(Francesco Gori) – La parlamentare israeliana Ayelet Shaked è salita agli onori della cronaca per aver detto che le “madri palestinesi” che partoriscono i martiri devono essere uccise. Shaked fa parte della Casa Ebraica, un partito politico sionista religioso in Israele. Nonostante si autoclassifichi come partito di destra, alcuni mezzi di comunicazione occidentali e israeliani lo hanno descritto come “partito di estrema destra”. L’esponente politico ha invocato l’uccisione di tutte le madri palestinesi che partoriscono i “piccoli serpenti”. Dichiarazioni che hanno fatto il giro del mondo.
“Dietro ogni terrorista stanno decine di uomini e donne, senza i quali egli non si coinvolgerebbe nel terrorismo. Sono tutti nemici combattenti e il loro sangue dovrebbe essere versato sulle loro teste. Ciò include le madri dei martiri, che li hanno mandati all’inferno con fiori e baci. Esse – ha detto la parlamentare – dovrebbero seguire i loro figli, niente sarebbe più giusto. Dovrebbero andarci, in quanto dimora fisica in cui hanno allevato i serpenti. Altrimenti, altri serpenti saranno allevati”
“Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.”
Le dichiarazioni, postate dalla parlamentare sulla propria bacheca Facebook, sono considerate, vista la posizione del suo partito, un vero e proprio invito al genocidio nei confronti dei palestinesi, considerati tutti nemici di Israele e dunque da eliminare. Questa posizione è stata ripresa da importanti giornali internazionali. Secondo alcuni si è trattato però di un clamoroso corto circuito mediatico, frasi decontestualizzate che non riflettono il pensiero della deputata israeliana.
La parlamentare ha smentito quelle dichiarazioni dicendo che si tratta di frasi scritte 12 anni fa da Uri Elitzur, un giornalista scomparso nei mesi scorsi. Il succo dell’articolo, mai pubblicato, è che se in guerra una parte attacca i civili della parte avversa, allora quella parte non può più moralmente rivendicare uno status speciale per i propri civili.
La frase incriminata sarebbe dunque stata estrapolata da un intervento molto più lungo che pubblichiamo in lingua inglese:
The Palestinian people has declared war on us, and we must respond with war. Not an operation, not a slow-moving one, not low-intensity, not controlled escalation, no destruction of terror infrastructure, no targeted killings. Enough with the oblique references. This is a war. Words have meanings. This is a war. It is not a war against terror, and not a war against extremists, and not even a war against the Palestinian Authority. These too are forms of avoiding reality. This is a war between two people. Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people. Why? Ask them, they started.
I don’t know why it’s so hard for us to define reality with the simple words that language puts at our disposal. Why do we have to make up a new name for the war every other week, just to avoid calling it by its name. What’s so horrifying about understanding that the entire Palestinian people is the enemy? Every war is between two peoples, and in every war the people who started the war, that whole people, is the enemy. A declaration of war is not a war crime. Responding with war certainly is not. Nor is the use of the word “war”, nor a clear definition who the enemy is. Au contraire: the morality of war (yes, there is such a thing) is founded on the assumption that there are wars in this world, and that war is not the normal state of things, and that in wars the enemy is usually an entire people, including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure.
And the morality of war knows that it is not possible to refrain from hurting enemy civilians. It does not condemn the British air force, which bombed and totally destroyed the German city of Dresden, or the US planes that destroyed the cities of Poland and wrecked half of Budapest, places whose wretched residents had never done a thing to America, but which had to be destroyed in order to win the war against evil. The morals of war do not require that Russia be brought to trial, though it bombs and destroys towns and neighborhoods in Chechnya. It does not denounce the UN Peacekeeping Forces for killing hundreds of civilians in Angola, nor the NATO forces who bombed Milosevic’s Belgrade, a city with a million civilians, elderly, babies, women, and children. The morals of war accept as correct in principle, not only politically, what America has done in Afghanistan, including the massive bombing of populated places, including the creation of a refugee stream of hundreds of thousands of people who escaped the horrors of war, for thousands of whom there is no home to return to.
And in our war this is sevenfold more correct, because the enemy soldiers hide out among the population, and it is only through its support that they can fight. Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. Actors in the war are those who incite in mosques, who write the murderous curricula for schools, who give shelter, who provide vehicles, and all those who honor and give them their moral support. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.
By the way, there was an interesting interview (here) with the Israeli spokesman (who by they way — regardless of how you feel about the merits of his argument — holds up well under a withering series of questions). The interview covers both views of the ongoing conflict.
Secondo il politico israeliano il post su Facebook si limitava a citare la nota di Elitzur e la traduzione dall’ebraico all’inglese è stata fatta in maniera maldestra, forse da quei siti filo palestinesi che non perdono occasione per attaccare Israele.
Ecco la replica integrale di Shaked:
“Let’s start with my July 1 Facebook post. It was written some 12 years ago, but never published, by a dear man, the recently departed journalist Uri Elitzur. The gist of his article was that once one side in a war attacks the other side’s civilians, they can no longer morally claim a special status for their own civilians.
Go ahead, ask a Hebrew speaking friend to translate it for you, they’ll confirm this is what my Facebook post was about. But you’ll find not a trace of that in Resnick’s account. Perhaps it’s his own ignorance of the Hebrew language. After all, he got the text from Electronic Intifada, a website dedicated to daily and hourly vilification of my country.
All Resnick had to do to make Elitzur’s sober, legally minded discussion sound like a speech made by Hitler himself, was to cherry pick words out of context. A call for the indiscriminate killing of children is a terrible thing. But what if the statement was that any time you attack our children, you’re exposing your own people to the same fate? Still unsettling, but rational when you consider their civilian population is actively supporting and participating in their war and terror efforts. It’s not a call for indiscriminate murder”.
Contro le parole, vere o presunte, di Shaked, si è scagliato anche il premier turco, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: “Una donna israeliana ha detto che le madri palestinesi devono essere uccise Questa donna è un membro del parlamento israeliano. Qual è la differenza tra questa mentalità e Hitler?”
Il premier turco ha inoltre accusato Israele di fare del terrorismo di stato contro i palestinesi nella regione. Parlando in parlamento, Erdoğan ha anche criticato il silenzio del mondo verso le atrocità commesse da Tel Aviv contro il popolo palestinese e, in particolare, nella Striscia di Gaza.
