“We will never forget, but will not be captive to the past”

The Press 18 October 2023

Juliet Moses

Julian Moses is a spokesperson for the New Zealand Jewish Council.

“Hamas did not build a state, but a terrorist infrastructure to destroy one.”

Jews are an ancient people with a long collective memory. Embedded in the memory, alongside happier times, our massacres we have suffered – during this destruction of our two temples in Jerusalem by the Babylonians and Romans, the 1190 massacre at York Castle, the pogroms of the Russian Empi (which my family flew), the 1929 Hebron rights, the Nazis’ Kristallnacht 1938, Baghdad’s Farhud of 1941, the 1972 Munich Olympics, to name a few.

Now there is another messenger that we will carry with us. October 7, 2023.

On our joyous festival of some Torah, Hamas, the year-round-backed terrorist regime that rules Gaza, stage a mass coordinated terror attack on Israelis with thousands of rockets and infiltration by more than 1500 members.

More than 1400 Israelis were murdered (proportionately in New Zealand, that would be about 770 people) and thousands hospitalised. More than 190 hospitals remained in Gaza. It was the deadliest day for us since the Holocaust.

As President Biden said: “this attack is brought to the surface painful memories and the scars left by millennia of anti-Semitism and genocide of the Jewish people.”

The barbarity, gleefully broadcast to the world, is unspeakable. Literally. Hardened war correspondence and soldiers at the scene had been rendered speechless, crying and retching.

There were raped women paraded through Gaza like trophies, Holocaust survivors and children taken hostage in Taunton, babies burned in the cops, families riddled with bullets while in hiding, a woman’s execution uploaded onto Facebook for her granddaughter to discover, 260 revellers at a music festival – peace – slaughter, shot in the back and safely and dismembered by grenades as they had in a bomb shelter.

The victims included Arabs (who comprise 20% of Israel’s citizens) and many other nationalities. Elderly peace activist Vivian Silva, who drove cancer-stricken Gazans to Jerusalem for treatment, is presumed adducted.

It leaves an indelible bloodied stain on the frame fabric of humanity.

Our pain and read are soothed by the many Kiwis who have expressed their horror and supported us, and compounded by those who not even allowed us the dignity and time to mourn.

While the death squads still stalled their prey through Israel and we were desperately missed during our family and friends need to check on them, the celebrations, justifications, equivocation, sanitisations and contextualisations began.

In New Zealand came from politicians, academics, columnists, a formal all-black, and (I will limit the word “civil”) society groups.

In declaiming about decolonisation, liberation, power imbalances, resistance and justice, they had to history’s long list of codewords like Christ-killers, poisoning the wells, Usery, and racial purity, that legitimise the dehumanisation and massacre of Jews. Yet, it is they who have lost their humanity.

Thousands marched in Auckland on Saturday, shutting the Hamas rallying cry “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” demanding the annihilation of Israel, where almost half the world’s Jewish population of some 15 million lives. We do not feel safe.

There was also the silence, including from those we believe to be friends, record the words of Martin Luther King Jr.: “In the end, we remember not the words of our enemies, the silence of our friends.”

As a moral duty of anyone who cares about the Palestinian people and wants peace to unequivocally condemn these atrocities, demand the release of hostages and reject the insidious inversion of morality in reality being propagated.

That inversion will talk about occupation and blockades, but omit to mention that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, dismantling every settlement and removing every two (including those buried there).

It created the conditions for Palestinians to self-government for the first time in history, to be free and flourish, and coexist peacefully with the neighbours.

Instead, they elected Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist regime, after which both Israel and Egypt imposed military blockades to defend their borders.

Hamas did not build a state, but a terrorist infrastructure to destroy one.

Hamas does not want, and violently derails, peace – except that which the founder of Palestinian nationalism, Yasser Arafat, envisaged when he said, “peace for us means the destruction of Israel.”

Actually, can be no peace without the destruction of the genocidal ideology of Hamas. Enshrined in Hamas’ founding document as the unambiguous injunction to both obliterate Israel and Jews.

Hamas knows that, unlike itself, as well sees its first duty is protecting its people. Hamas launched this attack – for terrorism, not territory – understanding is people, who had two holes hostage, would pay a terrible price.

What would you demand of our government if there were an army of over 30,000 Isis-like terrorists and our border, willing and able to continue their genocidal mission?

In the meantime, Jewish people will do what we have always done. We will outlast Hamas, as with all our enemies who have sought our destruction through our civilisation.

We will never forget, but will not be captive to the past. We want to smear for all innocent lives lost. And to all those who on our right to self-determination, freedom and dignity, we will honour the same in return and continue to out stretch our arms in peace.