The horror! Oh, the horror! Lord, how long can this madness continue?? It has sunk to a new level of depravity. This video will take a very strong constitution and is not for everyone. If you do decide to listen to it, please remember that no matter how outraged it will make you feel that we must not lose sight of the fact that the Palestinians must eventually make peace with Israel and it will not help to demonize an entire nation as you may be tempted to do.
Thank you (if that’s the appropriate phrase) to Israeli peace activist Assaf Oron for making me aware of this horrible potential war crime. Assaf has published a partial transcript of the conversation between the Israeli news anchor and the Gazan doctor, a gynecologist who trained in Israeli hospitals and works at Israel’s Tel Hashomer Hospital.
The interview begins after the shell has hit his home and his children and family have been killed:
Dr. Ezz-El-Din Abu El-Aish is a Palestinian gynecologist from Beit Lahiya, in the NE corner of the Gaza Strip. He works at Israel’s largest hospital, Tel Hashomer near Tel Aviv.
This impressive and peaceful man has been stranded at home during the war. Israel’s Channel 10 TV has regularly interviewed him by phone about the situation. On one occasion, a tank gun aimed at his home – and Israeli media intervention saved him.
The link is a Hebrew news portal, the clip starts auto-playing after a few seconds. the article comes after a short commercial. What we see in the clip is Israeli anchor Shlomi Eldar holding a cellphone with Dr. Abu El-Aish on the other side, howling with misery. A tank shell has just hit his home and immediately killed three of his children (apparently they cut off the first seconds when the shell actually hit).
Eldar barely holds himself from crying, and then offers help. Ambulances evacuated some of the wounded to Israel.
Assaf quotes Eldar interviewed later saying:
“Through one example via phone, Israelis became aware of the magnitude of the horror visited upon the Gaza Strip. I am saying horror, because there are more than a thousand dead, a large part of them civilians, and I am sorry that it takes a phone conversation like this, and the tragedy of a Hebrew-speaking man, to transmit it.”
This AP story provides more details of the story:
Gazan officials identified Abu Al-Aish’s deceased daughters as 22-year-old Bisan, 15-year-old Mayer and 14-year old Aya. His niece was identified as 14-year-old Nour Abu al-Aish. At least two other daughters were injured.
Abu al-Aish, a 55-year-old gynecologist, is a rarity among Palestinians, a Hebrew speaker who trained in two Israeli hospitals. He is also is a known peace activist who was involved in promoting joint Israeli-Palestinian projects, and an academic who studied the affects of war on Gazan and Israeli children. He works at Gaza’s main Shifa Hospital.
“Everyone knew we were home. Suddenly we were bombed. How can we talk to Olmert and (Foreign Minister) Tzipi Livni after this?…I want to know why my daughters were harmed,” Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish said on Channel 10. “This should haunt (Israeli Ehud Prime Minister) Olmert his entire life.”
“Suddenly, today when there was hope for a cease-fire, on the last day…I was speaking with my children, suddenly they bombed us. The doctor who treats Israeli patients.”
This Reuters story quotes the doctor saying:
“My girls were sitting at home planning their futures, talking, then suddenly they are being shelled,” he said in a voice shaking with emotion. “I want to know why they were killed, who gave the order?”
…The Israeli army said troops fired on Aboul Aish’s house because a sniper had fired on soldiers from the building.
Aboul Aish responded: “All that was ever fired out of our house was love, hugs and acts of peace, nothing else, ever.”
The IDF claims are outright lies. They don’t even care to make a statement having a semblance of truth. Their wanton brazenness is unspeakable. Only Israel’s Biblical prophets could rail with suitable passion and fury against such injustice.
I wish I believed in divine retribution so that I could have some certainty that justice would be done. But unfortunately, I believe, like Elisha ben Abuya, that there is likely “no judge and no justice.” The officers who ordered this tank to fire its shell will suffer nothing. They will feel, similar to Dan Halutz dropping a bomb on a Palestinian militant that killed many civilians as well, nothing but the backfire of their tank. They will sleep like babies, killers of young children that they are. Is this what the Israeli army has come to? Using tanks on defenseless families cowering behind thin walls? It has become the time of gnashing of teeth.
Crying.
Words fail me.
Israeli citizens are in large favor of the Gaza massacre. 85%+
Israel just banned all Arab parties from the elections (not that it matters).
How is this entire country any different from Nazi Germany? The citizens deluding themselves into thinking all their problems are due to Arabs and Islam? That they are superior to everyone else? Trapping Palestinians in a ghetto and then when they fight back, massacring them?
