An opinion on Genocide — by Lucy Elizabeth.
I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandfather when I was a child.
Before school, after school, during the school holidays, and on the often sick day (I was a very anxious child who often had those anxious tummy aches). I loved my Grandfather, very much. A military man, of the Royal Artillery Mounted Band, who served three years in Germany before moving his family back to England and then immigrated to Australia and then New Zealand, finally settling down in the later 1970’s. I was born in 1994. Time moved, the family changed, but his military aura was always there, even in the smallest amounts within the structure of his daily routines. His father, my great-grandfather, was a (lucky) surviving Sargent of Dunkirk during the Second World War. So war, struggle and survival, had been seen and felt first hand by my Grandfather. He had seen his family and community rebuild their lives as the world struggled to rebirth itself following the sheer hell of the 1930’s and 40’s. So naturally, being a man of that time and generation, later in his life, many the war documentaries were often circled within his television guide, ready to be viewed and reminisced. And with me spending a lot of my time with him, I soon began to watch.
I shouldn’t have watched. And I was meant to be doing an activity at the time or watching a child appropriate movie in the other room, but I couldn’t help it. Perhaps it was just me wanting to spend that extra bit of time with him, but it wasn’t just that. There was a pull. Almost magnetic it felt. As if I just had to watch. It started with Dad’s Army, which I was actually granted permission to watch. But then it soon evolved into snippets of documentaries on the history channel, (the intro to World at War: the flames, the music, still vivid within my mind). Along this journey, as my fascination of the war grew, I began asking my grandfather questions. I learnt of my Great-Grandfather and his experiences in Dunkirk, his survival as a rare-guard, his return half way across the channel on a row boat using his hands as oars, and the remainder of the war that he spent in Iceland. I learnt of life in England for my grandfather, his eight siblings, and my Great-Grandmother. (As a parent now, and only to one child, full kudos to her for raising nine children on her own and in the middle of a war. Wow! Especially with a husband being MIA in Dunkirk at the time). I learnt of how not long after my Great-Grandfather arrived in France, he wrote to his wife, telling her that when the Nazi’s got to England, she had to kill their nine children and then herself, because our last name was Hebrew. And I also learnt of how my grandfather and his school friend, aged 10 at the time, snuck into a film they were suspicious of being an “adult film”, due to the restriction of children and hearing their parents quietly talking about it. My 10 year old Grandfather and his friend snuck in and hid down in the front row. It wasn’t a racy adult film as the young boys had hoped — it was footage of the newly discovered concentration camps, soon after their liberations. Grandad never forgot what he saw on the screen that day.
My curiosity knew no rest. My questions wouldn’t stop. And luckily, my Grandfather loved a good yap and could in fact yap for hours, especially about war (thank you for that trait, Granddad). My learning of the Holocaust was an eventual milestone. The Holocaust is obviously an unavoidable part of the absolute devastation that was the Second World War. And it is most certainly a subject that should never be avoided and continuously educated on, for education and awareness deprives ignorance, and stops the threat of repetition. My Grandfather never quite told me about it. Well, not in detail. But with me being me, I spent my own time learning more. I remember books that he and my mother owned. I remember the pictures. To this day. Despite now having spent the past twenty three years of my life fascinated by and studying the Second World War and Holocaust (I would say my curiosity for the learning of that time was solidified within me from age fourteen, I am now thirty, but this all started from around the age of seven), those pictures for me, were what my granddad saw in that London cinema those 60 years ago. My need to understand was unstoppable. I had seen Schindlers List by the time I was fourteen years old. Mentally damaging? Yes. And it took me so long to view Ralph Fiennes as the fine man and thespian that he is. I couldn’t see the talented English actor past that particular role. It was very haunting.
The older I became, the more that I learned, and I returned to my Grandfather. How? Why?. I had always asked him those very same questions, but at first, when I was a young 7 year old, it was; “Why was the man with the moustache so angry? Why did he attack your home, Granddad? Why was he always yelling?”. But then as I grew and my learnings of the Holocaust deepened, the questions were the same but the more I learnt, the more my need to know exacerbated me.
