Cyberthought by Rabbi Zelizer -- December 30, 2008

We are all anguished and concerned over the shelling of Southern Israel by Hamas, the death of so many innocents, and the subsequent retaliation by Israel in Gaza. I thought you might like to read an open letter from a colleague of mine- a Conservative rabbi, who serves the Mesorti (Conservative ) congregation in Ashkelon.

Praying for the peace of Israel,
Gerald Zelizer, Rabbi

Gaza is not Auschwitz

Rabbi Gustavo Surazski
Kehillat Netzach Israel . Ashkelon (Israel)
sur@012.net.il

At certain times it is not necessary to watch the news on television; the news can be seen directly out of your living room window. No channel has found out yet about this piece of news; this is our scoop. The whole neighborhood already knows that a missile has landed near a house, here in Ashkelon.

My wife, frightened, pressed her nose to the living room window (actually, the screen). Maayan, my five-year-old daughter, tried to calm her down, saying: "Don.t worry mummy, it's only one missile." May God preserve the innocence of my daughter! It reminded me of Roberto Benigni's inspired film, "Life Is Beautiful," and I too wanted to convince her that all this is just a game, and the one who wins and manages to keep his prudence, will win a prize at the end of the competition.

This story happened nine months ago. Today, my daughter knows about missiles, and even war. Her drawings, previously full of color and little people, hearts and butterflies, have started to express her fears. Today she draws grey, rainy clouds and arrows falling from the sky. The little people? They are hiding in anti-missile shelters. The use of the term Shoah (Holocaust) in reference to the Israel-Palestinian conflict calls for some reflection, which I would like to share with you.

Certain groups show a clear tendency to make a one-dimensioned analysis of historical events. The complexity of such events means that they can often be compared, but never considered equal. The essential difference with the present conflict is not rooted in the overwhelming disparity in the number of victims. This would also be a sin of oversimplification. The fundamental difference between both processes is that the Jewish people had no responsibility over what happened in Nazi Germany in the period of 1933-1945.

The German Jews, during the years leading up to the Holocaust, were Germans proud of their nationality. They spoke German, read magazines in German and served in the German army. No German Jew dreamt of obtaining political autonomy based on a doctrine of terror; much less a state. The German Jewish leadership never thought of training militias to launch missiles against the non-Jewish civilian population, neither to smuggle arms in order to cowardly and indiscriminately attack their non-Jewish neighbors.

The Holocaust cannot be catalogued as an 'armed conflict'. There were no two sides; only victims on the one hand and victimizers on the other. In the Middle East, the attacks are not the legacy of just one side; the victims are bleeding on both sides of the frontier. And if no more civilians die in Israel, it is not because the Hamas missiles are made of cardboard, but due to the high number of anti-missile shelters in each house and in each street.

A few months ago, Amnesty International published a report in which it asserted that the situation of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip is the worst known since 1967. No objective analyst of the reality could affirm that these same Palestinians had no responsibility for the situation in which they live in today's Hamas-run territory. Since the Oslo agreement at the beginning of the nineties, the Palestinians have received more money than all Europe received after the Second World War, through the Marshall Plan.

Hamas is not a national liberation movement. Its objectives have nothing to do with the liberation of Gaza from Israeli hands, but rather with the 'liberation' of all Israeli territory from Jewish hands. According to the sick ideology of the Hamas movement, Jews and Christians are 'infidels' who, due to their inferior nature, must be subjected to Islamic power. And until this happens, the god of Hamas will find no satisfaction. In fact, you could say that - in essence - the ideological motives of Hamas are much more similar to those of Nazism, than are the objectives of Israel in executing its reprisal.

Anyhow - as stated above - historical processes are unique. It is with this ideology that the immense majority of the Palestinian population resident in the Gaza Strip identified (identifies?). They are the ones who still do not understand that Hamas is the disease, not the remedy. They are the ones who do not want to assume responsibility for the ill-fated image of the situation in which they are immersed. If we are talking about images, I would like to recall an anecdote about the celebrated Pablo Picasso, who exhibited "Guernica" - one of his eminent pieces of art - in an important Paris museum, during the German occupation.

In the eyes of many, Guernica is nothing more than a disorganized mass of suffering faces, tearful eyes and bleeding humanities. But we know that it is much more than this. Guernica was inspired by the German bombardment of the town of Guernica, during the Spanish civil war. While Picasso was exhibiting his work, incidentally, a contingent of German soldiers visited the museum. One of them approached the artist and, with no cynicism, said to him: "Tell me, did you make this?" Picasso forcefully responded: "No, it was you who did this." The fundamental hate professed by Hamas has brought tragedy to its very people. They themselves have painted the box, with their very own hands.

Whoever compares the present Middle East conflict to the Holocaust is - in the best case - doing so out of pure intellectual laziness. If someone did so deliberately, it would not be surprising. The large majority of people that compares the Israeli assault on Gaza to the Holocaust are the same ones who, in other circumstances, deny that the Holocaust ever happened.