It’s 9/11 again and worse. Pearl Harbour and worse. For in neither of these two catastrophes was there this direct savagery.
It was nothing else than a pogrom, such as had been the fate of Jews in Lithuania and other places in the past centuries. Nor was there the scientific approach of the Holocaust.
This was, once again, Kill the Jew, just because he or especially she is a Jew. Especially when unarmed. Rape the women who were caught, kill the children and in many cases cut off their heads, burn the bodies, sometimes when still alive.
The hordes of Hamas, joined by others, who streamed through the supposedly secure fence had this in mind. Kill the Jew.
The 2,000 participants in the Supernova rave party stupidly just across the road from the Gaza frontier were a bonus. There the same principle ruled: Kill the Jew. Only they were not only Jews. For there were about a million in Jerusalem celebrating Sukkot, drawn from all countries around the world, dancing and enjoying the Jewish tradition of setting up a cane open room outside the house or restaurant.
But then Gaza exploded. The two million crammed in an area the size of Malta with high unemployment, big families and a world record of density and poverty couldn’t take it any more.
The anger was palpable – even taxi drivers talked openly, they all faced humiliation every time they met a Jew, be it in getting a job, crossing the many walls that crisscrossed the country, catching a plane, coming across an IDF patrol or even a person out of uniform but with a rifle slung across the back. And in the past weeks Israeli provocation had ramped up both on Temple Mount and practically everywhere.
The wonder is how come IDF was so blind and did not see the signs when, with hindsight, they were so clear. And so on the 60th anniversary plus one day Hamas revealed they knew where the weak points were and they were about to wreak revenge.
But this revenge was wreaked on defenceless mothers and their children who got caught out not inside the secure rooms. And on young people already tired by an all-night rave.
Then, inevitably, came the reaction and the bombing that has reduced Gaza to rubble, causing more deaths, again of innocent people.
And the equally inevitable controversies that Roberta Metsola called the ‘whataboutism’. It has been remarked how the Left, not just in Malta, springs to the defence of the Palestinian people.
Beyond that, it’s what lies ahead that is extremely worrying.
Whatever happens in the coming days, the flourishing Israeli economy is shot – no longer will there be the carefree and joyous atmosphere of the past days. And the Palestinian maids, taxi drivers, construction workers etc will be the first to suffer.
Ever since World War II the dream of the Jewish people had been to have a country they could be safe in. They thought they had found it in Israel. Now they are finding they are not safe at all.
They tried to make their country safe by walls, barbed wire and the lot and it didn’t work. They thought that with hi-tech et they could be superior to the Palestinians but now find that low-tech could work as well.
Many crimes have been committed and the victims cry to high heaven for justice. I ask, in case I missed it, did Robert Abela and Ian Borg condemn the massacre? Or for that matter Bernard Grech and Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici? Or the President himself gaily enjoying his trip to Australia?
In the Old Testament Samson, tricked by a prostitute with his hair cut off and blinded is taken to the temple of Gaza to be humiliated. That was when he regained his strength and brought the pillars of the temple down upon the gathered people including himself, shouting in the Italian translation “Muoia Sansone e tutti I Filistei”.
Actually, to be pedantic, the Philistines are not the forefathers of the Palestinians. But the enmity between the people of Gaza and the Israelites predates even Samson and Delilah.
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