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THE WORLD WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SAY ‘WE DIDN’T KNOW’ ABOUT WHAT
ISRAEL WILL DO IN RAFAH  
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Odeh Bisharat
February 11, 2024
Haaretz
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_ History, in all its deviousness, places a people that only recently
was a victim of mass extermination on the threshold of a mass
extermination of another people. _

The tent encampment in Rafah, in southern Gaza Strip, on Friday.,
Mohammed Salem / Reuters

 

Apart from death, nothing in life is total. Perhaps that is what Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meant when he vows time after time that
the goal of the war in the Gaza Strip is total victory. Total victory
in this case will mean certain death for residents of Gaza who have
been herded from all over the Strip into a giant slaughterhouse in
Rafah.

Almost 1.5 million people
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most of them now homeless, are at the mercy of heaven. Netanyahu once
told critics of soaring housing prices that he deals with "life
itself." Today, he is dealing with the end of life itself for those
Palestinians, "death itself."

 

Netanyahu will not settle for total victory, he goes one step farther.
He berates all those who warn him against conquering Rafah, including
important countries
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that had been supporting Israel up to now. "[T]hey are basically
saying lose the war," he says. That's it! Either a massacre or losing
the war. Either heaven or hell. History, in all its deviousness,
places a people that only recently was a victim of mass extermination
on the threshold of a mass extermination of another people.

 

* When the West collectively punishes Gaza by suspending funding to
UNRWA
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* Who will we be after the war in Gaza is over?
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* Egypt threatens to suspend key peace treaty if Israel pushes into
Rafah, officials say
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In the meantime, let us erase the past because at such a momentous
time, only the present counts.

What will the Jews do after this victory? After what will certainly be
a massacre of thousands of Palestinians? Will the taste of the goulash
and hummus remain the same? Will young men and women continue to marry
to "the sound of happiness and the sound of joy," and bring more
children into the world? Will Shlomo Bar still sing the words of
Yehoshua Sobol, "Children are joy, children are a blessing"? How will
the Jews behave with the blood of another 30,000 or more Gazans on
their hands?

 

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," Jesus said.
But here the Jews know for sure. The whole world says "no," but so
what.

 
But the world will also not be able to say, "We didn't know." Everyone
even now is talking about the approaching massacre as if it were an
unavoidable natural disaster. The world has been divided into two
halves. One is the world of simple people of flesh and blood. They
represent the unprecedented level of public opinion opposed to the
massacre that was
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and to the massacre that will be. But there is another world, an
indifferent one, that is influenced by the interests of capitalists.
And capital, as we know, has no scent, no feelings.

The world that was silent in the face of the horrors of the past is
changing its tune, issuing a hesitant condemnation here and a faint
warning there. But the march to massacre goes ahead to its final
destination.

 

These warnings from European leaders are meant for the record, for the
history books. They are meant to say, "It wasn't we who caused such
bloodshed." But while they issue warnings and shed crocodile tears,
these same leaders continue to supply Israel with weapons, money and
diplomatic backing.

 

It will not help. Even today, long before the historians reach their
conclusions, it is clear that their hands are drenched in Palestinian
blood up to the elbows. Yes, "The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the
hands are the hands of Esau," but TikTok in its youthful innocence
explains to all that the hands of Britain's Rishi Sunak, Germany's
Olaf Scholz and France's Emmanuel Macron indeed share in the
bloodshed.

 
Finally, the Kafkaesque aspect of all of this. U.S. President Joe
Biden imposes sanctions on four settler bullies as if they were tax
evaders, and the whole world rises to its feet as if he had dropped a
stink bomb on Israel. At a time when he is giving billions of dollars
of weapons and ammunition in the service of the occupation of the West
Bank and the massacre in the Gaza Strip and cannot seem to force
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to release hundreds of millions of
dollars that Israel owes the Palestinian Authority. Can there be a
more dubious business than this?

Later, Biden will claim that he does not remember what his role was in
the Gaza Strip. He will say that his memory betrays him, his age, you
know, his age. But we will remember. And those who will remain alive
in Gaza will remember, and then some.

 

* Israel; Rafah; Netanyahu;
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