The Humans of Gaza

Insist on their humanity

Bilaam

Amidst the understandable cries for revenge against the Hamas terrorists, Israeli Jews from all shades of the political spectrum were calling the terrorists animals, insects and the like. It seemed wrong to me and I could sense that even as others were using these terms, they felt the same. A communal rage was driving us into speech patterns that were inaccurate and strange and grating to the ear, and inhuman. It was simply wrong, but I did not realize how wrong it was until I read a FaceBook post by Rabbi Dan Beeri. If you know Hebrew and want to see his original post, search for him in FB.

What he said was simple, and obvious in hindsight, but remained unheard amongst the screams of that day, and almost invisible under the dust and ashes of that horrid day, and under the dust of the screaming headlines of the next few weeks. By referring to the terrorist as animals, the terrorists were being deprived of their human agency, and ultimately, of responsibility for their actions. All humans are created in the image of God. In the context of this post the God-like attribute in humans is free will. The ability to choose between right and wrong, and to act accordingly.

The terrorists did what they did, and live-streamed what they did, and bragged about what they did for the entire world to see. And outrageous as it may seem, they and their apologizers bald-facedly began to deny doing what they themselves had broadcast once it became clear that it was a public relations disaster for them. Next they began to claim that they had no choice, because they were the actual victims, suffering from 75 years of Zionist colonialism. That claim turned out to be surprisingly ineffective, which for the terrorists was somewhat of a shock as it always produced positive results for them in the past.

But victim usurpation has many faces. Now there is a Muslim-flavored passion play being staged in Gaza, with the willing participation of major media sources, that re-creates the slaughter of Jews on October 7th in the Gaza strip, with the Israeli army playing the part of the terrorists, and the poor people of Gaza the un-witting victims. As quick as this fantasy reversal appeared it focused on the theme and the single word that still has the power to shake the senses: genocide. These terrorists who openly proclaim their goal as the destruction of Israel, are funded and trained and controlled by Iran, a member nation of the UN that itself has openly and repeatedly stated that they intend to wipe Israel off the map, and are developing a nuclear weapon to achieve that goal. Under the onslaught of this massive well-funded propaganda effort to rewrite reality and conceal true intentions, the real threat of the genocide of the Jews disappears back into the dusty and bloodied fields and safe-rooms of the Jew-slaughter, forgotten like the screams of mothers and babes, raped and murdered and mutilated to the sounds of terrorist laughter and elated cries of Allahu Akbar.

As I see them from the mountain tops,
Gaze on them from the heights,
There is a people that dwells apart,
Not reckoned among the nations, Numbers 23:9

Israel dwells apart, alone. Whether chosen, or un-chosen, or never-chosen, the Jews and Israel have definitely been chosen by those who wish to curse Israel unto total destruction, to the extent that an all-seeing eye of Jew-hatred keeps an outsized focus on this small dot of an oasis in the midst of a continent-spanning world of Islam, looking to discover weaknesses in the fabric of the “Zionist entity”, exploiting the weaknesses when they are found, inflicting unrelenting damage upon the people that dwells apart, the people who bequeathed to the world the idea that good can be chosen over evil, a people who stand alone today, insisting that this bequest be honored, and observed.