If you ask me who are the writers, cartoonists and journalists in the most difficult situation in the world? Without hesitation, I would say “Israeli journalists”. I don’t know if there are still any survivors of what the Europeans called the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”, the concentration camps, mass murder in gas chambers and incineration in ovens (there are 147,199 survivors of the Holocaust in Israel). The Nazi Holocaust is so ingrained in the Jewish psyche that the Israeli media, especially in the last 35 days, has been full of articles and speeches referring to this psyche and discussing it in terms of the “Gaza massacre”. Since October 7, some of the writers assessing the events of the past 35 days have called what happened to the civilians in the Kibbutzim (kibbutzim) in the occupied territories and Israel’s (Netanyahu’s, to be more accurate) retaliation Nazism.
A Jewish writer condemns another writer’s statement that the Israeli army’s murderous operation in Gaza was “disproportionate” and asks, “You cannot win a war with proportion. Did the US win the wars against Germany, Japan and Afghanistan in proportion?” “When I read someone writing about children’s eyes, I can only think of the babies in Nir Oz,” another responded. Nir Oz was one of two settlements where 1,400 people – civilians according to Israel, armed settlers according to Hamas – were killed on October 7.
The author who was the target of these reactions was the same person: Gideon Levy. Levy is a 70-year-old Tel Aviv native and columnist for the Haaretz newspaper whose grandparents were killed in the Nazi Holocaust; his father was a Slovakian German and his mother a Czech Jew. His biography describes Levy as “a writer who defends the Palestinians and opposes the Israeli occupation of Palestine.” In a speech he gave in the US 6 years ago, Levy explained Israeli terrorism and the logic of the Jewish lobby, saying, “Israelis don’t see Palestinians as human beings, so they don’t recognize the persecution as a violation of human rights.”
In a TV interview during the second week of the Gaza massacre, Levy spoke of the moral decline of the Jews who have made the indigenous population of Palestine refugees for 75 years, occupied the Palestinian territories for 56 years and blockaded millions in Gaza for the last 16 years. Levy said that October 7 should be seen as Gaza’s attempt to break the blockade and that it should be considered a military action against a military siege, no matter how barbaric.
However, Levy and other Israeli writers believe that this policy of siege and “apartheid” will now be used by Netanyahu to save himself from a trial and a possible political ban. As a matter of fact, Netanyahu ignores the growing protests around the world, the calls of the UN, the warnings of neighboring countries and even the half-hearted calls of the United States to halt the massacre, and even shoots at ambulances taking wounded children to Egypt. The fact that Netanyahu, as if he had been waiting for it, formed a so-called national unity government the day after the attack and incorporated the opposition into it shows that he has no other solution in mind than the complete destruction of Palestine.
The only way out now seems to be for President Herzog to save his country (and humanity) from an absolute catastrophe by forming a true government of national unity with opposition leader Yair Lapid and the 12th prime minister, Ehud Olmert.
Translated with www.DeepL.com from Milliyet.com.tr
