I've known him my entire life, we first went to school together, we were at University together, and we both worked in the City. Friday night we had dinner and I suspect that after that meal we will never speak again. My friend is Jewish and has been a "supporter" of Israel his entire life. I was in London, and we were having drinks (yeah I get the irony -- having a beer in a gastropub on a Shabbat...I get the joke), and we were having a chat about nothing when for some reason the conversation shifted to Israel, for the life of me I have no idea how it started, anyway at one point I said, it is ironic that a country and a nation that still threads on its Nazi persecution tragedy uses more than similar tactics, actually uses the same language.
He immediately looked cross, and I doubled down giving him clear and evident parallel specifically the recent words at a press conference by the minister of defence -- what he said was not open to interpretation, sure he's a dick and an ultra-orthodox idiot still he spoke for the government of Israel, and said the exact same words last Megel did all these years ago about "more baby deaths was good".
There was no interpretation on my part, these were the words used in both cases! Yet my friend of nearly 40 years was offended that he thought they were saying the same thing (ok one was talking about Jewish babies the other about Palestinian babies -- still). He got up, looked at me, and said you are a prick and I simply said, you want to hang your hat on that, we might just as well end it now.
He left, and a friendship of almost 40 years ended Friday night.
I called my wife Saturday morning and told her the whole story. She was not surprised she said, our (few) Jewish friends were unable to criticize the government of Israel and seemed blind to its actions. I remembered a conversation I had with our youngest daughter about the direction the conflict in Gaza was taking, I remember my views that this was a battle to the death, but I had not envisioned that for this terrible but likely outcome that the language of war in Israel would sound so much like the language of Nazi Germany.
If as a people you still feel comfortable guilting the world with the atrocity of Nazi Germany inflicted on your people, it should be unacceptable for you to act the same way. Yet the Israeli rhetoric has year after year sounded more like what came out of Berlin 75 years ago.
Another tragedy in the making, now even the American President had decided that enough is enough.
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