Heartbreaking Hypocrisy
Israel - Gaza - Iran
I’m not going back through millennia of persecution of Jews, but please don’t deny our history. No, I’m going to present a rough outline of some of the violent tribal war since 1948, the year I was born, to the best of my memory. Admittedly there will be holes in my memory and admittedly I am biased towards Israel’s right to exist and admittedly I am a secular, Jewish Zionist, but Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu is not the nation it was when I lived there.
1948, Israel becomes a sovereign nation after WWII, after Hitler’s focused murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust. Hitler also murdered six million other “undesirables”: political prisoners, Gypsies, homosexuals, disabled people, anyone who didn’t fit the desired Aryan model.
1948, Arab States declared Israel had no right to exist and the current tribal war began. The mantra “from the river to the sea” began which means they will drive Israel (Jews) from the Jordan River into the Mediterranean Sea, wipe the state into nonexistence.
1953, there is an attack by Palestinians on a small Israeli village killing a young mother and her two children - an infant and a toddler. Ariel Sharon, head of IDF and a hateful right wing hawk (and Benjamin Netanyahu’s role model) orders a massive, disproportionate retaliation on a small Palestinian village in the West Bank (then under Jordan and not a sovereign nation). This massacre killed nearly 70 people, 2/3rd of the village, mostly women and children. Sharon ordered massive destruction to send a message. International response was harsh so AIPAC, the American/Israeli PAC was formed to reframe the narrative.
More, and constant wars between Israel and Arab nations continue with Israel capturing the Sinai and giving it back to Egypt because of pressure from the UN. Israel wanted defensible borders, but the surrounding nations chanted from the river to the sea.
1967, the Six Day War began because Egypt denied Israel shipping access to the Straits of Tiran. It began June 5, ended by June 10; at the end, Israel occupied the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank including East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt by the end of the war. Israel relinquished only the Sinai Peninsula. Prior to the war, Egypt occupied Gaza and Jordan occupied the West Bank. These territories remain under dispute and pre-Netanyahu, were always part of negotiations.
1973, Oct. 6, the Yom Kippur war began, led by Egypt and Syria. Israel was flat footed and caught unaware. Nevertheless, Israel won that war, and strengthened their hold on the West Bank and Gaza.
1978, the Camp David Accords, negotiated by President Jimmy Carter, brought two hardliners together: Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Menacham Begin of Israel. They negotiated a historic peace treaty between the two countries.
1995, Israeli Prime Yitzhak Rabin signed a peace treaty with Jordan during the Oslo Accords. He was later assassinated by a right wing extremist, an Israeli law student named Yigal Amir. Thus ended the peace initiative that Rabin pursued and Israel became unrecognizable to me and countless other Jews.
1996, Netanyahu became Israeli Prime Minister, was replaced by Ariel Sharon in 2001, regained the position in 2006. Netanyahu remains in the position by cobbling together a coalition made up of reactionary right wingers and the ultra orthodox religious right wing.
2023, Hamas terrorists from Gaza attack a civilian music festival near Tel Aviv murdering and raping, beheading innocent people and taking hostages. Netanyahu begins his war against Gaza attacking civilian targets, using the Israeli hostages as pawns to justify his crimes against humanity. The world presumes all Jews and all Israelis support this heinous murdering of innocents. We don’t. We are not Netanyahu. We protest, we mourn, we withhold money. It’s not enough, but we do it. Netanyahu has bombed schools, hospitals, villages. He has murdered at least as many Palestinians as US military killed in the Vietnam War. He has murdered aide workers, people from the World Central Kitchen. Netanyahu is a war criminal and must be stopped. I want desperately to see him brought before the World Court in The Hague to be tried and convicted of crimes against humanity.
2025 Netanyahu begins a war with Iran. Today, The New York Times reported that Iran bombed an Israeli hospital. Herein lies my despair: Netanyahu has destroyed hospitals in Gaza because he (like Hitler considered Jews) considers Palestinians to be subhuman (like the current US president considers Latinos).
I hate this - blind, tribal war where each side is determined to exterminate the other. Netanyahu is not all of Israel. He’s a war criminal. Hamas is not all Palestinians. Hamas is a violent terrorist group with exceptional control of the citizens of Gaza. The Ayatollahs of Iran are not all Iranians. They are fundamentalists, and are not the majority of Muslims. And finally, donald j. trump is not all United States citizens. These are people who govern by fear, hate, and threats. The collective citizens of the world have an obligation to stand up to hate, to risk comfort, and end these wars. I am one individual, and I’m old, and I still do my part. Peacefully, without calling for an end to a country. Please let us end these futile, hateful tribal wars, arrest and convict the criminals, and rebuild.