Not too long ago, Tommy Lapid, head of the Shinui party expressed shock and dismay at the site of an old Palestinian woman sifting through the rubble of her home in Rafah destroyed by the Israel army. Lapid said the sight reminded him of the plight of his Grandmother in Eastern Europe who had suffered at the hands of the Nazis. Lapid’s remark was very controversial, because of the implicit Nazi-Israel army connection. But what bothered me was the hypocrisy of it – after all he is a senior member of the government that authorized these brutal actions, and his party is the lynch-pin of that government. Gideon Levy pursues that thought.
“Yet Lapid’s grandma tales – no matter how candid and dramatic they might be – cannot exempt him in the slightest from his major responsibility for the plight of the elderly Palestinian woman. After all, the government in which he serves as a senior cabinet minister, directly and knowingly, caused the demolition of her home. The Israel Defense Forces raided Rafah with the approval of Lapid’s government; while citing the express objective of widening the Philadelphi route, the army demolished the homes of innocent civilians, including the residence of this old woman, who could be seen scavenging through the rubble, looking for her medicine.”
