Paris Demetriades
Where to begin when speaking of Gaza, a place descending deeper into darkness every day? Where to even start with just this past week alone?
Perhaps with the fact that ordinary citizens, along with public officials both here and abroad, continue, through a stunning mix of blindness and ideological rigidity, to label even the faintest expression of solidarity with the thousands of children and civilians being starved and slaughtered under relentless bombardment of tents, hospitals, and schools, as antisemitism.
Or maybe with the fact that our own government, alongside Greece, joined the shameful minority of European nations that, in a moment of profound crisis, proved scandalously unequal to the occasion. Once again, we showed that international law, supposedly our moral compass, is nothing more than a scrap of paper we wave when it serves our narrow interests. What possible justification was there? What national interest was so existentially vital that it outweighed even the bare minimum of humanitarian aid for a devastated civilian population, as pleaded not by Hamas propaganda, but by the United Nations itself?
Or should we talk about another grotesque reality, the way the undeniably tragic killing of two Israelis in Washington topped TV news and dominated newsroom attention, while the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza were pushed to the margins? The murder of two Israelis was the lead story. The murder, because that is what it is, of hundreds of Palestinians was reduced to a passing mention.
At the heart of it all is this: the idea that an Israeli life counts a hundred times more than a Palestinian one. That is the very core of the problem. Just consider how much coverage, how many analyses and deeply emotional profiles we've seen on the roughly 200 hostages taken by Hamas. And now consider how casually, how dehumanizingly, the thousands of Palestinians being killed every day are treated. Killed mercilessly. Without end.
It is now painfully, undeniably clear: the Holocaust’s “Never Again” does not apply to all peoples. It applies only to some. The brutal climax of the crisis in decimated Gaza makes that truth impossible to ignore.
This opinion was translated from its Greek original.
