PTo put into perspective the cruelty of the assaults launched by Israel against Gaza over the past year, many do not hesitate to present the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians, women, children and old people as being these “collateral damage” which accompany all wars. Responding to the horrors committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023 was undoubtedly necessary. Stopping the hostile activities of Hezbollah in the north to allow the return home of citizens forced into internal exile, perhaps too. But are these massacres in any way tolerable?
“Genocide”say some. “Ethnic cleansing”accuse the others. International justice will decide. The reality of the horrors committed is beyond doubt. Let us add that the Israeli national novel ignores the Nakba, the expulsion of the Palestinians from their lands in 1948: the Arabs would be solely responsible for their misfortune, after having refused the partition of Palestine into two independent states in 1947, they would have left themselves their lands. In the beginning was denial. He could well continue.
The State of Israel certainly sheltered thousands of Holocaust survivors, which helped to make its status sacred. But the Palestinians had nothing to do with this tragedy. Their denigration nonetheless became the rule. Those who had fled were weak people who could be forgotten and whose houses could be lived in and their land cultivated. The fate of the Palestinians who remained within Israel’s borders was only apparently better: never considered or treated as equals to Jewish Israelis.
Us here, them there
As for the soon-to-be-occupied West Bank and Gaza, they became a reservoir of cheap, exploited and despised labor. It is not surprising, in this regard, that the Israeli security forces underestimated the capacity for action of their colonized people, and that the attacks of October 7 took them by surprise. They were busy elsewhere anyway: protecting Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
Read the story (2024): Article reserved for our subscribers The Nakba, the great tear in Palestine
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And then there were the walls, the barriers. Weren’t we safe? Us here, them there. Walls unfortunately do not protect as much as we imagine. Separation does not abolish hatred. On the contrary. The October 7 attacks found their fuel in this hatred of the Jews, of the Israelis, of these people on the other side, these masters of the checkpoints, despoilers, oppressors and jailers at the same time. On the Israeli side, over the past year, old hatred of the Palestinian has of course reached a peak.
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