On May 27, 1942 Czech and Slovak partisans assassinated one of the vilest of the Nazis, Reinhard Heydrich, the chairman of the Wannsee Conference that systematized the extermination of Jews, Roma (Gypsies) and all other conquered or peoples otherwise considered "inferior" by Hitler's Third Reich. When Heydrich ultimately died of his wounds on June 4, 1942 Hitler ordered revenge for the assassination by razing to the ground the villages of Lidice and Ležáky whence the partisans may have come. In the attack on those villages, every male 14 years-old and older was taken to a field and shot. The women and younger children were sent to the extermination camps and "disposed of" there. In all, 572 men, women and children were murdered in the 2 towns while 7 children were given to SS Officers' families to raise as Nazis.
On October 7, 2023 Hamas Terrorists from the Gaza Strip attacked Southern Israel killing about 1,300 Israeli citizens and taking over 200 hostages. Embarrassed by the failure of his anti-democratic and ultra-right wing government to detect this attack before it happened, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the razing to the ground of the Gaza Strip. First, by indiscriminate bombing of the area under the excuse that Hamas fighters hide amongst the general population. Second, to complete his revenge on the Palestinian population of over 2,000,000 persons and with little or no regard for those 200+ hostages, Netanyahu ordered a ground invasion of Gaza to complete the razing of the Palestinian enclave. At the time of this writing somewhere over 31,000 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children, have been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces largely through aerial bombing. Israel excuses this horror by claiming that Hamas "terrorists" live amongst the general population. Prime Minister Netanyahu, in a paroxysm of Orwellian rhetoric, has claimed that not "eliminating Hamas" means that Israel is weak and open to further attack. That is no more nor less than his excuse for a blatant genocidal attack on civilian targets.
I support the existence of a safe and secure Jewish Homeland in the Middle East. I also support a contiguous and free Palestinian Homeland in the ancient land of Palestine. It is possible to have both if the murders on both sides stop for the most part, the parties respect one another's rights and allow the fury that reciprocal murders generate to die down without excesses on either side over the coming 75 years.
What I do not and cannot support is the Netanyahu government of Israel inspired by its fanatical approach to land rights based on a book of mythology mixed with history. Though the Jewish peoples held much of what we call Palestine in the ancient past, that hegemony was broken after the Roman Armies won the Jewish War in 70 CE. Until the 1880s when Zionism began its defense of persecuted Jews by suggesting a home in Palestine, Arab and Bedouin peoples lived in and ruled over Palestine. Despite their ancient claims and mythology, modern Jews were and are interlopers in Palestine. Those Jews have established a homeland that they definitely need and should have but only as good neighbors to their fellow Semitic brothers and sisters.
The none-too-soon death of Reinhard Heydrich brought about retribution 579% greater than the loss of that one vile Nazi.
A death toll 579% greater than the 1,200 Israelis murdered on October 7th would yield a Palestinian death toll of 694,800. Thankfully, Israel's genocidal attacks since October 7th have not reached that horrific toll yet the attacks on Gaza stink of Hitler's response to Heydrich's assassination. Before we get anywhere nearer the 35,000 mark of Palestinian deaths, the bombing, the invasion, the blockade and dehumanization of Palestinians must stop.
Unlike Netanyahu's Orwellian attempt to distract from his government's failings, further attacks are not a demonstration of Israeli strength. This frenzy of genocide is an admission of weakness. What would show strength by Israel is a ceasefire, withdrawal of invaders and a demand that Gazans, the majority of Gazans who are not Hamas, surrender all hostages and also surrenders the leaders and planners of the October 7th attacks. A truly strong leader of Israel could demand that the Gazan people surrender weapons, including rockets, in exchange for opening of border crossings and importation of materials for rebuilding homes, medical supplies and food aid as soon as the surrenders began.
And my President could be the godfather to an incipient peace by demanding this much of his friend and client, Netanyahu.
I must at this point look at the use of the term "genocide". Israelis
broadly and even the wider Jewish community have a special connection to
that term. The Shoah perpetrated by the Nazis culminating the centuries
of discrimination, pogroms and individual murders is most certainly the
attempted genocide of the Jewish people. However, that does not make
"genocide" a term uniquely applicable to Jews. The Bible tells us that
the Abrahamic Tribes committed genocide against the Midianites.