Disgusting. The US is no different. We are all on the wrong side of history and someone needs to stop us.
Not quite true. A COMMITTEE of the Knesset made this decision knowing full well that the Supreme Court will overturn it.
If you can’t tell the difference then you’re neither being fair or historically accurate. There is NO comparison. Even if Israel is guilty of war crimes during this war, as I believe it is, it doesn’t come anywhere near the Nazi’s atrocities.
Just because we are enraged at Israel’s conduct–& rightfully so–doesn’t allow us to do violence to historical analogy.
It’s true—we should not demonize 100% of the Israelis for the blood-thirsty viciousness of 95% of their “people.”
Your website is acting strangely, not letting me post. I can’t even post a “testing”–it rejected that for being too short.
Anyway, in case this does get through–LD, Nazi comparisons are over the top. Israel is guilty of ethnic cleansing and numerous other atrocities against Palestinians over the years, but this falls far short of 6 million murdered. It doesn’t help Palestinians to make exaggerated comparisons, as though Israel’s crimes aren’t serious enough to stand on their own.
Let us hope that out of this one moment of truth the dysfunction of Israeli society will be highlighted and that some Israelis will join the brave minority who have long fought for truth, justice and freedom for the Palestinians. Israel has become a rogue state. It uses terrorism against the people it occupies and colonises. Israelis live the lie that they are the victims when they are the aggressor. There is no other people on earth who have had their land taken by others and colonised, who have lived under brutal occupation for more than half a century, who are kept in prisons and treated like animals and yet who are called aggressor and the occupier and coloniser is called victim.
It truly is insane. By the Israeli criteria the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were the terrorists using their women and children, with whom surprisingly the lived in the concentration camp, as human shields against the poor Germans, those victims who were just using massive military might to occupy them. Ditto for the crazy Russians in Stalingrad who had the gaul to fight against the Germans when by Israeli standards they should have put up, shut up and died. In resisting they were clearly terrorists posing a terrible threat to the entire German army and its people.
What tosh. What rot. What madness. Israel is a society which is drowning in its own inhuman madness.
I, too, have been trying to comment on your blogs without success. Hope it works this time.
Richard, your above is correct. Even Avrum Burg, in his superb book “The Holocaust is Over,” explains the differences. But that does not exonerate Israel from its present – and past – crimes.
As I watched the video with the doctor from the comfort of my Geneva living room, I complained to my wife that this kind of stuff is not being exposed to the American public, so no one will ever know. Thank you for being on the job and showing it to the world.
Main question: Will Obama be able to rein in Israel? Does he even want to?
I have stopped comparing israelis with the Nazis….not because the analogy in inappropriate but rather because I now believe that despite their feigned indignance at the comparison, they are secretly flattered by it. This is the image of the strong Jew the Israelis cultivate and try to project—someone who will shoot a six year old boy to pieces without a second thought, all in defense of their superior status.
Here, on the other hand, is what I’d call ‘a mensch!’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGuYjt6CP8
btw…the image on this site of David Grossman, that repulsive cheerleader for the Gaza extermination campaign, strikes me as incongruous, to say the least.
A Palestinian doctor extends his hand in compassion and reconciliation. The Israeli response is completely predictable. They murder his family.
The notion of the Israelis living peacefully alongside anyone, much less the Palestinians, has become thoroughly absurd.
Just as I was ashamed of this country when the majority of its citizens elected George Bush, especially for the second time; just as I was ashamed to be called an American when this country abdicated its prinicpals of due process and justice; just as I was ashamed to be called an American when America tortured and occupied and waged an unjust war, I am ashamed to called a Jew if Jewishness is defined by the morally repugnant policies of The State of Israel.
I am ashamed to be allied with Israel if Israel does not realize it cannot declare war on Hamas without clearly declaring war on a densley populated civlilian area. I am ashamed to be allied with Israel when Israel is engaged in covert ethnic cleansing. Hyperbole? No. Prior to this invasion, Gaza –for the past eighteen months — has been a humanitarian catastophre with flowing sewage in the streets, lack of medical supplies and starvation.
I am ashamed to be called a Jew aligned with Israel when the Israeli government, much like the American government the past eight years, lies and distorts facts to serve their purposes. Israel states Hamas fired rockets and broke the ceasefire. Hamas is a terrorist organization and should be condemned and should be dealt with. However, what Israel does not say is that according to Israeli news sources, Israel was planning attacks prior to the Hamas rocket attacks and I believe did begin to bomb a tunnel supplying materiel. Perhaps a just response; but don’t lie and say that Hamas broke the cease fire.
