By H.E. Ambassador Oren Anolik, Israeli Ambassador to Cyprus
Last week, Kathimerini published an article titled “Mass Murder Is a Pogrom; Booing Tourists Is Not.” While the article invokes a moral dimension, what it really exposes is the bias permeating the text. The author invents “facts,” isolates them from their context, ignores essential realities, and constructs a distorted picture designed to fit preconceived notions, presenting it as “moral clarity.”
There is not enough space here to address all the inaccuracies in the article, but here are a few examples.
The false claim that “five out of six Palestinians killed are civilians” is presented as fact. In reality, these numbers come directly from Hamas - the same terrorist organization that slaughtered, raped, and abducted Israelis on October 7, 2023. These figures are often reproduced by international media without verification from independent sources.
A more accurate estimate is that roughly half of those killed in Gaza are civilians - a tragic 1:1 ratio of terrorists to civilians. In fact, this represents a smaller proportion of civilian casualties compared to most similar military operations. These civilians were not deliberate targets, nor were they massacred or exterminated en masse. Tragically, they were caught in the middle of a war that Hamas itself initiated and continues to perpetuate. Their deaths are deeply regrettable, but they do not imply criminal intent.
Hamas has every reason to inflate the numbers because its entire strategy relies on hiding fighters, weapons, and command centers in hospitals, schools, and residential areas, turning civilians into human shields. The Israeli military faces a challenge that no other military force in the world has encountered on this scale. Israel, unlike Hamas, investigates its actions, acknowledges mistakes, and seeks to correct them.
The article distorts the meaning of the word “pogrom.” The term refers to the deliberate extermination of defenseless civilians because of their identity. That is exactly what Hamas committed on October 7 against Jews in Israel. Presenting Israel’s military operations against an armed terrorist organization as a “pogrom” flagrantly distorts reality and trivializes Jewish history and the memory of actual pogrom victims.
The author of the article justifies his “one-sided view” of Israel with a fabricated “tragic irony”: that a people who were victims of Nazi atrocities are now “the greatest perpetrators” of such atrocities. This is a cynical falsehood. People in Gaza are not targeted because they are Palestinian; Hamas fighters are targeted because they are terrorists. The methodology behind this argument is almost comical: invent a crime that did not occur and use it as a moral alibi to accuse Israel. In reality, the author constructs an arbitrary foundation to justify his obsession with Israel.
Democracies are inherently accountable. Yet the author is so consumed by hostility that he even questions whether Israel is a democracy. Were he to open his eyes, he would see that Israel’s democracy does not vanish in wartime. Israelis flood the streets every week: some protesting the government, others demanding harsher military measures, and still others calling for an immediate deal to free hostages. The debates are intense and public. This is democracy, even in wartime: confrontation, accountability, and freedom of speech.
One word is completely absent from the article: the word “Hamas.” This is no surprise, because in the imaginary world the author presents, Hamas does not exist. Remove Hamas from the picture, and all that remains is innocent Gazans dying for no reason and Israeli “monsters” killing them simply because they are Palestinian.
The human suffering in Gaza is real, and Israel does not deny it. But responsibility lies primarily with Hamas, which is absent from the “virtual reality” created by last week’s article. Hamas is the terrorist organization that started this war and brought destruction to the people of Gaza by choosing to implement its deadly jihadist ideology on October 7, 2023. Hamas is prolonging the war by refusing to lay down arms, release hostages, and stop using its own people as human shields.
Blaming Israel exclusively is not “moral clarity”; it is moral blindness. Demanding that Israel cease defending itself is equivalent to asking it to abandon the most fundamental duty of any democracy: protecting its citizens.
