Fergus Finlay: Terror should not be met with terror but humane quest for justice

I don’t have the right to claim that I speak for anyone but myself, although I know many who feel as I do. So let me speak for myself.

Over the years — though not often enough — I have attended the Holocaust Memorial Service in the Mansion House in Dublin, and I was honoured once to be invited to read at it. I listened several times over those years to Tomi Reichenthal, a deeply inspirational man who was imprisoned as a boy in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and who lost most of his family during the Holocaust.

I can’t hear the words, Bergen-Belsen, without going cold. And I can’t quote Tomi word for word, but I am certain that every time he spoke it was about the need to atone and the power of forgiveness. That was, and is, his astonishing grace.

I’ve never contributed to a fund or marched in a rally for Israel. So I can’t speak from any position of privilege, any sense of being entitled to be listened to.

I can only speak as an ordinary human being, albeit one who for his entire life has understood the reasons for Israel’s existence and has always instinctively supported Israel’s right to exist as a free and sovereign country.

But if I could say anything to the people of Israel now — people whose bravery and constancy has been proved again and again — it would be this. The pain being inflicted in your name on the people of Gaza is cruel, pitiless, and unrelenting. 

You cannot respond to a cruel and merciless act of terrorism by launching what looks more and more like a campaign of genocide

 You cannot respond to the terrible murder of your children by agreeing to the slaughter of every Palestinian child who stands in your way

I have to tell you your leaders are not leaders. Yes, leaders would speak with rage of the terrible murders and atrocities of October 7, but they would also seek to begin the slow and painful process of healing. They would talk of justice, but not of revenge. They would target the criminals, but they would not seek to dehumanise the entire population of Gaza. They would above all talk about the need to save the children.

Your leaders are opportunists. Your Prime Minister is using this war to strengthen his own position. He has nothing on his mind except his own preservation. He is using your anger to fuel hatred, and in the process driving you further and further away from the rest of the world.

He uses dehumanising language constantly: “We are the people of light, they are the people of darkness — and light shall triumph over darkness”, he said a couple of days ago. In a speech he posted on Facebook the other day, your Prime Minister asked you to “Remember what Amalek did to you. We remember and we fight.”

I had never heard of Amalek, or the Amalekites as they’re more widely known. But many Jews will know they were a tribe in ancient times that constantly attacked Israelites.

The old testament uses this sentence about them: “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”

That is the language of extermination. A leader of the people of Israel using the language of extermination?

He has told you that Israel must fight a new war of independence. But that is a lie. Israel is a strong independent country, recognised as such by most of the democracies of the world. Israel has no need to wage a war to assert its independence, especially against babies, children and pregnant women.

He has told you that you will win. That too is a lie. Even if, by killing thousands of innocent people, you succeed in crushing this generation of Hamas, there will be another Hamas. And along the way you will squander the support you enjoy now. If Israel continues this cruelty you will become more and more isolated among the nations of the world.

You have been led into fighting a war you cannot win, against an enemy you cannot see, and you are inflicting untold pain and suffering in the process. And you have been led into that war by a man so incompetent he left you unready for the October 7 attacks. You have a world-famous intelligence service that had become so complacent that they completely underestimated what was going on. You have a Prime Minister so obsessed with populist and divisive policies that he ignored all warnings about the instability he was causing. Even after the October 7 attack he blamed everyone else and refused to accept any responsibility.

You are now, a rich and prosperous country, attacking one of the poorest countries in the world. Hamas, hidden wherever they are hidden, might have military capacities and may well have stockpiled food and fuel for itself, but the people of Gaza have no way to defend themselves. They live now in terror and in many cases in the certainty of death. You will leave behind a scorched and barren landscape that will not be able to support human life for years to come. And you will leave behind a legacy of hate that may never be possible to repair.

The Prime Minister of Israel will not stop this war. It does not serve his interests, and that is the only thing that matters to him. The people of Israel can

You know that revenge is not justice. You know that your enemy is not Palestinian mothers or babies, of the Palestinian people as a whole. Your enemy has been arrogance, complacency, and incompetence — traits displayed by your own leaders. They ask you to trust them now after they have betrayed you and left you open to attack.

I hope, if I were an Israeli citizen, living in Tel Aviv, I would have the courage to take to the streets and demand this carnage stop. These daily atrocities being inflicted in your name, that have so far killed perhaps ten times as many people as died on October 7, will not heal your wounds, will not make you secure for the future, will not bring stability to your region.

You are the people who can demand a ceasefire. Justice demands a humanitarian ceasefire, just as it demands freedom for the hostages taken by Hamas. You are the only people who can make that demand. And you must.