On Tal Mitnick’s first morning inside an Israeli military prison last month, he was ordered into a small classroom. Pinned to its walls were various famous quotes. One caught his attention: “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” The name beneath it: Nelson Mandela.
“I nearly laughed to myself,” says the 18-year-old, speaking over Zoom from the bedroom of his family’s Tel Aviv home. “A military upholding apartheid putting that on their wall,” he says, “while South Africa was preparing its case against Israel for the international criminal court? I pointed out how ridiculous this quote being there was. No other prisoners engaged or agreed. I realised how alone I was.”
This insipid and cruel war against Palestine has got to end. I admit I wasn’t particularly on anyone’s side to start with, but now Israel has turned a singular day of violence into a bloodthirsty crusade of horror.
More killing will not solve anything, and now that Gaza is a blasted wasteland, there can’t be any winners at all. The love of killing other humans has got to stop - it just has to stop and we have to undertake psychological healing and promotion of peaceful ideals and quit inculcating young impressionable and easily coerced men with the idea that murder is ever justified for any reason.