Israel’s atrocities cannot be washed clean by diplomatic platitudes
THE article by Israeli Ambassador Dana Kursh, “From joy to grief: Reflections on October 7 and the enduring bonds between Israel and the Philippines,” published here is an expertly polished piece of moral cosmetics, which, however, still has death’s reek.
It shamelessly packages two years of blood and rubble into a language of “resilience,” “faith” and “friendship.” It asks Filipinos to weep with Israel yet avert their eyes from Gaza’s smoking ruins. It calls on our empathy to cleanse Israel’s conscience.
It is certainly a demonstration of the height of hypocrisy that this envoy of a genocidal state does not even mention in her 1,000-word article a particular number so important in any discussion of Israel today: 61,755. That is the number of Palestinians, half of them women and children, killed by the Israel Defense Force (IDF) — of which this envoy was once an army captain — since the Hamas raid in Oct. 7, 2023, in its war of extermination of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
The real number could be way over 100,000, an article in the respected Lancet magazine reported, as the Israelis waged war not in battlefields but in thickly populated urban areas, and the Palestinians didn’t have the resources to dig out those buried in buildings’ rubble.
Kursh opens her pack of lies with a serene view, she “is sitting in her embassy office looking at the beautiful green view of BGC and the Laguna Bay on the horizon.” Kursh should visualize the fact that her IDF destroyed so many buildings in Gaza City, where residents most probably had green views and the Mediterranean on the horizon before the IDF bombed them.
Yes, the Oct. 7 Hamas raid was horrific. No sane person celebrates the slaughter of innocents. But the ambassador’s selective retelling hides the scale of the horror that followed. In retaliation, Israel has unleashed an industrial war machine upon 2 million trapped civilians, turning Gaza into an open-air graveyard. Entire families have been vaporized. Children are pulled out of rubble every day, many still clutching their schoolbags. Hospitals have been bombed, doctors executed beside their patients, journalists targeted for daring to document the carnage.
The United States, of course, has as much blood on its hands as the Israelis, giving the IDF $30-billion war materiel, without which the genocide could not have been undertaken.
Kursh calls Hamas a “terrorist organization.” But what do we call a state that kills over 60,000 Palestinians, and with utter impunity as they don’t care that these crimes have been filmed in so many documentaries and hundreds of TV news reports. What do we call the bombing of refugee camps, the cutting off of food, water and electricity, the deliberate starvation of civilians? Collective punishment is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. Israel commits it daily — proudly, defiantly and with Western blessings.
Vengeance
And two years into Israel’s merciless war of vengeance, its government has not explained how an operation by hundreds of Hamas militants crossing barbed-wire fences stretching hundreds of kilometers wasn’t detected by its intelligence services like the Mossad, the civilian Shimnet and the military’s Aman, considered the best in the world. Is it just coincidental that Israel’s overkill retaliation has salvaged the steeply falling political fortunes of its Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu, with even the head of Shimnet filing a criminal case against him?
The genocidal state’s envoy cloaks her “narrative in faith”: Simchat Torah, the day of “rejoicing with the Torah,” she says, was turned into tragedy. The symbolism is powerful — but faith should illuminate justice, not justify vengeance. “Healing,” she writes, “as a people and as a nation.” Yet how can a nation heal while it crushes another beneath its tanks?
She even invokes Filipino religiosity — our Catholic devotion, our belief in redemption — to cast Israel’s war as a spiritual struggle. It is diabolically manipulative. It seeks to draw moral equivalence between our people’s faith and Israel’s impunity. The result is blatantly blasphemous: she turns religion into propaganda. The God of mercy she quotes has nothing to do with the God who watches hospitals burn, children killed, an entire population starved to death — and all shown in TV news.
Israel’s government has perfected the weaponization of grief. Every Israeli death is amplified to justify the erasure of Palestinian lives. Every rocket from Gaza becomes a pretext for another neighborhood erased. The IDF proudly posts videos of missile strikes as if they were advertising new products. The dead are reduced to data points, the survivors to human shields in official statements.
When Kursh writes of “healing through friendship,” she hopes Filipinos will forget the statistics: more than 70 percent of Gaza’s housing destroyed, over 200 journalists killed, doctors tortured in detention and mass graves discovered at hospital sites where Israeli troops withdrew. This is not self-defense. It is organized cruelty, the logical endpoint of an ideology that sees Palestinians as disposable.
Quezon
Kursh praises President Quezon for opening Philippine doors to Jewish refugees in 1937. That moment remains one of our proudest humanitarian acts. But she exploits that history to extract moral silence from us today. The Philippines saved lives fleeing genocide; Israel inflicts one.
She writes lovingly of the Filipino caregivers working in Israel, of our students learning Israeli agriculture. Yet she never mentions the Filipino workers killed by Israeli bombs, nor the migrant laborers trapped in shelters during air raids. The friendship she touts is transactional — a cover for military and cybersecurity contracts worth billions. Israel’s “shared innovation” with us includes surveillance technology used to monitor Palestinians. Some of those same tools are now marketed in the Philippines.
Let’s list what Kursh omits:
– The use of white phosphorus, banned in civilian areas, raining fire over Rafah and Khan Younis.
– The bombing of Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, killing hundreds seeking refuge.
– The targeting of UN schools and shelters, even when their coordinates were given to the IDF.
– The blockade that starved Gaza’s infants and denied medicine to the sick.
– The mass arrest and torture of thousands of Palestinians, many never charged.
– The killing of entire families whose names will never make it to Western media headlines.
Damage
This is not collateral damage — it is policy. Israel has turned Gaza into a laboratory for permanent occupation. Every war “to end Hamas” leaves Hamas stronger, and every child orphaned today becomes tomorrow’s resistance fighter. Violence has become the Israeli state’s default language.
When Russia bombed Mariupol, the West cried “war crimes.” When Israel flattens Gaza, the same voices say “self-defense.” The hypocrisy is nauseating.
This is the moment for moral clarity. To condemn Israel’s crimes is not to endorse Hamas; it is to defend humanity. To call for a ceasefire is not antisemitic; it is anti-genocide. To question Israeli policy is not hatred — it is conscience.
The Manila Times should join the civilized world in condemning Israel and its genocide of Palestinians, and the killing of 200 journalists by refusing to give it space in its efforts to disseminate lies. It is the only media outlet that has published Kursh’s lies. Would it have published a piece by Hitler’s propaganda wizard Goering condemning Jews before the war?
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Israel’s atrocities cannot be washed clean by diplomatic platitudes
Source: Breaking News PH
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