At times, many times, words are not enough. They simply cannot convey the emotions, the tensions, the grief that weighs down the air, the very breath one takes in places of tragedy. The agony and horror of the carnage at that site never leaves, an ever-present remnant forever echoing through the years, through the millennia. The too often attempts to 'whitewash' the carnage, to gin up a moral equivalency is obscene. Too often there is an attempt to equate obscenities, to create a moral equivalency where there is none. To minimize the grief of the other while highlighting one's own grief. Or to endorse the weird thinking that sharing one's misery with another somehow alleviates your own. It does not. It merely encourages a 'top this' approach as people compete in their moments of grief.
There is no moral equivalency, no shrinkage of the height of barbarity, the depths of cruelty and inhumanity, no right to shift blame to the victims nor to equate the consequences with the initial, causative actions of the perpetrators. Hence the issue of 'innocent' suffering Palestinians does not quite hold water. As more and more details of intelligence are uncovered, a clear line of connectivity is found between the raiding murderers and their vast amount of known intimate knowledge of the kibbutzim attacked. Its physical layout, the insides of cottages, who lived where, the directives as to capture of hostages, murder of the 'unworthy', the prize money awaiting captors, the violence to be perpetrated, from the unborn in the shelter of the womb to the oldest inhabitant.
This is knowledge that could only have been obtained via the not so innocent workers who violated the trust of their employers, the ties generated. 20,000 workers every day through the gates of Gaza, who then shared their assigned information with the overlords of Gaza- Hamas. They then aided and abetted pre, during and post attack, as they ran in behind Hamas, shouting cries of death, shooting their guns off at any available or uncovered target.
The consequences of their deeds are severe, as they must be. There is no moral equivalency even remotely possible, for what they inflicted upon truly innocent civilians is way out of line, or should I use the term flippantly thrown around of late-the international laws of war. What an oxymoron, as war, by definition, by reality, is lawless, an out of control bursting of ugly poisonous pimples on the rear ends of humanity and the poison that then enters the body and corrupts hearts and souls. International law re war? Well, maybe, but of course applicable only to Israel, which has the rather dubious honor of being the only sovereign nation in the world which must tolerate advice, demands, evaluations, accusations, and permission from all before they act.
Hamas continues to hold hostages and uses them coldly as tools to delay an invasion which must take place, as awful as it will be for the soldiers and families of Israel. It has no choice but to respond and fulfill its sovereign mandate to defend its citizens, demand repayment for blood shed. If not, Israel will lose credibility, deterrence and well, we know the rest.
In the meanwhile, Israel too undergoes an evacuation, a shifting of population of half the country, north and south, to be safer from rockets. They will return, as they have done again and again. Golda Meir said we defend Israel to the last because - we have no other place. True then, true now, and true always.
Finally, there is no genocide plan. That term is anathema to Israel for well-known reasons. In fact, it is the sects of Islam who are blowing up the schools, mosques, markets of another sect of Islam, waging genocide on their own. And silence, no condemnation, no interference from the world. Too busy concentrating on Israel.
I end this posting with the words of another. Read it, feel it, think it.
I thank the author for it. I hope he will not be angry for my posting of it.
Simple, deep, moving, true.
More than two weeks have passed since Hamas' savagery decimated the Israeli kibbutzim and small towns adjacent to the Gaza Strip, since innocent Jewish women, children, elderly, infants, and men were slaughtered and brutalized in the most vicious, horrific manner since the dark years of the Holocaust. And in short order, we have witnessed and are witnessing an attempt at moral equivalence in the media, in academia, and by some politicians across the globe between Hamas' murderous onslaught and Israel's subsequent legitimate determination to rid itself of the Hamas scourge once and for all. Of course, we are not indifferent, cannot be indifferent to the Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza, but they are the direct consequence of the fact that Hamas has been using them, and continues to use them, as human shields. And none of us can be allowed to forget how the present conflagration came about and what its outcome must be.
This work is dedicated to the victims, the wounded, the survivors, and the hostages of October 7, 2023
The work has proven too difficult for me to include, so look up on Newsweek Simchat Torah Requiem. Read it. Feel it.
By Menachem Z. Rosensaft
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