Secuestrados hace un año

Mis padres estuvieron escondidos en un altillo minúsculo en la Polonia ocupada por los nazis, aislados del mundo durante dos años, viviendo vaya uno a saber qué situaciones cotidianas, presos del terror y la incertidumbre. Lo único seguro era que si los descubrían serían asesinados. 

Los secuestrados hace un año en Gaza saben que pueden ser asesinados en cualquier momento. También están aislados. También presos del terror y la incertidumbre. ¿Qué pasará afuera? ¿Alguien estará haciendo algo por ellos? Mis padres no sabían nada del mundo exterior tampoco. 

Cuando emergieron del horror, como tantos sobrevivientes, se preguntaron donde estaba el mundo mientras ellos languidecían en ese infierno. ¿Se lo preguntarán también los 101 secuestrados que siguen encerrados en Gaza? 

¿Cuántos estarán vivos? ¿Hubo embarazos en las chicas violadas? Si así fue, ¿qué pasó con esos bebés, cómo incorporarlos a la línea filiatoria? 
Recuerdo lo que me contaban mis padres y no dejo de pensar en las atrocidades que puedan estar pasando. ¿Tienen comida suficiente? ¿Están en un espacio en el que puedan ponerse de pie, estirarse, caminar o están sujetos e inmovilizados? Tanto tiempo encerrados ¿y la ropa? ¿siguen con lo que tenían puesto hace un año? 

¿Están en un sitio habitado o en uno aislado? ¿a cargo de quién? ¿cómo los tratan? ¿Cómo se entretienen? ¿cómo pasan el día, la noche, cada hora, cada minuto, cada segundo? ¿Tienen luz o están a oscuras? ¿Y el baño, cómo atienden sus necesidades? ¿Se alivian allí mismo delante de todos? 

Viviendo una vida habitual que dejó de ser normal, me asalta un cierto enojo conmigo misma cuando me preocupo por pequeñeces. Es desgarrador y me sume en la impotencia estar tan lejos y no poder hacer nada. 

A mi alrededor el mundo sigue andando y la huérfana oscuridad en la que están se fue invisibilizando y son otras las cosas que ocupan los titulares de los diarios, el interés de la gente, la preocupación de los gobiernos. 

Lo que está pasando no es igual que la Shoá pero la intención genocida es la misma. Hay muchas diferencias. Los nazis no guardaban secuestrados como prenda de negociación o escudo de protección, los asesinaban rápidamente; ocultaron su política exterminacionista mientras que en la actualidad es explícita y es fuente de vanagloria y orgullo. 

Ayer no había quien nos defendiera, hoy tenemos un estado que nos respalda y que ha liberado a varios secuestrados y los medios de comunicación nos permiten saber casi instantáneamente mucho más de lo que era posible saber entonces. 

Pero la gran diferencia, la corrosiva, la abyecta, es que después de la Shoá la condición de víctima del pueblo judío frenó la judeofobia histórica y el mundo se condolió con nosotros mientras que hoy, el judío que no se deja matar pasó de ser víctima a ser visto como perpetrador. 

El judío que se defiende y lucha para seguir vivo no despierta simpatías. Se quiere solo al judío muerto. 

Hay guerras que se deben encarar cuando el enemigo amenaza con el exterminio. La guerra contra el nazismo estuvo tan justificada como la que hoy emprende Israel. Atacada por  varios frentes simultáneamente, defiende su propio territorio y, si logra terminar con el islamo-nazismo, defiende los valores que hacen posible la continuidad de la vida y la convivencia del mundo entero. 

Los 101 secuestrados aún prisioneros en Gaza desde hace un año están tan lejos del mundo como estaban mis padres. Los sobrevivientes de la Shoá se preguntaban dónde estaba el mundo, dónde la gente que se condolía con ellos, dónde los gobiernos, dónde los defensores de la justicia y del bien. 

Hoy estamos nosotros, judíos y no judíos, concientes y republicanos, democráticos y humanistas, y en este aniversario marcharemos en todas las latitudes y  clamaremos por su liberación.

Iom Kipur en Mishkan, 12/10/24

More than antisemitism

Although other issues are occupying media interest, the tragedy between Israel and the Palestinian people continues, with hostages still held captive. Anti-Zionism has become a banner of struggle, and several military events are reported with headlines accusing Israel, even though the texts later refute them. Why is Israel held to standards that other countries are not? Why does the Jewish homeland receive so much media attention, while dozens of injustices and arbitrariness elsewhere go unmentioned? Is it only antisemitism?

While antisemitism is undoubtedly a fertile emotional ingredient, it is not sufficient to explain the wave of anti-Israel sentiment that is overwhelming politicians, students, media, and human rights defenders in an explosion of hatred that is spreading instead of diminishing. Many do not see themselves as antisemites, even though they wield traditional Judeophobic accusations of power, supremacy, and malevolence.

As the academic year ended in the northern hemisphere, the protests subsided; students from the expensive North American universities, along with their professors and administrators, went on summer break, taking their tents to the beaches, forests, or mountains. However, the seeds they planted have spread everywhere and have become a cause of struggle worldwide.

Any pro-Israel declaration is viewed with suspicion, and those who make such statements are canceled. The responses of the three infamous deans reflect this clearly; they would firmly repudiate attacks on African Americans or members of various sexualities, yet they remained unmoved by the student clamor for Israel's extermination. The anti-Zionist witch hunt has left many victims, so much so that the number of those dismissed exceeds those who lost their jobs during McCarthyism.

How can we understand people who, with the best intentions, raise the Palestinian flag in a cry for justice? Perhaps, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the communism-capitalism opposition, we have been left without causes to fight for. Ecology, gender and sexual diversity, feminism, and human rights provide powerful arguments for those who have lost their sense of purpose. And there's more.

