Category: War & Humanity

Inna Rogatchi (C). Freeze. War & Humanity. 2023.

Maniac Lenin has left perhaps one bit of something useful after him, his  formula about  ‘useful idiots’. We are still using it a century after that miserable psychotic has died. Not only due to a successful wording, but mainly because it is so widely applicable.

But now, we are having a modification of that shrewd observation. Humanity progressed to the new category of idiots :hateful ones. All those media hysterics, political hypocrites, intellectual left-wing militants who were running the one before the other, in their breathless, blind hatred against Israel that was accused by such indisputable for them ‘angels’ as Hamas, of mass atrocity against that hospital in Gaza. Which turned out not only to be a blatant Goebbels propaganda lie, but also the hospital turned out to be not a hospital but a small car parking lot nearby. 

CNN, New York Times, vicious BBC, Sky News, all possible Guardians and Independents of all sorts, not to speak of myriad of heavily pro-militant Islamists-does-not-matter-what media outfits all over oh-so-democratic Europe, oh-so-humanistic Australia, and many others supposedly oh-so-civilised corners of this pathetic globe rushed breathlessly, with that Danton-like fevered eyes of zealotry, against Israel, the only Jewish state on this earth, as small as it is, amidst 40 of oh-so-nice and hospitable, so democratic Arab countries. 

I just wonder: if Israel is oh-so-awful, why the h-ck Hamas boss , and many of his buddies, were repeatedly treating his daughter, their other relatives and themselves by oh-so-terrible Israeli doctors? It is another question why on earth it had become possible in the first place. 

What this united in their hysterical blind hatred international media, and many hateful idiots the politicians, including some of European countries’ leaders, such as speaker of the Belgian parliament, and unfortunately many others senior figures demonstrated in this stupidest if not so cruel episode over the gloating the Hamas-fed Goebbels propaganda and attacking Israel absolutely without reason whatsoever did show it is the real attitude of all those circles and individuals to the state of Israel – and the Jews in general, for this matter. And it does matter. It does.

I do not remember the more shameful collective attack against the victim with a huge looming V from the part of the oh-so-civilised world, especially in the face of its media and politicians world-wide. In fact, that shameful and absolutely ungrounded attack was nothing else but the manifest of hate. Primitive, in some cases, subconscious ( I know some of such politicians cases personally, sadly so) anti-Semitism, even instinctive one, which is often the case, as it is known by any researcher of anti-Semitism . What we saw in that shameful attack against Israel, with feverishly repeating Hamas lies, was nothing but barely masked real hatred and pure racism. 

One of our good friends Tomas Sandell who is not Jewish, has come with the following observation: “Why is the gut feeling of so many to automatically believe the terrorists when faced with the terrible news of the Gaza hospital strike? Do people think that the same savages who butchered Israeli civilians just one week ago are suddenly credible news sources that are inclined to tell the truth no matter what?” He knows the answer, of course. What is important here is the articulated publicly point of view. Of a civilised, honest person versus the huge bunch of screaming hateful idiots. 

Another non-Jewish person has entitled his very shrewd, spot-on article in this way: “Why won’t the Jews just let themselves be killed?” Indeed. The article has initiated a vivid discussion among our Jewish friends: “ Have you seen this?” – “Yes, brilliant”. – “Is the author Jewish?” – “No, I don’t think so”. – “But maybe, he is married to a Jewish woman?’” – ‘Don’t know, not sure. – “ Or perhaps he might have some Jewish relatives, even distant ones?”. Nobody knew the family relations of the brave and honest writer. And then one of us popped in with a reflection: “Or, perhaps, he is just a decent person?..”  Nobody knew the answer to that puzzling supposition either.

Puzzling indeed, in these days of a pyrrhic global feast of hateful idiots. And pyrrhic it is because one’s hate always,  sooner or later, but  just always,  turns against a hating subject. Doubly so if he or she is so explicitly idiotic.

Michael Rogatchi (C). Kaddish. Oil on canvas. 1995.

Several of our close friends in Israel are frantically busy these awful days. They are busy with only one thing. Funerals. One after another. Several a day. For several days. I never knew anything like that happening in a close proximity. 