Crusaders of the Middle Ages carried out genocides of anyone who held
beliefs at odds with their own regardless whether those they murdered
followed Islam or a different Christian sect. The Ottoman Turks carried
out a genocide on the Armenian people. The Nazi's genocidal machine
devoured 6,000,000 Jews and additionally included gays, communists, socialists, and
the Roma condemned to the ovens or mass graves. The Rwandan majority Hutus carried out a genocide of
the minority Tutsis in 1994. Genocide as a term and a fact is not the sole
property of any one people or group. Genocide continues today against
the Rohingya in Myanmar (Burma) and the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China. The
Netanyahu Government's indignation at being called out for genocide in
Gaza is only slightly less indecent than the genocide against the
Palestinians of Gaza that it is currently carrying out.
Amidst
the genocide disguised as counter-terrorism we have organizations like
the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and The American-Israeli Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC) egregiously conflating criticism of the Netanyahu
Government with the broader evil of antisemitism. Those are somewhat
different issues though they do have some overlap. The important fact to
recall is that they are not entirely the same. Being an antisemite and
opposing the Netanyahu Government is almost a given while opposing the
policies of the Netanyahu Government does not make one, ipso facto, an
antisemite. Just ask the thousands of Israeli citizens who spent months
demonstrating against Netanyahu's attempts to co-opt the Israeli
judiciary in his attempt to evade conviction for massive corruption how
antisemitic they are.
Further,
opposing the genocidal slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza to further an
unjustifiable land grab does not make one a supporter of Hamas. It does
make one an humanitarian who opposes genocide. Amongst those who oppose
the genocide of Palestinians there are, undoubtedly, members of and
sympathizers with Hamas militants but just as the larger Venn Diagram of
those opposed to Natanyahu's Government includes some antisemites, so
the Hamas faction is a smaller subset within the larger throng of
humanity appalled by the Gazan genocide. In fact, one can justifiably
argue that the Israeli Defense Force under Netanyahu is the most
effective recruitment arm of Hamas that has ever existed. The senseless
murders of Palestinian civilians since October 7th has unquestionably
brought many survivors of this horror perpetrated by Israel into the
Hamas militant fold.
We
here in the United States have listened eagerly to interviews with
Palestinian survivors of incomprehensibly great losses who see that only
forgiveness and reconciliation can stop the continuing killing on both
sides. The forbearance and decency of those rare souls shames all of us
lesser mortals even as we praise their nobility. Yet I cannot help but
believe that each of those few great souls has more less forgiving and
justifiably angrier counterparts who, even now, plot revenge against the
state and people who have murdered their loved ones.
I
would suggest to the right wing Israelis eagerly cozying up to the
Christian Evangelical neo-fascists of the United States that they
question that support more closely. A significant majority of the
Christian Evangelical Movement sees Israel as a major step toward the
Armageddon, the return of Christ in glory and the genocide of all who
refuse to accept their perverse version of Christianity. These Christian
Evangelicals need Israel to exist as one step in their bizarre train of
prophecies, a red calf without blemish to resanctify the Temple,
Armageddon and the subsequent mass execution of Jews, Islamists and
other "unbelievers" in the ashes of the destroyed world. Perhaps allying
with those who look forward to your people's ultimate genocide is not
the wisest alliance one might make. But that would require some thought
to the future rather than for just immediate gain, commitment to
intelligence rather than willful ignorance and forgiveness rather than
revenge. In short, being humane rather than minimally human. Unfortunately, because of those who cannot understand that peace and security do not follow from anger and revenge, I write of a world that could but stubbornly refuses to exist in which weak, authoritarian leaders refuse to see anything beyond their own advantage, people dehumanized by a majority of others turnabout and dehumanize those that are a minority in their sphere and revenge for real and imagined wrongs incite more revenge from the revenged upon. It is a cycle of vengeance, a perfect circle that grows ever smaller as neighbors devour one another leaving nothing but horror, resentment and ashes generation after generation.
I see little or no hope, little or no sanity and unsurpassed amounts of weeping. Still, the weeping can stop if the first step is a ceasefire.
