For the sake of truth - Gabriel M. Gurman

How should an elderly man, a retired physician, react at a moment when his country is in danger, when less than 30 km from his home, men, women, and children are being randomly slaughtered, when sirens wail every ten minutes, and everything around him presents the horrific image of a human cataclysm of unknown dimensions until that moment?

The author, an anesthesiologist and professor emeritus at Ben Gurion University in southern Israel, woke up on Saturday, October 7, 2023, like all his fellow citizens, to a completely unknown situation, even in Israel, where terrorist attacks occur at almost regular intervals.

Around him, all those who could take up arms were heading towards the southern region of the country, aiming to limit the human disaster that had unleashed just a few hours earlier. Television channels did not cease broadcasting news and figures: the number of those killed, the number of the missing, the number taken hostage and forcibly brought to the tunnels of the terrorist group in the Gaza Strip.

And then, with the radio permanently on and in front of his computer, the retired physician decided to put “on paper” aspects of what was happening so close to his home, to describe the circumstances that led to the attack on that holiday Saturday, and to try to delve into the situation of a country that has been at war since its very existence, but now faced with a danger unknown until that moment.

Thus, for more than two years, with an irregular frequency imposed by events, Gabriel M. Gurman has written and sent essays in English to friends and acquaintances around the world, all aimed at presenting the “case of Israel” in its true light. The essays are characterized by a particular care for the veracity of the data and the objectivity of the expressed opinions, but undoubtedly here and there, the pain caused by the cruelty of events, but especially by the often extremely hostile attitude of global public opinion, compels the author to include notes and opinions with a tint of subjectivism, which can be easily understood by anyone who tries, even for a moment, to put themselves in the author’s situation.

This volume is, in fact, a detailed presentation of the situation in which Israel finds itself these days, where even if the danger seems to have passed, it exists and threatens the daily life of Israelis.

For those who wish to know more closely the daily reality of what we all call the Middle East, seen through the lens of an Israeli intellectual’s thinking, this volume will provide elements, details, opinions, historical and current data that will help them better and more profoundly understand what is happening today, before our eyes, in that troubled part of the globe.
 

RECENZII