Many people have their close circles hit with savages’ crimes. Once somebody you know has been viciously murdered , your soul rushes your body to the farewell. Our tradition in this respect is deep, thoughtful and exceedingly humane. 

With our people’s history, and its recent history when the Holocaust had become so terrifyingly near to us, to say respectful, meaningful farewell is a must. 

I am worried about some of our friends who have been attending  many funerals frantically , some of them as many as three per day. Our friends are not young. And they are not in the best medical form, to put it mildly. 

But they are determined to spend their days at this daring moment to their very best. And this best , under the circumstances of all-nation in Israel  and global Jewish mourning is to be able to be present physically and to say the Kaddish to as many people as they possibly could. 

I am just thinking of an  unprecedented density of horrifying non-stop funerals of known 1 400 victims of the Hamas terror , and counting, in the souls of those who have made their mission to respect as many souls as possible at their departure. What a trial. And I am so incredibly grateful to those very brave Jewish people who have volunteered with this endlessly sorrowful mission. And I am proud of my people.I always will remember this simple but so very demanding reaction and deeds. 

There are also attentive people who volunteered to do another similar task : to check and to make sure that there are people visiting mourners who are sitting the shiva, a week – long mourning observance according to Jewish tradition. “ Please, there is elderly lady alone evacuated from the  south to Jerusalem who is sitting the shiva for her son. She should not be alone , please visit her. Here is the address”. “ At this address in Tel Aviv, there is a couple who are sitting shiva for their only son. Their Hebrew is not that well. Please visit them and bring something to eat. “ Please make sure to comfort the father who is sitting shiva for his daughter’s family. Address is here. I find it incredible and natural at the same time. There are many people who are actually caring. Who are doing their bit every day during these nightmare-like days, to comfort those in the most need after Israel and Jewish National tragedy. There is love. There is care. There is compassion without slogans. The reality of understated goodness – this is what keeps me going.

Inna Rogatchi (C). Solitude Song I. Hatikvah in White and Blue project. 2023.

One hears a lot of stories these days. Sometimes, they get polarised in one’s head. And one’s world. On Sunday October 15th, 2023, there has been a very decent and good gathering in the Finnish capital, in front of the Finnish parliament ( which still be a dead-silent as an institution, except one small press-release which had to do with Finnish members of the Council of Europe), with about thousand people came to express their solidarity with Israel. As they were leaving the event, those people who were exiting from one of two entrances, were met by stones. Just like during a riot in Eastern Jerusalem or any other place of terrorist attacks, big and small,  in Israel. But in Helsinki? 

 My friend who was there said that there were four or five young men who attacked people and threw stones at them  just next to the Finnish parliament. ‘And the police?”- asked another friend. – ‘Police were at the event, but they were not dispatched at the both entrances, so the one where the attackers were waiting for people to leave the event, was not covered. Police told us not to use that unguarded entrance. But there were very good volunteer guards who took care of everything”, my friend went on. Moreover, the police said that the event was peaceful. Yes, it was, during the demonstration. But after it ended, we were met with stones, and not by one person, but by several of them who were prepared and waiting for us. Police’s lulled ‘all was peaceful’ statement is typical for Finland though”, – concludes my friend.  Never before anything like that happened here in Finland. Was it reported just anywhere? Nope. 

Being under the impression  of the story about the stones thrown in the middle of Finnish capital on peaceful demonstration, I am hearing another story, in which a very experienced forensic doctor, Nurit Bublil, the head of the forensic DNA lab in Israel speaks about their gruesome finding. Everyone can hear it for him or herself, too. It is on X ( Twitter) released by the Israeli Foreign Ministry. It is just a few minutes. There you can hear about the Israeli forensic doctors’ findings in their non-stop hideous marathon to identify the victims of the similar types which are throwing stones at people now in Europe, as well. The Israeli forensic specialists are working for ten days now in the rhythms of starting their work at the labs at 7 am and finishing by midnight, coming home by 2 AM, doctor Bublil tells us remarkably trying to be calm. “We need to give our people names to bury them’. These are our doctors’ main tasks these days. 

