‘Barbarians at the Gates of Israel’ by Fiamma Nirenstein

One of the most moving pieces I have ever read.

Fiamma Nirenstein in her “Barbarians at the Gates of Israel” takes the reader into the mindset of both the terrorists who committed the October 7th atrocities, and into the mindset of the victims, their families and the people of Israel.

Barbarians at the Gates of Israel published by Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs is a must read.

Here is an excerpt:

The Descent into Barbarism

It was the morning of October 7, 2023. The sun shone gloriously on the yellow sand, the grass of the kibbutzim, the swing chairs beneath the veranda, the lopsided sculptures, the children’s bicycles, the’ grandparents’ electric cars, the shells threaded onto string swinging in the wind and tinkling in front of the houses. The sea nearby. Everyone was sleeping. It was six o’clock on Shabbat morning. Not far away, a crowd of thousands of young people was dancing to pounding rave music at a festival called Nova, lightheaded with youth and peace until collapsing into sleep.

In the kibbutzim of southern Israel, among the Israeli families, this was the beginning of a holiday; nobody knew of the reality of roaring white pickup trucks breaking through the mesh fences and walls to invade. The inhabitants of Be’eri or Kfar Aza had wanted to create in the south one of the most utopian pictures of the homeland of the Jewish people, in the style of the early twenty-first century: a little socialist, very loving, ecological, and pacifist as well as technological, even holding a daily dialogue with the inhabitants of Gaza, neighbors across the yellow space, with gifts to the children, cookies, and health care.
At six-thirty, the legion of children, about three per family, princes, and princesses, masters of all, were sleeping before a new royal awakening of kisses and cookies. The grandparents

had left the Friday-night tables half laid, with the traces of the large families who had eaten the foods of their Polish or Moroccan past. They would sleep a little longer, as would the longhaired post-army youngsters, with the guitars propped in the corner, the cell phones already buzzing with all the TikToks trying vainly to warn them: “Wake up, something’s going on!” But it was already too late. In the houses overflowing with books and flowers, the many peace ideals would be incinerated with the special thermobaric RPG grenades, large black spindles (we saw dozens of unexploded ones) that explode at 2000 degrees and carbonize everything, leaving the victims and the houses, objects, and people, unrecognizable and unidentifiable. This is precisely what happened. I have seen photographs of the carbonized victims, like the victims of Pompeii.

As missiles began to rain everywhere, much more than the usual barrage of the southern communities constantly shelled by Hamas, I received a call from my shocked friend Ruthie: “Do you maybe know why they’re shooting so much and everywhere?” I didn’t know, nobody knew, nobody was expecting it. As in 1973, when the Yom Kippur War took a toll of about 2,700 Israeli soldiers, Israel had believed that its moral and technological superiority, its mythical powers of survival against all and everything, nullified any warning, any forecast. Instead, everything would soon be ashes and blood. In the 1920s and 1930s, in Europe, Gershom Scholem, Franz Rosenzweig, Walter Benjamin, and others relied on the refinement of advanced German thought without an inkling that anything was brewing in the country. They did not know, precisely because of their sophistication and hope in life joined with materialization, that a monster was lurking in the shadows, planning how to kill all the Jews, one by one, and bury them under the ruins of Europe.

[ … ]

The genuine wish for peace is only that which understands patience, namely long and difficult support for a painful but necessary war against Hamas. This was the case with Al Qaeda and ISIS. Moreover, it should be understood that, just as to achieve peace, it was necessary to fight the Nazi menace until its eradication, including Hitler, his officials, and governing infrastructure, so today this must be repeated because it has been demonstrated again that cruelty can go beyond the bounds of the most demonic imagination.

Therefore, let us hope for a victory over evil, a triumph of what we love and believe in. Let us hope for democracy and common sense, not for a premature ceasefire, but only when evil is stamped out. Peace will be achieved only with the patience and courage of today’s soldiers on the battlefield…

 Click here to read Fiamma’s entire 34 page treatise

About Dr. Fiamma Nirenstein

Dr. Fiamma Nirenstein was a member of the Italian Parliament (2008-2013) where she served as Vice President of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the Chamber of Deputies, served in the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, and established and chaired the Committee for the Inquiry into Anti-Semitism. A founding member of the international Friends of Israel Initiative, she is the author of 13 books, including Israel Is Us (2009). She is a Fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

©2024. Harold Rhode. All rights reserved.

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