A response to a writer I used to respect
If you really regard someone like me as a hero for opposing Israeli policy (I do not view myself that way), perhaps you’ll consider what I have to say. I could give you a lengthy resume of my peace and civil rights activism in America and Israel, a family tradition going back four generations, but if you are interested, you can check out my blog.
To begin with, saying that you are “stunned by what I see” does not suggest a sound state of mind for reasoning about what you saw, or think you saw—I presume you are seeing mediated images, and we all know that the camera can very easily be used to lie.
Asserting that the attendees of the “Nova” music festival were partying near a “concentration camp” of course implies that they deserved what they got—it is classic victim blaming. These were young adults at a music festival who were gunned down, raped, or kidnapped to Gaza. Defenseless unarmed people huddling in concrete shelters into which the Hamas “fighters” threw hand grenades. They were also the sort of Tel Aviv people most likely to favor concessions to the Palestinians, and the kibbutz member victims even more so. The Canadian-Israeli peace activist Vivian Silver, who had close friendships with Gaza Palestinians, was murdered in her home and her body so badly burned or otherwise mutilated that for several weeks she was thought to have been kidnapped to Gaza, until the Israeli authorities found enough DNA evidence to identify her remains. Her story has been widely reported (links to an article in the venerable left-wing Jewish newspaper, The Forward).
It is false and offensive to say that Gaza is or was a “concentration camp” (and I don’t care if another Jew said it to you). Would inmates of an actual concentration camp have been able to commit mass murder, rape, and kidnapping as Hamas did on October 7? Of course not, they would be much too debilitated. In fact, they were violent jihadists heavily subsidized by the theocratic regimes of Iran and Qatar. That you would relay a false and inflammatory claim on a topic of which you admit ignorance is highly irresponsible at best.
The fact is, Israel unilaterally withdrew all its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, leaving the Palestinians there free to run their own affairs. They could have done such things as building a tourist hotspot on the many miles of sandy Mediterranean beaches. Instead, Hamas won local elections there the following year, and in 2007, it staged a violent coup against the Palestinian Authority in the territory. Israel had little choice but to blockade the Gaza Strip over the years because Hamas used the territory for endless rounds of attacks on Israeli civilians. The blockade was never absolute—Gaza Palestinians crossed into Israel routinely to work or receive medical treatment, and Israel supplied the territory with electricity. That Gaza residents suffered nonetheless is indisputable, but I would remind you that the territory also borders on Egypt, which has sealed its border much more absolutely.
If you wish, you can read in detail on my blog about how much and why I loathe Netanyahu and his “far-right” coalition partners, people he deliberately and carefully cultivated with the aim of turning Israel’s government into a quasi-authoritarian regime, something like a cross between Victor Orbán’s Hungary and Narendra Modi’s India. The majority of Israel’s populace rose up in a nonviolent revolt against this last year, before the Hamas attack. It is also common knowledge in Israel now that Netanyahu deliberately turned a blind eye to Qatari funding of Hamas out of a mistaken belief that the latter did not pose a serious threat. But nothing, nothing, NOTHING, can excuse the mass rape, mass murder, and mass kidnapping Hamas engaged in. For people like you to side implicitly with them is a betrayal of every human value you claim to stand for, and forces “heroes” like me to conclude that much of the world is consumed by the same totally irrational and violent hatred of Jews that led to the Holocaust.
Emanuel Goldstein 