Novices are not taken to the teams of the Israeli forensic doctors sorting out the findings of the October  7th Massacre. Only very experienced doctors who saw everything. Everything but this, several of them have told us independently. Doctor Bublil tells trying to keep calm, what she finds in the hundreds of samples reaching her lab. “One package was unusually heavy, and we all thought what could it be? We opened. It was a cook-book. Very popular in Israel, which is in so many kitchens, mine included. We all are using this cook-book here. The book was soaked in blood. And I thought: “It could be any of us”. This great doctor also told about other findings. “I opened a small envelope, and there were small nails. Painted in such a nice rosy colour. And another one, in white. Nails only. Nothing else. Nothing”. 

Those nails – and those stones. Those stones – and these nails.  What else is needed to prove the evil of terrorism?

Michael Rogatchi (C). In the Mirror of Holocaust. 1999. Permanent Art Collection. Holocaust Museum. Dnipro, Ukraine.

My close friend is very justly lamenting the necessity of a heavy guard of the Jewish school in the centre of ever-peaceful Helsinki, these days. “ But this school where also non-Jewish students are studying teaches 100% Finnish official school curriculum. Why on earth should this school need an arm guard?!” – she exclaims, rhetorically, knowing perfectly well why and trying to make the point to those who pretend to be blind and deaf. The same goes with the Jewish school in Tallinn, which is known for the top-quality of the education it provides, and thus is very popular with many non-Jewish families in the capital of Estonia to get the best education for their children. It is heavily guarded too, and in a normal, adequate society places of peaceful education of all kinds of kids should not be in need of an arm guard. Crystal-clear. But not the fact of life for us these days. 

Just very recently, a couple of weeks prior to the October massacre in Israel, some of our American friends went genuinely surprised while seeing some guard next to some Jewish schools somewhere in the US. It came as a complete and total surprise to them. I spoke with my friends, and they were genuinely shocked to see it on American soil while they were fully aware of the situation in Europe where many of the Jewish-related sites are guarded for years. And this was yet before the macabre of all-fledged anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli hate which the authorities in too many places world-wide have been unable or unwilling to halt. 

And here is a charming episode from the US itself. Stanford of all places. The university, another school. There, a scum in the guise of a teacher, called all Jewish students in his class to identify themselves by raising their hand. Which they did, I do not know why. Then, he ordered them to get to the corner of the room and to stand there. And they went, I also just cannot get why on earth they stupidly obliged. Then the 46-year old scum who demands to call him a professor, declared that this is ‘what their people are doing to the people in Gaza’. He also taught the class on those separated Jews in the corner on what ‘colonisers’ actually is. He asked everyone of them where from  their family was. For another inexplicable reason, Jewish students answered to that gangster in the Stanford study hall. One of them happened to be from Israel. The gangster was ecstatic. “Yes, yes! You are absolutely a coloniser!” – he screamed. 

He also asked those in the corner, how many Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Maintaining that macabre dialogue, instead of calling for police, some students replied: “6 million”. – “Yes, 6 million, not enough”, the teacher stated, according to the testimonies of multiple witnesses. 

Yet before the Holocaust went into full-scale, this was the practice of many teachers in many schools in Germany. This is well documented. Now it is happening in the US, in Stanford of all places. Humanity came to its dark age, willingly so. 

The Stanford University authorities did an open inner investigation, due to the public outcry. The scum disguised as a teacher is suspended. Suspended, not fired, and not criminally charged. The University, typically for many universities nowadays, trying to hush-hush this screaming Nazism of our days, in an usual, pathetic way, diminishing his role in the university – ‘he was not a teacher, he was an teaching instructor’ ( in his official papers, one reads ‘professor’), and they deliberately omitted his name. Anonymous teaching instructor, it is nicer this way. His name is known and published, of course. The university looks stupid at the very least. 

And we all are eighty five years back, in a macabre dance of hatred. What has happened then, just a couple of years after German scums were exercising in the sport of placing Jewish kids in the corner? We know what. And why? We know why. Because that vicious, gut hatred was overseen, permitted and it splashed all over, to the ravine of the Babyn Yar, which today moved to Israel’s inner territory. And outside Israel, after the most barbaric crimes against humanity committed, the Jewish schools should be guarded all over Europe and the US, and in the leading American university with no war whatsoever, racist thugs are allowed to put Jewish kids in the corner. This has only meaning, actually. It is a civilisation which is cornered by militant anti-Semitic thugs. 

