SAN DIEGO — Editor’s Note: Jose Galicot, a leader of the Mexican Jewish communities in Tijuana and San Diego and an honorary board member of StandWithUs, has imagined how the historian Josephus Flavius would have described the situation of the Jews of Israel today. Although written in a fictional format, Galicot’s observations, in the guise of Josephus Flavius, are serious reflections about Israel’s current relations with the rest of the world. Here is a link to his previous article in the guise of Josephus Flavius.
By Jose Galicot
The accomplices applaud the criminals.
I am Josephus Flavius. As everyone already knows, I deserted my people and wrote their heroic story. I know I am a controversial figure. Some consider that I betrayed my people and others consider that, if I had not written The Jewish War, no one would have known about the heroism of my people.
Today I am surprised. I do not understand society. If any of those who are reading this today, and those who will read me in the centuries to come, had their family kidnapped, their children taken, their wives raped, and their brothers killed and held in captivity, what would they do? They would desperately try to rescue them, exploring all possibilities, even paying ransom, exchanging one life for another, attacking the kidnappers and their loved ones, their followers, and accomplices, and killing them if necessary, even those who had helped their relatives, and anyone who had participated in this kidnapping of our family.
Today, entire towns are accomplices of those who committed these crimes and kidnappings because they are forcing the people of Israel not to try to rescue them, making them pay a high price by making the offenders and kidnappers seem like heroes by applauding their cruel and immoral actions. I witnessed the crimes of the Romans. I saw how the people of Masada chose to commit suicide rather than surrender to the fierce Roman. I saw Titus Flavius Vespasian rise to become emperor of the city. I saw Jerusalem destroyed to the ground. I witnessed the dispersal of the Jewish people in the diaspora. Today I see hardworking people dedicated to doing good for humanity, producing positively in all areas of knowledge to save lives and understand the present and the future. Those people had their daughters, sons, and brothers kidnapped, and their young ones murdered, and then filmed these acts with laughter and joy. There are 140 people, civilians, kidnapped, held in cells, victims of the most repugnant excesses, and the world attacks those who try to save them, creating an absurd concept and dialectic.
Therefore, all those who applaud Hamas and its actions are accomplices of the crimes they have committed and continue to commit, and with their clamor they try to avoid justice and may cause new acts of inhumanity. In other words, the perpetrators today are victims, and the victims are the fierce aggressors who have paid with great pain for the fanaticism and madness of inhuman beings. The concept of humanism is raised, hahaha, without fully understanding the cruelty of kidnapping and the trauma of the kidnapped who will never heal from what they have experienced. Not to mention the murdered.
I, Josephus Flavius, throughout the centuries, have never seen anything so absurd until I encountered the Inquisition, where the people of Spain applauded the acts of faith. With the Nazis, the Germans, many other people applauded what was happening in the crematoriums, and I saw cruelty in its most blatant attitude. Today, once again, we see people applauding the perpetrators and denouncing the victims. This is fueling the will to fight of the Jewish people because they cannot bear the pain of the plight of their beloved kidnapped for whom they will pay in gold or through returning 3 to 1 to criminals from Israeli prisons, as has happened before.
Events are shaping history, and history continues to surprise me. I will not put down my pen until balance, justice, and morality return to humanity.
Let us remember other grievances.
In the late 1890s, a terrible persecution against Jews erupted in France, caused by the false guilt of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish military officer who was accused of being a German spy in the French army. The trial was brutal, as even though it eventually became clear that Dreyfus was innocent, it took the vehement pen of Emile Zola, a French writer and playwright, to publish the historic letter titled “J’Accuse” or “I Accuse,” which, for its clarity and honesty, defended Dreyfus, unmasking the true traitors and exposing to the frenzied public opinion the truth that managed to stop the wave of antisemitism.
Another reaction of that historical moment was that of Theodor Herzl, a fully assimilated Viennese Jewish journalist who covered the events in France. He was shocked by the violence of the antisemitic attacks and decided to react by also writing Altneuland (Old New Land), where he outlined a Jewish country of “p-a-pa.” This book shook the Jewish community, creating the desire to return to Israel and founded Zionism.
Emile Zola received tremendous backlash for his letter, but he managed to bring the French people to their senses, stopping the wave of antisemitism that was ravaging France.
Nowadays, another unjust event, the abduction of Israeli civilians and the obvious reaction of the Israeli army, has unleashed a series of antisemitic attacks that seem to have no end, once again plaguing the world. Therefore, I, before you, my dear audience, repeat Emile Zola’s J’Accuse, seeking for reason and justice to prevail, avoiding vicious attacks worthy of the Middle Ages against the Israelis.
Beautifully written
Thank you 🙏🏻
Excellent article thanks for sharing