We continue to contemplate horrific images from the
battlefield, as Israeli troops advance in their mission to wipe out the Hamas
terrorist organization. That these images affect us is what makes us human. We
cannot look the other way when we see the suffering of so many people who have
lost their homes and livelihoods and who are trapped, unable to escape the
strip, either in the direction of Israel or even towards Egypt, a country of
which, until 1967, Gaza was a part.
To observe this suffering and to respond by calling on
Israel to stop this war is not anti-Semitic. I can’t recall any war this
century, in which Western countries have intervened, in which there has not
been a significant part of society opposed to the intervention. Even in the
most recent case of the war in Ukraine, many, especially on the left, opposed
and continue to oppose sending weapons to the victim of Russian aggression. And
while such a stance seems to me highly misguided, it is a reasonable manifestation
of an intransigent pacifism. And calling for peace is not a crime. Quite the
opposite.
Nor can we turn a blind eye to the numerous objective
reasons to criticise the current Israeli government, led by Binyamin Netanyahu,
for its own contribution to this situation. One needs to go no further than
read Israeli opposition newspapers such as the prestigious Haaretz to see that such
criticism is not the exclusive preserve of voices from outside Israel and to appreciate
that opposing this war is not the same as wishing for the extermination of the
Jews. The Israeli prime minister bears a clear responsibility for failing to
protect the country from the October 7 pogrom, in which 1,200 Israelis were
killed and 242 kidnapped; for courting the far right in the country; and for
sowing discord in society thus providing the enemy with a pretext to believe
this to be the most suitable time to launch an attack.
Furthermore, we are undeniably witnessing a
humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza that is difficult to quantify, and that will
have long-term consequences for the region and the world. The images show us
that the territory has been razed to the ground. The civilian population lacks
houses, basic supplies, schools, hospitals... in an endless succession of
tragedy and despair.
However, despite all this horror, and the natural
instinct to use language to try to describe the indescribable, talking about a
"holocaust", as I see every day on social networks, is not only fake
news but also a horrendous offence, both to ordinary Israelis, as rightful
citizens of their country, and to the wider Jewish community. The reasons are
many, and I will try to enumerate some of them here:
First, let's try to define what we mean when we use
the word, "holocaust." The term refers to Adolf Hitler's partially
successful attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish population from the face of
the earth. The Jews posed no threat to anyone. Not to Germany, nor to any other
country in the world. As in so many other moments in history, the Jews were
used as a scapegoat, blamed in this case for all the ills suffered by Germany
in the 1930s, after the hardships suffered by the country following the Treaty
of Versailles. and later by the impact
of the Great Depression. The extermination of six million Jews—about half of
those living in the world at the time—was not based on any reason beyond the
deranged ideology of the author of Mein Kampf.
The suffering of the Jews in the Holocaust was by no
means an isolated event in history. Since the Middle Ages, numerous pogroms
have been documented against the Jews, who were cruelly murdered, expelled from
their countries, as happened in Spain at the hands of the Inquisition, and
accused of absurd blood libels, such as having "killed Christ". Such
slurs were often used in retaliation when they sought to recover the loans they
had granted, in a perfectly legitimate way,
to people of power. And the guilt felt by Germans and Europeans after
the end of World War II and the creation of the State of Israel as the national
home for Jews was not the end of it either. It is worth reminding that when Israel
had not even finished counting the dead of the October 7 attack, and had not
launched a single missile into Gaza, the number of violent attacks on Jews in
the capitals of much of the Western world skyrocketed.
When analysing the Israeli response in Gaza, clearly
it does not bare even the slightest resemblance to the Nazi Holocaust. Let's
document some facts:
1.
While the Nazis'
"justification" for the Holocaust was based on fiction, the actions
of the Israeli Defence Force are in retaliation for an attack that aimed, like
others in the second half of the last century, at destroying the state of
Israel. Funded by Iran, and with allies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon or the
Houthis in Yemen, this has been its clearly stated goal. The justification for
the reaction is therefore based on fact. It is about defending Israel, a
country in which 50% of the world's Jewish population lives today, and whose
population is increasing even now when it is under threat, because Jews who
lived in other parts of the world feel more in danger in the countries in which
they live, where anti-Semitism and violent attacks on their homes and
businesses are on the rise.
2.
When comparing Israel's response with
other retaliatory actions for terrorist or military actions over the last
century, it would appear to be perfectly proportional. The September 11 attack
in New York did not pose an existential threat to the United States, but it did
lead to the invasion of Afghanistan and the Iraq War. These two conflicts were
highly questioned by international public opinion, and neither was resolved
satisfactorily. As dramatic as those attacks were, the death toll was 2,996
people in a country of 331.9 million. In Israel, lest we forget, 1200 people
died out of a population of just over 9 million. The vast majority of the
world's Jews knew either directly or indirectly someone who was viciously
murdered, raped, kidnapped, or all three together, on that fateful day in 2023.
