The government lacks real empathy or humanity for Jews

As the Jewish Festival of Simchat Torah came to a close on Sunday evening, I started hearing and seeing the horror and devastation that had occurred in Israel over the previous 36 hours.

I learned of the astounding, unprecedented number of dead Israeli civilians who had been butchered in their homes in a massive, coordinated series of surprise attacks by Hamas from Gaza, and of the thousands more that had been injured, many fatally.

I heard of the cold-blooded massacre at a music festival that had resulted in the mass killing of 260 people out for a day of fun and song; of women being raped next to the corpses of those recently murdered; of those who survived being taken captive and paraded naked through the Gaza streets while onlookers cheered and celebrated Hamas’ “victory”.

I learned of the kidnappings of elderly people, including a Holocaust survivor; of children taken from their dead parents’ homes. My community heard about the abduction of the son of one of my former school friends and our Rabbi for many years.

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And then my cellphone beeped and I learned that my very precious and special friend Vivian Silver had been abducted by Hamas gunmen from her home in Kibbutz Be’eri on the Gaza border.

She has not been seen or heard from since. She is one of about 150 Israelis, mostly civilians, taken hostage during Hamas’ horror campaign.

My friendship with Silver spans nearly 30 years. I met her in 1996 and went on to work with her for many years taking groups of South Africans to Israel to learn about agriculture, rural development, water, cooperatives and the like.

Our groups spent time on Kibbutz Be’eri learning about how cooperatives work and exploring ways in which these systems could be implemented in our own country to alleviate poverty.

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Not only did they work on projects to uplift Israel’s Arab communities, but for many years they were able to extend their upliftment work to Palestinian groups.

Silver and I reconnected when she went on to become one of the founders of Women Wage Peace, a grassroots peace movement in Israel that works with thousands of Jewish and Arab women promoting and advocating for peaceful solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Silver’s last message, sent at 7.45am on Saturday, read: “It’s absolute chaos here. Terrorists have infiltrated Be’eri. There is shooting and screaming.”

I continue to read my government’s statements on the matter and cannot but note how devoid they are of any sadness or regret over the killings and abductions that have occurred.

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I have long recognised how government’s stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its allegiance to the Palestinians has reached a point where it has lost whatever role and relevance it might have had in any peace-building process.

What has impacted so deeply on me over the past several days is the absolute lack of any real empathy or humanity it has shown towards the victims of the mass killing and terror assault.

Nor is there any recognition by our leaders that their own Jewish citizens are in trauma.

Kahn is the national director of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies

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