It was a classic Freudian slip of the tongue, but it summed up the reality of what Israel is doing to Gaza. A day after more than 18 Palestinians were killed, including four children — a five-month-old baby among them — Deputy Israeli Defense Minister Matan Vilnai warned that Gazans face yet a “bigger holocaust” unless they cease the firing of rockets.
It was a shocking choice of words by the Israeli official. The term holocaust is almost never used by Israelis unless it is associated with Nazi oppression of European Jews during World War II. In fact it has become synonymous with their suffering, universally accepted and rarely challenged. Israel’s most revered historical monument is dedicated to the holocaust. It is a term that lives on in the Jewish psyche beyond the borders of Israel.
To contest the holocaust in Europe — and elsewhere in the Western world — is to the Jews what the Danish cartoons mocking Prophet Mohammad (pbuh) are to Muslims!
Holocaust originates from the Greek word kaustos meaning ‘burnt’, and the Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, the mass murder of Jews under the German Nazi regime in World War II.”
Vilnai knew exactly what he was talking about when he threatened Gaza with a bigger holocaust. He meant slaughter on a mass scale not unlike the mass murder of Jews under Nazi Germany!
These are extremely powerful threats. And they described the reality of what is happening in Gaza — and what will happen thereafter — better than any news agency, statesman and international organization. They were not uttered by a radical settler in the suburbs of Jerusalem or by a right-wing fanatic in the Knesset, but by a senior member of the Israeli government.
Vilnai’s chilling warning came in the wake of several days of brutal airstrikes against targets in the Gaza Strip which left more than 40 Palestinians dead and hundreds injured. Indeed a day after Vilnai’s disturbing threat, Israel launched a land incursion into northern Gaza that claimed the lives of no less than 30 Palestinians, two-thirds of whom were civilians.
Immediately after Vilnai delivered his ominous threat, Israel began deploying tanks and artillery pieces along its border with Gaza in what appeared to be a prelude for a massive ground incursion. Defense Minister Ehud Barak was reported by the Israeli media to have informed leaders of Western governments that his army is considering a land offensive to silence the Hamas missiles.
And since more than a week of heavy airstrikes have failed to put an end to the firing of rockets from the enclave, a major ground operation was given the go-ahead by the Israeli leadership.
The limits and objectives of such an operation are not known, but in a holocaust mindset, a final solution is not far fetched. That includes the full reoccupation of Gaza, the hunt down of Hamas leaders and the total subjugation of more than 1.4 million Palestinians who live in the Strip.
It is ironic that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is reported to have expressed concerns that a full invasion of Gaza might endanger peace negotiations with the PNA. It is astounding the he, and others, still believe in the peace process and its goals following an offensive that could turn into the biggest blood bath in the Middle East.
But outside Israel there is little reaction to what is going on in Gaza. There is a conspiracy of silence that has intentionally downplayed the Gaza carnage in the coverage of major news media. Inside the US, election news has overshadowed anything else. But even in Europe, the plight of Gaza received marginal attention. European governments have been muted and the UN’s Security Council, as usual, was looking the other way.
Even more astounding was the reaction of Arab governments. Attention was focused more on Lebanon, the Arab Summit and Turkey’s incursion into northern Iraq than on what was happening to Gaza. The Arab street was subdued and in the Muslim world people were still preoccupied with venting their anger against Denmark.
The conspiracy of silence extends beyond the recent events in Gaza. Israel’s criminal siege of the Strip more than a month ago has caused, by the UN’s own admission, one of the worst humanitarian crises in modern times. There are no exact figures on the number of babies who died in Gaza’s hospitals because their incubators had no power or as a result of chronic lack of medicine.
Palestinians in Gaza are dying not only because of Israeli airstrikes, but due to shortages of food, medicines and proper care. Raw sewage has flooded populated areas contaminating drinking water, and ambulances have been replaced by donkey-drawn carriages because of fuel scarcity.
Israel is moving rapidly from its illegal policy of collective punishment into a critical area of mass murder. Talk of holocaust-like punishment meted out on the people of Gaza should not pass without a major reaction from Arab and Muslim countries.
It should be denounced by Israel’s friends and supporters in Europe and the United States. But mostly it must be denounced by the Jews themselves.
For decades the Jewish people have revered their holocaust legacy and protected it religiously. For them, descendants of victims of discrimination, bigotry and carnage, to apply the same to the Palestinians is a betrayal to the millions of innocent Jews, and others, who succumbed to Nazi holocaust.
Vilnai’s statements underline the extent of Israel’s historical predicament in its decades-old showdown with the Palestinians. The frightening fact is that Israel has the capability and the means to unleash a new and bigger holocaust against its hapless victims. But now that we have reached this existential territory the question is: Can Israel, the state, the people and the idea, survive after that?
— Osama Al-Sharif is a veteran publisher and journalist based in Jordan.