It was, without a doubt, not only a heinous crime but also an existential threat
to the country.
3.
The justification for wiping out
Hamas terrorists is not only based on the events of October 7. The mere
presence of a neighbour who promises to put an end to your existence, who
indoctrinates children in their schools and colleges in hatred of the Jews, who
launches missiles daily at Israel, and who sows its territory with an immense
labyrinth of tunnels whose length is greater than the sum of the Parisian
subway and the London Tube, in order to
hide its forces and weapons and enter Israeli territory, creates a situation of
daily terror in Israel that has barely been touched upon in the Western media. Unsurprisingly,
more than 23 percent of adult Israelis suffer from post-traumatic stress from
living continuously amid the Hamas rockets. Little is said about it because the
Israeli defence system is so effective against missiles - the Israelis, unlike
the Gazans who have no shortage of aid money and have received billions from
the Israeli Government itself - invest in their own defence. However, waking
every morning in the knowledge that you are still alive thanks to an air
defence system is not sustainable over time in any democratic country.
4.
As reprehensible as the Netanyahu
government and its coalition partners are, and they are for many reasons, the
strategy in Gaza is being executed by a capable war cabinet, following the
formation of government of national unity, in which yes, there are extremist
voices, but those who call the shots are people with great knowledge of
conflicts and who are complying with standards they have always upheld. It took
several days for the intense bombardment to begin, during which time they
maximized the pressure on the Gazan authorities, -aka Hamas-, to return the
hostages peacefully. In fact, it would perhaps have been sufficient for Hamas
to accede Hamas to these demands for us to have avoided the situation we are in
now. And Israel, when it bombs, warns the civilian population like no other
army in the world by dropping leaflets from the air and other measures that,
while those so far away from the horrors of war, may not think count for much
but which do, in fact, make a difference. Reputable data – in contrast to the
figures provided by Hamas. suggest that
the number of civilian casualties as a proportion of the total is considerably
lower than the figures for other comparable conflicts.
5.
No civilian casualties in Gaza have
been intentionally caused by Israel. Such is not the case, however, of the
Hamas terrorists, who use civilians as shields in tunnels, and build
"hospitals" whose use is anything but to care for the sick. It is
striking that a country that many Western media define as an open-air prison 32
hospitals for a population of 1 million. Well, many of them were used only as a
base to hide weapons, as a refuge for terrorists and as a very useful public
relations tool to unleash a fierce international reaction every time Israel -
or Hamas itself, as in the case of the al-Ahli hospital, in whose courtyard a
Hamas missile fell on October 17 - entered one of these supposed health centres
with its troops.
6.
The main culprit for the catastrophe
is Hamas, which aims to achieve as many casualties as possible to delegitimise
Israel. And its strategy is working, as was to be expected from the start.
Israel is losing support in the international community and has had to bow to
European and U.S. pressure, first agreeing to a truce last November and now
showing greater caution in the final weeks of the conflict. These measures do
not always aid them in the pursuit of their objectives and could even prolong
the conflict. Israel allows all necessary humanitarian aid into Gaza. It is
another matter for Hamas not to allow this aid to reach the civilian
population. Now they are trying to launch the aid from the air. Of course, as
good or bad as it is as a strategy, these are not the kind of tactics you would
expect a country seeking to obliterate the population of Gaza.
Israel, like any other democratic country, and even
more so given the current state of the world, has its virtues and its defects.
Netanyahu is not a prime minister I would even wish on my worst enemy, and his
many shortcomings are compounded by his willingness to make deals with whomever
it takes, and if necessary, with the Devil himself, as a means of staying in
power. In this sense, he is somewhat reminiscent of a prime minister that we
have closer to home, even if the latter is from the left. Gaza is suffering
from a terrible humanitarian crisis, and if Netanyahu had done away with Hamas
earlier by other means, perhaps we would be in a very different situation
today.
Wars are always horrific. There is no humanity in war,
no matter how much one tries to minimise the suffering. However, if this war
were not fought now, it is hard to imagine where we would be a few years down
the line, with a nuclear Iran and terrorist infrastructures in Gaza even more
complex to navigate. The aim of this post is not to defend or convince anyone that
one strategy or another is the right one, or what other tactics could have
mitigated the suffering of the Palestinian people the most. Jews and Arabs need
to learn to live together. Today it is even more difficult than ever to imagine
such a result, although just in the days leading up to the Hamas massacre in
southern Israel, the rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia seemed to offer
a glimpse of such a scenario. Today, peace is farther away than ever. It’s
important to understand that reality. But resorting to anti-Semitic language
and to weaponise the word "holocaust" against Israel and the Jews in
the context of the Gaza war is intolerable and shows an unbearable level of
ignorance of the situation in the Middle East and Israel's role in the
conflict.
