Every day, I read or hear about Israel’s war in Gaza. Lately, most of the coverage is about the plight of the Palestinians. An estimated 22,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel attacked Gaza. The majority were women and children civilians. It’s impossible not to sympathize with those people who are crowded into refugee camps and live with death every day. Survivors are living with just a trickle of humanitarian aid and hospitals are overrun with casualties and don’t have the staff or medical supplies to take care of them.
According to Israel, this civilian death toll is due to Hamas using them as human shields, and the Israelis are now showing pictures and films of the deep, intertwined tunnels Hamas build in civilian areas and hospitals.
But let’s remember that this invasion of Gaza was incited by a commando attack which killed 1,200 Israels, mainly civilians, and 240 hostages were taken. The rocket attacks by Hamas are nothing new.
Israel occupied the Gaza Strip in 1967, but voluntarily left in 2005. Since then, there have been hundreds of attacks, and Israel has decided the only way to end them is to exterminate Hamas. To Israelis, this is to prevent a genocide that would eliminate all Jews in the middle east. The Jews cannot allow this to happen. They’ve learned from a painful series of historical events.
The persecution of Jews has been a major event in Jewish history, prompting shifting waves of refugees and the formation of diaspora communities. As early as 605 BCE, Jews were overrun by the Babylonians. The Jews were enslaved by the Egyptians for 400 years.
Antisemitism was also practiced by the governments of many different empires (Roman empire) and the adherents of many different religions (Christianity), and it was also widespread in many different regions of the world (Middle East and Islamic).
Jews were commonly used as scapegoats for tragedies and disasters such as in the Black Death Persecutions, the 1066 Granada Massacre, the Massacre of 1391 in Spain, the many Pogroms in the Russian Empire, and the tenets of Nazism prior to and during World War II, which led to The Holocaust and the murder of six million Jews.
The Jews finally said, “Never Again.” Since its inception in the 1948 war, the Jews have been forced to defend themselves against an unrelenting enemy. They have to.
If they don’t, they will eventually cease to exist.
A quick note: I know someone who has friends in Israel who told her that female guards who called for help several times when Hamas attacked those civilians, but the army disregarded their pleas. Can’t verify this. But Israeli leaders have already admitted that the attack was caused at least in part by an intelligence failure.
What do you think?
Frank Victoria is an award-winning author and screenwriter. He’s been an Amazon bestseller with his recent book, The Founders’ Plot, a political thriller for our times. He donates proceeds of his books to Tunnels to Towers and Fisher House, helping military veterans and first responders. His novella, The Ultimate Bet is available on his website and Amazon. Check out his new website: Frank M. Victoria
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