دار بيبليون
Reflections on the incident of the death of 3 Israeli hostages in Gaza by Israeli fire / Notes from a Conference by Lwiis Saliba on Zoom on 20/12/2023
On Saturday, 16 December 2023 the Israeli army provided new details about the “accidental” death of three hostages in the Gaza Strip.
On Friday 15/12/2023, the army announced that it had killed 3 hostages held by the Hamas movement in the Shujaiya neighbourhood, after mistakenly determining that they posed a threat, confirming the opening of a transparent investigation into the incident.
In detailing the findings of a preliminary investigation, the Times of Israel quoted a senior Southern Command officer as saying that the three dead hostages “managed to escape Hamas captivity”.
According to the source: “The incident began after a soldier stationed in one building identified three suspicious people leaving another building dozens of metres away. The three were shirtless and one of them was carrying a stick with a white flag on it”.
He continued: “The soldier thought that the movement of the men towards him was an attempt by Hamas to set a trap for IDF soldiers, so he immediately opened fire and shouted: Terrorists.”
According to the preliminary investigation, the soldier killed two of the hostages, while the third fled, wounded, towards the building from which he had come.
The officer who told the story added: “At that moment, the commander of the Israeli battalion, who was at the spot from where the soldier fired, came out and asked his forces to stop the attack.”
But “in the meantime, the forces in the area heard the voice of someone shouting in Hebrew: help”.
The officer added: “Moments later, the third hostage left the building in which he had taken refuge and another soldier opened fire on him, killing him.”
According to the preliminary investigation, “the battalion commander then realised that the third man’s appearance was unusual and it turned out that he was an Israeli hostage”.
“The soldiers recovered the three bodies and transported them to Israel for identification.”
The officer admitted that “the soldier who opened fire immediately after identifying the three men did so in breach of protocol, as did the second soldier who killed the third man”.
However, the Israeli army said it “understands why the soldiers did this”.
The officer added: “Several hundred metres away, the forces found a building with paint on the walls with the SOS signal written on it and a sign saying in Hebrew: Help. 3 hostages.”
He said, “The soldiers thought at the time that the building was booby-trapped, and now the army is investigating the possibility that this sign was connected to the incident.”
The Times of Israel explained that the preliminary investigation had been completed on Saturday and that its results had been presented to the families of the three dead.
What can we understand and conclude from this remarkable and expressive incident? The State of Israel has launched this devastating military campaign since 7 October 2023, under the slogan and with the aim of freeing the hostages and prisoners held on that day, and has spared no act of violence: it has bombed hospitals and refugee camps, killed women and children, and carried out other atrocities, until its death toll now stands at around twenty thousand, and when it found what it was looking for, namely a number of its hostages and the detained soldiers, it killed them with its own hands. Israel is shooting at Israel, which means that it is committing suicide because of the excessive blood it has shed!
It’s reminiscent of that ancient myth about the monster who drank so much blood without quenching his thirst that he had no choice but to drink his own blood!
Or the story of the cat who licked the cooler, enjoying the taste of blood, which was actually his own blood.
This is the beginning of a cycle of violence that blinds sight and insight! Even though all the evidence indicated that these three men were peaceful, even Israeli: they shouted in Hebrew, waved the white flag and took off their clothes so that the Israeli soldiers wouldn’t think they were hiding explosives. But all these measures did not benefit these poor prisoners fleeing Hamas prisons, because their fellow Israeli soldiers considered them enemies and killed them one after the other.
Is this the irony of Fate? It is rather the eternal law of Dharma that says that violence must return to its perpetrator!
Doesn’t this revealing incident call for a pause for reflection and insight: twenty thousand Palestinians, most of them children and women, have so far been the victims of Israeli military action since 7 Oc
7 October 2023, under the slogan and with the aim of freeing the hostages and prisoners held on that day, and has spared no act of violence: it has bombed hospitals and refugee camps, killed women and children, and other atrocities, until the number of its dead has now reached around twenty thousand, and when it found what it was looking for, i.e. a number of its hostages and the detained soldiers, it killed them with its own hands. Israel is shooting at Israel, which means that it is committing suicide because of the excessive blood it has shed!
It’s reminiscent of that ancient myth about the monster who drank so much blood without quenching his thirst that he had no choice but to drink his own blood!
Or the story of the cat who licked the cooler, enjoying the taste of blood, which was actually his own blood.
This is the beginning of a cycle of violence that blinds sight and insight! Even though all the evidence indicated that these three men were peaceful, even Israeli: they shouted in Hebrew, waved the white flag and took off their clothes so that the Israeli soldiers wouldn’t think they were hiding explosives. But all these measures did not benefit these poor prisoners fleeing Hamas prisons, because their fellow Israeli soldiers considered them enemies and killed them one after the other.
Is this the irony of Fate? It is rather the eternal law of Dharma that says that violence must return to its perpetrator!
Doesn’t this revealing incident call for a pause for reflection and insight: twenty thousand Palestinians, most of them children and women, have so far been victims of Israeli military action since 7 October 2023. Despite the scale, horror and brutality of these acts, Israel has not been able to free a single one of its captives. Worse still, when it found three of the hostages, it killed them with its own hands! This is in addition to the twenty Israeli soldiers who were accidentally killed by the fire of their colleagues!
Violence is regressive, said Gautama Buddha, and it must one day fall on its perpetrator, as we have indicated, it is an eternal law.
This day has not been long in coming because of the many atrocities and acts of violence committed. Today, the State of Israel is reaping the rewards of what it did yesterday. It did everything in its power to weaken the Palestinian Authority. It was Israel that poisoned and killed Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and boasted about his actions. It was he who encouraged and financed extremist Palestinian Islamic movements to oppose the Palestinian Authority and the PLO, in order to weaken the latter!
It was the same American policy that financed Bin Laden and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan to stand up to the Soviets. What was the result? Al-Qaeda attacked its backer on 11 September 2001, and the rest is history…
America repeated the same mistake by funding Daesh ISIS. Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted in her memoirs that it was America that funded Daesh in the first place. The result is well known. The equation is now well known: you can create the monster, but you can’t control it.
Israel is America’s disciple in this and so many other areas.
As for us, we meditate on the words of the Buddha:
Do not do evil for evil’s sake and do not repay hatred with hatred. Nor think that you can destroy evil by returning evil for evil and thus increasing evil. Leave the wicked to their fate, for their evil deeds will sooner or later, in one way or another, bring about their own punishment. (Saliba Lwiis, Meditation in the Teaching of the Buddha, p200).
As well as his advice to his disciples:
18/3-Persevere in your mission, for it is truth that convinces people, not force. And do not worry about their violence towards you. (Ibid)