In Gaza, Israel Is Racing to the Moral Abyss
JVL Introduction
This is a howl of anguish from Michael Sfard, Israel’s stalwart human-rights lawyer, who tirelessly defends Israeli and Palestinian human rights and peace organisations, movements and activists.
He gives no quarter to Hamas and is unsparing in his condemnation of the massacres of 7th October, as he is of those members on the left who find it hard to unhesitatingly condemn Hamas’s atrocities.
But he knows all too well that the conflict did not begin on that day: the 75 years of refugee status, 56 years of occupation, 16 years of siege have, he says, “normalized a situation where there are people worth less” – so much so that Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president and its moderate face, can say that all Gazans are responsible for Hamas’s crimes.
Sfard deplores the Israeli response and its hounding of critics of that inhumane response (see the Haaretz editorial and Israeli journalist Israel Frey reporting, in hiding after threats to his life – below).
“Moral corruption,“ Sfard says “is no less dangerous to our survival than Hamas.”
This article was originally published by Haaretz on Mon 23 Oct 2023. Read the original here.
In Gaza, Israel Is Racing to the Moral Abyss
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Good for Israel Frey. Whether Arab or Jew, not easy in Israel speaking up against the government and expressing support for the Palestinians.
There is no middle ground in this argument. Israel must be condemned absolutely for what it has done. For Israel, the question of innocence and guilt no longer applies: no-one is innocent, all are guilty.
Israel created a monster: the monster broke free, and attacked its creator: and now the monster must be destroyed and the land that sustained it made barren.
The pain and anguish Israel has brought upon itself must, Israel says, be paid for in blood. Israel seeks now only what it has always coveted, the land of another people. Israel need no longer hide its true intentions.
Of course, the culpabilility of Hamas is very great.
Its crimes were two-fold. First, it committed horrific crimes against a people who they knew were in no position to defend themselves, in a kind of bizarre mimicry of the kinds of Israeli behaviours they claimed to be defending Gaza against. And second, it gave Israel exactly the justification it was looking for to kill Palestinians indiscriminately with the sole intention of once and for all winning Gaza for itself.
I have no doubt that there are Israelis and Gazans alike who, while looking on their supposed enemies with horror, see also unbearable horror in what their own governments are doing in their name.
My own disgust is absolute.
Solidarity to Israel Frey.