Earlier today I read your “Open Letter to Khalil from Gaza,” the one in which you conjured up an imaginary Palestinian, someone like yourself — a loving husband and father, trying to do right by his family — and informed him that tonight his seven-year-old daughter would die.
“You’ll wake up in the middle of the night,” you wrote, “to a deafening explosion. Your whole house will tremble. Parts of the ceiling will fall on you. You’ll run to your daughter’s bedroom, and find the northern wall gone, your daughter lying on the broken floor, a charred husk.”
You went on to explain that although it will be your government, the Israeli government, that fires the missile that perpetrates that atrocity, Khalil mustn’t be mad at them, or you, because it will be Hamas, not Israel, who will have placed his daughter in danger, Hamas who will have condemned her to death.
And so I have a question for you, Boaz. My question is this.
Even if I accept your fictional narrative of the murder of Khalil’s child, and the moral calculus you impose on it, what about the other Palestinian children?
What about the children killed by your country’s wayward missiles, and its jumpy border guards? What about Hamid Younis Abu Daqqa, shot down earlier this month by a stray Israeli bullet fired by a soldier who never knew he existed?
Is there no room in your response to such tragedies for ambivalence, for doubt, for taking up the moral burdens of your own country’s actions?
Can you honestly imagine no other way to reach out to a Palestinian who has just lost his daughter than to chastise him? To chide him? To lecture him? Is that where your moral imagination, your capacity for humanity, ends?
Is this actually what you would want to say to a person whose child your government’s army was about to murder? To a person, an innocent, whose life was about to be destroyed as the side-effect of an attempt to keep your family whole?
Is that it? Is that really it?
And if it is — if you were speaking from the heart in your open letter, if it represents the truest and best of who you are — then tell me this, please: Why on earth should he not hate you?
Why on earth should I not hate you?
studentactivism.net 
4 comments
Comments feed for this article
November 20, 2012 at 4:52 pm
alia
This whole thing has me gutted. Especially because my understanding is this latest round of assault is because the Israeli government is facing an election, and it’s easier to win in the middle of a war. Horrific.
November 24, 2012 at 10:45 am
Boaz Kantor
Thank you, Angus, for this open letter.
The letter to Khalil turns to Israelis, not Palestinians, who are not fully aware of the situation in Gaza. I’m happy that it reached people all over the world, who aren’t aware of the situation as well.
If you think this letter is trying to lecture the misfortune Gazans, then you missed the whole point of it.
This letter suggests a point of view, in which the future of the Palestinians lies within their own hands. It suggests that there is a group of Gazans who can turn the basic conditions of this conflict and shift it out of deathful stagnation. It suggests bringing the Arab spring and democracy into Gaza.
It does not turn to those who aren’t open for a change. It does not turn to those who think that the fate of one is in the power of their government alone. It does not turn to those who wish to keep the conflict as it is.
It explains the sad situation, in which Israeli children are under a constant threat of thousands of rockets, already aimed at them from all over the Gaza strip. The situation is sad, because Hamas’ strategy is digging those launchers within crowded innocent population, kindergartens, hospitals, and elderly homes. Hamas does that because they know the Israeli army (IDF) will not harm innocent population, unless the lives of innocent Israelis are at stake. And that’s what the recent operation was all about.
This “use children as defense” strategy has two sad grounds:
1. It keeps Israel and the IDF in an impossible lose/lose situation.
2. Hamas will never change it.
The deaths you described are usually results of this situation. The IDF has a very high moral, and does not shoot civilians to kill. NEVER. In fact, the IDF failed many times in securing our population due to that situation. And unfortunately, every army’s job is protecting their own population.
The open letter to Khalil tries to explain it in a simple way (yet too graphic, I know, sorry about that). It suggests breaking these grounds by taking Hamas down. It does not discard other solutions, only suggests a new one. A revolutionary one.
You can hate me for being an Israeli, you can hate me for being a Jew, even hate me for the brutal explanation of the death (although I’ve seen the pictures, it’s not even close to reality). But hating me for suggesting a civil rebellion shows lack of understanding of the situation, or the letter.
Some people use this letter to better understand the situation and to think out of the box, some object it and use it for adding more hate, just as you suggested.
Peace,
Boaz.
November 24, 2012 at 2:26 pm
Angus Johnston
Boaz, I think it’s safe to say that I understood what you were trying to do — your piece wasn’t exactly subtle. But unfortunately, it appears that you still don’t understand what *I* was trying to do.
You say that the IDF “does not shoot civilians to kill,” and you add an all-caps “NEVER.” But of course the IDF does kill civilians, and as it turns out they’ve killed more Palestinian civilians in the last three weeks than Hamas has killed Israeli civilians in the last three years.
That’s a fact. But it’s a fact that you continue to fail to reckon with, a fact that leaves you not merely untroubled, but unruffled.
Which means, I guess, that I have my answer.
November 25, 2012 at 2:46 pm
Boaz Kantor
I’m listening.
Let me ask you this:
If someone was holding a child as hostage, and aiming a gun at your wife. What do you do? And after 12,000 shots that missed your wife (analogue to the 12,000 rockets shot at Israeli civilians), how would you retaliate?
1) take your family and run.
2) throw a hand grenade at their general direction.
3) try to talk to him and see what they want from you.
4) take your best shot at the terrorist, and hoping that you don’t hurt the hostage.
Fact is, Israelis are well protected when they spend the night in the basement or the shelter.
Fact is, 1.2 million Israelis have been living in shelters for the past years.
Fact is, we took option (1) when we disengaged from Gaza in 2005.
Fact is, implementing option (1) again means abandoning Israel and migrating back to Europe.
Fact is, option (2) was never on the table.
Fact is, we tried option (3) with Palestinians for over a century and keep failing.
Fact is, Hamas has already declared they want to conquer entire Israel and all Jews dead, so option (3) with Hamas is off the table.
Fact is, operation Pillar of Cloud is option (4), and unfortunately and due to the location of the terrorist armories, there are civilian casualties.
So what would you have done?
Boaz.