May 2021 – THE KIBBITZER

Gaza and Warsaw: The Iron Fist in Action

On a visit Tuesday to the mixed Arab-Jewish town of Acre, where Palestinian rioters had torched Jewish property the previous day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the incidents reminded him of “sights from our people’s past, and we cannot accept that.”

I understand him. When I see TV clips of Gaza going up in flames from Israeli bombardment – foreign news clips, to be clear; Israeli TV is entirely focused on Jewish suffering – I am also reminded of sights from the Jewish past.

I see the burning buildings and wailing children of the Warsaw Ghetto during the Jewish revolt of April-May 1943 – the savage, sadistic German response to a futile rebellion by desperate people who had no future and were prepared to sacrifice their lives to preserve whatever scraps remained of their own dignity.

Israel’s Political Pyromaniac Strikes Again

With Gaza under sustained attack and Hamas rockets targeting wide swathes of southern and central Israel, it is perhaps too early to draw conclusions about what precisely caused the latest round of blood-letting in the Middle East. That said, there are three factors that are already clear at this stage.

The first is that Bibi Netanyahu never intended to leave office quietly. In the days before yesterday’s descent into open warfare, his opponents appeared set to announce a new government – one with the single, overriding objective of getting rid of the prime minister. Netanyahu, who faces doing prison time without the shield of office, was never going to let that happen.