Everyone must be feeling relieved about the ceasefire, but how many of you, like me took a good hard look at the photos in the papers this morning, now that Western journalists have been allowed into Gaza again, and felt utterly sick to the stomach at the devastation and human misery that has been the lot of civilians in Gaza?
And before you jump down my throat and tell me it was all the fault of Hamas etc etc, I don't buy it. However unsavoury the leadership that was elected by the desperate people of Gaza who have seen every alternative unable to wring concessions from Israel, they did not deserve this. I thought the very least that we Jews would learn for our history is that collective punishment is a crime against humanity.
I do believe Israel had alternatives both before and after Hamas assumed power in Gaza.
I took the claims that Israel was trying to avoid civilian casualties with a huge pinch of salt. Of the 1300 dead counted so far, there are 400 children, and they are still pulling people out of the rubble.
The only comfort we can take from the last few weeks is that there were thousands of brave people in Israel protesting every weekend during this war. Last Saturday they marched from Tel-Aviv to Jaffa. The day before that a convoy of Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel were illegally turned back from delivering truckloads of humanitarian medical aid.
Those citizens were Israel's conscience and if Jewish leaders in the diaspora or in Israel, did not want to hear them in the last few weeks, I suspect that their words will be haunting them in the coming weeks.
As the songwriter Pete Seeger once said: When will we ever learn?
Not yet it seems.
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