Musk’s Amnesia Over Israel’s Past ‘Conspicuous Acts of Kindness’

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (C) takes Elon Musk (L) on a tour of Kibbutz Kfar Aza after the Oct. 7 massacre took place there, in Kfar Aza, Israel, on Nov. 27, 2023. Amos Ben-Gershom Handout via Getty Images

Commentary

To win over Palestinians and end the Gaza War, Elon Musk recently suggested a “counterintuitive thing ... that Israel engage in the most conspicuous acts of kindness possible ever.” Mr. Musk then endorsed “talk of establishing, for example, a mobile hospital” to help the Gazans. “I recommend doing that. Just making sure that, you know, there’s food, water, medical necessities.”

Mr. Musk seems unaware that Israel clearly agrees, since it has been helping the United Arab Emirates and other foreign governments set up field hospitals in southern Gaza.

Mr. Musk must also have forgotten, or perhaps he never knew, that the idea of mobile hospitals in Gaza isn’t new. After Hamas overthrew the Palestinian Authority in 2007 and took over Gaza’s administration, it barred Gazans from continuing to travel to Israel for medical care. In response, the Israeli Medical Association (IMA) in 2009 lobbied Hamas for the right to set up field hospitals inside Gaza.

As urged by IMA chairman Dr. Yoram Blachar, who was also president of the World Medical Association, “The situation in Gaza continues to deeply concern us. There are hundreds of wounded in need of medical care, in addition to the chronically ill who need medical attention. We were informed by the Health Ministry in Jerusalem that Israel is willing to accept any number of wounded to Israeli hospitals, but that Hamas is preventing their transfer to Israel.”

Hamas eventually relented, leading first to a trickle, then to a flood of Gazans seeking medical attention in Israel. One high-profile case occurred in 2012—Mr. Musk might even deem it a “conspicuous act of kindness”—when Suhila Abd el-Salam, the sister of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, accompanied her ill husband to Israel’s Beilinson Hospital.

In 2016, according to a study in the American Journal of Public Health, 93,890 Palestinian patients, accompanied by 100,722 family members, were cared for at hospitals throughout Israel, including 9,832 children with birth defects and chronic diseases.

Mr. Musk’s amnesia extends to Israel’s many other “conspicuous acts of kindness,” such as its decisions in past wars with Hamas to continue to provide Gazans with essential services. During Israel’s 2008 war with Hamas, Israel never cut off Hamas’s electricity, even as Hamas’s Qassam rockets were raining down on Israel.

“We’re continuing to supply them electricity despite the overload for electricity in Israel and despite the fact that Israeli residents and Electric Company workers that are being sent to Gaza Vicinity communities are under threat from Qassam rockets,” explained Miko Zarfati, chairman for the workers’ committee of the Israel Electric Company. “The Electric Company sends people to fix power outages that are caused from the Qassam barrages every day in Sderot and the Gaza vicinity, and more than one worker has already been injured in these rocket attacks.”

Mr. Musk might also remember Israel’s 2005 decision to unilaterally leave Gaza altogether. In what surely must count as an outrageously “conspicuous act of kindness,” Israel left all its infrastructure behind and intact, including its lucrative greenhouse industry, which was supplying Europe with high-value fruits, vegetables, and flowers. Israel hoped that Gaza would become a “Singapore on the Mediterranean,” an affluent country that would then want to live in peace with Israel. Yet soon after turning over the keys to Gaza, rocket attacks began.

Like Mr. Musk, Israelis have stubbornly believed that acts of kindness would eventually win over Palestinians. Such naivete is in the Israeli character, something Mr. Musk evidently shares without being Jewish. Israelis continued in their naivete throughout Israel’s existence, despite decades of wars, intifadas, suicide bombings, airplane hijackings, and kidnappings.

Israelis’ naivete ended on Oct. 7; Mr. Musk’s naivete has not yet run its course.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.