Israel is aghast over Roger Waters. Israel is aghast at the October 7 deniers. There is nothing worse today in the eyes of Israelis than to deny the atrocities. They are right. It is tantamount to denying the Holocaust. The October 7 atrocities are Israel's improper justification for everything that it has done since then, and that is why their rage is so fierce.
In the eyes of Israel, it is impossible even not to know that there is an Israeli baby among the hostages, even when there are 17,000 dead Palestinian children, whose heinous killing most Israelis deny.
Guy Lerer of Channel 13's current affairs show HaTzinor, like his fellow propagandist TV hosts, deliberated last week between two possibilities: either Waters has gone mad, or he is being deceitful. Lerer chose both. Waters is neither, but he doesn't need me to defend him.
October 7 denial is indeed an injustice that shows a lack of understanding. On October 7, horrific crimes were committed against thousands of innocent Israelis, even if babies weren't murdered in ovens. One can and should be shocked by what Israel has done in Gaza since then, even without entertaining baseless conspiracy theories about October 7.
One can and should have empathy for the Israeli victims, from the Nova festival to Kibbutz Nir Oz, from Ofakim to Kibbutz Be'eri, and at the same time be shocked by Israel's crimes in Gaza and express solidarity with the millions of victims there. Casting doubt on the veracity of this or that detail is irrelevant, because the overall picture of October 7 is clear and shocking.
The fact that Waters cries every morning for the children of Gaza, as he said in an interview with Piers Morgan, is a badge of honor for him and his conscience. I know his tears; they are genuine.
I wish more Israelis would cry for the children of Gaza. They are being killed, injured and orphaned en masse. And still, the scope of Israel's disaster must not be minimized.
Having said all this: Israel has no right to criticize the deniers of October 7 or any of its other national disasters. There are few nations that deny the disasters they perpetrated against other peoples the way that the people of Israel does. Israel outdoes all those who deny the truth, who lie to themselves and others.
From denying the existence of a Palestinian people that lived in Palestine for generations, through denying the Nakba to denying the indiscriminate, mass killing in Gaza – 100 years of denial.
A society that lives in such denial, that lacks any minimal notion of accepting responsibility and acknowledging the truth, or at the very least respect for its victims, needs a lot of chutzpah to denounce those who deny its disaster. What difference is there between the deniers of October 7 and the deniers of the Nakba, the disaster of a people that lost its world, country, land, property and honor in 1948?
How many Israelis are willing to recognize the Nakba, and when will Israel officially recognize it? Israel also denies the horrors and crimes of the occupation and denies the existence of apartheid. These are more egregious denials than the denial of October 7, because they involve an ongoing, endless situation.
For Thursday's political cartoon, the wonderful Amos Biderman drew Waters standing on a pile of corpses, alongside burning kibbutz homes and Nukhba terrorists abducting Israelis to Gaza. Waters asks in the caricature: Where's the evidence? Biderman could have drawn a similar picture, of Israel standing on the ruins of Palestine, or at the very least on the ruins of Gaza, asking: Where's the evidence?
Where's the evidence that we carried out ethnic cleansing in 1948 and did not allow refugees to return to their country; where's the evidence that when two peoples live under one government and one people has full rights and the other, living under eternal occupation, has no rights, that this is apartheid?
Where's the evidence that Israel killed tens of thousands of innocent people in Gaza? Where's the evidence that children are starving to death in Gaza? Where's the evidence, and who here is the denier?