Dear fellow religiously-observant Jews, I have a request to make of all of you.
Please, please – in the name of minimal decency – spare me another round of weepy propaganda over the release of some Israeli captives formerly held by inmates of the concentration camp you helped to create in Gaza.
I cannot bear your misplaced sentimentality over the freed Israelis – many of whom actually wore their IDF uniforms as they left behind the ruins of what used to be Khan Younis – any more than I can tolerate your hypocrisy about the Israeli genocide you have applauded for over a year.
And before you launch into a self-righteous tirade about “terrorism” and sputter “Hamas” into my face, let me assure you that I am not asking you to conduct yourselves like conscientious human beings. After watching your behavior over the last 15 months, I know that this would be too much to expect of all but a handful of “religious” Jews.
No, I am only asking you to begin to call things by their right names. Can you at least do that much – before making another sanctimonious speech? Before posting another self-pitying comment on Facebook about “our hostages”?
Because here’s the thing: Israeli soldiers captured during a military operation – one launched, please remember, by the victims of Israel’s brutal, decades-long occupation and the criminal blockade that has crippled Gaza since 2007 – are not “hostages.” They are captured soldiers who (in my view) are lucky not to have been put on trial for complicity in crimes against humanity.
Do you want to talk about real hostages? Then consider the thousands of Palestinian civilians (including scores of children) rounded up in the Occupied Territories and held under appalling conditions in various Israeli dungeons for their use as “bargaining chips” in negotiation with Gaza’s leadership.
Those are hostages, though never described as such in Israeli or Western media – or by you.
You’re guilty of the same sort of name-reversal every time you use the word “terrorist.” Inmates of the Gaza concentration camp who try to defend themselves against attack are not “terrorists” – not even when their desperate methods include the use of deadly force against their tormentors.
Meanwhile, real terrorists aren’t hard to find. Israeli Jews who don the uniform of a vicious apartheid militia that has confined, tortured and massacred Palestinians for decades – especially in Gaza – fully deserve that name. If anyone still questioned this before October 7, 2023, the IDF’s savagery against Gaza’s civilians since then has surely removed all doubt. Yet you never apply the word “terrorist” where it clearly belongs.
And what about the right name for the systematic destruction of Gaza?
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