Inna Rogatchi (C). Creation Visions.

For most of our Jewish friends it was the saddest and the most difficult Shabbat of their lives. We are no exception to this phenomenon. The beginning of the Torah, the first parsha Bereishit, ( Genesis), with which the world’s observing Jewry starts its new year, is a cosmos and the world of itself. So you are trying to get to the bottom of it, as from the first time, because in an essential sense, it is the first time in a new reality, to get a crack on what has gone wrong in the beginning. From the beginning. That humanity is desperately secondary in the world full of human beings. 

We were praying in danger, far from Israel, in many places world-wide, from Paris to New York, and from Helsinki to Berlin. We were guarded, by both the police and the volunteers, the real friends, to whom we are grateful to, each of them. Our close non-Jewish friend in Italy in his mid-1960s spent the whole day on his feet, in his military uniform, with his weapon, guarding the synagogue in Florence. Grazie cordialmente, caro Stefano. And everyone who helped and is helping us all to be and to feel, importantly, secure, all over the world. 

But this is screamingly wrong. The world, human society, have had the Holocaust. Everyone everywhere knows its face. It is utterly wrong and completely unacceptable by any standard of any civilised society to allow violent gatherings of thugs. In Helsinki, they were almost storming the Israeli Embassy, and the same was the case in London, New York, Berlin and many other cities in Germany. In Berlin, they are marking the houses where they think Jewish people are living with stars of David on the entrance doors, en masse.  At least, in Paris, the gathering was not permitted. They went on the street anyway, but in this case, the police had a legitimate right to disperse them. This false appeasement towards the anti-human thugs must be stopped. This is sacrilege, and absolutely wrong signal to its own society, in every case. 

As it always happens, it only starts with Jews. In the front of our eyes, first the Louvre and then the Versaille had to be evacuated and shut down,  on the same day, due to the specific threats of explosions. Is it not telling enough? 

All over the world, many synagogues decided to shut their doors following the police assessment. On Shabbat. No services, no possibility for people to come together and to be together which is very important at a time like this. Does it provide a sense of security? No, it provides a sense of isolation and imminent and permanent danger to the members of Jewish communities worldwide, for days by now and for days to come. And this is not even wrong. This is weak, inefficient, and morally perverted. In a properly functioning civilised society, authorities in charge do not make victims victimised yet further on. This is outrageous. 

Well, we’ve got the message. We’re on our own. As always. We will prevail. We have an experience of it for three thousand and seven hundred years. 

The past Shabbat was the first specific Shabbat known to the Rabbinic authorities as ‘war Shabbat’. It has its own features, including permission to work for specific categories of people. This Shabbat, additionally to everyone on the duty, army, police, rescue and medical staff, a special permission and request to work was issued by our Rabbinic authorities to two categories of people: rabbis and all kinds of the Torah teachers, those who has their personal students who are on the front line, and might be in need to be in touch with their teacher personally at any moment during the Shabbat; and all and every person who is working in the organisations and services providing  psychological support. Their services are needed 24/7 these days both in Israel and all over Jewish diaspora, our Rabbinic authorities concluded. Such was our first Shabbat in this new globally spread Jews-hateful reality. 

Daily Entry of the War & Humanity Special Project

Inna Rogatchi (C). Winds & Silences. Hatikvah project. 2023.

I never knew that I would not know how to carry on Shabbes. The previous Shabbes was an explosion of horror, but many of us, observing people, did not know of what had happened until its end. I knew almost everything in real-time. I felt something bad might occur, and my telephone was on in a quiet mode. Still, most of the observing Jewish world have entered the previous Shabbes in a very celebrating, enlightening, uplifted mood of the peak of our High Holidays 5784 on the closing end of it, outburst of Simcha Torah. The end of a week-long Sukkot was also sunny, assuring and encouraging. Life was about to smile towards all of us for the just started  year 5784. So previous Friday October 6th, 2023, erev Shabbat, Shabbes eve, was an enlightened festive entering into the Shabbat, as we used to experience it all our previous life.

