A Personal Statement on the War in Gaza
In any conflict between peoples, there is a time for balancing the books, for placing facts neatly in the debit and credit columns, for issuing measured statements about the rights and wrongs on both sides. But not in the midst of one-sided carnage. The only decent thing to feel at the present time is outrage. The only thing for decent people to do right now is to condemn, without reserve or qualification, the brutal campaign that the Israeli military is waging against the population of Gaza. Every ‘if’ and ‘but’ derogates from decency.
Yesterday, 7 January 2009, my synagogue sent its members an email containing details of two rallies in support of Israel “which we would urge you to support”. No ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ here, just solid support for the perpetrator in the midst of the horror it is perpetrating. Is it possible to go further in the opposite direction to decency?
Attached was a flyer for a “Mass Rally in Support of Israel” organised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council, with “the support of the major organisations of UK Jewry”, for the morning of Sunday 11 January in Trafalgar Square. The flyer proclaims “End Hamas terror!” No ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ here either. No hint at the unspeakable state terror being unleashed, day after day, by the Israeli military. It defies belief.
So, let me place on record the following fact: The Board does not speak for all British Jews and certainly not for this one. Nor does the so-called Leadership Council, nor any of the organisations associated with this misbegotten event. None of them represents me or the Judaism that I cherish and which leads me to say as follows: I condemn utterly the military offensive by the government of Israel against the people of Gaza. The loss of any human life, on whatever side of this conflict, is a terrible thing. At this juncture, though, my heart is with the Palestinians on the ground in the midst of their misery. And I extend my hand to those Israelis who are speaking out against their own government.
Brian Klug
Co-founder, Independent Jewish Voices
London
8 January 2009
I noticed the Israeli media is now facilitating international media to “ access news” about Gaza!! Carefully monitored, whetted and weeded. “ I am a cat, I close my eyes and the world goes dark”, says a proverb in my language. Typical Israeli attitude I say.
What caught my eye on TV was the conducted tour for international media, to a hospital on the Israeli side where children and women from across the border were being ‘treated’! Bash them and bomb them and then provide them with medicines and services; that is what I call Israeli generosity! Or hold a machine gun at a 5 year old Palestinian boy – this must be an Israeli act of bravery.
In the Israeli hospital was this Palestinian pregnant woman waiting to deliver her baby who just wept soundlessly when the media asked her how she felt. Her family had left her there just before the ground attacks commenced and well before she was due to deliver, for the safety of herself and her baby. But what was the meaning of being safe in this context.
Was it, being able to safely deliver her baby not knowing where her husband and other children were or whether she and her baby will be safe from the bombs after she returned or whether she will remain a refugee stateless and aggressed in her own land?
I am sure millions of questions were floating in her troubled waiting mind.
There must be hundreds of women like her holding the core of life in their fist – losing lives of those that they have borne so patiently and at the same time nurturing new life.
Do bombs in these instances have the discerning capacity to understand that these are mere innocents? I say not. Because if they did, then the humans who triggered them would be superior beings intelligence enough not to make war with the pretext of looking for peace.
http://whythelefthatesisrael.blogspot.com/