Israeli Journalists Condemn Gaza’s Bloodbath: A Nightmare Beyond Imagination
From the Pain of Remembrance to the Tragedy of Gaza: A Call for Conscience Amidst a Growing Crisis.
Watan-Israel is not committing a catastrophe against the Palestinian people, but in the last 19 months, Israel is rapidly approaching one. This needs to be said more strongly today.
Today, when I hear the siren, as I do every year, my thoughts will shift between the memory of my grandmother and grandfather, Sophie and Hugo, whose names I saw engraved on the memorial wall at the old Jewish cemetery in Prague, and the images of Gaza that won’t leave me.
Since I was a child, I always imagined, upon hearing the siren, a great fire consuming everything. Even during the Gaza war, I saw Jews burning in it. This year, I will also see babies burned alive last week in a refugee tent in Khan Yunis, along with thousands of children, women, and men killed by Israel without mercy.
How can we stand silent without reflecting on the disturbing report by Yenv Kofovitch published in Haaretz yesterday about the execution of 15 aid workers by Israeli soldiers, who shot them coldly, then destroyed the ambulances they traveled in and buried their bodies in the sand?
Also, think of the citizen from the village of Sinjil in the West Bank, whose house was set on fire by settlers, then the soldiers arrived and fired tear gas at him until he had a heart attack and died, as Hagar Shizaf wrote yesterday. And think of the shepherds’ gathering in “Um al-Khair” south of Hebron’s mountain, which I visited this week, and think of the endless massacres witnessed by these peace members in the villages at the hands of the army and settlers working together to expel them from their land.
A Warning Echoing the Holocaust: Reflections on Gaza and the Children of Catastrophe
To read a brave and shocking article by Orit Kemer (Haaretz, 21/4) about Israelis opposing this war, which, according to her opinion, denies their right to complain about the Germans who did the same—this is to agree with every word she wrote. To read a shocking article by Daniel Biltman speaking about the children of Gaza and the children of catastrophe (Haaretz, 22/4).
The day the war resumed in Gaza, Biltman said, will be remembered forever in Jewish history. We hope it will be so. “For forty years I have been involved in investigating the catastrophe,” Biltman wrote. “I have read countless testimonies about the most horrific genocide against the Jewish people and other victims. In short, the reality in which I will read testimonies about the mass killings carried out by the State of the Jews, which reminds me of testimonies from the ‘Yad Vashem’ archive, I cannot even imagine in my worst nightmares.”
This is not a comparison with the Holocaust, but a terrifying warning of where things are heading. Failing to think about this now is a betrayal of the memory of the Holocaust and its victims. Failing to think about Gaza now is akin to losing the human image and desecrating the memory of the Holocaust. This is a “stop” sign for what lies ahead.
A Brutal Reality: Comparing Gaza to Historical Atrocities and the Silence of Indifference
Israel tends to claim that October 7 was “the most horrific disaster to have happened to the Jewish people since the Holocaust.” This, of course, is a crude comparison that insults the memory of the Holocaust. There is no resemblance between the one-time deadly attack on October 7 and the Holocaust, but what followed it evokes memories of the Holocaust.
There are no Auschwitzes or even Treblinkas in the Gaza Strip, but there are gathering camps. There is also starvation, thirst, and the movement of people from one place to another like animals, along with a medical siege. A part of this catastrophe has been present for some time: the process of dehumanizing the victims, which began with the Nazis, is now occurring with full force in Israel.
Since the resumption of the war, approximately 1,600 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip. This is a bloodbath, not a fight. This is happening not far from our homes, at the hands of our best sons. This is happening in front of the silence of most Israelis and their pathological indifference.
Israel Prize laureate Ariel Rubinstein published this week a sharp but admirable article (Haaretz, 22/4) in which he explained why he will stand this year when the siren sounds. I will stand today, but I will think of my grandfather and grandmother, but I will also think of Gaza.
