Public Comment

People whose mission is to justify every Israeli crime have no choice but to rely on lies. Such is the case with Faith Meltzer’s claim, (Oct. 1 letter) that ninety-five percent of the 1,417 Palestinians butchered by Israel in three weeks of attacks on Gaza were males. Research by B’Tselem, Israel’s highly respected human rights organization, documented the killing of 320 minors and 109 women. B’Tselem also documented that in the first day of the attack Israel murdered 248 Palestinian police officers, most were killed in aerial bombings of 60 police stations. Police officers are mostly males and are considered civilians ; targeting them is a war crime. Israel also destroyed 45 mosques and in some mosques, the bombing took place during prayer services when the mosques were full with male worshipers, another war crime.  

The report by Judge Richard Goldstone, the chair of the UN commission investigating the War on Gaza, documented the wholesale destruction of civilian infrastructure including 2400 homes, the bulldozing of agricultural fields, the bombing of water wells, the bombing of sewage works that caused a huge spill over a large area, all these are war crimes under International law. 

Ms. Meltzer’s justification of the murder of Palestinian children is another sickening lie. I am as bewildered as Judge Richard Goldstone, described as a Zionist moderate, when he said “I found it difficult to understand how Jews wouldn’t respond in protecting the human rights of others.”  

That the Israeli army was determined to cause maximum death and destruction is obvious. Equally clear is that some Israeli religious authorities encouraged the soldiers to spare no one. Former Sephardi chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu wrote “According to Jewish war ethics, an entire city holds collective responsibility for the immoral behavior of individuals. In Gaza, the entire populace is responsible.” Rabbi Elijah quoted from Psalms. “I will pursue my enemies and apprehend them and I will not desist until I have eradicated them.”  Following the rabbi’s twisted logic, another deranged person could conclude that the entire Jewish Israeli population is fair game and should be held responsible for the decades of crimes by the Israel government, soldiers and settlers.  

We now know that Israel’s chief military chaplain, Rabbi Avichai Rontzki, distributed a booklet to soldiers fighting in Gaza containing similar rabbinical edicts forbidding showing any mercy.  We also know several soldiers boasted about their cruel exploits. Many “soldiers” celebrated by ordering specially designed T-shirts and baseball caps with dead Palestinian babies, mothers weeping on their children’s graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques. An especially heinous sharpshooter’s T-shirt from the Givati Brigade’s Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull’s-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, “1 shot, 2 kills.” A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription “Better use Durex” next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. The Lavi battalion produced a shirt featuring a drawing of a soldier next to a young Palestinian woman with bruises, with the slogan, “Bet you got raped!” Many of the images on the soldiers designed t-shirts underscore their actions during the Gaza attacks including shooting a bullet into the victim’s head from close range, harming religious sites, and targeting females and children. 

I hope that people like Meltzer realize that Israel’s crimes must be exposed and condemned lest they completely destroy not only Palestinians but also Jewish souls. 

Hassan Fouda is a Kensington resident.