Article and illustration by Paola Bilancieri

Seneca Was Wrong
New York     Cesar Chelala
A recent report by Haaretz, one of the most prestigious Israeli newspapers, on IDF soldiers’ actions against Palestinians civilians looking for food, represents a damning accusation of the soldiers’ behavior. Predictably, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz rejected those claims and called them ‘blood libels’
According to the report, based on interviews with IDF officers and soldiers, the commanders ordered Israeli troops to shoot at crowds at food distribution centers to drive then away or disperse them, even though they posed no threat to the soldiers.  
The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza reports that 549 people have been killed near food distribution centers while waiting for UN food trucks since May 27. In addition, over 4,000 people have been wounded, although the exact number of those killed or injured by IDF fire remains unclear. 
Haaretz informs that the Military Advocate General has instructed the IDF General Staff’s Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism – a body which reviews incidents involving potential violations of the laws of war—to investigate suspected war crimes at these sites. Previous investigations of that nature didn’t produce any practical results.
According to one IDF soldier, “It is a killing field. Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force –no crowd-control measures, no tear gas—just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.” 
An officer at a distribution center called the IDF’s approach ‘deeply flawed’. “Working with a civilian population when your only means of interaction is opening fire –that’s highly problematic, to say the least,” he told Haaretz. “It’s neither ethically nor morally acceptable for people to have to reach a humanitarian zone under tank fire, snipers and mortar shells.” Another officer said, “The fact that live fire is directed at a civilian population –whether with artillery, tanks, snipers, or drones—goes against everything the army is supposed to stand for.” 
The easy way out –and an incorrect one—has been to call antisemites all those that criticize the IDF soldiers’ actions against the Palestinians. To do so, however, is to deny a tragic reality that is being increasingly denounced by Jews and non-Jews alike, as well as by an increasing number of governments worldwide.
A testimony from Reform Jews for Justice states, “My Judaism teaches me pikuach nefesh, that every life is sacred and must be saved. When we destroy a single life, we destroy the whole world, and when we save a single life, we save the whole world. I cannot stand idly by and watch as my own people ruthlessly take away the lives of innocent children and families in Gaza that have truly nowhere to run or hide. Even worse, these murders are done in the name of Judaism, in the name of protecting the Jewish people, but it is not the Judaism that I practice and love. I pray for the safe return of the hostages and mourn the tragic loss of Israeli lives, but I know that killing innocent Palestinian families will not bring back our loved ones and will not subside our grief. The Jewish people must do better.” 
Stephen Kapos, writing in Double Down News, says, “The way the Israeli government is using the memory of the Holocaust in order to justify what they are doing to the Gazans is a complete insult to the memory of the Holocaust. It is an outrage…What distinguishes the Jewish Holocaust is its industrial scale and industrial methods being applied. And what has been happening in Gaza is similar in that the scale of the bombing and the indiscriminate nature of the bombing, the complete lack of care about children and women being the majority of the victims, amounts to an industrial scale of genocide. The painting of the Palestinian people as worthless, almost animal like, by the description of some of the leaders, that dehumanization, enables the population of Israel to tolerate what’s going on. The way the Palestinian people who were arrested were treated having to take their clothes off and parading them, it’s part of the humiliation.” 
The IDF soldiers’ massacring innocent Palestinians, including women and children, proves Seneca wrong. When the Roman philosopher and poet said, “Wherever there is a human being there is a chance for kindness,” he couldn’t have foreseen that indiscriminately killing unarmed civilians desperately looking for food makes of the soldiers who carry out illegal and inhumane orders war criminals.