Resistance to Israel’s war on Gaza is mounting, both internationally as well as inside the country. A column follows by Gideon Levy, an Israeli journalist and author, published in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on 25 May, and taken from Terry Bell’s website, Terry Bell Writes.
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There are in Israel more than a few politicians and public figures calling to end the war. There are many people who are fighting courageously for the release of the hostages. There are many more who yearn to see the current government ousted. There are people who fear for Israel’s international standing as it becomes a pariah state. Many are also worried about the consequences of Israel’s ostracism and its economic and societal costs.
And there is not a single righteous person in Sodom. Few express concern publicly not only about Israel’s reputation and moral standing but also, and chiefly, about the fate of Gaza’s inhabitants.
There is no Israeli public figure whose sleep is disturbed by the children screaming in terror and pain in hospitals, the old people who are trundled from place to place in donkey carts and by the elimination of entire families, one after another.
Gaza’s pain is secondary noise to the public conversation, background noise to an entirely different debate. Even the best of us are only concerned with the war’s implications for Israel.
The human voice is missing; humanism is dead. It is completely absent from politics; most intellectuals have been struck dumb, and there’s no hint of it in the media. There isn’t a single Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Janusz Korczak or Bertrand Russell to cry out: this must end no matter the price, because of what Gaza has been through. All of Israeli society lacks the basic humanity to be shaken by the suffering of the worst victims.
The human shock over what happened on October 7 has not been replaced by a similar shock over what Israel is doing in Gaza. Why is that? Because we’re Jews and they’re not? Can’t human kindness cross borders and blur national affinities in the face of destruction? “Please do not disturb, we are still in October 7.”
But since then, we have committed a thousand October 7s, and these have not managed to touch the hearts of Israelis. The traitorous media indeed helps people avoid seeing the horrors. But even without the media, one can know that a horrific disaster is taking place there due to our handiwork.
Protests against this are not heard here. The causes for this are numerous, but there is no justification for it. It’s obvious that people care more about their own, and every nation looks after its own people first. But this? To what extent? When I recently showed a horrific video from Gaza to a relative a few days ago, she asked mechanically: “Are you sure it wasn’t faked?”
Nothing will crack the protective wall Israelis have built around themselves. Nothing in Gaza evokes any guilt. We don’t even have the kind of protest that rocked the United States for years, the one against the Vietnam War. There is no Eugene McCarthy running on an antiwar platform.
Take, for example, Orna Rinat’s exemplary op-ed in Hebrew from Thursday, perhaps the most disturbing piece published in Israel about the war. Has it made any waves? Where is the person who will take to the podiums and say that the horror must stop first of all on account of the suffering of Gazans,, and to hell with all of the other learned considerations?
Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, one of the leaders of the protest movement, wrote another biting essay on Thursday calling for an end to the war. I read it twice. There is not a hint of compassion or human sympathy for the Strip. The last thing that interests Barak is the suffering there. He has numerous explanations for why the war must be stopped. He even remarks on the need for “humanitarian aid,” mainly in order to placate the world. But where’s the outcry against the destruction?
Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s op-ed in the same issue was both braver and more humane. In South Africa’s apartheid era, white Jews enlisted in the fight, yes, the fight against apartheid, shoulder-to-shoulder with the Blacks. They were wounded, imprisoned for years and even died. In Israel, there isn’t even someone expressing the pain of the victims.
The war must stop first of all because it is a war of destruction, causing inhuman suffering to the people of Gaza. There is no one in Israel who will put it in those words.
FEATURED IMAGE: Children injured in bombing of Gaza Strip, 24 November 2023. UNWRA on Wikimedia Commons.
| Source | Palestine Rally: End The Siege, Stop the War on Gaza |
An excellent article. Indeed the human response it missing and the few who oppose what is happening seem to be using a Trumpian transactional logic. Is there any kindness out there? Empathy?
Indeed — all worrying questions. At least, I find it heartening that Haaretz is carrying this kind of material. It’s worth watching (as Terry Bell is doing), to get an idea of how the internal debate within Israel is unfolding.