Trashing Jewish values risks Israel’s survival as we know it

After 77 torturous years of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, punctuated by intense violence and wars, successive Netanyahu-led governments have shattered Jewish values to the core-values that have sustained and preserved Jewish lives for centuries and provided the moral foundation on which Israel was built.

Throughout millennia of dispersion, the Jews had no army, no weapons, and no advanced technology to fight back against persecution, segregation, expulsion, and death, but they survived.

They persevered because they upheld these moral values at all times: in times of joy, in times of suffering, in times of loss, in times of gain, and in times of anxiety when they did not know what tomorrow would bring.

The historian Paul Johnson noted in his book A History of the Jews: "To [the Jews] we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person; of the individual conscience and so of personal redemption; of the collective conscience and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice, and many other items which constitute the basic moral furniture of the human mind."

Tragically, these moral values have not resonated with Prime Minister Netanyahu and his ardent followers. From the first day he rose to power in 1996, he vowed to undermine the Oslo Accords, and swore to never allow the establishment of a Palestinian state under his watch. Since he returned to power in 2008, the Israeli-Palestinian relationship has hit a new nadir, and the prospect for peace is dimmer today than ever before.

Dehumanizing and brutalizing the Palestinians under occupation in the West Bank, tightening the blockade around Gaza, and categorically objecting to making any meaningful concessions to reach a peace agreement became his life-long mission, rendering the conflict increasingly intractable.

He facilitated the transfer of billions of dollars from Qatar to Hamas, which allowed Hamas to build a powerful militia that is still standing against Israel's formidable military machine. Netanyahu convinced himself that Hamas was under control, but then came Hamas' savage attack under his watch.

Though Hamas' barbarism is unforgivable, and Israel has every right to defend itself, Netanyahu unleashed a retaliatory war against Hamas unparalleled in its scope and disproportionality. The war has laid two-thirds of Gaza in ruin; 47,600 Palestinians were killed, with half of those identified as women, children, or elderly, and over 100,000 have been injured.

Forcible and repeated displacement of 1.9 million people, restriction on deliveries of food, medicine, drinking water, and fuel, and the destruction of schools and hospitals, precipitated a humanitarian disaster unseen since Israel was created in 1948.

Revenge and torture, shooting to kill with no questions asked, and treating all Palestinians in Gaza-men, women, and the elderly-as legitimate targets as if they were all combatants, demonstrate the moral rot that has taken root in Israel. Asa Kasher, one of Israel's best-known philosophers, recently stated, "We heard a eulogy from the family of a soldier who was killed, who related how he burned homes and undertook acts of revenge. Where did this disturbed idea of revenge come from?"

These moral crimes have not only violated the laws of war but the very core of Jewish values. They have not brought back to life a single Israeli who was massacred by Hamas, they have only satisfied a corrupt Netanyahu-led government that functions like a criminal gang whose thirst for Palestinian blood is insatiable and would stop short of nothing to achieve its ends.

Furthermore, Netanyahu is using the cover of the Gaza war, where the whole world's attention is focused, to ransack the West Bank.