Week in, this ongoing erev Shabbat, October 13th, 2023, is not just drastically different. We are living in another world, on another planet. And I have no idea if we ever return to our previous world. In this new world, expectedly, almost all Jewish people have come together, forgetting disagreements. In this new world, unexpectedly, we have not many whom one would expect to be near, from our non-Jewish circles. Maybe, we all should be wiser, not expect a thing. Possibly. But as this is a widely-spread phenomena, it makes one think, even for a bit. Notice. Register, quickly. Just register. It is enough.

Another day, speaking with good real non-Jewish friends, those who took our pain close, I’ve heard, to a slight surprise of myself: ” Well, all these days, I am thinking of how odd, weird, inadequate has been (non-)reaction, that really deafening silence from the side of our Lutheran church here in Finland, and basically, all the other churches here”. And I was thinking: well, true, the church here, in Finland, also practices this incomprehensible deafening silence-mode. And the Vatican calls for Israel to restrain, of course. 

I hope, they all would be able to look and to see – because it is two different things – just three of many photo documenting evidences from Israel, just those three which today ( October 13th, 2023) The Daily Telegraph opted to publish, after special consideration, and of which CNN did show one, mentioning the other two as ‘unpublishable’. Well, they are publishable, my dear CNN friends and colleagues. I know that you meant well, and I’ve gratefully noticed your truly compassionate work for real victims, citizens of Israel, and also citizens of a high number of countries worldwide. Those photos are unwatchable, that’s true. More so, those who prefer silence-mode in the churches of different denominations, those who are so unanimously felt comfortably silent, should see them.

As for us, we are entering the first Shabbat after the October 7th, 2023 Catastrophe, and we are consoling each other all these hours preceding the Shabbes in our new reality, and teaching each other of how to make it. We will, no doubt about that. Because of what has happened, we will celebrate and value life and light during this Shabbes of Bereishit, when we start the new annual circle of the Torah, on an entirely new level of compassion. Our light is indistinguishable, and this fact commands everything and anything else. In our new reality, even more so.

Daily entry of the War & Humanity Special Project

Michael Rogatchi (C). Spiral of Faith. Oil on canvas. 2005.

There you have a father who is crying in agony over his murdered in the attack against kibbutz 8-years daughter and saying that he felt her death as a blessing. An absolute blessing’ – due to the simple truth of what would have been waiting for his child as a hostage of the savages. So this assault on humanity which this war has to be called, actually, brings people to an existence beyond nature. The CNN correspondent who took the interview with the grieving father, took it well, both professionally and human-like.

Looking at the horror of the terrorist attack against Israel in October 2023, I do not remember when a military assault had created so many devastating, unbearable images during such a short time, 5-6 days. Each of them shows incredible human suffering, both victims of the Hams terror and their families, friends and all those people who have their hearts in the right place.

Professionally, extreme situations are always a litmus test for any media. Both in their professionalism and their decency. There are no other criteria in journalism, actually. This I can state having many decades’ experience of it.

When humanity is switched on in covering unspeakable, a decency works as a parachute saving us from falling on the ground of the abyss of horror after seeing for example a photo of a completely burned down Jewish child just a few days ago, on the Shabbat and the festive end of Jewish High Holidays.

CNN, Fox, Deutsche Welle, SKY News most of the time, and many other leading world TV channels work well, both professionally and human-wise. BBC and MSNBC are unsurprisingly appalling, with a shame of funding of tax-payers money in the case of stubbornly and so very lowly ever-biased BBC, and professionally off any standard MSNBC.

And then, there are those channels in some unlucky countries which are using hybrid tactics covering their barely veiled anti-Israel die-hard stand. In Finland, while commercial MTV3 works decently, after initially losing grip of the situation, its main, tax-payers funded YLE is a total blunder, both professionally and humane-wise.

Utterly biased in the beginning of their coverage of the terrible crimes against humanity, being justly and promptly criticised, they have opted for this too cunning for their own good hybrid tactics: sending a very good, honest, human-champion correspondent Antti Kuronen to cover the unfold of the terrorist attacks on the Israeli side, while supplementing his brave and honest, but edited as a very short reports by all usual suspects, all of them explaining the poor palestinian cause and ever excusing them for anything, in a decades-continuing motion. Their choices for interviews are heavily biased too. In contrast with existing documentation of the massacre and crimes, this is simply sacrilege.

