Family and Atrocity

Look at your loved ones and tell me how you would respond?

It doesn’t take long, does it?

It doesn’t take long for the ‘story’ to concentrate first and foremost on the ‘suffering’ of the Palestinians, on the worries about the electricity supply in Gaza, or for voices to be raised condemning ‘Israeli actions’.

I entered the phrase ‘Israeli victims of Hamas attack’ on a search engine. The search engine replied with these first words in it’s summary:

“Palestinian civilians across Gaza are struggling for survival in the face of an unprecedented Israeli operation against the territory…”

The British Prime Minister says that Britain stands with Israel, but also of course stands with the Gazan Palestinians, and western powers including the US are already scolding Israel about how they should respond, how they are responding, to the worst one-day terrorist massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

An online friend of mine of long standing, who is no longer a friend, laughed and sneered at people adopting the Israeli flag as a sign of sympathy and compassion, whilst others told me that sympathy for Israel is the latest in a long line of media driven outbursts of hysteria, akin to the response to COVID and the Ukraine war. Whilst criticizing the ‘virtue signalling’ of the Israeli flag, he adopted the Palestinian one, all to prove what a free thinking rebel he is. I know many people who think they are clever and insightful, or defending liberty, or more rational than the rest of us who are swept along, unthinkingly, by ‘war fever’. One told me that everyone who loves liberty refuses to have any compassion for Israel, and that his lack of sympathy was an act of moral courage.

The usual suspects, of course, talk to us about Israeli ‘oppression’, about the ‘apartheid state’, about ‘occupied land’, dragging out all the tiresome and duplicitous old lies that ignore the millions of Arabs who live in Israel as full citizens with full rights, together with the constant attempts for the last 70 years to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth.

Others, Israelis and Jews with far more knowledge and investment in it than me, have explained the history far better than I could. I want to talk about one specific bit of history, and I want to talk about in a way that conveys some of the righteous anger that Israel feels, and that I, a non Jew far away, share.

And to do that, it seems, since so many apparently feel no shared humanity with the Jews of Israel, I have to do it by not talking about Jews, not talking about Israel, not even talking about Hamas.

I have to begin by talking about you. Whoever you are, wherever you are.

I have to ask you to picture your family and your friends. I have to ask you to think about your tiny children, your innocent babies, or your beloved elderly mother or grandmother. I want you to think about every happy moment with your 8 year old daughter, all the dreams and hopes you had for her. I want you to remember the daughter who grew into a fine young woman, and family gatherings where you smiled and laughed at each other. I want you to remember the first steps you remember your child taking, some little cheeky boy with wobbling legs, or chasing him round the dinner table in your in laws house while he squealed with laughter and joy.

I want you to remember family, and humanity, and what love is.

And THEN I want you to imagine men coming into your home with the specific purpose of terrorizing, torturing, raping and killing your children in front of you. I want you to imagine what this feels like. The fear, the horror, the helplessness. I want you to picture this being done to those you love, those you have spent years sharing love with, those YOU would happily die to protect. Only this time you cannot protect them, and all the years of protecting them is in vain.

What would you do, if you survived? What would you want done to the men who burned your little child alive, or to the men who laughed whilst gang raping your daughter next to her slaughtered friends? What would you think of someone who said to you, while the horror was still fresh in your soul and burning before your eyes, while you could hear nothing but innocent screams from people you love, let’s talk about the family of the terrorist, and their safety, and their rights?

The human agony inflicted by Hamas just a few days ago should be something that no human being can ignore and remain human. It should be so obviously foul, so obviously evil, so obviously hideous, that even comprehending it feels like a betrayal of one’s own humanity. Even talking about it taints us, but we must. We must speak and we must know. All else is cowardice.

When I look at the pictures of the families who were murdered or abducted all I can see are good people living good and normal lives. I see Erez Kalderon-Dan, a 12 year old boy. He is a handsome young man, and he is sipping what looks like a milkshake with his sister, also a child. His sister had to listen to him say ‘They are here’, knowing what he meant by that, knowing the terror that was unfolding. He is missing, likely one of the abducted. A little boy who drinks milkshakes.

Do you have a 12 year old child? Do you know and love one?

I see Abigail Idan, a smiling, wild haired 3 year old girl playing with toy bricks in a living room. The bricks look exactly like ones my children played with. Abigail was abducted. Her father was murdered whilst he was holding her in his arms, trying to shield her.

Can you imagine killing a man whilst his three year old girl is in his arms? Can you imagine his last moments, and her fear and confusion and horror? Could you bear this being done to your family, could you do it to another?

I see Noa Argamani, a beautiful young woman whose only crime was being an Israeli Jew. I see her face contorted with terror and fear as she ripped from her boyfriend. I hear her saying ‘no, no’ as she is picked up and put on a motorbike between two savage killers. Noa is missing.

Can you see that happening to your daughter, or your niece, or your sister? Can you imagine what happens next?

I see 84 year old Dietza Hyman, a former social worker, a bespectacled little old lady, who had difficulty walking. She was widowed at an early age, and raised her children doing all the normal and good things a loving mother does. As the horror unfolded her daughter phoned her again and again, desperate to find out if her mother was safe.

Can you imagine hearing a strange man answer with the words ‘It’s Hamas’? The helplessness of being on the other end of that line?

All of the victims were innocent. Those murdered, those abducted, those injured, those who had the most grotesque cruelties inflicted on them. What were their crimes? Attending a peace festival? Drinking a milkshake? Playing with toy bricks? Raising and loving families?

Being Jews? Being Israeli?

Show me the Palestinian that two murdered 6 year old twins, Shahar and Arbel, harmed?

Look at the pictures of these real people, these complete innocents, and read the survivor accounts. Read the details released from what was found at the sites of slaughter. There are soldiers who saw beheaded babies. They have spoken. Do not believe those who pretend that this didn’t happen, or that somehow shooting babies and children is much more understandable.

The savage filth that are Hamas went in and they cut organs from women as they were raping them. They tied up parents and children next to other so that they could force them to watch what was done as they raped one or the other or both, and as they burnt them alive. That’s what they did. They sat casually eating a meal, laughing and joking no doubt among themselves, as they tortured and killed. To any real human being, the acts they committed are inconceivable. How do you do those things to crying children? What are you?

Can you imagine a level of atrocity and inhumanity so great that a loving father knows that the only blessing he can take from it is that his little daughter is dead, and not held hostage, because to be a hostage of Hamas is worse than death, and at least death ends the suffering of the innocent?

Imagine these things happening to the innocents who are most real to you, to the children you kiss goodnight, and to the parents who raised you.

Then tell me that Israel should worry about cutting off the electricity supply, that Israel should be ‘proportionate in response’. What does that even mean, in such a context? Proportionate would be the same inhuman murderous savagery returned, and Israel will not do that, Israel is not doing that. Israel is STILL, despite all horror and despite the absolute righteousness of an anger that is vast and unstoppable, actually showing AGAIN a level of restraint that is as astonishing in what it says about humanity at its most human as the actions of Hamas astonish us in the other direction.

What would you consider proportionate, knowing your baby had been slaughtered or your child raped or your brother or sister burnt alive or your grandmother abducted and threatened with execution?