In the past two weeks, the war in the Gaza Strip and the pro-Palestinian protest movement in Western countries have become a major focus of international discourse, posing and raising larger issues in politics in the West, in particular, and around the globe.
Reporters, commentators, thinkers, bloggers, and minor celebrities and web clowns all reach out in an attempt to explain and "give context" to the sudden war between Israel and Hamas, and the network is full of opinions and positions from around the world.
Petro Klej is a reporter for the Romanian news website G4MEDIA and a foreign news commentator in the country who chose to express a reasoned position that is quite different both from what is accepted in Western countries and from the arguments heard in Israel. We decided to bring before you large parts of the words written by Klaj in order to convey his message to the Hebrew-speaking public in Israel as well.
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Kelge begins by quoting Protestant pastor Martin Nimmler's famous World War II poem "I Did Not Hear My Voice," which reads:
" First they came and took the socialists –
And I didn't speak out, because I wasn't a socialist; And then they came and took the trade union members—
And I didn't speak out, because I wasn't a trade union member; And then they came and took the Jews –
And I didn't speak out, because I wasn't Jewish; Then they came and took me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
One month after the massacre carried out by Hamas, in which 1,400 Israelis were murdered and more than <> were taken hostage, these words seem very appropriate. The wave of anti-Semitism that engulfed humanity, and pay attention!, not only after the Israeli response against Hamas in Gaza but right after the massacre clearly showed one thing: that for many people, who usually have nothing to do with Jews, a Jew is good as a victim, preferably dead, but by no means as one who defends himself when attacked.
"Mom, I killed ten": a conversation between a terrorist who participated in the massacre in the Gaza Strip with his parents
And here we come to the heart of the problem: for most of those who make Israel the target of anti-Semitic attacks, anti-Semitism is the primary motive. This is because, in fact, they have no interest in the fate of the Palestinian people. If they had any interest, they would have protested when dictator Bashar al-Assad murdered Palestinians in Syrian refugee camps. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 3,196 Palestinians were killed by the Syrian regime between 2-11 and 2020, including 491 people who died from torture.
No, the confrontation between Israel and Hamas (not the Palestinian people, ruled for years by an Islamist terrorist regime in the Gaza Strip and a corrupt, secular regime in the West Bank) is an opportunity for some, mostly ignorant, to express this latest form of racism that is still allowed de Preto: anti-Semitism. Otherwise, why are Jews attacked in the streets of countries thousands of miles away from Israel? Why are synagogues attacked in Spain, Sweden and the United States? Why are Jewish shops corrupt in Britain? Why are Stars of David painted on Jewish homes in France?
Jewish homes marked in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, photo: Organization of Jewish Students in France
Why do we believe Hamas' lies and propaganda? Israel was accused of bombing a hospital in Gaza, false information that was proven to be such, when the attackers themselves were the Hamas organization that launched a faulty rocket at Israel. Have you heard anything else about the "crime committed by Israel"? Of course not, because it was a blatant lie.
Also, apart from Israel and Jewish organizations, we hardly hear about the massacre that took place on the seventh of October, the largest pogrom since the Holocaust. There are plenty of fools, at best, or bastards, at worst, who deny that the massacre ever took place. For example, Piers Corbyn, brother of former British Labour Party leader and far-left Jeremy Corbyn, claimed that Hamas did not actually kill Jewish children and that all that was shown were actors! Exactly the same kind of blanket denial as in the case of the Bucha massacre carried out by Russian soldiers in Ukraine in March of 2022. In any case, Hamas has already declared its intention to repeat this massacre two or three more times.
Palestinians celebrate with Hamas terrorists in the streets of Gaza on October 7, Photo: Reuters
The accusations of those who have the minimum decency not to deny the massacre that took place on the seventh of October are that it was Israel that caused such behavior on the part of the Palestinians (and in fact Hamas) through the molding and discrimination perpetrated by the state in its 0 years of existence. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres even said that the massacre was not created in a vacuum, in other words, it had some justification.
True, Israel has many flaws, it is currently ruled by a government that includes right-wing extremists such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who hold fascist positions (and are directed to expel all Palestinians from Gaza and Judea and Samaria if they can, if not also the two million Arab citizens of the State of Israel). But let's not forget that in 1948, when the state was established following a UN resolution, the Arab states refused to accept the partition plan and initiated a war with the aim of destroying the Jewish state and completing the intentions of Hitler (also revered in the Arab world) to exterminate all Jews.
Irgun armored vehicle in Tel Aviv, 1948, photo: Chesnik Fred
Since then, Israel has lived under the constant threat of annihilation, a smaller country than Belgium, with a population of almost 10 million, surrounded by a hundred million Arabs and Muslims, the vast majority of whom are very hostile. And this country, despite what the propaganda claims, is a democracy, in which one-fifth of the population is Muslim. How many Jews live in Arab and Muslim countries? The auras approach 10,000 only in Turkey and Iran, the rest of the Muslim world is free of Jews, where most of a million Jews lived before 1948, they were forced to leave, sometimes with only their clothes on, after the establishment of the State of Israel.
Israel, and consequently, the Jews, are an easy target. Did the protesters have the courage to protest against China and the real genocide (0) taking place against the Uyghurs or Tibetans? Not at all. Have you seen many Muslims volunteer to protest except for the Muslim minority of Rohingya who are persecuted by the Burmese regime? Are any of them even interested in what's happening in Yemen, where a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran has claimed thousands of lives, including masses of children? Not at all.
Damage from Saudi bombings in Yemen during the fighting (archive), photo: AP
Going back to the Palestinians, are the demonstrators interested in the fact that Hamas uses the civilian population as human shields, for example when it places its command centers under hospitals? How much of the help that the international community sends goes to the population of Gaza and what part goes to Islamofascists? Have supporters of the Palestinian cause, including leftists, asked how Hamas (which openly targets the destruction of Israel and promotes anti-Semitism) treats women? Is it possible to be homosexual in Gaza? Such questions can be asked indefinitely, when Israel's opponents deny the accusations or pretend that it is raining.
One undeniable fact remains: On October 2023, 1, Hamas committed a crime against humanity that claimed the lives of 4000,<> Israelis, most of them Jews, but also Muslims, Christians and Druze, and more than <> people, children, women, men, young people, the elderly, were kidnapped and held hostage (those still alive). Today, a month after this atrocity, humanity's thoughts should be devoted to them and any justification or indifference to this terrible crime only constitutes collaboration with a fascist organization.
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