The small and functional office of Dani Dayan (Buenos Aires, 1955) becomes even smaller compared to the monumentality of the Holocaust Museum that it presides over. Of Argentine origin – he maintains the accent of Buenos Aires – and immigrated to Israel in 1971, Dayan is a former technology entrepreneur, ex-leader of the organization that brings together most of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and ex-consul general in New York. He sees genocidal ideas in October 7, and not in the Israeli retaliation in Gaza.
The Holocaust Museum is Yad Vashem in Hebrew, Monument and Names, and emphasizes that every victim is a person with a name and not a number. Is it forgotten in every conflict and is it now happening to Israel with Gaza?
One of the quotes from the Holocaust that moves me the most is that of a Dutch Jewish survivor who says that the Holocaust was not the murder of six million Jews, but six million murders. There was one victim in each. This is true for any conflict, of course. The names of the soldiers who have fallen in battle and those of the victims of the massacre of October 7 are published every day. It would be very important if this culture of remembrance existed in our enemies.
The dead in Gaza are more than 20,000, according to the authorities. Has the war reached the point of dehumanizing the enemy and seeing him only as a number?
One of the first things the Nazis did is to put numbers on the people arriving at the concentration camps; transform her into a number before enslaving her and killing her. We agree on this: no person is a number. I don’t hesitate when I say that.
The massacre by Hamas on October 7 is sometimes referred to as a second Holocaust. The Israeli offensive in Gaza is now described by many people in the international community as genocide. Is it like that?
One of the things that historians taught me is that every historical fact can be compared to another with one condition: point out the similarities and differences. There are similarities between October 7, the Holocaust and the behavior of the Nazis. The cruelty, the sadism, the barbarism… Any Jew has the Holocaust in some part of his consciousness, and when we heard the stories of mothers covering the mouths of their children so that they would not cry and they would not be discovered or die, I think that everyone thought of stories of the Holocaust. The intentions were genocidal.
And what to say about the thousands of dead in Gaza? Is it a genocide, how is it reported?
It is completely unfounded to say that it is genocide. The Israeli army does everything possible not to kill civilians, which is the opposite of what anyone who wants to commit genocide does. Unfortunately, as you know, Hamas is on purpose among the civilian population, which makes our efforts not to harm those not involved in the war conflict very difficult. Hamas commits a triple war crime: they are located among the civilian population, from where they attack the Israeli civilian population, and many of the Palestinian victims are also the cause of their failed attacks, as happened with the Al-Ahli hospital, upon which many were quick to accuse Israel.
Criticism of Israel over Gaza comes even from allied governments.
A very clear separation must be made between criticism of Israel, which is legitimate and not anti-Semitism, whether you agree with it or not, and things we see in the world today that clearly cross the line of anti-Semitism. My conclusion is that a pseudo-intellectual and pseudo-scientific theory is being built piece by piece that calls for the elimination of the Jewish State. There is no mention of the occupation or of 1967; there is even talk of 1948 [when Israel is born]. Words about decolonizing Palestine or calling Israel a colonial state are slogans used to defame Israel.
The controversy between President Pedro Sánchez and Israel for his critical words after visiting the border with Gaza still resonates.
Without any doubt, the words of President Sánchez, but even more of members of his Government, have crossed the line between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism. Denying the right of the Jewish people to self-determination is an anti-Semitic act. Members of the Spanish Government make statements that are explicitly defined as anti-Semitism by an organization of which Spain is a member, the International Alliance for Holocaust Remembrance.
Is it a separate point in the relationship between Spain and Israel?
I do not know. You have to ask the diplomats and the politicians about that, but I can tell you that I am very sorry, because I have an affinity and a lot of affection for Spain.
The criticism for Gaza is seconded by António Guterres, the UN Secretary General, with whom he has collaborated on other occasions.
I was very saddened by the Secretary-General’s statement that October 7 did not happen in a vacuum. I wrote to him and said: “What content can justify the murder of a child, sexual violence against women, the shooting of fathers in front of their children and children in front of their parents?”. This is what Guterres sadly failed to understand. October 7 was not another event in the proverbial cycle of violence between Israel and the Palestinians. It was something completely different, an attack with genocidal characteristics. To say it didn’t happen in a vacuum is to justify things that cannot be justified.
The Israeli ambassador to the UN wore the yellow star with which the Nazis identified Jews to denounce the UN’s position on Gaza. You criticized its use. Does it hold criticism?
Although I know that my friend Ambassador Gilad Erdan is waging a struggle in front of a critical and adversarial forum for Israel, I did not remain silent because it was a mistake. The yellow star symbolizes the helplessness, being at the mercy of others, of the anti-Semites. And today this is not the situation. Today the Jewish people have their independent and sovereign state and their army. We have the means to defend ourselves. The yellow star should not have been used and perhaps also crosses the line of trivializing the Holocaust, even if it was for noble or worthy reasons. It is a line that must not be crossed.
In Israel it is difficult to find anyone critical of the war, despite all the casualties it causes in the aim of eliminating Hamas. And those who are say they are pointed out. Is war a danger to Israeli internal plurality?
Anyone who thinks that anything can change or cancel Israelis’ natural tendency to argue and have different ideas doesn’t understand Israeli society. Even in the midst of the Holocaust, in the Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion, there were two Jewish forces that did not unite and fought separately. Therefore, I don’t think there is anything that can change this way of being, which is sometimes positive, and sometimes negative.
Is talking about two states and settlements the way out of the conflict?
You have to ask the politicians.
