Reposted from Toronto Star
As a Jewish youngster growing up in Budapest, an infant survivor of the Nazi genocide, I was for years haunted by a question resounding in my brain with such force that sometimes my head would spin: “How was it possible? How could the world have let such horrors happen?”
It was a naïve question, that of a child. I know better now: such is reality. Whether in Vietnam or Rwanda or Syria, humanity stands by either complicitly or unconsciously or helplessly, as it always does. In Gaza today we find ways of justifying the bombing of hospitals, the annihilation of families at dinner, the killing of pre-adolescents playing soccer on a beach.
In Israel-Palestine the powerful party has succeeded in painting itself as the victim, while the ones being killed and maimed become the perpetrators. “They don’t care about life,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says, abetted by the Obamas and Harpers of this world, “we do.” Netanyahu, you who with surgical precision slaughter innocents, the young and the old, you who have cruelly blockaded Gaza for years, starving it of necessities, you who deprive Palestinians of more and more of their land, their water, their crops, their trees — you care about life?
There is no understanding Gaza out of context — Hamas rockets or unjustifiable terrorist attacks on civilians — and that context is the longest ongoing ethnic cleansing operation in the recent and present centuries, the ongoing attempt to destroy Palestinian nationhood.
The Palestinians use tunnels? So did my heroes, the poorly armed fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto. Unlike Israel, Palestinians lack Apache helicopters, guided drones, jet fighters with bombs, laser-guided artillery. Out of impotent defiance, they fire inept rockets, causing terror for innocent Israelis but rarely physical harm. With such a gross imbalance of power, there is no equivalence of culpability.
Israel wants peace? Perhaps, but as the veteran Israeli journalist Gideon Levy has pointed out, it does not want a just peace. Occupation and creeping annexation, an inhumane blockade, the destruction of olive groves, the arbitrary imprisonment of thousands, torture, daily humiliation of civilians, house demolitions: these are not policies compatible with any desire for a just peace. In Tel Aviv Gideon Levy now moves around with a bodyguard, the price of speaking the truth.
I have visited Gaza and the West Bank. I saw multi-generational Palestinian families weeping in hospitals around the bedsides of their wounded, at the graves of their dead. These are not people who do not care about life. They are like us — Canadians, Jews, like anyone: they celebrate life, family, work, education, food, peace, joy. And they are capable of hatred, they can harbour vengeance in the hearts, just like we can.
One could debate details, historical and current, back and forth. Since my days as a young Zionist and, later, as a member of Jews for a Just Peace, I have often done so. I used to believe that if people knew the facts, they would open to the truth. That, too, was naïve. This issue is far too charged with emotion. As the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle has pointed out, the accumulated mutual pain in the Middle East is so acute, “a significant part of the population finds itself forced to act it out in an endless cycle of perpetration and retribution.”
“People’s leaders have been misleaders, so they that are led have been confused,” in the words of the prophet Jeremiah. The voices of justice and sanity are not heeded. Netanyahu has his reasons. Harper and Obama have theirs.
And what shall we do, we ordinary people? I pray we can listen to our hearts. My heart tells me that “never again” is not a tribal slogan, that the murder of my grandparents in Auschwitz does not justify the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians, that justice, truth, peace are not tribal prerogatives. That Israel’s “right to defend itself,” unarguable in principle, does not validate mass killing.
A few days ago I met with one of my dearest friends, a comrade from Zionist days and now professor emeritus at an Israeli university. We spoke of everything but the daily savagery depicted on our TV screens. We both feared the rancour that would arise.
But, I want to say to my friend, can we not be sad together at what that beautiful old dream of Jewish redemption has come to? Can we not grieve the death of innocents? I am sad these days. Can we not at least mourn together?
Gabor Maté, M.D., is a Vancouver-based author and speaker.
Dr. Mate,
With greatest respect for your writings about trauma and the mind, I must note that your argument here is illogical. Your statements that sound like fact are inaccurate and lead inexorably to support for your mistaken conclusions. Further, although Harper is a great supporter of Israel, what on earth are you talking about relating to Obama, the most anti-Israeli president in history?
The key premise is that, despite your statements, you seem to miss is that this conflict is really quite simple: you and many others fall into the trap of believing this is about land. If the terrorism around the globe has taught us anything (and the terrorism locally in Israel is more than enough to know this to be true), it is that this is a holy war to kill every living Jew. Look no farther than the Hamas charter. Look no farther than the fact that a sovereign nation has been offered to the Palestinian Arabs on at least 5 separate occasions, each of which was rejected or walked away from without comment. Look no further than the hatred that is taught to 3 year olds in Gaza and the WB. You look at symptoms, but ignore causation. Arabs have been murdering Jews for centuries and the most recent round started in the early 20th century. You may wish to read “Hitler’s Mufti,” about the self-proclaimed “Mufti of Jerusalem,” who spent the WWII yrs in Berlin advising Hitler, encouraging him to kill the Jews rather than simply expel them from Europe (he was at the mtg at Wansee where the Final Solution was adopted) and recruited large #s of Muslims from the European Muslim countries for the SS). At the end of the war, he escaped Europe to Cairo where he recruited none other than Yassir Arafat (and, if memory serves, Abbas). You also might read “Arafat’s War.” These are just 2 amongst many sources (like try googling NYTimes headlines from way back when to get a feel for the attacks by arabs on jews). With your name, I should hope you’ve done some research, dear Sir, before writing an article in which you make inconsistent statements, factually inaccurate statements and statements which may be true, but are given inaccurate context. It might serve you well. More importantly, you might then not publish something so misleading, vague and erroneous as to make the world a worse place, rather than a better one. To be clear, I argue for compassion towards all beings. I have no hatred towards even terrorists – I think they are delusional, as are all negative behaviors of any sort (obviously, varying drastically in severity). But to suggest that the IDF can surgically strike and purposefully kill civilians is beyond sanity. What do you know about surgical strikes? What do you know about fighting a war like this? Did you even pay any attention to the way last summer’s war began (you may recall, Hamas operatives kidnapped and murdered 3 boys, then fired missiles into Israel, to which Netanyahu responded that peace will be met with peace, so the very next day, they fired more rockets in one day than ever before). Further, did you not notice that Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza in 2005? And that there was no longer any occupation or blockade? And did you not know that when Israel ripped its own citizens out of Gaza against their will (a heckuv an internal political battle), it not only left thriving agricultural businesses, but also raised $23M for those businesses to be developed (off the top of my head)? And did you not notice that Hamas was elected into power, consolidated that power by killing its adversaries, destroyed all those businesses donated by Israel and American Jews and began firing rockets at Israel, to which Israel RESPONDED by blockading Gaza, not to prevent legitimate goods from entering Gaza, but to prevent arms from entering. And despite that, Gaza still receives massive amounts of arms as evidenced by their attacks on Israel. Further, instead of building productively, Hamas takes any concrete that enters and builds death tunnels. Were it not for the happenstance of this war, Rosh Hashana would have been an incredibly bloody and ugly day in Israel w/ 1000’s of terrorists entering Israel through those tunnels, murdering men, women and children in teh streets and taking them as hostages. The could have turned Gaza into the Singapore of the middle east; instead, they turned the entire strip into one big death cult. You say they love life, but that’s baloney and you know it. They have institutionalized hatred, while Israel still treats them in its hospitals. There are countless videos of Palestinian mothers expressing their most fervent desire for their sons to become martyrs, just as one small example. And there is so, so, so much more. I really must say, I’ve learned to calm my mind pretty well, but I just need to ask you: what rock have you been hiding under?