorities warned that Israel is encircling occupied East Jerusalem with 88 new iron gates and checkpoints. (Anadolu)
Israeli forces arrested Ibrahim Asi, the mayor of Qarawat Bani Hassan near Salfit, after he tried to remove an army roadblock at the town’s entrance—marking the fifth Palestinian mayor detained since late August. (Anadolu)
Haaretz reported new details on Israeli military’s September 8 shooting of two 14-year-olds, Mohammed Alwana and Islam Majarmi, in Jenin, where residents who thought the army had withdrawn tried to return to the camp; two IDF jeeps suddenly appeared, soldiers jumped out and fired 8–10 bullets without warning, striking Mohammed three times in the chest, arm, and abdomen, and killing Islam with a shot to the chest. (Haaretz)
Allenby Attack
A Jordanian aid truck driver opened fire and stabbed people at the Allenby Bridge crossing on Thursday, killing two Israelis, before being killed by Israeli forces. (Haaretz)
Israel
Greater Israel
Israel’s airstrike on a newspaper complex in Sana’a last week that killed 32 Yemeni journalists is the deadliest attack on reporters ever in the Middle East, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. (Drop Site)
Defense Minister Israel Katz said on X that the Israeli flag would fly above the capital of Yemen.
Imminent Nuclear War
Leaked transcripts from June 12 war cabinet meetings show Netanyahu privately said Iran was still “a few years” away from nuclear bomb capability—contradicting his public warnings at the time that the threat was imminent. (ToI)
Smotrich Tracker
Smotrich said, “UN condemnation of Israel is October 7th of today.” (INN)
Democracy Report
Smotrich is moving to cancel party primaries in Religious Zionism, proposing to strip the 20,000 members of their vote and hand control of the candidate list to a forum of about 150 activists. (INN)
Israeli authorities demolished 40 Palestinian homes in the village of al-Sir in the Negev. (Anadolu)
Israel barred two British Labour MPs, Simon Opher and Peter Prinsley—both critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza—from entering on a parliamentary delegation to the West Bank to meet UK diplomats and humanitarian groups. (Guardian)
Torture Camps
At a Knesset hearing, prison officials defended a blanket ban on Red Cross visits to Palestinian inmates as a “national security” risk. Far-right MKs branded the Red Cross “antisemitic” and urged Israel to “act like the enemy does,” over objections citing a High Court ruling on ending its policy of starving Palestinian prisoners. The son of a slain Israeli hostage said, “The hostages are a reflection of the prisoners. When you say you’re treating prisoners harshly, it only means more torture for the hostages.” (TOI)
Days later, Netanyahu accused Ben-Gvir of leaking cabinet deliberations about a National Security Council proposal that would have let the Red Cross visit Palestinian prisoners—excluding anyone from Gaza or affiliated with Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, according to Shin Bet—and then pulled the proposal. (JPost)
Popular Opinion
A new survey shows 58% of Israelis warn annexation would harm Arab alliances, 72% call preserving the Abraham Accords a core national interest, 78% back a Trump-led plan tying Saudi normalization to ending the war and disarming Hamas, and 57% say further Gaza operations could damage Israel’s diplomacy. (JPost)
Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar threatened to defund the Ophir Awards—the “Israeli Oscars”—after The Sea, a film about a 12-year-old Palestinian boy blocked at an army checkpoint on his way to see the Mediterranean, won best film and will now represent Israel at the Oscars. (BBC)
This Is Sparta
Netanyahu admitted Israel is entering a period of “isolation,” which he blamed on Muslim immigration in Europe and influence operations by Qatar and China, and said the country must become more self-reliant: cutting regulations, massively expanding domestic weapons production, and behaving like a “Super Sparta” because, in his words, “life is more important than the law.” (Haaretz)
Oct 7 Investigations
The Israeli police banned all events near the Gaza border a month before October 7 due to security risks, but the Nova festival went ahead after the IDF gave last-minute approval despite reduced holiday staffing. (Haaretz)
Haaretz reports that a colonel cited by internal probes for serious failures on Oct. 7 leveraged Likud ties to get Defense Minister Israel Katz to block his dismissal. (Haaretz)
Denazification
The Mizrahi Israeli Jewish activist Orly Noy wrote, “The Gaza holocaust was made possible by the embrace of the ethno-supremacist logic inherent to Zionism. Therefore it must be said clearly: Zionism, in all its forms, cannot be cleansed of the stain of this crime. It must be brought to an end... This denazification process must begin now.” (+972)
US (and World)
Trump <3 Netanyahu
