This Yom Kippur, the Whole World Must Apologize to Israel

Israeli soldiers in the midst of Gaza's ruins, 2024. Credit: Rami Shllush

This year, Yom Kippur should be canceled, probably permanently. Israel is already beyond good and evil. Jews are incapable of sinning, simply because everything they do is always just, moral, legal and even sublime. The fast must also be canceled: This year we will eat like kings, because we deserve it.

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.

Israeli soldiers take up positions during a military operation in the West Bank city of Nablus, August. Credit: Majdi Mohammed,AP

In the U.S., people should gather tonight for mass apologies to Israel because 67 percent of Americans have changed their opinion of it for the worse and 55 percent have considered reviewing the continued pouring of vast fortunes into Israel. Everyone who has ever dared to criticize Israel should apologize. For what exactly? What is there to accuse Israel of? All people of conscience in the world who could not remain silent about the massacre of a thousand babies and 20,000 children must apologize to Israel, before the gate closes.

The 9,000 Palestinian detainees imprisoned in Israel, most without trial, must also apologize tonight for taking up so much space and consuming such quantities of food and medicine. Apologies also to the farm thugs for the Palestinians who dare to stand in their way on their lands.

And a big apology to IDF soldiers. The soldiers of the Israeli Salvation Army are the ones who deserve to hear the biggest apology tonight. Apologies for those who dared to question the morality of an army that killed nearly 100,000 people. Apologies to the soldiers who killed 200 people for one wanted person as "collateral damage." Apologies to the pilots who dropped one-ton bombs on tent camps and were so offended when someone dared to call them child-killers. How people in Israel and around the world dared to question the purity of heart and intentions of our pure pilots and soldiers.

Apologies to the Israeli fascists, for being called such for no reason. "And for slanderers, let there be no hope" (Ne'ilah prayer): Apologies to those who are now inciting a lynching against the creators of "collateral damage." Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham must apologize tonight for daring to tell the truth.

"We have dealt falsely, we have given evil counsel, we have lied, we have rebelled, we have provoked... we have transgressed." We, in Israel and around the world, all who dared to cast aspersions on the Jewish state and its exemplary society, must voice a great apology tonight. We, and no one else.