By: Marcos Arana, Observatorio del Derecho a la Salud
Condemning Israel for its crimes is not an act of anti-Semitism. With its unconscionable cruelty and insensitivity to the lives of children and other civilian population, Israel betrays the fundamentals of Judaism in which there is one commandment above all others, and which speaks of the importance and power of empathy: “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the heart of a stranger: you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Shemot 22:20).
With its disregard for the lives of the Palestinians, the State of Israel is severely undermining the moral authority and symbolic value that the world conferred on the Jews at the end of World War II for their sacrifice and resilience; and whose testimony should have been for all humanity, a perennial reminder that the atrocities they suffered was a crime that should never be repeated. However, instead of honoring the history of the millions of European Jews who were exterminated, the Israeli government distorts the narrative to justify the dispossession and slaughter of Palestinians, as well as to manipulate the blame that persists among the leaders of countries that were passive, silent or collaborators in the face of Nazi barbarism. Israel blackmails to ensure support and impunity for its criminal excesses and violations of
international law, as well as to neutralize the ability of the United Nations to stop them.
The United States and the European Union guarantee Israel’s impunity to perpetrate the same kind of excesses that these very same countries committed during the darkest moments of their colonial histories. Their complicity prevents the ceasefire and endorses the genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. The position of these governments will fill them with shame and blame in the future for having been collaborators in one of the greatest mass crimes of recent history. One day they will have to be held accountable for repressing and ignoring the clamor of their citizens demanding a halt to Israel’s aggression. In this way, the governments of these countries have not only allowed, but helped the State of Israel to misuse the name and history of a victimized people to become the executioner.
The military escalation carried out by Israel against Gaza is much more than an act of excessive punishment; it constitutes a premeditated and long-planned action to take advantage of the Hamas attack as a pretext to implement a final solution to the Palestinian problem; similar to the “Endlösung der Judenfrage” or final solution that the genocidal Nazis executed against Jews and Gypsies. At this moment, the Israeli government is implementing a final solution against the Palestinians; the scenario has changed, it is no longer the Warsaw Ghetto or the Ukrainian Galizia; now it is Gaza. It is no longer the swastika, but the blue star on the Israeli flag. The solution is to annihilate the Palestinians from the cradle and the womb of their mothers and throw the survivors into the Egyptian desert. This is the plan, meticulously carried out by Israel. Biden, Macron, Sunak, Scholz and other European leaders endorse it, and form the circle that protects the lynching.
To carry out the “Final Solution,” the Germans coordinated and perpetrated the murder of the Jews of Europe. They murdered the Jews by implementing policies that led to starvation, disease, random acts of terrorism, mass shootings and death by gassing. The difference is that in the Palestinian Holocaust, the sacrificial fire comes from American weapons.
Fortunately, Israel does not represent all Jews. Tens of thousands of Jews are opposing the ethnocide, marching and raising their voices to demand that Israel stop the massacre and to say “Not in our name!”. Jews for Peace, who demand Israel to stop the massacre of Palestinians, remind us of the dignified difference between the Germans who joined in breaking windows and denouncing Jews and those who hid and protected the persecuted at the beginning of World War II.
It is not acceptable that the millions of people around the world who oppose the genocide and dispossession of the Palestinian people are powerless to stop the genocide. We can demand that Latin American governments withdraw their ambassadors to Israel and break diplomatic relations. The Colombian president Petro already warned about this possibility. While finishin writing this text, the Bolivian government announced its decision to cut diplomatic ties with Israel in an energic statement denouncing Israel genocidal military operation against palestinians. Hopefully other countries in the region will make the same desion.
We need to claim diplomatic isolation and economic boycott against Israel. We urge that Netanyahu and Yoav Galant, the defense minister of Israel to be formally charged as war criminals and arrest warrants against them are issued. They should not be allowed to travel, that they be isolated, singled out, charged, that they not go unpunished.
And along with the other war-mongers, who have launched a war of extermination against the Palestinian people, they are also guilty of distracting the whole world from the urgent task of fighting a global climate cataclysm. Their war machines are accelerating their intensity at breakneck speed. Their war machines are also murdering all of us.
Octubre 29,2023.
observatoriosalud@gmail.com
Cover photo: EPA
