Denying Gaza's Starvation Is No Less Vile Than Denying the Holocaust
There aren't many meaner phenomena than the denial of the Jewish Holocaust. Deniers have claimed that it never took place, and that if it did, the number of victims was small, or that there never were any gas chambers.
They took measurements and had data to back this up. The Holocaust was a conspiracy meant to extort compensation and commiseration. Its denial has been criminalized in many countries, with deniers considered to be antisemites. British historian David Irving was imprisoned in Austria and ostracized.
Casting doubt on October 7 was condemned in Israel, and anyone daring to do so was labeled an antisemite. When Roger Waters claimed that there was no evidence of rape and that the story of babies being burned in ovens was an Israeli lie, he was widely assailed, as were many others who pointed to exaggerations in the Israeli narrative.
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In recent weeks, a despicable wave of denial has been sweeping through Israel, of all places. It is prevalent among many swaths of the public, shared by almost all media outlets.
We've tried to ignore, to conceal, to avert our gaze, to blame Hamas, to say that this is how it is in war, to claim that there are no innocent people in Gaza, until the totality of Israel's crimes in the Gaza Strip overflowed.
With the onset of deliberate deadly starvation, there was no alternative but to turn to denial, no less loathsome than denial of the Holocaust.
The current denial includes a denial of the genocidal intent and the transparent goal of removing Gaza's population elsewhere.
Such denial is legitimate in Israel, it's consistent with local political correctness – there is no hunger! No one will be condemned or penalized for causing it.
This attitude has become part of the mainstream. Descriptions of deliberate starvation in Gaza are an antisemitic conspiracy. If there is hunger, talk to Hamas.
Palestinians react as they wait to receive food from a charity kitchen, amid a hunger crisis, in Gaza City, Saturday.Credit: Mahmoud Issa/Reuters
That's the way it is when you run out of excuses, fabrications and propaganda. That's how it is when you become so morally warped that you say there is no hunger even when the scenes are in plain sight. What right do people have to say this?
There are 50 shades of Israeli denial and they are all equally contemptible. They range from averting one's eyes to rolling them, to blurring and concealing and lying to oneself.
They all have the same objective: avoiding blame, continuing to play the victim while singing songs of praise to ourselves. Deniers come from all walks of life.
This includes four Israeli researchers who wrote an essay called "So-called genocide in the Swords of Iron war" – whose nakedness was exposed by Holocaust historian Daniel Blatman and by journalist Nir Hasson (Haaretz Hebrew edition) – and the woman handing out the free daily Israel Hayom, who told me with great confidence the other day that the pictures of starvation are "from Yemen of produced by AI."
It also includes the sanctimonious TV journalist Moriah Asraf, who silenced with repulsive high-handedness freelance journalist Emmanuelle Elbaz-Phelps, and all TV news editors, who are concealing what is happening in Gaza.
Palestinians struggle to get donated food at a community kitchen, in Gaza City, northern Gaza Strip, Saturday.Credit: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP
Denial has accompanied Israel since the days of the first Nakba, in 1948, which never happened and was only conceived in the imagination of Israel-haters. It continued during all the years of occupation and apartheid.
There is no society in the world that lives in such self-denial, much of it the fault of its free press. But what has been happening in recent weeks is breaking any record of baseness.
There is no hunger in Gaza. After all, there are trucks waiting on the border, the parents of children dying of hunger are obese, there is a video of Hamas terrorists eating bananas in their tunnels (a photo taken six months ago, now disseminated by the chief disseminator of propaganda lies in this country, the IDF spokesperson).
There is something more despicable in this than evading blame: contempt for the victim, for the child dying in the arms of his mother, who is carrying him, crying. Telling her that there is no deliberate starvation is tantamount to deriding her in her pain.
For years, I believed that even if we presented Israelis with all the horrific evidence, they would reject it. The proof is now here. Pictures of starvation are inundating TV screens and newspapers around the world, and Israelis are denying it.
With what confidence they assert that these pictures are fake, that there are no starving people, that there are bananas, that 80 trucks a day come into Gaza.
This is exactly what French academic Professor Robert Faurisson did: He claimed that based on the volume of the gas chambers, the Holocaust never happened.