This tactic does not really outsmart no one in our age of a massive stream of news from anywhere. But the stand of Finland’s state TV on the worst crimes against humanity in the modern time is appalling and unpardonable. In the end, people would remember not the media’s coverage. They would remember the media’s stand. And it is a deep memory, for both humans and its opposite.

Daily Entry of the War & Humanity Special project.

Michael Rogatchi (C). The Kotel. Fragment. Oil on canvas. 1999.

Now we all know what Holocaust was like, real-time, total-spread. Although the wide public does not know yet what Israeli soldiers, ZAKA, Magen David, and volunteers have been seen at the scenes of massive massacre of an evil force which is also a death cult . We have not seen, only being told about decapitated babies. We have not even been told publicly about Arab words on the faces of Jewish raped women, ablazed on their faces by the beasts’ lighters, while the victims were still alive. The names of beautiful Israeli kibbutzim which were justly known as ‘small piece of Paradise’, and were extremely popular with tourists, now have processed the hearts of many of us into ash. The number of victims is staggering. The way of their slaughter is wild in its atrocity. And nothing can change this catastrophe beyond the border of comprehension. You cannot fix it. In none of the ways. You can only avenge it. And it will be done, undoubtedly. This is the very least we can do reacting to this Holocaust of our time. We are grieving. And we need to prepare ourselves for more awful information about the October 2023 Massacre to come. Against this more than gruesome reality, where are those who are receiving their salary for their proclaimed missions regarding care of human rights, like odious Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Red Cross, and alike. Never in my life, I thought that the degree of bias can be that high. All of these organisations are sympathising with the wrong parties repeatedly, decades by now. I am personally tired from this ugly hypocrisy of professional defenders and watchers of the wrong causes. I am indignated that they all dare to defend even open terrorists against the gruesome evidence. Amnesty officials dared to say publicly, answering to the question of naive journalists of how come that the whole world and everybody is speaking and denouncing terrorists committed such hideous crimes, except Amnesty, that ‘their organisation only speaks publicly about the information that they can verify independently, by themselves’. Human Watch officials have a gut to criticise Israel for ‘overdoing’. The Red Cross is totally absent in the screaming situation with at least 150 hostages, including a 6-weeks baby and 90-years Holocaust survivor in an invalid chair, while they do have a full mandate to operate in this situation. Not to speak about anything else. This is a total moral fiasco for organisations whose essential purpose is to defend a basic humanity. This peak of hypocrisy is truly outrageous.

Daily entry of the WAR & HUMANITY Special Project.

Inna Rogatchi (C). MAHLER. Mixed technique. 2020.

There are two schools of thinking and two modes of behaviour when it comes to the reactions of things horrible. According to one school and mode, people switch to an introvert more, even the most extravert ones. This is how your own inner surviving mode operates. Many of us are better coping on one’s own, in a self-imposed shelter.

According to the other school and mode, people need support and a feeling of a shoulder from those who are nearby, in order to keep one’s balance and to feel safer, better and more assured. And then, in cases like the recent vicious massacre in Israel, there is a global outcry of indignation which brings hundreds and thousands on the streets.

This is what we are seeing in New York, in the series of ongoing rallies in support of Israel there, where Jewish youth refused to be shy in front of screaming voices of evil who came to demonstrate in support of the beasts. And when Jewish youth in New York confronted those pro-Palestinian screaming bandits with our Israeli flags, they did read the message in a second. They usually do.

It was a very dignified, important, large pro-Israeli event in London organised by many of our friends there, just next door to Downing Street, with the presence of a huge amount of people, each of them thoughtful, grieving and supporting the state of Israel and all our victims and their families.

Unsurprisingly, pro-Palestinian forces in London were able to collect and bring too many thugs-supporting-thugs in the front of the Israeli Embassy in London which is the subject of attacks and ugly demonstrations traditionally, sadly. This is not a democracy. It has nothing remotely close to democracy when horrendous massive crimes against humanity and military crimes are allowed to be cheered about in any of places world-wide. It shows the weakness of the governments who did allow it. It shows that those governments, each and every one of them, from the UK to Sweden and from Finland to Australia, are weak in front of sheer evil.

