[ I just don’t think it will bring us any closer to a better
position, Yonatan Zeigen, whose mother, Vivian Silver, is a hostage,
said. Vengeance is not something to build foundations on. It is not a
strategy. How many dead Palestinians will be enough?]
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EVEN IN THEIR ANGUISH, THESE ISRAELI SURVIVORS SAY INVADING GAZA
WON’T HELP  
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Nicholas Kristof
October 25, 2023
New York Times
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_ I just don’t think it will bring us any closer to a better
position, Yonatan Zeigen, whose mother, Vivian Silver, is a hostage,
said. Vengeance is not something to build foundations on. It is not a
strategy. How many dead Palestinians will be enough? _

William Keo for The New York Times,

 

No one understands terrorism more viscerally than Maoz Inon
[[link removed]]: His
78-year-old father and 75-year-old mother were among those massacred
by Hamas this month in southern Israel.

He mourns his parents, and he despairs for old friends who have been
kidnapped by Hamas. Yet he also fears that the unbearable losses his
family endured are now being used to justify an impending ground
invasion in Gaza.

“I don’t stop crying,” he told me in the hostel
[[link removed]] he runs here in Tel Aviv.
“I’m crying for my parents. I’m crying for my friends. I’m
crying for those who are kidnapped. I’m crying for the victims on
the Palestinian side. And I’m crying for all the victims that are
going to suffer.”

“We don’t sleep at night, we don’t eat, we are under emotional
trauma,” he said. “We are just broken. But from these traumatized
days, we must learn the lessons from history.” And foremost among
them, he said, is the need to break the pattern of escalating violence
that feeds hatred, creates orphans and self-replicates indefinitely.
 

Maoz Inon.  (Photo credit: William Keo for The New York Times)
Inon is an outlier, but he’s not alone, and I’ve been speaking
with several of those here in Israel who lost loved ones to the terror
attacks yet argue that the next step should not be further destruction
heaped on Gaza, even in the name of destroying Hamas.

These are Israelis in anguish at their own losses and also fearful
that their suffering is being used to justify bombardments and a
ground invasion of Gaza, killing innocents there and perpetuating
bloodshed. I can’t emphasize enough that this attitude is the
exception, but perhaps that’s why I find it so majestic.

I’ve been following the Middle East conflict for most of my life,
and I can’t remember a time of such despair, trauma and mutual
mistrust. It’s heartbreaking to see the collapse of all hope, and
this month may be the nadir: the worst massacre of Jews since the
Holocaust and a devastating air assault and siege of Gaza that has
claimed even more lives there.

In this grim context, people like Inon remind me of the human capacity
for empathy and wisdom — two qualities desperately needed across the
region. I told him he was out of step with the public mood, for most
people have drawn a different lesson from history: that it is
important to wipe out enemies who want to kill you.

“We have been doing exactly that,” he said, referring to reliance
on military solutions, yet noted that that approach failed to keep his
parents alive. “What I’m saying is we have to stop doing what we
were doing before. We need a new policy.”

“Someone needs to be brave enough to stop the cycle of blood,
dislike and violence that has been going on for a century,” he said.

This may require Gandhian levels of inner fortitude.

 

David Zonsheine.  (Photo credit:  William Keo for The New York
Times)
“I’m full of rage,” said David Zonsheine, whose uncle was
murdered in the Hamas attacks. “But rage is one thing, and policy
and plan are another.”

Zonsheine’s fear is that blind fury will propel Israel into a ground
invasion of Gaza without any plan for what comes next. Even if it were
possible to remove Hamas, he said, something worse may follow — just
as Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 helped spawn its great enemy
to the north, Hezbollah.

A cousin of Zonsheine, a nurse, went missing in the attacks and
presumably was kidnapped and taken into Gaza. Zonsheine worries that
an invasion would lead to the deaths of hostages like her, and also of
countless innocent Palestinians.

“Civilians there are being killed in massive numbers,” he said.
“And they are not being killed by Hamas. They are being killed by
us.”

That’s a triumph of compassion, at a time of personal and national
trauma, that Zonsheine knows will leave him accused of naïveté or
worse. But those favoring a more surgical response insist that they
are the ones who are being tough-minded, for decades of occupation and
military strikes have culminated not in peace but in the worst
massacre of Jews in Israeli history.
 

Yonatan Zeigen, whose mother, Vivian Silver, is believed to be a
hostage in Gaza.  (Photo credit: William Keo for The New York Times)
Yonatan Zeigen, whose mother, Vivian Silver, is believed to be a
hostage in Gaza, makes the same point. “Mother always said we have
to shift the paradigm,” he said. “We won’t have safety in a
state of war. It can’t be done.”

Silver, 74, is a peace activist who spent decades volunteering to help
people from Gaza. Zeigen and his brother, Chen Zeigen, told me they
talk constantly about what their mother must be thinking now. Chen is
not entirely sure, for their mother’s beloved kibbutz was destroyed,
her family home burned to the ground and her friends murdered. But
Yonatan believes she would be appalled by the relentless bombing of
Gaza and preparations for a prolonged ground invasion: “She would
have been, I think, mortified by the destruction in Gaza, and
collective punishment and vengeance.”

That’s where Yonatan comes down as well. He is shaken by the
savagery of the Hamas attacks, and understands why so many are
determined to invade and bomb Gaza to try to destroy the terrorists
forever, even at the price of many civilian casualties.

 

Vivian Silver lived at Kibbutz Be’eri, which was attacked by Hamas.
 (Photo credit: William Keo for The New York Times)
“I just don’t think it will bring us any closer to a better
position,” he said. “Vengeance is not something to build
foundations on. It is not a strategy. How many dead Palestinians will
be enough for us to feel safe? I don’t think there’s any number.
And it’s just the wrong thing to do.”

If even people like him, personally shattered by a barbaric terror
attack, can muster the clarity to understand that relentless
bombardment and a ground invasion may not help, perhaps there’s hope
for the rest of us. May we learn from their wisdom and humanity.

_[NICHOLAS KRISTOF joined The New York Times in 1984 and has been a
columnist since 2001. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes, for his coverage
of China and of the genocide in Darfur. You can follow him
on Instagram [[link removed]], Facebook
[[link removed]] and Threads
[[link removed]]. His forthcoming memoir
[[link removed]] is
“Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life.”
@NickKristof [[link removed]]]_

* Hostages
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* Hamas
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* Israeli survivors
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* Israel
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* Palestine
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* Gaza
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* Palestinians
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* Terrorism
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* Israel-Gaza War
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* Cease Fire
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* Ceasefire
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* Palestinian prisoners
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* war crimes
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* Israel bombing
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* Genocide
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* apartheid
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* ethnic cleansing
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* Benjamin Netanyahu
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