“How did the world let that happen, grandad? Why did they do that? Why did they hate them so much??”.
That need to understand stayed within me, so intensely. It was almost as if I had to know what the earth felt like at the time, and of course, how it became that way. That need for understanding followed me into my teenage years, and right into adulthood. It lessened as I studied, worked, and created my own family. But it lingered. It was threaded throughout and around me as it had been for more than most of my life. I needed to know how humans could do that to each other, and how other humans could let them do it. My thirst for war knowledge and history broadened, for all wars of the twentieth and twenty-first century, so the more I read and watched. The First World War that created the snowball effect, that led to the pandemic—economic collapse—the depression—desperation, resentment, and hate—antisemitism—uprising of the Second World War—Holocaust—Communism—the Korean war—the Cold War—the absolute illegal waste that was the Vietnam war—and so forth. Good grief. I learnt that humans not only hated each other, but are incredibly resilient. And will just…not…stop….
As I reached my late twenties, that need for knowing returned. And into the war studies I dived once again. I remember working a particular 9-5 job when the Ukraine was invaded, post the coronavirus pandemic (historians giving the nervous side eye as the patterns of the twentieth century began repeating), and I was sat in an online meeting feeling absolutely baffled and out of body as my then team leader was so over enthusiastic about our work and a new initiative from the company. I couldn’t have cared less. A new war had just broken out. Sure, not in my home country, not near me at all. But now in my time, we were seeing it all first hand due to social media. It’s right there. There’s no denying it. I remember in that meeting how my stomach was so tight as the patterns repeated, but I was meant to ignore it and focus on earning money to survive by helping impatient people? How dystopian it began to feel. Looking back, I think that was the start of finally having my questions being answered.
“How? Why? Why was it not stopped?”.
We jump forward a little in time, and further war has broken out. “War” —apparently. Hm. At first, I had heard that Israel had been attacked. “Jew’s being attacked??”, I had thought at the time. Because that’s how I saw it. It played more into my worry of history repeating, and I thought that surely the world wouldn’t let this happen to them again. To be honest, I did not know a lot on the history of Israel and Palestine. I knew little of their troubles with each other. So I researched, I watched, and I listened, as I always have when trying to understanding why more humans are killing each other. And then I saw it. With a great disappointment for what it was — an attempt of the eradication of a people. A genocide.
Today, as I start writing this, it is the 16th of January, 2025. A ceasefire has been agreed upon. Hopefully, this one is held. 467 days. 46,707 killed. Including nearly 18,000 children. More than 15 months of death, of daily murder, starvation, displacements, and most likely rape. And for what? Land. And a warped belief of promise. Yes— Hamas is guilty of the terrorist attack that they carried out which initiated this genocide. Israeli hostages were taken. There was no excuse for that. I am not trying to justify it. However — could one compare this act of retaliation to an event like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising? Or any forms of resistance that we saw throughout the Second World War? Or during any war for that matter, because even if only managed by a small amount of people, there is always fight for freedom. Containment, living under strict ruling restricting freedoms, medical care, basic human rights forgone, violence, and psychological torture. For the people of Palestine have been living under a social apartheid for the past 75 years. Would one not eventually react? Would you not react? To me, the attack that Hamas inflicted, was the excuse that Israel had long awaited for. Finally, they could cover themselves with the label of defence and commence their genocidal land-grab.
Now here — I really want to differentiate between Jews and Judaism, and Zionists and Zionism. Because there most certainly is a difference! And it is incredibly important to see the difference, as I have seen comments on social media platforms saying horrid, uneducated things such as “the Austrian painter was right and he should have gassed them all” — referring to how A.H should have been allowed to complete his Final Solution: the eradication of all Jews and the Jewish faith. This is disgusting. And it is worrying that some people are not seeing the difference between a Jew and a Zionist. Because this is what is fuelling further fascism and antisemitism within our world today. Are Israel even aware that their actions are what is fuelling antisemitism?? On this note — we literally have seen Jewish Holocaust survivors speaking out against Israel and of the genocide and literal war crimes they are committing. Yet, we still have people (Zionists), not listening! Some grasping at any ropes of control that they have suggested that those Holocaust survivors are not real Jews. How disgraceful. I’m sure that the perished ancestors of these Zionists are incredibly disappointed. The ancestors who only ever wanted peace and freedom, and for all.
