There have been two letters printed in the River Reporter that have accused me of ignorance and dishonesty, and yet neither letter produces any specific allegation of a factual misstatement that I’ve made. 

Further, in Rabbi Zierler’s remarks, he asserts easily and repeatedly debunked lies about what happened on October 7, 2023. There were no butchered babies(1) and no victims or forensic evidence has been produced to substantiate the charge of systemic rape by Hamas(2, 3). Yet these and other lies are endlessly promoted in our discredited national media.

This would be an argument about points of fact, but it raises a larger question as to what the purpose of these lies is in exaggerating what happened on October 7. War is messy and tragic, so terrible things undoubtedly happened on that day. So why embellish what did happen with these particular fabrications?

The image created in the mind of a casual listener or reader, of a child come to harm, or a woman violated, paints a picture of a group of people who would do such things as super-evil. With this dehumanization, by designating a certain group, in this case Palestinians/terrorists/Hamas, as super-evil, it gives permission to view whatever happens to these people, no matter how severe, as them getting what they deserve. This is precisely the loop of dehumanization leading to a license to commit atrocities, that Israeli and Zionist society are currently trapped in, to the peril of us all.

Since we know now that these are lies—no beheaded babies, no systemic rape—perhaps it’s time to consider that Palestinians are actually not super-evil. Indeed they are people like the rest of us who have lives and feelings and loved ones, which deserve our respect, as we all would expect for ourselves.

It is also outrageous to throw up the dubious number of 1,200 innocent Israelis killed, as outweighing in importance, the tens of thousands of dead, and the oceans of cruelty and suffering that Israel has visited on the people of Gaza in response. The official number of Israelis killed that day per the Israeli government is 1,139(4). Of these, 373 were Israeli soldiers. We also know now that the Hannibal directive, the IDF order to prioritize stopping hostages from being taken even at the cost of their lives, was given on that day(5), meaning Israelis were killing their own people. 

Knowing that Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships were engaged in free-fire activity all day, with little distinction as to whom they were killing, all of the images we saw soon after, of bombed and burned-out cars and houses, far beyond the firepower of the self-equipped resistance forces, can credibly be attributed to friendly fire by the IDF.

So a number of people were killed that day, a large number of them innocent civilians, but we don’t know who is responsible for their deaths. Balance these uncertain figures with over 40,000 killed by Israel in Gaza, by official count, and upward of 186,000 dead, projected by a British Lancet study(6).

However one feels about Hamas, nothing they have done justifies 10 months of continuous terrorist bombardment on a civilian population, keeping them perpetually uprooted, withholding food and water to the point of famine, the destruction of water and sewage facilities, the destruction of the health care system, the attacks on hospitals and massacres that ensued, the hostage-taking of doctors and health care workers, the torture camps, the destruction of all the universities, the destruction of schools, the bombing of ambulances, the ripping up of streets, the destruction of farmland, the desecration of graves, the destruction of ancient churches and mosques, the killing of journalists, the killing of aid workers, the killing of tens of thousands of children, the killing of tens of thousands of women, the massacres of people waiting for food, the massacres of kids playing soccer, the withholding of anesthesia in aid shipments, the bombing of people in tents, the summary executions, the mass detentions, the rapes.

If Israel and its supporters are unhappy with the term “genocide,” then they should quickly bring these killings and atrocities to an end.

I am also accused of being hateful, when I’m quite sure the only ideological position I’ve articulated is that all people are equal and that all people should have equal rights and equal access to justice. How can this position be called hateful? What does it say when there are powerful voices within our society who disparage the most fundamental principles of our nation?

Footnotes

(1) www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/22/biden-yet-again-says-hamas-beheaded-babies-has-new-evidence-emerged/

(2) electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/watch-ny-times-investigation-mass-rape-hamas-falls-apart

(3) m.youtube.com/watch?v=TApiok-KiRc

(4) www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231215-israel-social-security-data-reveals-true-picture-of-oct-7-deaths

(5) www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-07-07/ty-article-magazine/.premium/idf-ordered-hannibal-directive-on-october-7-to-prevent-hamas-taking-soldiers-captive/00000190-89a2-d776-a3b1-fdbe45520000

(6) archive.ph/RDqEx

Doug Rogers is a musician, composer and carpenter who lives in Long Eddy, NY.