“[T]he reality of concentration camps resembles nothing so much as medieval pictures of Hell.” – Hanna Arendt
In February 2008, Matan Vilnai, then Israel’s deputy defence minister, threatened the Palestinians of Gaza with a “holocaust”. “They will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves,” he said in an interview for the Israeli army radio station, using the Hebrew word for holocaust.
It is important to recall this statement today as activists and analysts are being berated for comparing what is happening now to the people of Gaza to what European Jews suffered at the hands of the Nazis last century.
The word “shoah” is never used in Israel outside discussions of the Nazi extermination of Jews during World War II. Many Israelis, especially Zionists, have a serious problem with people using it to describe other genocides.
Yet, the deputy minister decided to threaten the Palestinians with a “shoah”. It is clear he knew what he was referring to and he did not mince his words.
In December 2008, 10 months after Vilnai’s interview, the Israeli occupation forces launched a massive military onslaught on the Gaza Strip that lasted 22 days. Israel killed more than 1,400 people in this onslaught, the overwhelming majority of whom were children and women.
At the time, no one referred to the prohibited word. No one dared to compare the military operation, grotesquely dubbed “Cast Lead”, to the “shoah”.
The so-called “international community” did nothing to protect Palestinian civilians. Just as it did nothing in the late 1930s, when it stood aside and watched idly, refusing to give shelter to the innocent civilians fleeing slaughter at the hands of the Nazi monster regime.
The Nazi war criminals acted with full impunity for a long period of time, relying on the support of ordinary Germans and the indifference of the “international community”, who facilitated what the late philosopher Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil”.
Author:Haidar Eid ,Haidar Eid is an associate Professor at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza.
Source:https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/12/30/on-the-gaza-shoah-and-the-banality-of
