The current hard-line, militaristic Israeli government and the Israeli Defense Forces (which are currently synonymous) are not acting as if they were Jews. They are acting as brutal oppressors who ignore the consequences of their actions.
Responding to the experience of nearly 2,000 years of waves of anti-Semitic persecution, marginalization and murder, they are now sadly acting in Gaza like their own former oppressors.
Jewish culture is lively, laced with humour and rich in human wisdom, plus an ingrained striving for self-improvement. Jewish religious teachings overwhelmingly urge peaceable conduct and compassion.
Jews comprise 0.02 per cent of the world population, but have received 20 per cent of all Nobel Prizes, including nine Nobel Peace Prizes.
Jews like renowned medieval physician Maimonides, classical composers Offenbach, Mendelssohn, Mahler and Bizet, actors Kirk Douglas, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Dustin Hoffman and Danny Kaye, musicians Al Jolson, George Gershwin and Bob Dylan, and physicists Albert Einstein and Neils Bohr have all contributed enormously to the legacy of human creativity and knowledge.
But the current government of Israel, led by Benjamin Netenyahu, a former Special Operations soldier with the Israeli Defense Forces who has opportunistically allied himself with fanatically militant Zionist colleagues, is wreaking indiscriminate and vengeful havoc on Palestinian men, women and children, responding to the brutal October 7 attack by Hamas militants.
War does not end war. It embeds memories of pain and suffering and a legacy of anger and resentment. A headline in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz yesterday is explicit: “Netanyahu’s Far-right Ministers Are a Gift to Hamas”.
Jewish organizations like US Jewish Voices for Peace, Canadian Independent Jewish Voices and Israeli-Palestinian Combatants for Peace – and many others – are calling for a ceasefire.
Political leaders everywhere must press for this too and for the tough negotiations that need to come next.
Read more: Salmon Arm rally urges ceasefire in Isreali/Palestinian conflict
Warren Bell
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