We are living in a world where some of the most maligning, libelous, litigious and morally catastrophic charges have been leveled against the one Jewish, state of Israel: Hamas, B’Tselem, Code Pink, Jewish Voice for Peace, Democratic Socials of America, Rabbis for Human Rights, Students for Justice in Palestine, T’ruah, World Workers Party, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Fatah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) are just some of the myriad organizations that have taken the dastardly events of Oct. 7, 2023, and exploited them for their own gain.
Just to recap: A little before 6:30 a.m. on Simchat Torah 2023, a Shabbat morning, thousands of Hamas terrorists and Palestinian Arabs living in the Gaza Strip breached the border separating the State of Israel from the coastal enclave. Approximately 3,800 terrorists of the Nakba force smashed through the border fence, entering kibbutzim, burning children in front of their parents, burning parents in front of their children, raping women and men at the Nova festival, and then murdering and mutilating them.
They celebrated as some of the maimed bodies were brought back into Gaza.
In all, some 1,200 people in southern Israel were left dead. And about 350 soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces and roughly 65 law-enforcement officers were also murdered on the deadliest day in Israel’s history.
Much of this was recorded on GoPro cameras by the terrorists themselves for posterity. Later, many tried to deny their own footage and instead cast blame on Israel for the same crimes they themselves were filmed doing.
A story emerged on Sept. 20 that a Palestinian photojournalist, Motaz Azaiza, was filming the depravity against Israelis but didn’t want to share his videos because he didn’t want to “ruin the lives of the (Gazan) people who were filmed.”
Children were assaulted. Entire families were beaten and burned alive. Whose interests did this serve?
Evidence of that horrific day needed to be preserved and gathered. Families of the deceased and the injured need answers. The withholding of photographic documentation amounts to a massive betrayal of the victims and their rights.
From the scars of these events, two Israeli filmmakers, Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham, created a wholly biased documentary. They worked with a few military men and intelligence officers whose voices were disguised and faces distorted—meaning, anonymous sources.
What does this mean? That these people who wanted to come forward did not have sufficient courage to reveal their faces and their voices, let alone their names?
They titled the film is “NAZA,” taken from an Israeli military acronym for nezek agavi, meaning “collateral damage.” The term bears a disturbing similarity to the word “Nazi.” It conjures up repulsive images that have been seared onto the collective consciousness of the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
Why were the events of Oct. 7 omitted? Why was there no mention of Hamas and PIJ?
Compare the urban conflict Israel was forced into in Gaza to American battles in Tokyo, Nagasaki, Hiroshima and My Lai during World War II.
On Aug. 6, 1945, the US army dropped atomic weapons on Hiroshima that murdered roughly 90,000 to 166,000 people. Hundreds of thousands were left injured. The atomic radiation left at least 160,000 people with the lifetime tail of solid cancers and leukemia.
The bombs over Nagasaki killed at least 80,000 people by 1945 out of a total population of 250,000. Tens of thousands suffered from burns, lifetime injuries and blindness from the immediate flash.
The March 9-10, 1945 firebombing of Tokyo (“Operation Meetinghouse”) is generally considered the single deadliest bombing raid of World War II. Estimates of deaths from that one night typically range from about 80,000 to over 100,000 people, with roughly a million more left homeless—the city’s densely packed wooden construction meant the incendiary bombs created a firestorm that consumed large areas of the city.
And then there was the My Lai Massacre. On March 16, 1968, over the course of several hours, the U.S. 11th Infantry Brigade tortured and murdered between 347 and 504 defenseless Vietnamese civilians, mostly women and children. The American military initially hid the operation from the public and deemed it “a successful operation against enemy forces.”
It wasn’t until late 1969 that this cover-up was exposed.
We know that the Israeli army warns civilians in Gaza to leave an area where it has heard Hamas is hiding. We have known since the very beginning of the war that hospitals, schools, mosques and tunnels are used for launching rockets and missiles. We know that terrorists hide behind women and children. We also know that anyone in Gaza who risks telling the truth about Hamas ends up tortured or dead.
The IDF takes great pains to avoid collateral damage. It is widely considered among the best-trained and most experienced military forces in an urban combat zone.
John Spencer of West Point Military Academy has studied urban warfare and been to Gaza multiple times on research trips. He believes that the IDF is doing anything more than anyone in the history of warfare. He has written, “I am a war scholar. There is no genocide in Gaza.”
After the Oct. 7 attacks, British author and historian Douglas Murray has been to Gaza multiple times and said: “No Israeli—right, left or center—believes they can live beside Hamas. Hamas has been given the state of Gaza in 2006, and they have produced a generation of people who believe Jews are enemies and should be killed. The children have all been indoctrinated to believe this.”
Any non-combatant killed in war constitutes a tragedy. However, this was a war Hamas chose three years ago, supported by Iran and thrust upon the Israeli people.
Sometimes, there is no other choice than to fight back. The fact that Israel is the stronger party has been turned into propaganda for the other side, just as Hamas wanted.
