If penitential prayers are heard in Israel on this Day of Atonement, then we have learned nothing from the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The misconception that Israel is capable of sinning is still deeply rooted
Let the Gentiles fast. They deserve it. Let God fast. He also deserves it after all he has done to us. Let the thousands of starving Palestinian detainees fast, not the Jews who have never done anyone any harm. The fast is fitting for the two million war refugees in Gaza. They deserve to fast, not us. We deserve only good, and we have nothing to apologize for. We were and remain a chosen people, a villa in the jungle. A nation of lions never needs to apologize.
If selihot (penitential prayers) are heard in Israel tonight, we will know that Israel has learned nothing since the Yom Kippur War in 1973: The mistaken concept that Israel is even capable of sinning is still deeply rooted.
On this Yom Kippur eve, the whole world should apologize to Israel. Palestinians should ask for forgiveness for everything they have done to Jews since the dawn of Zionism. How they tried to resist the establishment of a foreign state in their land, how they still dare to complain about the Nakba and how they have since tried to resist the Zionist project that seeks Jewish supremacy forever between the river and the sea.
How dare they resist living in the cage of Gaza and the West Bank. They are the ones who should ask for forgiveness. For resisting the occupation, they should seek atonement in mosques; turn to their God and say: “Forgive us, our Father, for we have sinned, pardon us, our King, for we have transgressed.”
All other nations of the world should also apologize to Israel. The British should apologize for the Balfour Declaration and for the sanctions they seek to impose on the most just, legal and moral enterprise in the world, the settlement enterprise. Along with them, all European countries that wish to follow their path. Sorry, settlers.
Gideon Levy is a Haaretz columnist and a member of the newspaper’s editorial board. He is the author of the weekly Twilight Zone feature, which covers the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza over the last 25 years, as well as the writer of political editorials for the newspaper. Levy was the recipient of the Euro-Med Journalist Prize for 2008; the Leipzig Freedom Prize in 2001; the Israeli Journalists’ Union Prize in 1997; and The Association of Human Rights in Israel Award for 1996. His new book, The Punishment of Gaza, has just been published by Verso Publishing House in London and New York.