News Reader.info

No-one who has looked at the images of extermination of six million Jews in the Holocaust Memorial of _Yad Vashem_ in Jerusalem will underestimate the impact of the appalling 7 October 2023

Hamas attack and hostage-taking on Israel and on Jews worldwide.  No-one watching the daily TV coverage of the civilian dead and dying amongst the rubble of Gaza, and listening to radio

reports of attacks on Palestinian communities on the West Bank, will underestimate the impact on public opinion here and elsewhere. The ability of Israel to define the purpose of this

violence – and the wider conflict with Palestinian nationalism — has reached its limits.  It has created  the current spiritual crisis in Judaism.  Partly in response to public opinion, the

tone and tide of Western governments’ reactions is changing.  Why now? For a long time Western democracies voiced concern rather than condemnation of Israel’s conduct.  Hamas, the sorcerer’s

apprentice that had received funding from Israel to split the Palestinians, had perpetrated a face-to-face version of 9/11.  The ravages of ISIS and Al-Qaeda, Europe’s millennia of

antisemitism, all weighed heavily on the scales of foreign policy.  The weapons kept coming from the USA. After months of bombing and blockade, Israel continued to promote a story that this

was a war for its survival — rather than a war for the survival for Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, propped up by religious extremists determined to ethnically cleanse the land of

Palestinians.   _Haaretz_, Israel’s oldest and most influential newspaper, was writing on 18 April that there was “no longer a war, but an unrestrained assault on civilians”. The key to

continuing unrestrained the invasion and destruction of Gaza, while containing the volume of protest both inside and outside Israel, was to “kettle” reporting and comment on public outrage

in a wider story of antisemitism. The aim was to present as a further expression of antisemitism all protests at the massive civilian casualties, blockade of Gaza, deprivation of all but the

most rudimentary health care, near starvation and resultant malnutrition of a generation of Palestinians.  But like most falsehoods it contained an element of truth.  Islamic solidarity

worldwide with the Palestinians can slip easily into antisemitism, and in the heated language of Left-wing protests sometimes Jews are conflated with the Israeli government. Some hate crimes

have been prosecuted in Britain. As protestors increasingly emerged from Jewish communities around the world and inside Israel – albeit at first a small minority — dismissal of protest at

the conduct of the war as merely antisemitism became  implausible, even if frequently repeated by Israeli government sources.  Moreover, IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) bombing and shelling put

the lives of hostages in danger.    On 13 May a number of British rabbis called for an end to the blockade.  “What is happening in Gaza is completely against core democratic values and what

I would call Jewish values that we are all made equal in the sight of God”, in the words of their spokesperson Rabbi Janet Laura Klausner.  Trump’s _Riviera of the Middle East_, an

AI-generated social media video, brought out some 350 US Jewish leaders in denunciation. Dissent with the conduct of the war has been growing in Israel. _ _Last month, 40 NGOs issued an

urgent _appeal_ to stop the war.  A Catholic news service, _International Catholic News_, carried this significant story about civil society resistance to the war in Israel.  I have not

found it reported elsewhere in the UK. The organisations included — to give some sense of their range — _Rabbis for Human  Rights,_ which has increasingly been supporting Palestinians on the

West Bank against settler attacks, a co-operative village founded by Jews and Arabs,  _Neve Shalom Wahat Al Salaam_, the Jaffa based _Physicians for Human Rights Israel_, and the veteran

Israeli soldiers’ organisation, _Breaking the Silence_. “All residents of the [Gaza] Strip are at risk of famine”, the appeal read, “while the healthcare system is collapsing due to severe

shortages of medicine, medical equipment, and fuel.  Israel is deliberately inflicting conditions that make life impossible in Gaza, with the declared goal of carrying out ethnic cleansing….

Israel’s commission of war crimes, which could also amount to crimes against humanity, must not be met with continued silence and inaction by the international community.” In the past

Israeli Government sources have spoken with candour.  The Israeli director Dror Moreh’s documentary _The Gatekeepers,_ 2012,  contains strikingly candid  interviews with six former heads of

_Shin Bet_, Israel’s internal security agency.  Avraham Shalom (1981-1986) warned of the dangers of occupation. “We are making the lives of millions of people unbearable … the future is

bleak … we’ve become cruel … cruel to ourselves, but especially the occupied”.  The former Prime Minister (2006-2009) Ehud Olmert recently asked whether war crimes were occurring and spoke

of “actions which can’t be interpreted in any other way”.   A Refuser Solidarity Network is growing in numbers amongst IDF reservists and conscripts. So when did the tide begin to turn?  

The date 24 April 2025 stands out: Holocaust Memorial Day, the annual official occasion at _Yad __Vashem, _the grieving heart of Israel holding the victims’ names. According to the

_Guardian_, waiting for Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers at the entrance to _Yad Vashem_ were a handful of people in their 80s holding a banner that read: “If we lose our compassion for

the Other, we have lost our humanity”, in English and Hebrew.  They were Holocaust survivors.  The 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in January was widely featured in the UK.

This protest was not. Veronika Cohen, one of the three survivors holding the banner, was born in the Budapest ghetto.  “People here see Palestinians as the Other and that’s why they have

created a barrier,” she said. “They have managed not to feel their pain and I find that incomprehensible. To me, when I read the stories of their suffering in Gaza, it blends completely into

how I feel about the Holocaust.”  This, the past’s call to the present for compassion, resonating in the soul of Israel at this memorial to the victims of genocide, at this symbolic place

of tragic memory, and on this day, sends a unique and unequivocal message.  _ _In a square in Jerusalem thousands had gathered holding pictures of Palestinian children killed during the Gaza

war, whilst some 50 lined a road in Tel Aviv dressed in black holding empty pots symbolising the  hunger of the Gazan civilians. No-one should imagine Veronika Cohen as typical of Holocaust

survivors, nor the Refuser Solidarity Network of the military, nor the many now protesting representative of the majority of the population.  This poignant protest will not end the killing,

but it challenges the claim Netanyahu and the Israeli State make to represent Jewish  values_. _ World opinion about Israel is changing.  Future generations may see the protests of April

24th 2025 in Israel, under-reported at the time, as a turning point.  But, please God, these protests may signal the beginning of the end to the intolerable suffering in Gaza. A MESSAGE FROM

THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one that’s needed now more than ever, and we need your help to

continue publishing throughout these hard economic times. So please, make a donation._