Axios reports that Netanyahu phoned Trump about Israel’s plan to bomb Hamas leaders in Qatar roughly 50 minutes before the strike, contradicting the White House claim that Trump only learned once missiles were in the air; Israeli officials insist Trump “didn’t say no.” Trump denied the report. (Axios)
Trump privately fumed that Netanyahu was “fucking me.” (WSJ)
The US vetoed a UN Security Council resolution demanding a permanent Gaza ceasefire for the sixth time, leaving it isolated against all 14 other members. (BBC)
Trump moved to sell Israel nearly $6B in weapons—30 Apache helicopters, 3,200 infantry assault vehicles, and $750m in spare parts—on top of about $12B already approved this year. (TOI)
Dual Loyalty
The Israeli-funded Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy has been promoting unsubstantiated claims that Qatari university funding caused a “300% increase” in antisemitism on US campuses—statistics not backed by its own studies—while quietly receiving Israeli government money and shaping congressional hearings to equate pro-Palestine protests with foreign subversion. (Drop Site)
Candace Owens reignited MAGA’s internal war over Israel—accusing pro-Israel conservatives of betraying America—splintering the movement’s unity in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination and exposing how foreign policy toward Israel has become a flashpoint on the right. (Axios)
Police State
UC Berkeley handed the federal government private information on more than 150 students, staff, and faculty as part of Trump’s campus “antisemitism” probe. (Mondoweiss)
An immigration judge in Louisiana ordered Columbia protest leader Mahmoud Khalil deported to Syria or Algeria for alleged misrepresentations on his green card application, though his lawyers say a federal judge’s earlier order still protects him while his habeas case proceeds. (Zeteo)
The Trump administration quietly ordered that all Palestinian asylum applications undergo an extra layer of “quality assurance” review—a step normally reserved for terrorism cases or duress claims—marking the first time an entire identity group has been subjected to blanket scrutiny. (WaPo)
Spencer Ackerman argued that MAGA’s affinity for Israel stems from seeing it as the ethnostate America should be: a frontier settler-colony built on ethnic supremacy, militarism, and unapologetic brutality. (Zeteo)
Threat to Zohran
A Texas man, Jeremy Fistel, 44, was extradited to Queens and arraigned on 22 counts for allegedly terrorizing NYC mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani with threats like “don’t start your car,” “check your beeper,” and “I’d love to see an IDF bullet go through your skull.” (Forward)
Public Opinion
A new Chicago Council survey shows 37% of Americans now believe the US supports Israel too much in its Gaza “war”—up from 30% last year. (WaPo)
Economy of Genocide
NYC is leasing space in the Brooklyn Navy Yard to two companies tied to the Israeli military—Easy Aerial, led by an ex–Israeli air force officer and credited by investors with aiding Israel’s Gaza war, and Crye Precision, whose camouflage is used by Israeli forces. (Intercept)
Bare Minimum
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) introduced a resolution urging President Trump to recognize a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside Israel—effectively tying Palestinian sovereignty to disarmament—while faulting both Hamas and Israeli policies for blocking peace. Backed by J Street and seven progressive senators, including Sanders, Van Hollen, and Kaine, the resolution calls on Israel to end the Gaza “war” and expand humanitarian aid. (JNS)
The Congressional Progressive Caucus, representing nearly 100 lawmakers, endorsed the Block the Bombs Act—the first time a major caucus has backed legislation to cut off arms to Israel. (Zeteo)
Thanks for reading. As always, I welcome your thoughts, questions, etc. in the comments.
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Jasper, thank you for continuing to report with such professionalism, your work is unparalleled in breadth and is organized so well.
It's sad to see the "progressive" wing of congress, while making some small steps towards recognizing the Gaza genocide, still repeating Israeli logic and offering neutered diplomacy that still does not recognize that Palestinians' right to defend themselves. It reminds me of Harris laughing before the election about owning a gun, and that was seen as this normal, empowering validation of her self worth, but the same dignity of defense is never afforded those whose entire lives are dominated by Jewish supremacists. The racism prevalent in Democrat spaces is so disgusting.
"Spencer Ackerman argued that MAGA’s affinity for Israel stems from seeing it as the ethnostate America should be: a frontier settler-colony built on ethnic supremacy, militarism, and unapologetic brutality. (Zeteo)"