THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD
(apologies to Keith Olbermann)
Yochanan Gordon
If political leaders and military experts determine that the only way to achieve its goal of sustaining quiet is through genocide is it then permissible to achieve those responsible goals?
I’m not about to take sides in the Israeli-Palesitinian conflict. The actions of both sides in Gaza have been reprehensible, albeit for very different reasons. Both sides have blood on their hands, and if they wished for the killing to stop, it would. The truth is that both Israelis and Palestinians are far more concerned with scoring propaganda points than they are with protecting the lives of civilians. Hamas is quite happy to use the death of hundreds of Palestinian civilians as evidence of Israeli perfidy…and they have a point. What Hamas conveniently glosses over are their tactics and attacks on Israeli civilians, which Israel is quite happy to use to their advantage.
Killing is the coin of the realm in the Middle East, same as it ever was; so it didn’t come as a particular surprise when the Times of Israel published an op-ed piece by Yochanan Gordon advocating genocide as a legitimate means to achieve political and military goals. Not that the realities of the Middle East making justifying genocide any less reprehensible.
You’d think that, given that six million Jews perished in the Holocaust during WWII, Gordon might be at least somewhat cautious when it comes to discussing genocide. Or does he honestly believe that genocide, when committed BY (and not UPON) Jews, is in fact not mass murder at all, but a justifiable tool to be used to achieve political and military objectives? When Nazis commit genocide upon Jews, it’s a Holocaust; when Jews commit genocide upon Arabs…well, it’s not like Arabs are people, right??
I realize that Gordon’s an outlier, in that he was stupid enough to put his sentiments on the subject in writing. Though the op-ed was quickly removed from the web, the damage has been done…because Gordon’s views are reflective of many Israeli Jews who only see their side of the suffering. It’s easy to sees Arabs as subhuman zealots who live only to kill Jews, but their point of view is every bit as valid. Their methods are certainly reprehensible, but they have the same right to life and peace Israelis do. It’s Hamas that’s chosen to use the lives of Palestinian civilians as political bargaining chips and propaganda points…and those same civilians have acquiesced to a role in which their lives count for little.
An eye for an eye only leaves the whole world blind.
- Mahatma Gandhi
Enough of blood and tears.
- Yitzhak Rabin
What Gordon advocates can only result in more blindness, blood, and tears. More children will lose their parents, more wives will lose their husbands, and the unimaginable suffering and pain will continue unabated…unless both sides recognize they’re the living definition of insanity. Killing ever more innocent civilians and expecting different results is insane; yet that’s what the Israeli-Palestinian conflict represents- insanity heaped upon insanity.
Gordon’s advocating for genocide when your six million of your forebears were the victims of Nazi butchery 70+ years ago demonstrates how little humanity has learned. Genocide was easy for the Nazis, indoctrinated as they were to fervently believe that Jews were subhuman and worthy only of extinction. More than 70 years later, Yochanan Gordon has given voice to the convictions of far too many Israelis who’d be quite happy to see Palestinians eradicated en masse.
The fact that the Times of Israel published Gordon’s op-ed is telling…and extremely disturbing. In a country that owes it’s very existence to the world’s collective guilt after WWII, much of Israel has chose to elevate and distinguish their genocide from that of the Nazis.
When we do it, it’s self-defense. When they do it, it’s a Holocaust and the worst sort of inhuman butchery imaginable.
Who says history isn’t circular…and rife with hypocrisy and double standards?
