The rise of altruist Jews of conscience within Israel, and those standing shoulder-to-shoulder in solidarity with Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians across the globe, is a wakeup call – photo BBC
A Wakeup Call
By Mohajer Ansari
CA
The creation of Israel was Europe’s deceitful and cruel gesture of atonement for the Holocaust. Its sole premise was to force the unsuspecting Palestinians to pay the price for Europe’s original sin: perpetration of the Holocaust on its Jewish population. The largest open-air Jewish cemetery in Auschwitz symbolize that indelible sin!
Europe’s perceived atonement for the Holocaust ended up creating a different yet more diabolic one in 1948: one that the humanity is witnessing live for nearly 3 months now. Under the shallower and hollower echo of ‘never again’, it is being unleashed on the people caged in the largest open-air prison on the face of the earth!
Of 21,000+ civilians killed (and counting) so far, three-quarter are defenseless children and women. The dead also include journalists, UN workers and healthcare individuals. Israel’s blinding rage for retribution against Hamas fighters for the October 7 events, did not respect the sanctity of even Christmas and bombing continued without any lull. Almost 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced, forcing them to live with dwindling access to food, water, electricity, and medical supplies. Israel plans to drive them to an unforgiving desert with little hope if they will ever be allowed to return.
The latest wartime damage mapping done by experts at CUNY Graduate Center and Oregon State University shows that Israeli forces have killed approximately twice as many women and children in Gaza in the first two months of the conflict, as Russians forces did in Ukraine in nearly two years!
The largest bomb that the coalition forces used against Islamic State forces in Mosul or in their stronghold of Raqqa, were 500-pound Mk-82 bombs. Israel has pounded Gaza with bombs of up to 2,000-pound; more than 200 such bombs have been dropped so far! More than anything else it is the intensity and sheer tempo of bombing and speed of the damage in such a short timeframe on such a dense population crammed in a small space that is mind boggling. Such ferocity was never recorded in any conflict before.
To put in historical context, Gaza compares to the bombing campaign by Allied forces over Germany during WW II, which effectively destroyed Cologne, Dresden, and Hamburg. The data collected by CUNY and OSU shows that the percentage of buildings damaged or destroyed in Gaza in the first two months of the current conflict surpassed the destruction in Cologne and Dresden and was rapidly approaching the level of Hamburg; it might have done so by now.
One wonders, how within a century, helpless victims have become the most inhumane aggressors!
Silence equals conformity and complicity. There are no sidelines. True adherents of the monotheist Abrahamic faiths - Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike - believe that God is just. God would eventually dispense justice for those who have been wronged, dehumanized, and deprived of their dignity.
In that spirit, South Africa launched a case on December 29 at UN's top court, accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and asking the court to order Israel to halt its attacks. It has asserted that Israeli actions in Palestine amount to crime against humanity and meet the threshold of genocide as defined in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. This is the first such challenge made over the current war. South Africa has been a fierce and vocal critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, comparing its policies in Gaza and the West Bank with South Africa’s past apartheid regime of racial segregation. It is also the only country in the world to have severed its diplomatic relations with Israel in the very early stage of the conflict.
South Africa’s lone quest to add a humanitarian face to the Palestinian crisis, draws a parallel to the story of persecution of Maccabee Jews at the hands of ruthless Antiochus, followed by their deliverance. Their post-plight triumph was symbolized by lighting of a cruse with pure olive oil just enough to burn for one day, but miraculously continued for eight days. Hence, the Menorah.
On the brighter side though, not everything is lost. The rise of altruist Jews of conscience within Israel, and those standing shoulder-to-shoulder in solidarity with Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians across the globe, is a wakeup call to the apartheid regime and its international colluders.
