Again, the self-proclaimed “Israel Defense Forces,” are pulverizing Gaza. As of this writing, 44 Palestinians in Gaza have died in this latest onslaught, euphemistically named “Operation Breaking Dawn.” At least 15 of the dead are children.
While the mainstream media speaks of this new round of open warfare as a break in what has been roughly 15 months of peace, readers of Mondoweiss know otherwise: Palestinians don’t go a day without experiencing horrific loss at the hands of Israel’s apartheid occupying regime and Palestinians in Gaza are still cleaning up from last year’s war. The damage done to Gaza’s youngest generation is necessarily of an unimaginable scale the likes of which Israeli children have never experienced. Dare I say an entire generation of Jewish children hasn’t been harmed like this since the Holocaust? But this price is acceptable for Israel to inflict on the other so that it can maintain its grotesque brand of apartheid.
In times like this, defenders of Israel are apt to make all sorts of absurd pronouncements, one of which is Golda Meir’s famous refrain that “there will be peace when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.” This may sound trenchant to the untrained ear but the fact is that no matter how nice the Palestinians are to the Israelis, Israel will never give the franchise to Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza. And Palestinian citizens of Israel don’t exactly have a good deal either.
Political Zionism of all stripes (especially the liberal type because it’s insidious) is antithetical to any just and human notion of Judaism. If there is any hope for Judaism to shed its disgusting identification with a chauvinistic philosophy and thereby survive this very dark period in its history, then there needs to be a tectonic shift. I wish I could tell you how that will happen.
Thanks for reading,
Scott Roth
