In their worst misdeeds, the Nazis always tried to hide their abominations. They burned the bodies, crushed the bones, buried the carcasses, each time trying to preserve a heavy silence about the horror of their crimes. With a certain success, moreover, since it would take years after the war to unearth the unimaginable from the depths of dormant soils as well as from the depths of memories which had hurried to empty.
The new barbarians do not have this delicacy. On October 7, armed with GoPro cameras, they went on a hunt to kill, decapitate and drag pregnant women, old men and Jewish children to the ground while spitting on them. While it is true that all deaths are equal, not all crimes are. This is what 150 international journalists accredited in Israel understood when viewing this week these scenes of rare horror that the Hamas jihadists rushed to broadcast on October 7 on TikTok and Telegram as soon as their misdeeds had been committed.
Sorry to come back to a morbid event which the frenetic news would have us believe happened two years ago already. An event which, on the scale of Israel, caused more victims than September 11. Because there will be a “before” and an “after” October 7, 2023. This is what the torrent of news skillfully tries to hide from us, with the blessing of those who blissfully believe that all horrors are equal.
After the Six Day War in 1967, Israel emerged from the conflict with the false assurance of its military superiority and of henceforth being the master of the clocks. An assurance that began to be weakened in 1973 by the Yom Kippur War, which came to the complete surprise of the general staffs. The second intifada, in the early 2000s, with its kamikaze attacks targeting innocent families and children returning from school, put an end to any prospect of a Palestinian state in the foreseeable future.
A further step has just been taken with the savage attack of October 7. He not only proved that Israel’s borders were vulnerable, but also that the worst could happen on its territory. Yes, a real pogrom similar to those committed in the last century in Eastern Europe where the throats of women and children were slaughtered. And all this on the territory of a country created from scratch so that this would no longer happen.
“This will remain the greatest shock in post-Shoah Jewish history,” declared in The world sociologist Eva Illouz. The entire ontological reality of Israel was called into question. The Nazis were trying to hide the atrocities, not broadcast them. Death itself has become a propaganda motif. There is a change in the regime of atrocity. »
The other novelty of this war is that we shouted “ God is great » in Paris as well as in Berlin, Brussels and Melbourne. What has been called the Palestinian national cause today seems to be held hostage by a globalized Islamist ideology, causing at the same time a fabulous internationalization of the conflict which makes it more and more insoluble. Because Palestinian national demands do not interest fools of God any more than corrupt Arab potentates.
If the French President, Emmanuel Macron, was right to point out that there will be no peace in the region without the creation of a Palestinian national state, we must recognize that this state will be a utopia as long as Hamas will remain what it is and that it will transform this war of national liberation into a religious conflict opposing the Jews of Palestine to the entire Umma. However, the most dramatic thing is not so much to discover the horror of which Hamas is capable – we have long known what these religious extremists are fueled by – but to realize that this terrorist organization which exploits the national struggle of the Palestinians in the name of the prophet enjoys the broad support of a galvanized population. In Palestine as elsewhere in the world.
“We must therefore free Palestine from the Israelis who want to steal it, but also from the “Arabs” and the Islamists who want to sell and buy it and ride on its back,” wrote Kamel Daoud with courage. And the Algerian writer adds that we must put an end to “this solidarity in the name of Islam and hatred of the Jew […] who turns a blind eye to Hamas and its nature to cry out in indignation.”
Eradicating Hamas is a noble and necessary goal. But it will require a long struggle where we will have to avoid the post-September 11 trap, as Joe Biden subtly reminded us in Jerusalem. A struggle that cannot be reduced to invading Gaza for a few weeks at the cost of thousands of Palestinian lives. And to return Gaza to whom next? Knowing that Israel does not wish to administer this territory since Ariel Sharon withdrew from it in 2005.
That Hamas must be crushed, both for Israel and for the very honor of the Palestinian people, should be in no doubt. But how to do it without disgracing yourself? All the complexity of Israel’s reaction lies in this tragic question admirably posed by the writer Fabrice Hadjadj: “How can we crush the enemy’s head without it devouring our hearts?” »