Gideon Levy and Israel’s ‘Zone of Interest’ in war-battered Gaza

Gideon Levy’s car was once fired at, but the official line seems to be that he can write and publish his version of events as Israel is a democracy

Gideon Levy is a courageous, conscientious and outspoken Israeli journalist. He writes for the Israeli daily ‘Haaretz’ and is on its editorial board. When he talks about Israel’s ‘Zone of Interest’ in Gaza Strip, he’s referring to British filmmaker and screenwriter Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar-winning 2023 film ‘The Zone of Interest’ which focuses on the life of German concentration camp commandant Rudolf Hoss and his family during World War II.
Höss (since the o has two dots called an umlaut over it stressing it,  the name is pronounced as Hers) was commandant of the Auschwitz death camp in German-occupied Poland where an estimated 1.1 million people were killed in less than five years. At least one million were Jews, and the rest included Roma gypsies, Soviet POWS, Poles, Czechs, French and German inmates.
While people were shot and gassed to death every day, Höss and his family lived a very comfortable life in their official home just outside the camp. Non-Jewish prisoners served as servants, and valuables belonging to killed inmates were given to the Höss family (wife Hedwig and five children). Höss enjoyed shooting camp inmates at work from his balcony with a sniper rifle. The house was separated from the camp by just a garden wall, and the family tended to the garden while Höss read fairy tales to his children at night.
In the film, Glazer suggests that Höss and other Nazis responsible for the Holocaust were not in a special ‘evil category’ but ordinary people who simply believed in what they had to do, and enjoyed doing it.

The Höss family enjoyed their home at Auschwitz so much that, when Höss was transferred to Berlin, she requested that the family be allowed to stay behind. The request was granted, and Hoss returned to Auschwitz later to oversee the gassing of 700,000 Hungarian Jews.
The film, co-produced by Britain, U.S, and Poland, premiered at Cannes in 2023 and won the Grand Jury Prize. It received five nominations (including Best Picture) at the 96th Academy Awards,  and won two awards (Best International Picture and Best Sound). 
The director said he wanted to tell the Holocaust story as ‘not as something safely in the past,’ but  as something ‘here and now.’
The here and now happens to be Gaza, where the Israeli army, backed by intense air and artillery strikes, has been given the task of driving out the entire Palestinian population.
In an interview with the non-profit news outlet Democracy Now, Gideon Levy who has been critical of Israel’s military operation from the start told host Amy Goodman about Israel’s own ‘Zone of Interest’ in the coast of northern Gaza, just an hour’s drive from Tel Aviv where he lives.
“There are no concentration camps in Gaza,” Levy said. “But it shows a terrible lack of sensibility to build a recreation centre for Israeli soldiers in the middle of so much death, suffering and hunger, adding that while Israeli Defence Force personnel needed rest and recreation after such a protracted war, this was hardly the place to do it.
“I speak to friends in Gaza, and I know people are fighting over a glass of water or a piece of bread. In that context, it’s so insensitive to have barbecues and drinks, get body massages and go swimming for recreation there.”
When asked by Amy Goodman about babies freezing to death, Gideon Levy said he’s more concerned about the cold wind blowing from Israel. News of this kind hardly gets published. When it does happen, no one really cares about it.
Gideon Levy’s car was once fired at, but the official line seems to be that he can write and publish his version of events as Israel is a democracy. But, after over 40,000 civilian deaths in Gaza (including at least 14,000 children) due to indiscriminate bombing and shelling, and what can only be called deliberate denial of essentials to Gaza residents, official Israeli practices can only be described as apartheid.
Then there are the charges of genocide. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not be present at the Auschwitz commemoration ceremony in Poland this year, while the German chancellor and the Polish president will attend it. Levy calls it the ultimate irony, that a Jewish leader cannot travel to the death site of a million Jews, victims of genocide, because he’s facing the same charges imposed by the International Criminal Court of Justice.
There has been a strong and widespread condemnation of Israel’s actions in Gaza internationally, but at least in the West this was carried out mainly by private groups and individuals, not governments. The U.S. remains the principal backer of Israel, and the EU remains pro-Israeli. But this stance is shifting.
France was the first EU nation to officially condemn Israel when President Emmanuel Macron strongly criticised Israel’s actions. Now, Australia which has had good diplomatic ties with Israel including military co-operation, has officially taken several bold steps to tell Israel that it has gone beyond acceptable limits and conventions in warfare and treatment of civilians during war.
In December 2024, Australia split with the US and voted with 156 other countries at the UN to demand the end of Israel’s “unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible”.
The vote marks Australia’s return to the position for the first time in more than two decades.
A month earlier, Former Israeli Interior and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked was denied a visa to Australia  because her presence could ‘vilify’ Australians or ‘incite discord,’ according to media reports.
Shaked is a hardliner who has supported illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Furthermore, Australian officials say they want to question former IDF veterans now in Australia about their conduct during military operations against the Palestinians.
Israeli tourists are now denied entry to 30 countries, and not all of these are Muslim-majority states. Sri Lanka has no official word on this issue and is unlikely to follow up reports that an IDF soldier wanted for an alleged war crime was seen in the country. While the Maldives has taken the courageous step of banning Israeli tourists, bankrupt Sri Lanka badly in need of tourist dollars and trying to pack off its citizens for labour-intensive jobs in Israel (and with its own history of covered up war crimes) is clearly unable, or unwilling, to do so.