Surely our lives matter too?

Oded Lifshitz was a journalist. He was a dedicated father and grandfather. He was a kibbutznik through and through, having helped to start Nir Oz 70 years ago. He was a man who dedicated his life to helping others.

He spent much of his time taking sick Gazans to Israeli hospitals to get good medical treatment.

He believed in peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and intrinsically saw the possibilities of this in his lifetime.

This isn’t the picture of a man who could ever be considered a threat to the Palestinian people. To the contrary, he was someone who believed in the good in everyone and finding a peaceful solution.

But when Hamas and its terrorist cronies destroyed Kibbutz Nir Oz and killed or kidnapped 117 of its 400 residents, they didn’t stop to ask what Oded, 83, and his wife, Yocheved, 85, thought of Palestinians or how they had helped Gazans.

They simply saw an elderly Jewish couple whose home they could burn down and destroy, and who they could use as cannon fodder by taking them hostage. They shot Oded in the hand, and took them both separately. They dragged Yocheved off without her shoes or glasses, and threw her on the back of a motorbike and beat her as they took her through to Gaza.

Oded’s body was returned last week along with the bodies of the two Bibas boys and a woman who was said to be their mother, Shiri, but turned out to be a Gazan woman. Oded was believed to have been murdered before the end of 2023.

“My father spent his life in the peace movement and he fought for the possibility of both nations [Israelis and Palestinians] living peacefully side by side,” Sharone Lifshitz, Oded’s daughter told the media after her mother was released 17 days after being taken hostage. “He believed that you do peace with your enemies.”

Why, while the world is concentrating on the Bibas family, am I focusing on this elderly man killed by Hamas when there were so many other victims?

Quite simply because those who hate us would have you believe that the people whom Hamas took hostage or killed were their enemies. Hamas – and those who see the terrorist organisation as the side of good – want you to believe that someone like Oded was a threat to them and so they murdered him in captivity. They want you to believe that someone like Oded can be compared to convicted terrorists in Israeli prisons who killed many as they tried to destroy the people of Israel. They want you to believe that Oded, whose dream was Israelis living in peace with Palestinians, was similar to those with whom his body was to be swopped in the ceasefire agreement’s hostage-prisoner exchange.

How can anyone in their right mind compare them? Those coming from the prisons are convicted of murdering numbers of people in their attempt to obliterate Israel. Those aren’t people who are ever likely even to consider peace or to find a way to live side by side with Israelis. What are the chances that those released will try to return to do more damage?

And yet, our haters want you to believe that Oded was a threat that needed eradicating, so they killed him.

As his wife said at his funeral this week, “We fought all through the years for social justice, for peace. To my sorrow, we were hit by a terrible blow by those we helped on the other side.”

His grandson, Daniel, said at his graveside on Tuesday, 25 February, that Oded was the one who taught him that people were essentially “good”.

Oded was a left-wing journalist who led the fight for the Bedouins to remain on their lands. In fact, he defended Bedouin residents of Rafah when the Israeli army attempted to evacuate the Sinai Peninsula, and was an on-the-ground reporter covering the 1982 refugee camp massacre in Beirut.

Yes, and this is a man who was murdered by his captors as a hostage in Gaza. A threat, they say?

But then they also claim that the Bibas family was a threat. Clearly, they felt it was necessary to strangle a four year old and a nine-month-old baby and their young mother. They were a threat, really? Yet the many in the world who are against us will believe that, no matter how obvious it is to the contrary. Or perhaps they will simply ignore it because it doesn’t fit what they want to believe.

I imagine that’s the situation with President Cyril Ramaphosa, who so conveniently ignored the plight of the Bibas family and Oded this week when he spoke about the ceasefire in his statement at the G20 meeting with foreign affairs ministers.

Why was it necessary for the chairperson of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Professor Karen Milner, to have to point out to him that it’s not just Palestinians who have been affected in this war? Surely, our lives matter too!

On the very day that Oded and the bodies of the Bibas children were brought back to Israel, Ramaphosa spoke about the ceasefire and the “downtrodden” Palestinians, but made no mention of the horror of what happened to the hostages.

Surely when innocent children are brutalised, it doesn’t take much to inspire a human being to speak out against it. But our president didn’t. He simply ignored it.

Oded stood for all that the South African president and government pay lip service to in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Oded could potentially have been their champion, but his life and his death aren’t even a blip on their radar.

Having read as much as I could about Oded and his life, I realise that no matter how awful this situation is, he wouldn’t be baying for blood and vengeance. He would still want to find some way for Israel to live in peace.

As it stands, the idea of peace is for most of us something to dream about but something that unfortunately, isn’t around the corner.

I have no idea how and when it will be possible, but like most of us I do still dream of Israel turning “swords into ploughshares, and their spears into sickles”, call me an idealist. I dream of a day that Israel doesn’t have to send its sons to war or be in a situation where it has to make no-win agreements. It would also be great if our government here, especially Ramaphosa, acknowledged the damage it did every time it takes one side against us.

One has to have hope and dreams!

Shabbat Shalom!

Peta Krost

Editor