My Thoughts During the Siren - Opinion - Haaretz.com
Israel is not committing a holocaust against the Palestinian people. In the last 19 months, however, it has been approaching it at a frightening speed. This has to be said, and with even greater emphasis today.
Like every year, I will stand at attention when the siren sounds, and my thoughts will wander. They will move from remembering my grandmother and grandfather, Sophie and Hugo, whose names I saw engraved on the commemoration wall at the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague, to the sights from Gaza, which won't leave me.
Since childhood, I've always imagined a great fire consuming everything during the siren. Before the Gaza war, I envisioned Jews burning in it; this year, I will also see the babies burned alive last week in their shelter tent in Khan Yunis, and with them thousands of children, women and men whom Israel has killed without mercy.
How is it possible to stand at attention today and not think about the horrifying investigation by Yaniv Kubovich on the execution of 15 Palestinian rescue workers by Israeli soldiers, who shot them in cold blood and then crushed their ambulances and buried the bodies in the sand? Without thinking about the resident of Sinjil in the West Bank, whose home settlers set on fire, after which soldiers came and threw tear gas at him until he had a heart attack and died, as Hagar Shezaf reported on Wednesday? Without thinking about the shepherding community of Umm al-Khair in the South Hebron Hills, and the incessant pogroms these peaceable people endure at the hands of the army and settlers, who have joined forces to expel them from their land?
How can one not think about the brave and shocking article by Orit Kamir (Haaretz Hebrew, April 22) about the Israelis standing on the sidelines of this war, which she believes negates their right to complain about the Germans who did so, and agree with every word? Or about the no less shocking article by Daniel Blatman about children of Gaza and children of the Holocaust (Haaretz Hebrew, April 23)? He writes that the day fighting resumed in Gaza will live in infamy in Jewish history. One can only hope that will be the case.
"I've studied the Holocaust for 40 years," Blatman wrote. "I've read countless testimonies about the most horrific genocide of all, against the Jewish people and other victims. However, the reality in which I would read accounts about mass murder committed by the Jewish state that, in chilling resemblance, remind me of testimonies from the Yad Vashem archives – this I could not have foreseen even in my worst nightmares."
This is not a comparison to the Holocaust but a terrible warning of where things are heading. Not thinking about it today is to betray the memory of the Holocaust and its victims. Not thinking about Gaza today is to forfeit one's humanity and desecrate the memory of the Holocaust. It is a warning sign against what is yet to come.
The brother of four-year-old child victim Zain Hijazi holds his body after the boy was killed at the site of a tent encampment for Palestinians displaced by conflict which was hit by Israeli bombardment at the Jazira Club in Gaza City on Monday.Credit: AFP/Omar Al-Qattaa
In Israel, people tend to claim that October 7 is the worst disaster that has befallen the Jewish people since the Holocaust. This is, of course, a perverse comparison that cheapens the memory of the Holocaust. There is no similarity between the murderous and one-time attack of October 7 and the Holocaust. But what followed it does evoke its memory.
There is no Auschwitz or Treblinka in Gaza, but there are concentration camps. There is also starvation, thirst, the transfer of people from place to place like cattle, and a blockade on medications.
It is not yet the Holocaust, but one of its foundational elements has long been in place: the dehumanization of victims that took hold among the Nazis is now blowing in full force in Israel. Since the war resumed, some 1,600 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. That is a bloodbath, not combat. It is taking place not far from our homes, carried out by the best of our sons. It is happening amid the silence and nauseating indifference of most Israelis.
Israel Prize winner Ariel Rubinstein published a profound and inspiring article (Haaretz Hebrew, April 22), in which he explained why he will not stand at attention for the siren this year. I will stand and think about my grandmother and grandfather, but mainly about Gaza.