Quand les Juifs d'Israël disent "plus jamais ça" ils sont sérieux, Dan Hodges

Dans une tribune parue dans le Daily Telegraph.  Dan Hodges, qui est socialiste, syndicaliste et blogueur, explique que le récit sur les Juifs privilégié par Européens - celui du Juif éternelle victime, faible, vêtu d'une chemise à rayures grises, tête rasée, tatouage sur le bras - n'est plus toléré en Israël.  On est, après tout, en 2014.  C'est fini.  Basta.  Comme il est également évoqué régulièrement dans ce blog,  l'Europe a beaucoup de mal à comprendre cela - aussi parce que ça l'arrange. Pour le peuple d'Israël, ajoute Dan Hodges, la menace d'anéantissement n'est pas une abstraction historique. C'était la raison de la création de cet État. Et c'est en raison de cette menace d'extermination que les Juifs d'Israël ont été contraints à défendre leur État des invasions de 1948, 1967 et 1973. Chaque jour, ce peuple est obligé de se défendre contre les attaques terroristes, petites et grandes.  Et il conclut que quand les Juifs d'Israël disent “plus jamais ça”, ils le pensent vraiment. They mean it. Israël connaît le prix de la faiblesse. L'aspect positif est qu'on constate dans les réseaux Internet que de plus en plus d'Européens ne croient plus à ce qu'on leur dit sur Israël et les Juifs, notamment ce qu'en disent les médias et les spécialistes du Moyen-Orient.  Dans Hodges invite ses compatriotes à ne plus faire semblant de ne pas comprendre.  

Yes, Israel is strong, and the Palestinians are not. Israel knows the price of weakness

[...] The Guardian ran its own commemoration, which included the story of a man called Freddie Knoller. “On arrival, [at the death camp] he was given a uniform and had the number 157108 tattooed on his left arm. As his head was being shaved, he heard, for the first time, about old people and women being taken to Birkenau to be gassed and cremated.”

This is the narrative we prefer. The frail Jew in a striped shirt. The Jew who has his head shaved, and a tattoo stamped on his arm. The Jew as victim.  But it’s not a narrative they’re prepared to tolerate in Israel. Not in 2014.

In its editorial on the current Israeli military offensive the Guardian asked “Are there not some acts which, even in the name of self-defence, exact too high a price?” The author should go back and read their own paper’s article on Freddie Knoller. It will give them the answer.

People may not like the current Israeli assault on Gaza. They may be appalled by it. Perhaps they are right to be appalled by it.

But please, let’s not pretend we don’t understand it. The threat of annihilation is not an historical abstraction to the people of Israel. It was the reason for the formation of that state. It was why they were forced to defend that state from invasion in 1948 and 1967 and 1973. It’s why they have been forced to defend it from terror attacks large and small every day since.

So yes, Israel is strong. And yes, perhaps that strength is sometimes used unwisely and disproportionately. But that’s because the Jews of Israel learnt in the most barbaric way imaginable that the price of being too strong is not as high as the price of being too weak.

Israel has its planes and its tanks and its guns and its shelters and its Iron Dome defence system. And the Palestinians have only their rockets – 130 fired at Israel on Sunday alone – and their suicide vests. But do we honestly expect Israel to apologise for that? Apologise for the fact that Hamas are not as good at killing Jews as they’d like to be?

We may feel more comfortable tutting and shaking our heads and saying “isn’t it terrible about those three teenage boys?” But in Israel they don’t just tut. Not any more.

The images of what is happening in Gaza may sear our consciences. But when the Jews of Israel say “never again”, they mean it.