All due respect, the word 'provoke' is EXTREMELY weak compared with being attacked and have your life and the lives of everyone you know in danger. With having everything in your world turn upside down. And while I really do not want to delegitimization your opinion and feelings in the matter, I think it's hard to judge unless you're put on the same spot.
At the time same, let's remember something here - This is just an internet forum. What someone writes, sometimes in the heat of the moment, means a lot less than what he actually does - or doesn't do.
Well, I'm not in the army, haven't been in uniform for 24 yearsm and had I been drafted for combat, I would have refused.
As for leaving the country, gladly. I've been working in sports journalism and editing for over 20 years and it's still the only thing I want to do. If anyone wants to offer me a job, despite the fact it might take some time to get my English up to journalism levels, I'm open to offers.
The reality of the matter is that even people who are most certainly considered left in Israel justified the war - at least at the beginning - because the horrors of October 7 were so terrible. That does not mean they are not left. And I guess you'll enjoy the column Gideon Levy wrote as a message to these people in Haaretz today:
--
Dear friends and former friends: It's time to sober up from the sobering up.
It was baseless to begin with, but now, nearly half a year after your "eyes were opened," it's time to return to reality. It's time to go back to seeing the whole picture, to reactivate the conscience and the moral compass that were shut off and stored away on
October 7, and to see what has happened since then to us and, yes, to the Palestinians.
It's time to remove
the blindfolds you put on, not wanting to see and not wanting to know what we're doing to Gaza, because you said that Gaza deserves it and its catastrophes no longer interest you.
https://www.haaretz.com/2024-02-28/...ctober-7/0000018d-efe6-d7f4-a3dd-efeeb8470000
You were angry, you felt humiliated, you were stunned, you were terrified, you were shocked, and you grieved on October 7. This was fully justified. It was a huge shock for everyone.
ראש הטופס
But the conclusions you derived from this shock were not just mistaken, they were the opposite of the conclusions that should have been drawn from the disaster.
You don't come after people in their sorrow, certainly not
Zionist leftists whose sorrow is their art, but it's time to shake off the shock and wake up. You thought that what happened on October 7 justifies anything? Well, it doesn't. You thought that now Hamas must be destroyed at all costs? Well, no. It's not just about justice, but about recognizing
the limits of force.
It's not that you are evil and sadistic, or racist and messianic, like the right. You only thought that October 7 suddenly proved what the right always said: that there is no partner because the Palestinians are savages.
Five months should be enough for you to get over not only your gut reaction, but also your conclusions. October 7 needn't have changed any of your moral principles or your humanity. But it turned them inside out, which is a serious cause for concern about the steadfastness of your moral principles.
Hamas's vicious, barbaric attack on Israel does not change the basic situation in which we live: of a people that has been harassing and tyrannizing another people in different ways and at varying intensities for over a century now.
Gaza didn't change on October 7. It was one of the most miserable places on the planet before October 7 and became even more miserable after it.
Israel's responsibility for the fate of Gaza and its guilt did not change on that terrible day. It is not the only guilty party and does not bear full responsibility, but it has a decisive role in Gaza's fate.
The left cannot evade this responsibility and guilt. After the shock and anger and sorrow, it's time now to sober up from the sobering up and to look not only at what was done to us, as
the Israeli media commands us to do day and night, but also at what we are doing to Gaza, and to the West Bank, since October 7.
No, our catastrophe does not make up for that, nothing in the world can make up for that. The right is celebrating Palestinian suffering, reveling in it and wanting more, while the left looks away and keeps dreadfully silent. It is still "sobering up." It's time to stop that.
What the whole world sees and understands should also be understood by at least part of what was once the camp of conscience and humanity. We won't go into the Zionist left's part in the occupation and apartheid, or dwell on its hypocrisy.
But how can an entire people avert its eyes from the horrors it is committing in its backyard, with no camp remaining that will cry out against them? How can such a brutal war go on and on without any opposition within Israeli society?
The Zionist left, which always wants to feel good about itself and consider itself enlightened, democratic and liberal, needs to remember that one day it will ask itself, or be asked by others: Where were you when it all happened? Where? You were still sobering up? It's time for that to end, because it's already getting late. Very late.
