Desabafo de um Judeu

I share with my readers the important outburst of a dear friend sent to his work colleagues at a very complicated time not only for Israelis, not only for Jews, but for all good people in this world. It is a first-person account of what the Jewish community around the world has been feeling since the Hamas terrorist attacks on 10/7.

Please understand, the reports from friends and relatives in Israel, the terrible photos we saw, videos we watched in horror, each day new and more brutal, the cowardly barbarity that our brothers, human beings being treated worse than insects, suffered a true progress in the 21st century, just 78 years after the end of the Holocaust, we relive the same types of attacks, the same extreme brutalities, and the same contempt that we experienced for more than 2,000 years, culminating in the brutal murder of 6,000,000 innocent lives . We will carry this tragedy for years to come . These will be wounds that will forever be marked in the history of the Jewish people, yet another one.

Worth reading and sharing:

“Yesterday I wasn’t feeling well at the meeting, in fact I was feeling bad, I believe some noticed.

I confess to you that I was no longer there after the start of the meeting when we talked about the war, from then on I didn’t hear what was said, my mouth closed, my head went elsewhere.

I was no longer able to coordinate my ideas, speech and thoughts, those subjects that excited me so much became banal from one moment to the next.

With the simple and necessary objective of expressing how I feel, I will dare to write the text below, they are words from the heart.

I’m feeling very sad, it’s a feeling that has been inside me since 7/10.

It’s not a superficial sadness, it’s deep, it’s a feeling similar to when we lose a close relative, it makes you want to cry out of nowhere, it’s painful.

I will explain to you the reasons for this sadness.

I am not a practicing Jew, but on the other hand, I love the traditions, the history of my people, the unity of the community, the values ​​and principles of my religion (they are simple…10 commandments), being a Jew is not a question of practice, it is a matter of the soul.

My grandparents immigrated to Brazil from Russia, Poland and Germany, they immigrated even before the Second World War broke out because the persecution of Jews was already huge at the time, they came to Brazil without knowing how to speak Portuguese, without assets or money, they came “ fugitives” in search of a better life in a free country.

On my wife’s side, her grandmother was rescued from Auchwitz at the end of the second war (she weighed 40 kilos when she was rescued), she lost all her relatives (parents, 8 brothers, cousins) except for one sister who survived and today lives in Israel, this sister is 99 years old, she is one of the few Holocaust survivors still alive.

After being rescued, my wife’s grandmother went to a refugee camp and then went to Israel where she was part of the founding of the country.

My wife’s grandfather “was” shot in Auchwitz, he managed to hide under bodies and survived, in the end he was lucky enough to be saved by Schindler, he was one of the names on the famous list.

My mother-in-law is Israeli, my father-in-law is Moroccan, he went to Israel as a teenager and became Israeli, they met there, got married and today I am married to their daughter, and we have 2 beautiful daughters.

My father-in-law fought in the 73 war in Israel.

We have relatives, many friends, children of friends and acquaintances in Israel, many of them going to the front to defend the homeland (Israel does not use mercenaries, it is our own people who defend the country, they are young people and adults, sons, daughters, fathers and mothers).

Our connection with the country and the Israeli people is deep despite the distance.

We carry in our souls deep scars from many centuries of persecution, expulsions, contempt and prejudice (anti-Semitism), these scars seemed to be closed, but they were just brutally reopened on 10/07.

Since it is now clear that I am a Jew, let’s get to what saddens me (besides the bombings and the war as a whole).

Dear “humanist” friends and colleagues who so quickly sympathize with the suffering of the Palestinians and forget the suffering of the Jews, I say to you:

It hurts my soul to see the suffering of human beings in Gaza, whether men, women and especially children, it really hurts, perhaps even more than it hurts any of you, it directly affects me in different ways, and for you are more of a topic at lunch while you drink an ice-cold chablis and ponder the injustices of the world.

But at the same time I ask you: why didn’t I even hear an expression of solidarity in relation to the barbarity that happened to the Jews on the 7th?

I heard the sound of silence, I heard that the Jews must not defend themselves because innocent people will die.

Don’t human rights apply to everyone?

Are Jews always to blame?

