Letter: Israeli Minister – Our Total Destruction of Gaza Has No Precedent. And the World Is Not Stopping Us.
Food distribution center in Rafah, Gaza, Januray, 2025. Photo: Anas Mohammed via Shutterstock
It is estimated that Israel is killing 100 Palestinians/day in Gaza.
Israel recently initiated a new attack called “Gideion’s Chariots“, which was promised by Prime Minister Benjamin Netenyahu when he pledged to “enter Gaza with full force”, as if they haven’t been doing that since October, 2023. As if they haven’t been bombing Gaza into oblivion, forcing people to keep moving to avoid the bombs, to find refuge where there is none, to keep people in terror of when the next bombing will occur. As if they haven’t been blocking humanitarian aid from reaching Gaza. Humanitarian agencies around the world, as well as the UN are rightfully calling out the US and Israel for the creation of famine in Gaza.
And Israeli officials have come oh so close to proudly announcing genocide. Netanyahu, in the Israeli daily Maariv, last week bragged about “destroying more and more houses [in Gaza], and they [the Palestinians] have nowhere to return to,” adding that “the logical result will be the desire of Gaza residents to leave.” Netanyahu also remarked about “the difficulty is in finding countries that would accept to receive them.” How much like Hitler’s speech to the Reichstag in 1939, when he lamented that no one would take the Jews, prophesizing the destruction of European Jewry. Netanyahu has gone on to lament how the stories and photos of starvation are making it harder to implement their plans for Gaza.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich: “We are disassembling Gaza, and leaving it as piles of rubble, with total destruction [which has] no precedent globally,” he continued. “And the world isn’t stopping us. There are pressures. There are those who attack [us]; they are trying to [make us] stop; they are not succeeding.”
He goes on explain that the proposed aid plan is simply a part of the genocide: “The [aid] that will enter Gaza in the coming days is the tiniest amount,” he explained. A handful of bakeries that will hand out pita bread to people in public kitchens. People in Gaza will get a pita and a food plate, and that’s it. Exactly what we are seeing in the videos: people standing in line and waiting to have someone serve them, with some soup plate.”
Gerry Weiss
Gerry Weiss, a psychotherapist, was a member of the Amherst Select Board from 2004 to 2010 and a member of Town Meeting for 19 years.
This is horrifying. What can people do to help?
We can lobby our Senators, Markey and Warren, who have voted for the military aid to Israel, more than once. Mr. McGovern has repeatedly voted no on the aid. (you could write to him and thank him). You can speak out the truth whenever you hear the lies being spoken and whenever you are in conversation with friends. I find that there are 3 basic camps: Pro Zionist, Anti Zionist and don’t know much about what is happening. Sending money for aid is tricky since Israel does not allow aid into Gaza. I’m researching this question and will send ideas as I find them. I found a website today that looks promising: https://upliftps.com/gaza-direct-aid-portal/ . You can join the weekly stand out at the Rt 9/Rt 91 roundabout, every Friday at 4:30. You can join Jewish Voices for Peace to keep up with events 9https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/local/), You can subscribe to Mondoweiss to get daily news about what is happening both here and in Gaza. (mondoweiss.net)
It seems that Mr. Netanyahu doesn’t quite have his Old Testament history right, since Gideon, one of the Israelite judges, had no chariots, nor did he have much of an army: just 300 men with torches hidden under clay pots, ready to descend on a huge Midianite army. And Gideon himself seemed to have lots of doubts about the whole enterprise, repeatedly asking the Lord for assurances that this all was going to turn out in his favor. Or perhaps the name of the campaign is ironic, given that the actions of the Midianites against the Israelites described at the beginning of Gideon’s chapter in the Book of Judges correspond pretty well to …. well, to what’s being visited upon Gaza right now.
Then again, what good is history if you can’t rewrite it to suit your own purposes?
Thank you for your letter, Gerry, and for continuing to raise this issue even as the Israeli assault on the people of Gaza continues to intensify by the day and the world watches, as if helpless. As Bertolt Brecht wrote, back in the 1930s, in reference to the impending Nazi genocide in Germany,
“The first time it was reported that our friends were being
butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred
were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered
and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of
silence spread.
When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out
‘stop!'”*
I think it’s particularly important that you quote the Israeli Finance Minister, pointing out that “the proposed aid plan is simply a part of the genocide.” The kind of thinking that proposes to permit the delivery of a minuscule amount of so-called humanitarian aid even while subjecting the people of Gaza to a renewed ground invasion is diabolical in the extreme.
*For the full text of the poem: https://echoesandreflections.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/12-01-07_Student_Handout_When_Evil_Doing_Comes_Like_Falling_Rain.pdf
One correction: I erroneously stated that Senators Markey and Warren have voted in favor of all military aid packages to Israel. This past week, they voted in favor of Senator Sanders resolution to withhold billions of dollars in offensive weapons sales and other military aid to Israel. The measure to withhold aid failed 15-82.
How is this relevant to Amherst? Why do I keep writing? As Gabor Mate points out about his writing and speaking: not a single finger of a Palestinian child has been saved because of his speaking out. True. Yet, I persist. This genocide (it is a term being used more and more frequently, some of whom would not use the term previously [Elizabeth Warren for one]), is the greatest moral failure in the world since Nazi Germany. The day will come, perhaps in my lifetime, that an accounting of the dead, of the dismembered children; of the starvation; of the trauma, will occur. We are watching in real time (if one takes the time to look for it – it takes seconds to find) GENOCIDE with all it’s grotesque and inhumane underbelly in full view. This time we cannot say “we didn’t know” as was often said after the defeat of Hitler. We all have blood on our hands, from full support of Israel’s actions to indifference and to “I could have done more”. This genocide has been excused because of Oct 7 (really? Genocide?), the 77 year occupation has been excused because “Palestinians hate Jews”. Not even true. Palestinians hate occupation, as did every people ever living under an occupation. Jews and Palestinians lived side by side in peace for hundreds of years; were neighbors; were friends. It all started with the occupation. Palestinians are paying for Nazi Germany’s barbarism. It will end, when we end it; or when every Palestinian is dead or relocated. The latter option is becoming more and more likely. The current plan is to starve people into “voluntary relocation”.