this is a draft it is incomplete but it is largely composed there are bits that i am not necessarily going to keep i have not written anything properly in like 4 years so i hopefully will return to it tomorrow; it is politically motivated i will admit this is not a politics-free bit of art it does have a subtle message to do it so if you don't like that kind of thing you shouldn't read it, you're not going to like it, it's going to be woke! it's a woke bit of writing! it's not pro-israel so if you're pro-israel i can't imagine you'll enjoy it but that may become clear pretty quickly, in any case i am posting it here
Israel is known to the world as the only democracy in the middle east, a shining bastion of multiculturalism in a starkly brown region, with progressive views on LGBT rights, a vibrant nightlife, and rigid apartheid. Ever since the harrowing events of October 7th, the civilised world has largely celebrated the noble steps it has taken to resolve the problem in the region.
But inside the Gaza Strip, where gay marriage is illegal, opinions are less agreeable on the only Jewish state in the world exercising its right as a sovereign nation to defend its citizens from attack by the Iran–backed UN designated terrorist organisation Hamas, who have governed the territory since 2006 and whom none of the Palestinians we spoke to condemned.
In fact, according to Rima Mohammed Sabri Al-Braim, a Palestinian author and human rights lawyer with over 30 years of acclaimed experience in the study of genocide, Israel are committing “genocide”. Oh really? Then how come you’re alive if you’re Palestinian, and there’s over 2 million others as well? Idiot. That’s so many and that’s way more than are dead right at this moment and that means, therefore, that it isn’t technically genocide yet, so that means it’s fine.
Rima really annoyed me so I cut our interview short and instead had a delightful conversation with Benny Goldman-Sachs, a freelance dog-walker originally from Brooklyn who moved to Tel Aviv last April.
“Yeah it’s tough, you know. Like, as a country, as a people, we were really shaken by, you know, obviously October 7th, but a bunch more as well I’m pretty sure. Like, back in the 50s or something I’m pretty sure there was an Arab killed a soldier or something so like yeah it’s been kind of a back and forth tit for tat you know. It’s pretty, you know, it’s complicated, but these people who aren’t from here, they don’t get it.”
I asked him how he personally had been affected by the harrowing events of October 7th.
“Well I mean you know I wasn’t here at the time I only moved here, I don’t know, just over a year ago now, I guess. Wow, time flies. But no so I was like, six months after it, or whatever, I moved here and like, you could still tell that, you know, something had happened. It’s like, we remember, you know. Kind of feels like the world forgot.”
Poignant, sombering words, from a man who has endured suffering the likes of which most couldn’t bear to imagine. But listen to Palestinian poet and doctor Bilal Loay Omar Alwan, and he would have you believe that the entire population of Gaza has endured far worse since the harrowing events of October 7th, and even before that, as far back as the years following the harrowing events of the Holocaust, during which over six million Jews were murdered.
“You said he moved here last April? So he wasn’t even living here when that happened?” were the last words I allowed his vile tongue to spew forth before I had him shot by the IDF. Just kidding, but you probably believed it because you hate me because I’m a Jew and you just hate Jews and that’s why you think they’re doing genocide but they aren’t, admit it.
While most Palestinians I spoke to were callous and arrogant, dismissive, haughty, well-to-do, and rather a touch stinky, the Israelis with whom I had the pleasure of conversation were considerate and humble, expressive, naughty, well-spoken, and rather a touch sexy.
To cleanse my palette after an exhausting day of interviews with Palestinian after Palestinian insisting on their “right to exist”, I sat down with linguist and lawyer Jared Seinfeld-Esptein.
“It’s interesting I think, the way the Arabs talk about the land. They chant about rivers and seas and freedom, but what do they really want? What does that really mean, “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free.” Because of course, it sounds perfectly acceptable, perfectly peaceful, that’s the trick of it! These Arabs, they’re wily. They disguise their genocidal intent with flowery prose.”
I asked him to expound on this insight.
“They say, “Palestine will be free”, but they do not say, of what it shall be free? Free of what, Palestinians? No, of course not, for that is them. Then, I suppose, free of… Jews? I’d say that’s almost certainly what that means! They want Palestine free of Jews… by killing all the Jews! They want to kill all of us, so that they can have all the land from the river to the sea, to build beachside holiday homes and luxury resorts!”
Though we know it most famously as the only democracy in the world, Israel is incontrovertibly an apartheid state with a clearly defined ethnic hierarchy. This is seen by some as oxymoronic, for how can a state be held as the foremost example of a democratic society, while simultaneously implementing apartheid. Former IDF sniper Wally Wolowitz explained it to me.
“What we have here is an issue of perspective. To the outside world it looks like apartheid. It’s a scary word, a scary concept. Not what we want to have, obviously. But you need to understand, it’s not so simple as to say, well, we’re all just people, why can’t everyone use the same streets and vote and what have you. When you talk about Arabs, it’s not like dealing with a Jew or a Christian, their religion tells them to kill infidels. So what is an infidel? Anyone not an Arab. Now you see? You need to have systems in place to prevent this kind of thing from happening.”
Wally was in active service at the time of the harrowing events of October 7th.
“It was crazy, I’ve never seen anything like it. I was shooting Arabs left right and centre. We lined this whole family up against the walls of their house and we shot them one by one, youngest to oldest, made them all watch, it was profound. Oh, 2023? Oh sorry, my apologies. That was the darkest day of my life. I saw things that day that no man should see. My best friend was kidnapped from a tank. Nothing could ever justify such cruelty.”
Israel, home and birthplace of the world’s only recorded democracy in history, has been routinely blamed by western media outlets for numerous explosive detonations in the Gaza Strip. Despite appearing to be impartial, in reporting of “bombs falling near Palestinians” the implication is clear that Israel is the likely culprit, while in fact according to the IDF Independent Reviews Commission spokesperson Caleb Calloway, Israel is only responsible for 80-90% of the incidents it is accused of instigating.
“It’s startling really, if you have the ability to read between the lines, the anti-semitic anti-Israel anti-Jew bias abundant in the western media. It’s abhorrent. I mean, just look at this for example, ‘Dozens dead, hundreds injured as deluge of bombing continues’, from the so-called impartial BBC. They weaponise the passive language, they don’t assert ‘IDF bombs refugee shelters’, they leave it, insidiously, up to the reader to infer that this must be the case, as materially how else could that have happened. How else indeed.”
He showed me a map detailing various explosives incidents in the Gaza Strip since the harrowing events of October 7th.
“You can see here the incidents in red are unsolved, the ones in blue we did them and the ones in green was Hamas. Obviously we did more than them, especially since we stopped the aid trucks because they were being used to smuggle weapons. But you see this pair of incidents in the start of November, where it was Hamas? The media used their ‘impartial language’ in reports, and so everyone saying we did that! We didn’t do those! But because we did the other thirty here twenty there everyone assumes we did those two as well. It’s unbelievable what we endure here.”
While I have remained impartial up to now, I must admit that recounting Caleb’s testimony moved me, and I feel I would be doing a disservice to my ancestral land if I do not use my journalistic privilege to be a voice for hope. The harrowing events of October 7th were an unforgivable atrocity inflicted upon a historically persecuted people, who were banished from their homeland and suffered a thousand years of persecution, culminating in the harrowing events of the Holocaust, in which over six million Jews were murdered.
Not since the harrowing events of the Holocaust, have events so harrowing befallen the Jewish people. I thought, as we all did, our harrowing was behind us. Alas. I ask you. Why you being so mean about this. Please vote for us in Eurovision.