People don’t want to compare the “war” on Gaza (this is not a war, because a war needs to be double sided, and this is a mass attack on civilians), to the Holocaust that was inflicted by the Nazi’s. Why are we so scared to compare? Is it because people are so scared of being hit with that antisemitism label? Yes. Yes, people are scared of being labelled as such. The Zionist’s know exactly what they’re doing with this. Because they can play the guilt card. It is guilt and that warped sense of entitlement. Entitlement being that since their ancestors perished from what they experienced within 1920-1945 (because antisemitism was long on the rise before the Nazi party even came into power, this sustained and secured their vote into government in 1933), that they too are allowed to behave as such. The Zionist literally see the people of Palestine as ‘less than’, as not real people. Which is the exact same beliefs and ideologies that the Nazi’s had of the Jews.
Congratulations my non-friend, you have let yourself become as bad as your own oppressor, and you are also damaging Judaism, as well as boosting antisemitism, racism, and violence around the world. Well done.
Going forward, as the remaining Palestinian people return to their rightful homes that no longer exist—and struggle to live with the many mental and physical health issues that have been flicked upon them whilst they search through the rubbles for missing loved ones, or what is left of them—Israel must be held responsible for their extensive war crimes. Following the end of the Second World War, we saw The Nuremberg Trials, where criminal tribunals trialed and prosecuted German military authorities and political officials for the war crimes and atrocities that they had committed. Many guilty, blood-dripping hands fled trial and punishment due to their escape, mostly to Argentina/South America. That was inexcusable, and what would be even more inexcusable today would be the world not putting Israel officials through their well deserved trial and punishment. There is no denying the war crimes and genocide that they’ve committed! Because we have all been watching. We have seen footage and photographs of this genocide freshly through social media. How dystopian that you’re on social media and are laughing at an amusing post, and then you see people begging for your help from inside a genocide? Just imagine if our grandparents and great-grandparents had seen the Holocaust as casually as we see the Palestinian genocide now.
To conclude, those questions, of the ‘Who? What? Why?’ no longer linger around my mind. If my grandfather were alive today, I would look at him and nod quietly with understanding. And I would tell him that I finally see. I unfortunately understand it. I see how his fathers generation let the Holocaust happen. I can see how the world let the rise of antisemitism grow swiftly into such a murderous place. I can see how fascism also took the lives of millions of others who were not deemed superior within their mind, body, faith, and political views. And I can see this all now, because it has been happening before me, in my lifetime. I no longer have these questions for my grandfather, for I am seeing a genocide now. In my time. Right before my eyes. This, is the Palestinian Genocide.
Have I offended you from this opinion of mine? I don’t care if I have. Because if you are someone with the belief that the Zionists have been well within their apparent rights to conduct the war crimes and this genocide that they had committed, then you need to sit down with yourself and ponder the concept of morality. And I will personally (especially whilst raising a child and teaching her about morality and humanity) will not sit here and no longer share my opinion of the Palestinian genocide, for my great-grandfather fought such similar evil so I could be alive and speaking today.
And please remember that the power actually stands with us, with the people. So don’t stop talking about this. Handy Tip: Pull your awareness, attention, and money from the public figures/celebrities that have not used their privileged platforms that WE gave them, to speak out about the genocide, and invest that awareness and time into yourself as well as towards the liberation of Palestine and Judaism from Zionism. We especially cannot let our Palestinian friends down. Because very soon, our children and Great-Grandchildren are going to be the ones asking us how we let this genocide happen.
Soon, my child will be asking me the very same questions that I once asked my Grandfather.
