If there was any justice in the world, the international community would have prevented Israel's attack, says Israeli researcher Maya Rosenfeld. He belongs to the minority in his country because he believes that there is an alternative to war.
“This one the war should never have started” Maya Rosenfeld start.
He sits the reporter and cameraman on the couch of his home in Jerusalem and offers rolls and bananas. Rosenfeld is prepared to speak at length. In his home country of Israel, he has to be careful about what he says, or at least where and how he expresses it.
For HS, Rosenfeld talks non-stop, for two hours.
He wants to share his views on how the immense violence in Gaza, which started after the beginning of October and has now lasted for three months, could have been avoided.
If there was any justice in the world, the international community would have prevented the Israeli attack on Gaza, says Rosenfeld.
Rosenfeld wants to start the interview by stating his own position, i.e. the position he is talking about.
He is a sociologist and anthropologist. In addition, he calls himself a political activist.
He works at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Roselfed has conducted field research on, among other things, the lives of Palestinians under the Israeli occupation.
He has friends in Gaza. He lost his friends as a result of the terrorist act of the extremist organization Hamas on October 7.
He wants the state of Israel to exist, but he opposes Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories and considers it a cruel thing.
Roselfeld says that what happened on October 7th was an “earthquake”. It didn't change his views, but the consequences have been unprecedented.
Since the beginning of October, Rosenfeld has spent all his waking hours following news related to the war.
He wants to find answers on how to move forward from this situation.
“The mass murder of civilians must stop.”
He fears that Israel's current state leadership, nominally the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahumay continue the war even until 2025.
Maya Rosenfeld constantly follows war news.
of Ro
senfeld According to him, the terrorist attack by Hamas and the war in Gaza could have been avoided if Israel had adopted a different policy towards the Palestinians from the beginning.
However, he considers it an overly simplistic idea that what Hamas did is a direct result of the occupation.
What Hamas did was a rational decision. It had been planned for a long time. It wasn't done on the spur of the moment.
“It was a rough decision.”
Rosenfeld says that the attack by Hamas on the military targets of the occupier, i.e. Israel, would have been justified, even if it would have been in no way advisable for Palestinian civilians due to Israel's military supremacy.
However, Hamas was not satisfied with only military targets, but decided to carry out the mass murder of civilians.
“It was a shock for me personally. Hamas knew what would follow from the attack,” says Rosenfeld.
To violence The spiral formula has been known for a long time. Hamas strikes the Israeli side with its home-made rockets, and Israel responds with superior aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
The October attack by Hamas was quite extraordinary in its scale. About 1,100 to 1,200 people died in Israel, of which more than 700 were civilians. About 240 people were taken hostage by Hamas, and more than 100 of them are still in Gaza. Israel has not experienced anything like it since the Holocaust. Israel said it would respond to the Hamas attack with unprecedented force, and it has.
At least 23,000 people are believed to have died in Gaza. Almost two million people have been forced to leave their homes. Almost 70 percent of the homes have been damaged or destroyed. People are starving and diseases are spreading.
Hamas knew exactly what kind of consequences the attack would have on the Gazan population, but it didn't care, says Rosenfeld.
Maya Rosenfeld feels that she belongs to the minority in her home country of Israel because she believes that there is an alternative to war.
Rosenfeld says that he pondered over how the war in Gaza could have been avoided.
“Israel should never have been allowed to attack Gaza. The international community should have intervened,” he states.
Hamas should have been forced to surrender. Not by armed force, but
by political means.
This would have required the support of both the United States and Arab states close to Hamas such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
“If [Yhdysvaltain presidentti Joe] Biden had been brave, or had some kind of directness, he would have told Israel to stop.”
Israel should have been told that you have brought this conflict to a dead end and now you must take responsibility for it. Your time is up, you can't go on like this.
The task of the Arab states would have been to convince Hamas that they no longer have a place in Gaza, that they must leave.
Rosenfeld believes that Hamas could have listened.
“At least this opportunity should have been created,” he says.
Hamas after the terrorist act, especially in Europe and the United States, there was quite a consensus on Israel's right to defend itself.
In the public debate, almost no alternative to war was brought up, even though it was known what war means for the civilian population of Gaza.
Several experts estimate that Israel's goal of destroying Hamas is not realistic. It is impossible to destroy Hamas because it is basically an ideology. Or if Hamas were to be destroyed, new, possibly even more radical, extremist organizations could take their place.
“Sometimes there are moments in history when you have to accept that you lost. Israel lost on October 7,” says Rosenfeld.
Israelis and Palestinians deserve to live in peace, and that could have been possible if Hamas had been offered the opportunity to lay down its arms and withdraw from Gaza, he continues.
The destruction of the war in the city of Rafah in southern Gaza.
of Rosenfeld according to it is sad how widely it is thought in Israel that the destruction of Gaza and the bombing of civilians can lead to something good.
Bombing has always been part of Israel's range of means. It has become too commonplace, and it generally has no impact on the lives of most Israelis, says Rosenfeld.
According to him, one of the biggest problems is the continuous armed support of the United States to Israel.
Israel doesn't have to pay for its war, nor for the reconstruction of Gaza, which is why Israelis never think about the
consequences of war, says Rosenfeld.
“Do we have any choice but to bomb Gaza, Israeli Jews ask.”
It shows how easy it is for Israelis to take up arms. How easy it is to bomb unarmed civilians, he says.
Rosenfeld is disappointed not only with the Israelis but also with the Palestinians.
He does not understand why the Palestinians have not condemned the attack by Hamas.
Hamas is not interested in improving people's lives. They are interested in how to be in better positions in battles, says Rosenfeld.
A recent opinion poll from December tellsthat support for Hamas has only increased in the West Bank since the October attack.
of Rosenfeld according to 95 percent of Israeli Jews support the ongoing war in Gaza, and about half of them think that Gaza should be bombed to the ground, leaving only a large football field.
He himself says that he belongs to the five percent minority who believe that there is an alternative to war.
Because of this opinion, Rosenfeld has received a lot of hate mail. He says that he sometimes writes his opinions under a pseudonym.
“I feel very lonely here sometimes.”
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