Wednesday, November 4, 2009

An incredible and unusual piece in the Jerusalem Post!

Rattling the Cage: Some victims we are
So let's decide: Who was the victim of Operation Cast Lead, them or us?
No question - us. We Israelis were the victims and we still are. In fact, our victimhood is getting worse by the day. The Goldstone report was the real war crime. The Goldstone report, the UN debates, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Red Cross, B'Tselem, the traitorous soldiers of Breaking the Silence and the Rabin Academy - those were the true crimes against humanity. This is what's meant by "war is hell."
It is we who've been going through hell from the war in Gaza. It is we who've been suffering.
This imaginary monologue is how we actually see ourselves today. We initiated the war in Gaza, we waged one of the most one-sided military campaigns anyone's ever seen - and we're the victims.
We're fighting off the world with the Holocaust; witness Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the UN with his Auschwitz props. "We won't go like lambs to the slaughter again," vowed his protégé, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, in a cabinet discussion of the Goldstone report.
Auschwitz, lambs to the slaughter, Operation Cast Lead. To Israelis today, it's all of a piece, it's one story, one unbroken legacy of righteous victimhood.