Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine), 25.02.2025
Today the prisoner of war Oded Lifshitz whose body was returned to Israel was buried. Hundreds of Israelis carrying Zionist flags participated in his funeral. .He was buried in the Kibbutz Nir Oz. Yocheved his wife who was released in a deal in November 2023, said goodbye to him and said: “It is unimaginable that I stand in front of a crowd and eulogize you. We fought all these years for social justice, and for peace. Unfortunately, we were hit hard by the people we helped on the other side. I stand here stunned, to see the number of graves, and the terrible destruction of our community that was completely abandoned on October 7“[i]
Mr. Oded Lifshitz was born in Haifa and later served in the Israeli military’s 50th Battalion of the Paratroopers Brigade that was part of Nahal. Some 108 kibbutzim and agricultural settlements were established by the Nahal, many of them on Israel’s borders. Members of Nahal units, known as Garinei Nahal (Nahal seeds) have served together in various army units, most famously in the Nahal Mutznakh (Airborne Nahal) battalion of the Paratroopers Brigade, the reserve battalion of which was instrumental in the Zionist victory in the Battle of Jerusalem during the 1967 War. Many settlements were founded by Nahal units in Galilee, the Negev, and the West Bank, including settlements formerly located in the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip.
He later became a journalist and changed his mind to become a peace activist. He worked for Al HaMishmar(Hebrew for “The Guardian”) and later broadcast on Army Radio. While we can understand her pain, we cannot forget that the Zionist monster killed over 46,000 people in Gaza. Many of them are old people, women and children. For the Israelis the Palestinian prisoners are a price to pay for the release of the Israeli captives. Mr. Lifshitz and Yochaved Lifshitz are members of this kibbutz part of the enveloping Zionist settlement that their function is to prevent the Palestinians from Gaza, many of them children of the people who were expelled from their lands occupied by the Zionist settler colonialists, to return to their lands. Israel used ethnic cleansing in 1947-8 to expel them and make them refugees, and stole their lands.
Nir Oz (Hebrew: נִיר עֹז,)( ’Meadow of Strength’) is a kibbutz in southern Israel, founded in 1955 on stolen Palestinian lands. Mr. Lifshitz belonged to the Mapam a Stalinist-Zionist Party, the biggest thief of Palestinian lands. He saw himself as a peace activist and was not able to understand the horrible contradiction between his claim to be a peace activist and his living on stolen lands from the Palestinians and his role to prevent the refugees from returning to their lands.
Moshe Dayan’s eulogy for Rothberg is much clearer about the role of Nahal Oz, a similar settlement (which the first part given here was censored by Ben Gurion in the radio broadcast):
“… Let us not cast accusations at the murderers today. Why should we blame them for their burning hatred for us? For eight years they have been dwelling in Gaza’s refugee camps, as before their eyes we have transformed the land and the villages in which they and their forefathers had dwelled into our own property.”
We are the generation of settlement; without a steel helmet and the muzzle of the cannon we will not be able to plant a tree and build a home. Our children will not have a life if we do not dig shelters, and without barbed wire and machine guns we will not be able to pave roads and dig water wells” [ii]
He died in November 2023 by bombs of the Zionist air force. While the Zionist propaganda claims that he was murdered by Hamas. His funeral is used by the Zionist state to justify further murdering of Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians.
The only support Israelis can give to the Palestinians is to break from Zionism and fight for a Palestinian workers state to which the Palestinian refugees will return and the Israeli minority will have equal civil rights.
Down with the Zionist monster!
For Palestine, red and free from the river to the sea!
Endnote:
[i] https://www.israelhayom.co.il/news/local/article/17429596
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshe_Dayan%27s_eulogy_for_Ro%27i_Rothberg