All eyes were on Rafah this week, and what happened in the southern Gaza city was very hard on the eyes. And the soul.
“I saw bodies everywhere. Children burning. I saw heads without bodies, the injured running around in pain, some alive but trapped inside burning tents,” a lawyer identified as Zuhair told The Guardian, after an Israeli air strike at a refugee camp.
Israeli tanks rolled into the centre of Rafah on Tuesday. And Israel said the war may continue until the end of the year.
The catastrophe is spiralling with justifications and explanations, vengeance and grief, digging giant holes into families and creating a seismic shift in future history.
This should not, and will not, be forgotten. It will live in the bones of survivors and their descendants, and in the descendants of the dead. In the blood memory of two peoples, reverberating around the world.
All of this will make peace – already a shaky proposition – even more difficult to attain.
Benjamin Netanyahu has been a disaster for the Palestinians, long before this war – but also for Israel. The horrific Oct. 7 attacks happened on his watch. Since then he has failed the hostages, their families, the Israelis he has sent to war and their families, and anyone who cares about the State of Israel. He has fed into a grave existential crisis, attracting the world’s fury, destabilizing support from even Israel’s greatest allies and, in the process, inspiring hatred not just toward Israel but Jews in the diaspora, too.
If you think that’s blaming the victim, fair. Yes, Israel was a victim on Oct. 7, and it has been victimized through the decades by hostile neighbours. But it has in turn created victims, and continues to do so. Is it Hamas’s fault? Sure. And the hostages must be returned. But Israel is now sending the bombs, bullets and soldiers.
The soldiers themselves are victims of this catastrophic war, in a country where military service is mandatory and reserves have been called up in wartime. However, some of their actions have been grotesque, too. A group of Israeli soldiers filmed themselves burning books, including a Quran, during their operation in Gaza. This is not what this state was established, in the ancient homeland of the Jews after the Holocaust, to become.
It is frustrating to see so much of the world’s focus on Israel’s actions when there are killing fields in so many other places. One may surmise that this has something to do with the age-old hatred of Jews. But not talking about Gaza is not going to stop what’s happening in Syria, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This doesn’t give anyone a pass for antisemitism, or for applauding the murderous attacks of Oct. 7 as “resistance.”
Hamas knew exactly what it was doing. It got the war it wanted. And with Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, it got the international sympathy it needed, using its own people as pawns. Mr. Netanyahu has been offering a giant helping hand to Hamas’s dream of eradicating Israel.
Israel has insisted that victory is impossible without taking Rafah. If there’s a ceasefire now, some Israel supporters say, the terrorists win.
But nobody is winning. The losses are piling up, along with the bodies. Every death is a disaster. Even if Israel “wins,” this war has ignited a much deeper divide – who would have thought that possible? – that will last generations and echo far beyond the Middle East.
How can anyone call anything about this a victory?
Yes, people die – innocent people – in war. Yes, historically it has been “acceptable” to kill members of a declared enemy state. Today our view is more humanitarian, perhaps because we are able to see the evidence immediately. And all eyes can see that none of this is okay.
There is no moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel. But there is no moral victory to be found in the rubble, either.
“They want us dead” is a rationalization from some Israelis and their supporters. Even if that were entirely true, that’s no justification. If this started out as defence, it has become offence now, and it’s offensive. And these thousands of Palestinian deaths have created chasms of grief – and hatred. A lot more people want Israelis dead now than eight months ago.
This week, The Globe and Mail shared the horrific experiences of Hagar Brodutch, who was taken hostage on Oct. 7 with four children, and released in November. I’ll give her the last word.
“I think Israel has to stop everything and bring everybody back home, and that’s it,” Ms. Brodutch told The Globe in Toronto. “Stop the war. I want to live in peace. I want my kids to have a normal life. They have to find a solution for us and for the Palestinians. It can’t go on like this.”