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Rabbi Avraham Zarviv, a D9 driver in the reserves, said in an interview: "I destroy 50 buildings a week with my D9... it’s as if I’m playing music on it."
Rabbi Zarviv is "playing" the death march with his D9. He is the angel of death in Gaza, serving the State of Israel. I feel nauseated by the often-repeated statement: "We, the people of Israel, sanctify life while they sanctify death." This is said while the people of Gaza are disregarded as human beings. Tens of thousands of children, women, and the elderly have been killed by us. And yet, we continue to claim: "Human life is valuable to us, and not to them. That’s the difference between us and them."
I’ve heard this horrifying cliché countless times in the past day. Jewish supremacy has been injected into our veins since the day we were born. The sheer number of people buried beneath the rubble of buildings bombed from the air and ground is shocking. It shows the devaluation of human life, particularly non-Jewish life, in the eyes of Israeli society. A blind society congratulates itself collectively, claiming to "value human life" (as they dub themselves, "the most moral army in the world").
The words of the prophet Isaiah fit well here, though in a different context: "Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil."
Have you heard anyone in mainstream Israeli media speak about the value of human life in Gaza as an important principle? If not for Trump, a Jewish settlement would be built in Gaza today, not by hilltop youth, but by the Israeli government, encouraged by its ministers.
This isn’t a small, blind minority unable to see the truth. It’s a large public deliberately turning a blind eye to the deaths of newborn infants in Gaza. These infants, in the eyes of Israel's military and political establishment, are "uninvolved," and their deaths are deemed "collateral damage." The process of their extermination is carried out as part of the "work" and schedule of the IDF, cleaning the area of people (a term used casually while referring to human lives).
This, too, is a psychological wound we’ll face in the future. Will mental health professionals step up to treat this illness?
Written by: Rafi Davidzon