Help Israel to keep the soul

In his speech I was at the top of the mountain, Martin Luther King called the struggle for civil rights in the US the « second hell of the twentieth century. » If so, it is not very difficult to classify events in Gaza as the ‘first major hell of the 21st century’. The news that comes from that enclave represents an attack on the decency and idea of ​​Western civilization.
Following the shameful attacks of Hamas, of October 7, 2023, the Israeli state began a great offensive, which aimed to destroy that terrorist movement.
The attack represented a colossal security failure by the Israeli state apparatus, particularly serious because it took place when the country’s head of government was, and is a man whose main political capital stems from his ability to ensure security to the people and their territory.
The success of the offensive of the Armed Forces of Israel would condition, as the political future of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for the failure of security, on the one hand, and the judicial problems he faces, on the other. If, while the US Allies were chaired by Joe Biden, they were careful, especially by these, to ensure that the minimum subsistence was given to the Palestinians, the election of Donald Trump seems to have released the ties and limits to that war.
The apparent moral failure of the Israelite State cannot correspond equally collapse throughout the West. Those who claim to be heir to the Enlightenment, and defender of the dignity of the human person as a central pillar of our civilization, cannot fail to collide with the atrocities that power in Israel is committing in Palestine.
We know that international organizations have been a foolish ingenuity, somewhat collaborative, over the last few years. We also know that Hamas is an abject terrorist group. We also know that October 7, 2023 was a horrible act, but this cannot give it to everything. October 7 does not justify a systematic policy to kill Palestinians, or to widen the territory, taking advantage of the ally’s benefits and the weaknesses of neighbors. Today’s military victories will be no more than the seeds of the future wars.
Hamas is what it is, but whether the Israelites or ourselves, we are not ‘that’ and we do not want to be transformed ‘in that’. In the purpose of overcoming the devil, we cannot allow us to turn into another demon. This is what is currently at stake.
The way this war has been led by the Nethanyahu government is, by itself, a statement of a certain losing the soul of Israel, in the sense that represents a betrayal of a state that was born from the collective shame of the world allowed the holocaust. If, in World War II, being silent before the Nazi horror (knowing what was going on) meant tolerate the Holocaust, accepting, in 2025, that Gaza is hell, it represents collaborating with what its regime is transforming.
I fear, because I admire and respect Israel, that this conflict is leaving the seeds of tomorrow’s hatred and grudges. Until a few years ago, Israel was a country that was born under attack of its neighbors, but that, most of the time, had resisted to behave like those, respecting their values ​​and their moral superiority.
From now on, what prevents the world from seeing Israel as equal to those who attack them? ‘What does it enjoy man to win the whole world, if you lose your soul?’