Israeli Cruelty Reached A Point Of No Return In The 2008-09 Gaza War
There have been crueler military actions, more wicked army operations, but there was never anything quite like the IDF’S Operation Cast Lead.
By Gideon Levy | Mar.31, 2013
She was standing there screaming, the veins in her neck seeming about to burst. “What’s happened to you ? have all of you gone crazy? Who knows what he had in his house, maybe there were weapons there?” The crowd of curious onlookers gathered around her, and they too were shouting: “She’s absolutely right ... Garbage! Garbage! That’s what you are.”
This scene took place on Saturday, January 17, 2009, on Day No. 21 of the Israel Defense Forces assault on the Gaza Strip known as Operation Cast Lead. It was the penultimate day of the operation. The place: a corridor in the Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, outside Tel Aviv. The occasion: A press conference with Dr. Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish, a Gaza Strip physician who once worked at Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva, and who the previous day had lost his three daughters and his niece when an IDF shell hit their family home in the Jabalya refugee camp, near Gaza City.
It was perhaps the purest, most distilled moment of the entire operation: a moment when Israeli cruelty and hatred reared their heads, without excuses, without any cloak of “security-related” or “love of the Land of Israel” motivations. Pure, undiluted cruelty and hatred, this screaming at a bereaved father, who even in his hour of profound sorrow did not speak hatred, and who has spoken peace ever since his tragedy, as well.
Levana Stern, who introduced herself to al-Aish in the hospital as the mother of three paratroopers who were in Gaza at the time, was incapable of sharing the bereavement of this Palestinian enemy, did not identify even for a moment with his pain, did not comprehend his heartache. Decades of brainwashing and the fanning of incitement and hatred had apparently had their effect on her, and burst forth in a single moment: “Who knows what he had inside his house,” she declared, standing before a man who was seen by some to be practically an Israeli, who had just lost the people most precious to him, whose world had collapsed upon him.
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http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/passover/israeli-cruelty-reached-a-point-of-no-return-in-the-2008-09-gaza-war.premium-1.512749
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