Do you believe Israel should also pay for the reconstruction of Gaza, given that it has destroyed much of the Strip and its civilian infrastructure?”
This cost Nunziati his job at the Italian news agency Nova. In a statement justifying this action, the agency claimed that the journalist’s question was “totally out of place” because Russia was the aggressor whereas Israel was acting in self-defence. Nunziati’s question, therefore, reflected ignorance of the basic principles of international law – or so Nova would have us believe.
In fact, this question should concern everyone at this juncture. Despite all the current talk and various conferences on the reconstruction of Gaza, where Israel has destroyed 90 per cent of the infrastructure, no one mentions the need to make Israel pay anything – from the costs of reconstruction to reparations for its immeasurable war crimes, as required under international law.
Israel knows these laws well. It may be the country that has made the most use of them when doing so served its interests, and it pursued their application to the point of extortion. No state that harmed Jews during World War II was spared the need to pay reparations, sometimes amounting to billions. Israel pushed its extortion of Germany to unprecedented limits. It is true that Hitler’s Nazi regime perpetrated atrocious massacres against Jews in what became known as the Holocaust, but for decades afterwards Israel managed to exploit German guilt to secure exorbitant amounts of material, moral, and military support. Much information on this can be found in The Holocaust Industry, by the US scholar Norman Finkelstein. Himself a Jew and the son of Holocaust survivors, Finkelstein, in this book, accuses Zionism of turning the Nazi extermination of Jews into an industry that profits Israel.
Now the tables have turned, and Israel has become the aggressor – contrary to Nova’s claim. So why is no one demanding that it foot at least part of the bill for the destruction it caused in Gaza, let alone the billions it should owe in reparations to the victims of its more-than-two-year spree of genocide.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 11 December, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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