If you’ve just been in Gaza, as I have, it’s quite hard to watch the spoof video made by a group of Israelis called Latma (it means “slap” in Hebrew slang) and distributed by the Israeli government press office, which has been posted on YouTube.
The government has apologised now, but the damage is done.
In the video, sung to the tune of We Are the World, the Israelis sing “There’s no people dying, so the best we can do is create the best bluff of all. We must go on pretending day by day”.
Latma was founded by Jerusalem Post correspondent Caroline Glick, and has made previous spoof videos, including one accusing Scandinavian governments of “anti Semitic blood libel” and another referring to President Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel – who was recently in Jerusalem for his son’s bar mitzvah – as a “self hating Jew”, because he is part of a US administration which Latma regards as hostile to Israel.
Their point in this video is the one the Israeli government has been making – that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and the flotilla activists who were killed were “terrorists” not aid workers.
But, as we reported last night, poverty and hardship in Gaza have been exacerbated by the blockade. The aid agencies have chronicled it in detail, and I’ve seen it with my own eyes. This is not the Ethiopian famine, but the deliberate destruction of the Gazan economy.
The Israelis say their actions are necessary to contain Hamas, but even the US government wants the blockade eased because it has destroyed the livelihood of ordinary Gazans, increasing destitution and dependence on aid. It may have increased support for radical Islam and Hamas as well – that’s what tends to happen when people are cornered.
The video has had more than 1.3m hits on Youtube. I suspect that most of those who’ve watched and laughed don’t understand that to outsiders it looks as if they’re regarding Palestinian life with contempt. They’ve probably never met a Palestinian, because these days most Israelis don’t interact with their Arab neighbours at all.
You can argue that’s the fault of Palestinian militants who used to carry out suicide bombings in Israel and who still fire rockets from Gaza, refusing to accept that killing Israeli civilians is wrong. They might argue that they are still living under military occupation and many more of their civilians are killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers. Then you end up with the everlasting Middle East argument about who started it.
The Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said the video had nothing to do with the Israeli government, but he called his kids in to watch it becauses he found it funny.
But it didn’t make me laugh, it made me cry because it shows how far apart Israelis and Palestinians are these days and how hard it is for either to acknowledge the other’s humanity.