We
do not have gas chambers and crematoria, but there is no one fixed method for
genocide.
Dr.
Ya’akov Lazovik writes (“Academic Genocide”, “Ha’Aretz”, 4 March)
that in the State of Israel it is impossible that the regime and the nation
will plan and commit a genocide. It
is difficult to determine if this is naïveté or self-righteousness. As we know, there is no single fixed method for murder and
not even for genocide. The author
I. L. Peretz wrote about “the righteous cat” who does not spill blood, but
only suffocates her prey.
The
government of Israel, using the military and its instruments of destruction, is
not only spilling blood, but it is also suffocating. What other name can be given to the dropping of a one-tonne
bomb over a dense urban area, when the justification uttered is that we wanted
to murder a dangerous terrorist and his wife?
The rest of the citizens who were killed and injured, among whom are
children and women, do not count, of course.
How
is it possible to explain the expulsion of citizens from their homes at three
o’clock in the morning on a rainy night, then depositing bombs in the house
and then departing without warning? When
those expelled returned to their home, the bombs were exploded and a brutal
murder and destruction of property was thus committed.
And what is the justification for what happened in Jenin?
We did not destroy the whole neighbourhood, just 85 houses;
it was not slaughter, we killed only 50-some citizens.
How many does one need to murder and destroy in one swoop for it to be a
crime? – A crime against humanity, as determined by the Laws of the State of
Israel, not only the laws of Belgium.
And
more: A curfew and closure of an
entire city so that a few celebrants from the racist bunch of settlers in
Hebron could walk to the Cave of the Patriarchs, and
tanks destroying fruit and vegetable stands, and bulldozers that destroy
houses, and Generals who, in their arrogant hubris, are willing to destroy a
whole neighbourhood and ancient houses for the convenience of a group of
settler hooligans. Curfew,
closure, brutality, murder, destruction of homes of suspects, while we keep
parroting the incantation that a person is innocent until proven otherwise (as
in the case of our Prime Minister and his sons).
The
order that Ariel Sharon gave to the soldiers who went to wreak revenge in
Qibiah: “Maximize losses in life and property”, has not been forgotten.
Today Sharon, Mofaz and Yaalon, the three Generals who manage the policy
of this government, behave like that self-righteous cat -
suffocating all the time. Curfew
and another curfew, arrests and more arrests, destruction of roads, brutality
to the residents at road stops. Benny
Alon, (a minister in the present government), already said: “make their life
so bitter that they will transfer themselves willingly”.
This
is done on a daily basis, in addition to the destruction.
The Chief of Staff, Yaalon, already announced that he is “destroying
for re-building”. One can understand from his moves that the “building” is
building of more and more settlements. So
that they will not be obliged, as military rulers, to take care of the
residents’ welfare, the army uses sorties, followed by retreats. They
enter a village, they kill, they destroy and they arrest, and then they
retreat. Those who remain on the
ashes and the ruins will take care of themselves.
Many
of our children are being indoctrinated, in religious schools, that the Arabs
are Amalek, and the bible teaches us that Amalek must be destroyed.
There was already a rabbi (Israel Hess) who wrote in the newspaper of
Bar Ilan University that we all must commit genocide because his research
showed that the Palestinians are Amalek.
The
nation is not planning to commit genocide; the nation really does not want to
know what’s happening in the territories.
The nation is following orders given by the legitimate representatives
of the regime. After the
legitimate Prime Minister who wanted to bring peace was murdered, the hand is
loose on the trigger, greed is paramount, and there is always some reason to
brutalise all of the residents of a city that number tens of thousands, if not
hundreds of thousands, because there are always people there who are on the
“wanted” list. It is
sufficient that one person is wanted for us to bomb and kill, by mistake, of
course, also women, children, workers and other humans – if indeed we still
count them as humans.
Of
course with our self-righteousness, with our self-adoration in our “Jewish
ethics” we make sure to advertise how beautifully the doctors take care of
Palestinian victims in the hospitals. We
do not advertise how many of those are executed in cold blood in their own
homes.
So
it’s not yet genocide of the terrible and unique style of which we were past
victims. And as one of the smart
Generals told me, we do not have crematoria and gas chambers.
Does that mean that anything less than crematoria and gas chambers is
consistent with Jewish ethics? Did
he not hear how an entire people claimed that it did not know what was done in
its name?