The perpetrator/victim axis, born from post-colonial theories, identifies as victims those populations previously subjugated by Europeans and Americans, the "non-whites" who need to be defended and rescued. Feminism denounced the patriarchy and identified the white heterosexual male as a model of authoritarianism and supremacy. From both perspectives, the victim is enshrined as unquestionably innocent. Israel and its Jews, several decades after the Holocaust, defeated one by one the powerful Arab armies and lost their status as eternal victims to become the victors.

Communist countries and the left shifted their support to their oil suppliers, and a new generation of wealthy Islamic elites invested part of their amassed wealth in large department stores, soccer teams, and universities, fortunes that fed American universities and demanded anti-Zionist chairs, professors, and content. 

By uniting these different causes, Israel became, in the academic mindset, the white, exploitative, and patriarchal state that subjugated, oppressed, and victimized the Palestinian people.

This simplistic and Manichean approach hides that the victimization, which indeed exists, is largely the work of Palestinian leaders who keep their population in eternal temporary camps to obtain economic and political support, and in the process, accuse Israel of apartheid, occupation, and genocide. Although 20% of the Arab population lives freely in Israel, decades of indoctrination have convinced academic elites of the intrinsic evil of the Jewish state. This is where antisemitic arguments flourish, even though many activists do not recognize themselves as antisemites. Their anti-Zionism has a rational basis in the oppressor/oppressed axis, but antisemitism is the emotional fuel generating anti-Israel hatred. Because, let's be clear, if their struggle were successful, "from the river to the sea" implies the destruction of the state of Israel. Islamic exterminationist terrorism is strictly religious and does not mince words or hide its anti-Jewish motivation and opposition to all "infidels" who do not revere Allah. This is what today's anti-Zionist militants support.

The struggle of activists in support of victims is commendable, and I believe they are convinced they are doing something good for the world. But in the process, they forget the injustices happening elsewhere, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its innocent dead, other massacres and genocides with tens of thousands of victims and refugees (in Yemen, Congo, Nigeria, Syria, and the list goes on). They only become outraged when they can accuse Israel. The Israeli victims massacred in an explicit genocidal plan have no place in this narrative. They see the children burned alive, the pregnant women stabbed in their wombs, the heads decapitated and used as soccer balls, the young girls gang-raped and tortured, and the hostages as white, male, heterosexual, and patriarchal oppressors—meaning they deserved what happened to them because they were Israelis, Jews, whites, and victors.

Educated elites promote an orgy of self-hatred. Perhaps they are washing away the guilt of their predatory, genocidal, pirate, colonialist, and slave-owning European ancestors? Is this homage to radical Islamism part of the West's crisis in exonerating a shameful past? Is the only way to compensate for past guilt to undermine the future?

Some speak of the suicide of the West, of the values of democracy, republicanism, and humanism. All of them are in danger, not just the Jews.

That's why I say that anti-Zionism is not only antisemitism. It's more than that.

Published in Spanish in La Nación

You lost credibility

We are experiencing the betrayal of feminist goals that have done so much for the dignity of women. The historic struggles for equality and justice, the denunciations of attacks and perpetrations, the ideals enunciated were shattered by the thunderous silence after the femicide orgy by terrorist Hamas on October 7. The same women who pointed out the oppression of patriarchal society remained silent in the face of such barbarism. The same women who gloated over their progressive militancy, their egalitarian morality and their yearning for dignity, decked themselves with the flags of patriarchal dictatorships and femicide terrorism and silenced their voices in the face of the Israeli victims.There was no empathy with them. Their ideological opposition to Israel took precedence over their feminist ideals. Jewish women are for them more Israeli than women, they are not equal to others, they do not deserve to be defended. What is incredible, contradictory and even bizarre is that the same women who did not sympathize with the Israelis merrily support countries where women lack the same rights they claim to advocate.They betrayed feminism and also each of the women they claim to represent. They betrayed their principles and their struggles. They betrayed the brave suffragettes, Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, and every single woman beaten or murdered. They betrayed themselves. They broke up the collective and lost the authority to speak on behalf of "women." The Jewish ones, raped, mutilated, tortured, murdered and exhibited as trophies, do not belong in the universe of feminism. As shown by the view of Nazism towards Jews, Israeli women are less women, or sub-women, they do not have the same rights nor deserve the same struggles and demands. From the river to the sea evokes the road to Auschwitz. Non of the feminist groups empathized. Neither #metoo nor the defenders of LGTBIQ+ rights nor the so-called progressive left, nor #blacklivesmatter. All these ideologues, thought policemen and patrons of morality are blind and deaf when it comes to Jews, they decollectivized the feminist collective pretending that what happened did not happen. Some utter a timid and cowardly "yes, it was terrible but...", and others, the ones that bought the Manichean, simplistic and false narrative of Israel-oppressor/Palestinian-oppressed defend the terrorists and raise Palestinian flags calling for the demise of the State of Israel as if the principles of freedom and justice they claim to uphold do not contradict those held by the terrorists.

Feminist movements made it clear that no woman's behavior justifies violence or attack, even if the perpetrator hides behind it to claim innocence. Not a short skirt or a baleful look, the fault is not the victims. Unless they are Israeli. That is why I no longer believe them. #Idon’tbelievethem anymore when they claim to change patriarchal society so that women have equal rights. Jewish women are not allowed there. We are more Jewish than women even though our pains are alike.

We must fight alone as we learnt during centuries of patriarchy and antisemitism.

Feminists, shut up from now on! Look for other cases that give sense to your lives! You do not fight for universal rights anymore! Your silence is an accomplice of the worst things you supposedly fight for. You have murdered feminism. 

#Youlostcredibility