It is an utterly wrong signal which might backfire in all these societies where those weak governments refuse to make a distinction between good and evil.

But to strengthen our hearts, one should have a look at the extraordinary gathering in Paris yesterday night, Monday October 9th, 2023. Thousands of people, the sea of human beings, so many young of them, fortunately, have stood in front and all around the Eiffel Tower which was blue and white and with an Israeli flag, for four hours at least. They sang Hatikvah all together, in an unmistaken and assuring motion. The same evening, at the Grand Synagogue in Paris, a completely full house which hosts thousands, French Jewry of all ages sang Hatikvah in the same way, in the crystal-clear message of defiance and love, care and strength which. we all are having now, around the globe.

The world Jewry is wounded but we all are united and determined. Anyone who attended and saw mentioned and other ongoing vigils and gatherings of the people worldwide in support of Israel and Jewish people, got this very clear message of unity and determination. And in sharp contrast with the jackals who are attacking in the most mean way and disappearing in the most cowardly way, in a full accord with their nature, we are and will stay united, determined and strong. For our brethren in Israel. For Jewish people anywhere.

A beast is inferior to a human being because of the absence of associative thinking. This is the alphabet of biological knowledge. Plus the spirit which actually commands the department of associative thinking if to get the things as they are, not as Mr Darwin wanted to present them. Beasts attacks, beast wounds, and beast might kill. But any beast, and any group of beasts will be hunted down, and eliminated as mad beasts should, by the organised, unified and determined human beings. By intellect and spirit. By soul and skills. This is also an alphabetical position of behavioural psychology. This knowledge is chronically missing from Hamas and similar schools, obviously. They would have to learn it in an empiric way. And they will. Am Israel Chai.

Daily entry of the WAR & HUMANITY Special Project.

Inna Rogatchi (C). Israel Window. Mixed technique. 2023.

When the disaster as the Hamas massacre in Israel happens, solidarity is the main thing with regard to the outside world, both countries and people alike. The shock is so deep that victimised people and those who feel victimised as 99,9% of Jews all over the world are, are unable to think or do anything. We all have very similar symptoms. We do not sleep, do not eat, we are switching in between fervent impulses to get the latest news, which are so horrible that we are also getting into the other extreme of switching off everything completely. We are in agony. And in this case, the agony goes for days. Nothing matters any longer. The life before the massacre seems to be a thousand years away. The only thing that matters is attention and a warm word, a question, and a hug, even a virtual one. And a sincere demonstration of solidarity. The first expression of the sort internationally was thoughtfully made by the government of Austria which hoisted two large Israeli flags on the roofs of its Chancellery and its Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Not a light show, a real flag. Next to the flags of Austria and the European Union. Simple, decent, and telling. I personally would remember this gesture of decent, solid and importantly, timely solidarity forever. Precisely because it was not show-like. Then the projections of all sorts mushroomed all over the planet: Prague, Bratislava, New York, Miami, London, Brussels over the EU headquarter, Vilnius, Madrid, Sofia, Budapest, Sydney, Buenos-Aires, all over Italy, with beautiful, thoughtful, generous demonstration of care.

There are people who believe that it is not enough, or that it is just lip service. Perhaps, in some cases and to some degree this thinking is relevant. Still, a clear, visible expression of solidarity, especially in a capacity of a state, regional or municipal administration is incomparably better than absence of it – as we are seeing in Scandinavia, two Baltic countries except Lithuania ( with Estonia did it belatedly), Poland, etc. This kind of aloofness, the absence of compassion, zero solidarity feels weird. It feels out of place. It feels like a cold void of good. In a case like that, with the worst slaughter of civilians in 80 years, the absence of solidarity with Israel by all and every of those who abstained, be it state, city or any more or less meaningful public institution, shows absolutely clearly on which side that institution is. Although we are grieving, we have noticed. And we will remember the absence of solidarity, maybe less than its presence, but still graphically. Because the emotional language of compassion works on its own level and in its own way, and is engraved in people’s hearts. Just one more thing: the long and very dramatic history of humankind teaches us that those who are unable or unwilling of compassion towards others should not expect it towards themselves. And Israel is confident, always, with all our mighty, cordial and decent friends in the world. Am Israel Chai.