“(T)he reality of concentration camps bears no resemblance to medieval images of hell.” –Hanna Arendt
In February 2008, Matan Vilnai, then Israeli deputy defense minister, threatened Palestinians in Gaza with a “holocaust.” “They will bring a greater Holocaust upon themselves because we will use all our strength to defend ourselves,” he said in an interview with Israeli Army Radio, using the Hebrew word for holocaust.
It is important to remember this statement today as activists and analysts are chastised for comparing what is happening to the people of Gaza today to what European Jews suffered at the hands of the Nazis last century.
The word “Shoah” is never used in Israel outside of discussions of the extermination of Jews by the Nazis during World War II. Many Israelis, especially Zionists, have a serious problem with some using it to describe other genocides.
However, the deputy minister decided to threaten the Palestinians with “Holocaust”. It’s clear he knew what he was talking about and he didn’t mince his words.
In December 2008, ten months after the Vilnai interview, Israeli occupying forces launched a massive military attack on the Gaza Strip that lasted 22 days. Israel killed more than 1,400 people in the attack, the overwhelming majority of them children and women.
At the time, no one mentioned the forbidden word. No one dared to compare the military operation, grotesquely nicknamed “Cast Lead,” to the “Holocaust.”
The so-called “international community” has done nothing to protect Palestinian civilians. Just as he did nothing in the late 1930s, when he stood by and watched, refusing to give sanctuary to innocent civilians fleeing the massacre perpetrated by the monstrous Nazi regime.
Nazi war criminals acted with impunity for a long period, relying on the support of ordinary Germans and the indifference of the “international community”, which facilitated what the philosopher Hannah Arendt called “the banality of wrong “.
For this reason, the Nazis felt comfortable repeating the same crimes over and over again. What the Nazi officers were doing then seemed “terribly normal”. As Arendt described the actions of a Nazi bureaucrat: he committed crimes “under circumstances that prevented him from knowing or feeling that he was doing harm.” The Nazis killed and then felt no remorse.
Today we would call this the normalization of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In Palestine, we are currently witnessing the normalization of genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.
Because the bloodbath committed by Israeli apartheid in 2008 was not taken seriously by the UN, the UN Security Council, the European Union and the Arab and Muslim world, the headquarters and the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza in a concentration camp have become “normal”. or, as Arendt would say, “banal.”
As a result, Israel has struggled to repeat the bloodshed of 2012, 2014, 2021 and now in 2023 – while maintaining the hermetic, medieval siege imposed in 2006. The massacre of civilians as well as the blackout of electricity , food, water, medicine, internet, communications and other essential goods and services have all become “normal”. The Palestinians in Gaza are, after all, “human animals” – as current Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant put it bluntly – and their deaths provoke no remorse.
In normalizing genocidal violence, Israel was aided and abetted by the colonial West. This is hardly surprising given the history of Western countries waging war all over the world, from Asia to Africa to Latin America, thereby destroying indigenous cultures and civilizations. These countries committed heinous crimes as part of the white man’s “civilizing mission.”
In the Arab world, they also maintained an imperialist project that had two objectives: first, to protect Western interests by guarding the oil fields and crushing growing nationalist sentiments; and secondly, to manage the guilt complex of liberals in the face of the worst pogrom committed in the 20th century, namely the “Holocaust”.
This is why the “shoah” in Gaza is tolerated. The brown-skinned Palestinians of Gaza do not weigh on the Western liberal conscience, and the “trivial” death of 21,000 Palestinians at the hands of a genocidal army does not threaten Western interests in the Arab world. Hence the failure of the UN Security Council to impose a total ceasefire in Gaza.
So, are we to understand that Israel’s genocide of Gaza is acceptable, that is, “normal” for the West? That the UN Security Council does not see the urgency of a total ceasefire now? That the UN Security Council is just an extension of the US State Department?
Unfortunately, the answer to all of these questions is yes.
The fact that we find ourselves in this genocidal reality today does not mean that there is no possibility of another world order with a better UN where all votes are equal. Pro-Palestinian rallies brought together millions of people who took to the streets in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, South Africa, Spain, Morocco, Indonesia, Malaysia, Yemen, in Jordan, Spain, Italy, Chile, Argentina, Colombia and elsewhere. and the reasonable decisions made by the governments of Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile and South Africa, among others, show that the world is willing and able to be different.
It is not too difficult to imagine a near future where there is equality and real respect for the rights of all human beings, regardless of race, religion, gender and ethnicity.
The German poet Bertolt Brecht said this during one of the darkest periods in human history:
In dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About dark times.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.