And what about the humanists who, when they see images of babies having their throats cut off, people with their heads ripped off, hundreds of people shot, women raped, entire families burned alive, are not moved to learn that the victims are Jews? What to talk about this? The emotion lasts 2 minutes…then soon after that comes the concern for the poor Palestinians (who are victims too, of course).

And the humanists who say nothing when terrorists kill their own Muslim Arab citizens by throwing gays off buildings, stoning unfaithful women, shooting political opponents, embezzling money from hospitals to buy weapons, how do they justify this double standard of now being ultra concerned? with the Palestinians? Where was the concern for the Palestinians themselves while all this was happening?

How is it possible for someone to think that Israel should not retaliate (in fact defend itself) against Hamas because Palestinians will die? What are you thinking? That we should abandon the 300 hostages in the hands of Hamas to their fate? Is that what you would do if it was one of yours?

Are we condemned to suffer attacks, receive rockets to the head, just defend ourselves because our enemies use their own population as human shields?

Or are we doomed to always suffer attacks and that we deserve this because we are Jews (and therefore guilty) and cannot have a homeland to call our own?

Ahhh, but the Israeli army is very strong, how are they going to fight against terrorists who only have firecrackers?

Is that what you think happens there?

Israel could use lasers to just kill terrorists, right? Do you think this is how it works? Are you not informed?

Ahhh, Israel should give a proportional response….ok, let’s look for a rave party in Gaza and kill, rape and do everything they did to the Israelis, let’s find a village with the same amount of people and burn them alive …would this be a proportional response?

I’m sorry, Jews don’t do that, we don’t wake up in the morning thinking of a thousand ways to kill Palestinians, quite the opposite.

It is precisely for this reason and for this reason that the Zionist movement arose, so that the Jews would never again be driven from their places, so that the Jews would have a safe haven, so that the Jews could exist… without Israel, I would not be here, Without Israel there would be no more Jews in the world.

Our army is strong, and that is what guarantees our existence…we will become increasingly stronger, more united.

For those of you who are looking for fake news to unsee what you saw, to justify to yourself the horror and barbarity against Jews, continue like this, or else, if you want to get out of this bubble of prejudice and justifications for the unjustifiable, I recommend that you get out of your bubbles and seek correct and true information, which takes away the eternal guilt of the Jews and puts yourself in the shoes of one of us for at least 1 minute.

 For you who are looking for confirmations in your bubble to be able to say that there is apartheid in Israel, what does it tell me when you know that before 1948 there were 900 thousand Jews living in Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Syria, etc., that these Jews lived peacefully in these regions for centuries until 1948 and that they had to flee to avoid being executed and that today there is not a single Jew living in these areas, what do you say?

What do they tell me when I learn that in Israel 20% of the population is Arab, that 20% of the parliament is Arab, that there are Arab Israeli soldiers, that there are Arab police officers, Arab doctors, etc., living peacefully with the entire Israeli society, that Is it apartheid? What do you say to me when you learn that Israel allows (allowed) 20,000 Palestinians from Gaza every day, despite all the threats, to enter the territory to work?

If your neighbors had a contingent of 30 thousand terrorists within their territory and knowing that these terrorists are willing to die to take the life of a Brazilian, wouldn’t you protect yourself from that? Wouldn’t it control its border?

If FARCS “guerrillas” were in Brazil and dismembered 35 thousand Brazilians (yes, that’s the proportion), kidnapped 4 thousand citizens, wouldn’t you do anything? Would you send flowers?

But you can rest assured, when the next gay nightclub blows up the Jews will be in solidarity, when the next attack takes place in beautiful Paris, don’t worry, we will be by your side, when the next plane blows down a building, don’t worry, we will be with you at Civilization’s fight against barbarism, but please don’t blame the Jews, okay? We are not the terrorists.

The subject of conflicts is very complex, Israel makes mistakes and has made a lot of mistakes in several aspects, there are points of view for everyone, but it is unacceptable for what terrorists did to be relativized or mitigated by any opinion in relation to the conflict. There is no BUT… and Israel has the right and obligation to defend itself and its people.

For those who haven’t seen Roni Meisler’s video from RESERVA, I suggest you watch it, whoever has seen it, I suggest you watch it again. I make his words my own, the tone of the message is the same.

I don’t care if they call this story of victimism and I also don’t care if anyone here will notice what I wrote, but I didn’t sleep that night and I needed to get it off my chest.

A kiss for you”