The eyes water with emotion, the heart swells with pride: Israel Defense Forces soldiers recovered the bodies of two Jews who were killed in Antakya. The eyes water, the heart swells: Operation Olive Branch pulled a 9-year-old boy out of the rubble Friday evening. An IDF team rescued 19 people.
Like everything in the IDF, the operation has a childish name and PR from the biggest PR agency in the country, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit. Israel is second only to Azerbaijan in the size of the rescue mission it sent to Turkey. It is doubtful that the main headline of Azerbaijan’s most widely circulated newspaper Friday was “A moral mission,” as Israel Hayom’s was. The heart swells with pride.
What the IDF is doing in Turkey cannot but inspire admiration. Digging in ruins in a foreign land day and night and then providing medical care to survivors, with endless devotion, and in a semi-hostile country yet. Kudos to the IDF.
But isn’t this the IDF that we know? The same IDF we are shocked by? It saves children in Turkey and kills children in the West Bank; digs through ruins for Turkish corpses, and abducts dozens of Palestinian corpses and stores them in refrigerators; clears the ruins of houses destroyed in an earthquake and demolishes hundreds of houses a year with its own bulldozers. It wouldn’t be surprising if some of the Israeli soldiers who were sent to Turkey are the same soldiers who are razing buildings in the villages of Masafer Yatta. Perhaps the officer who sealed the home in A-Tor before the TV cameras is now carefully clearing rubble in Turkey?
This is what the IDF issues: a singular, moral, pride-inspiring thrill. Of course, it does so out of a sense of mission, but it is impossible to hide the sweaty effort to reap benefits from a humanitarian operation as well. How moving it is to bring the bodies of Fortuna and Saul Cenudioglu from Antakya for burial in Israel – and what about the body of Wadi’ Abu Ramuz, 17, of Silwan, which Israel snatched? There’s no need to dig to bury it, just remove it from the refrigerator where it was placed. And what about the hundreds of bodies taken by the IDF from families who were sentenced to mourn their loved ones without a grave?
It is hard to understand how such a brutal and sometimes barbaric army can suddenly change its spots to become the salvation army. The same commanders, the same soldiers, the same uniforms: rescuing and killing, rehabilitating and razing, saving from the ruins and with the same stroke bringing destruction upon others. There is no difference between the victim of an earthquake and the victim of a demolition in terms of the disaster that befell them: Both are left homeless, with nothing.
On the day the IDF team was photographed on its way to Turkey, the demolition of an apartment building in Silwan was planned: 12 apartments, 77 new homeless people, 12 of them children. Will the IDF supply humanitarian aid to them, as well, after their personal earthquake?
This is how we like to appear, the most human, the most rescuing. Pop over to a disaster zone for a few days, clear, rescue and of course be photographed, and then return to routine. It is okay to be proud of the rescuers, but not to forget that Israel is one of the world’s cruelest, most heartless countries in its treatment of asylum seekers, war refugees and survivors of disasters.
It’s easy to carry out rescue missions. It’s much harder to take in refugees. Jordan, Turkey, Sweden and Germany are a light to the nations much more than is Israel the rescuer. In recent years they have taken in millions of refugees from Syria, Iraq and the Balkans. They are paying an unbearably heavy price for their rescue actions, and no one applauds them for it. Israel does not even consider taking in a few of the victims of the earthquakes in Turkey.
An anonymous post on Twitter told the entire story: “While Israeli soldiers are saving Muslims in Turkey, other Muslims are killing Israelis,” it said. And really, why is it that we did not receive, and immediately, all of the credit that we deserve for Operation Olive Branch? And how come the Palestinians don’t forgive us for everything that we do to them? Hey, we rescued 19 Turks from the ruins.