History will be the judge
The Israeli government may get away with it, but its members will be remembered as the protagonists of the ugliest chapter in our history. Even if those responsible for the situation we find ourselves in, would not pay a price in real time, they will forever be accompanied by a great mark of Cain.
By Netta Ahituv • Translated by Sol Salbe
In among the flow of events, news and updates that threaten to drown us, and alongside the protests that seek to save us, here and there some images are engraved. They manage to float above the others because they say something general about the spirit of the times, yet specific enough to cleave the soul and burst up the tear ducts. In the past 24 hours, those images happen to be two photos, one from each side of the fence, depicting the tragedy but also the human kinship.
First photo: Former abductee Yarden Bibas with his sad eyes — and how sad they are — stands at a demonstration last night holding two and holds two pictures of abductees. We saw so many images of people standing in demonstrations holding pictures of abductees, and many times it was Yardan’s two sweet children, full of life. Last night, Bibas held pictures of his good friends, David and Ariel Cuneo. Every sane person, with one gram of compassion in their body, who looks at this picture, internalises its full meaning and just wants to give this dear man one gift of kindness.
This is really the only thing that can be done for a man who has lost the love of his life, his two children, and has been held captive for over a year in a real-life hell, not to mention the emotional one he is still in. All he asks now is to get back two of his friends that can still be saved. Where can Itamar Ben-Gvir gather so much cynicism to say that he is returning to the government because renewing the fighting is the “most moral” thing to do. How can we look at Yarden’s silent plea and say that anything other than the return of his friends is a moral act?
Second photo: A baby boy or girl (you can’t tell because the body is so small and their face was mutilated by the bomb that killed them). They are at most a few weeks old, lying on the body of an older person, probably the parent who was holding them at the time. You can’t see if it’s the mother or the father, because only their blue legs are visible under the blanket that covers them. The baby was killed in the nighttime bombings carried out by the IDF in Gaza — they paid in their short life the price of the integrity of the coalition of people they didn’t know, who did not know the baby and who have never acknowledged their suffering. Unfortunately, we also saw a lot of pictures of dead babies in the last war (that is, those who chose to see them, because most of the media did not show them), but what catches the attention in the photo are the clothes on the baby’s tiny body: a cute suit with a rainbow print. This cute piece of clothing came to the baby from Israel — it was part of a delivery of aid that kind-hearted Israelis delivered to penniless Gazans during the ceasefire. Activists from the Standing Together movement saw the picture of the body and identified the garment, which was bought in Israel only two months ago and transported to Gaza. As far as is known, more than 100 other children died alongside that baby. Is their death a worthy price for Itamar Ben-Gvir’s return to the coalition?
This government may complete its full term; it may even succeed in escaping democratic elections that would blow it away. It is possible that we will become an autocracy, and it is reasonable to assume that none of the culprits in the great failure and all the failures that preceded it will ever be prosecuted or punished in the legal sense. But for their moral sins — there is no forgiveness, no atonement, and no erasure. They will forever bear the marks of Cain, heavy and full of guilt as weights on their accursed souls. No street will be named after them in Israel, no one will praise their work, they will never have a dignified commemoration, not even the prime minister himself. They will leave public life without pomp and without splendour, and will always be remembered as the ugliest and most terrible chapter in our history — the one we’d write, not them. They will turn into one murky pastiche that will listed under the heading “abyss” and will remain forever be undesirable people in our heritage.
