Point / Counterpoint: A tough talkback response

Counterpoint to:

 Israel and the family of Nations
"The talk elsewhere is now of boycotts [of Israel], of arms embargos, of revoking trade agreements, withholding financial support and canceling export credit guarantees There is, as we report today, a growing body of authoritative opinion arguing that the manner in which battle is being pursued in Gaza could well merit future investigation as possible war crimes."

Editorial
The Guardian (London)
January 13, 2009

If the war in Gaza has produced a downpour of news reports, opinion pieces, op-eds, editorials, and other commentaries in the world media, the scale of comments cannot compare with the sheer inundation of talkback responses that have appeared on the international media’s websites. A seasoned journalist told me yesterday that he had never seen anything like it in his 22 years in the profession. 

Here is one talkback response from a commenter identified as 'TheVoiceOfIsrael'.He responds to a Guardian editorial that bemoans Israel having "turned its back on global opinion" and which asks:

What actions or arguments can the rest of the world take or make that will have any resonance in a country which now gives every appearance of having turned its back on global opinion?"

The editorial goes on to offer such ideas as sanctions against Israel and possibly even threats of war-crime tribunals against Israel's leaders. Here's the response:

Let me tell you, Guardian editors, how I and my fellow Israelis feel.

We are fed up, and were not going to take it anymore!

We are sick and tired of the hypocrisy, the double standards, and the holier-than-thou attitude towards us, especially from Europeans. As far as were concerned, anyone who doesn't want to buy our products, or to sell us theirs, or to visit our country, or to invite us to visit theirs, or to join our clubs, or to invite us to join theirs, can go to hell.

We'll survive without you. Where the hell were you when we needed you in Auschwitz, in Maidanek, in Theresienstadt, and in Bergen-Belsen? And if you don't like us bringing up the death camps (or as some of you call it, playing the Holocaust card) then you had better get used to it, because we will NEVER stop reminding you of what you did to us in Europe. If you think that we are sick, then you in Europe are a lot sicker. The disease of anti-Semitism, based on centuries of racism, does not get erased in a single generation.

And what else do we need in order to know that the virus still lives on, other than to read an editorial that threatens us with your sanctions for defending our lives and our own country - for making sure that there will never be another Auschwitz. For making sure that we will never be led like sheep to the slaughter again.

And you in Europe are going to bring us to war-crime tribunals, are you? You who bombed Dresden to kingdome come, with tens of thousands of civilian casualties, or who bombed Algeria where the number of civilian casualties are not known to this day, or who bombed Tokyo so that the largest city in the world had to be rebuilt from scratch. You are the ones who will lead us to a war crimes tribunal???

There are good people in this world. Not everyone is a hypocrite, and not everyone has one set of principles for others and one for himself. Go ahead with your sanctions. There will be enough good people in this world who we can visit if we are so inclined, who will buy our products and whose products we will buy, and who will stand by us when the United Nations Human Rights Commission, led by those beacons of liberty, Iran and Libya, pass another stupid resolution condemning Israel, while they stone their homosexuals, cover their women from head to foot and beat them in public, execute their people for promiscuity, and slaughter their minorities.

We have been reading your newspapers and watching your news broadcasts over the past two weeks. We have seen your biased and prejudiced reporting, and frankly we don't even want to respond to you anymore. We are sick of hearing of our disproportionate response, as if we needed to wait until one of the Hamas rockets hit a school bus full of Israeli children before we could justifiably go into Gaza to stop the barbaric fanatic Islamic Hamas from firing their rockets over the border into our towns.

So you want to feel good about yourselves, and you want to stand up for what you think is justice - you want to be brave, and so you pick on tiny Israel with a population smaller than London? Go pick on China, Russia, Pakistan, and Iran - but you won't do that because they don't give a damn what you do or say, and you know it. Well, we did give a damn.

But we don't any more.

Come back when you have learned a little humility. We might listen to you then, but not before.

TheVoiceOfIsrael