This Intolerable Gap Between Jewish Memory and Palestinian Reality - Opinion - Haaretz.com
I can't stop thinking about the 15 emergency responders who were buried together in Rafah, along with their ambulances. One picture in particular was etched in my mind: a photo of one of the victims, a young man with a penetrating gaze, looking straight into one's eyes. His name was Rifat Radwan. His cellphone, found in the mass grave he shared with the other bodies and ambulances, contained his last recording.
In the video clip Rifat hears the prolonged shooting by IDF soldiers, understanding in that moment that his death was approaching. He began reciting the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith. The shooting stops for a moment, and is then renewed, with rapid fire heard. He doesn't stop reciting, continuing to say "there is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet."
After that he starts saying "God is great," as the shooting intensifies and his voice weakens. In the background one can hear loud yelling, and at some point Rifat says: "Mother, forgive me, this was the path I chose, to help people." He asks God to forgive him and ends by asking God to accept him as he is. His voice breaks, gunfire is heard again, and in the end, he says: "The Jews are here, the Jews are here." The End.
I have walked around with this story for days, silent, with a sense of oppression. I walk with Rifat's gaze, sharp, penetrating, one that looks straight into one's soul. I think about him during the day, and when I close my eyes all I see is his face, with its direct gaze.
Since the war began, I have had different periods where I saw the eyes of someone that wouldn't leave me, eyes that threatened my nonexistent serenity, not giving me any peace. But for a long time now, and the more death is rampantand growing worse in Gaza, I haven't had any eyes disturbing my composure. Until I encountered Rifat's gaze.
Palestinians mourn medics, who came under Israeli fire while on a rescue mission, after their bodies were recovered, according to the Red Crescent, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip March 31, 2025.Credit: Hatem Khaled/ REUTERS
I blame Israel's school system and the State of Israel for having introduced the Holocaust into my veins. I had to check. I Googled: "The murder of emergency responders during the Holocaust." And there I saw that someone had written that "during the Holocaust, particularly in Eastern Europe, when the war spread to the east and south, there were many instances in which emergency teams, including medical personnel and members of aid organizations helping Jewish communities were caught and murdered. The motives were mainly to prevent any assistance for the Jewish population while carrying out the Nazi regime's extermination policy."
It is April. I've said everywhere how hard and oppressive the months of April and May are for me. When I think of April I think of Passover and the memorial days of the Jewish people residing in Zion. Especially Holocaust Remembrance Day, which last year marked the disappearance of entire Jewish communities. What will this year's Remembrance Day mark?
This intolerable gap between the memories of the Jewish people and the reality of the Palestinian people, between the insistent pledge of "Never Again" and what is happening now, in the present, is something that burns one's heart, something almost inconceivable. This is the gap between an Israeli society that opens its heart, at least ostensibly, to a painful historical memory while ignoring, sometimes brutally so, the pain that it itself is responsible for.