More close to home, I am also ashamed of mainstream Judaism if they remain silent, if Reform, Conservative and Orthodox rabbis do not overtly, loudly and forcefully condemn Israeli policy. So far, the only outcry I am aware of coming from the local Jewish community in Chicago is a letter from the rabbi of JRC which was published in the Sun-Times. If there are more voices of strong dissent, please make me aware of it.
Finally, and the bottom line, is that I am ashamed, sickened and disgusted when — despite the deplorable tactics of Hamas — the Israeli IDF kills and maims over 1,000 innocent Palestinian women and children in response to rocket attacks that have injured less than 100 Israelis and killed several solders. Yes, a human life is a human life and it is dangerous when we get into a numbers game; however, one cannot ignore the gross disproportionate response by the Israelis.
Thank God for Avenue J, Tikun Olam, The Magnus Zionist and other honest, compassionate voices. Thank God for the more than 500 Israelis that demonstrated in opposition to government policy. Thank God for deeply religious, Orthodox, Zionist Jews that speak out against these (quite possibly) war crimes.
I disagree with the comments criticising the appropriateness of comparisons with Nazism. Nobody is suggesting that the Israel’s actions are the same in scope or scale, but in countless other respects they resemble it. The pervasive discrimination against and dehumanisation of the other, assassination and denial of fair trial, arbitrary arrest, detention and torture, widespread use of collective punishment, the use of terror as an instrument of control, etc, etc, etc. Also striking is the use of propaganda, distortion and outright lies to defend the States actions. In one important respect it is different; any (Jewish) Israeli can criticise and actively oppose the state without fear of the state’s excessive retaliation.
There is a very good reason for avoiding the obvious comparisons, it offers your opponents a cheap shot, and you end up defending the comparison rather than discussing substantive issues. Comparisons may be appropriate, but they are always unwise. For that reason alone I desist, and would recommend others to do likewise.
Richard, I did not mean LITERALLY that Israel = Nazis.
The impression is enough.
Zionism is just another form of radical nationalism. Israel is not a Democratic state. Jews receive preferrential treatment because they are Jews.
There is PLENTY of discrimination against Arabs. Plenty of racism.
And the brutality and indiscriminate force the Zionists inflict upon the Palestinians – whose land and resources they steal – is rooted in Jewish racism and Jewish supremacy, ALL a part of the Zionist ideology.
Israel may not kill 6 million people all at once, in an assembly-line slaughter – BUT not many other people will.
The Nazis were uniquely insane. You had this Western country that was modern/technocratic for that time/etc. It was secular/etc. and here they were carrying out the most barbaric atrocities.
It was a marvel of collective insanity, emphasized by the factors I listed : the secular society/modern/Western/etc.
Israel is also secular and modern. Western. Yet, the citizens applauded this massacre. They openly discriminate against Arabs.
In fact, in ways, Israel is worse than the Nazis. This conflict has been going on for 60 years. 40 years of occupation.
Israel is status quo. Much like the US is status quo. So both of them can get away with murder again and again.
How many millions has the US killed? They may not have done it all at once but they’ve certainly amassed all those deaths over time with the SAME basic foreign policy and elite mentality.
That’s my point. Those variables are all there in the present-day in Israel.
The only difference between the Nazis and the Zionists is that outright genocide is no longer fashionable for a Western country. That’s for the 3rd world. We’ll have no part in that since we’re ‘above’ that now.
The comparison between Israeli policy and The Third Reich is fallacious, intellectually lazy and historically inaccurate. Inherent in Nazi philosophy was the ingathering of Jews and other “inferior races” from every corner of Europe (at the outset) finally resulting in the ingathering of Jews from every corner of the globe to be exterminated so that a master race could rule the world. I repeat, an ingathering. Do I really need to go into detail demonstrating the difference?
The policies of the State of Israel are morally indefensible, odious and quite possibly are worthy of war crimes. But to compare the IDF to Nazis and Israel to The Third Reich is to dishonor the memory and suffering of the twelve million who perished in the holocaust.
Perhaps the comparison of Israeli(and the US for that matter) government policies with the Nazis is not inaccurate, simply premature? Guess we’ll just have to wait and see if they can catch up.
Words are inadequate. Absolutely heartbreaking.
May they rest in peace, away from this cruel world.
Shalom.