Shabbat shalom.
This morning, as LBJ use to say, I come to you with a heavy heart. My heart is heavy from grief - not just over the horrible accidental killing of the seven innocent aide workers, but also, grief over the soul of Israel. Hamas may be diminished in its military capability, but it is clearly achieving its goal of further isolating Israel from the rest of the world. And, as the relentless images of death and destruction in Gaza continue unabated, I have to ask myself, is this the time when its most understanding allies call “time” on the killing and even fervent believers in Israel, like myself, begin to waver? And where are the global protests and pressure to release the Israeli hostages, the true innocent victims in this madness!
As Jonathan Freedland stated on his latest podcast, “If you had asked me to imagine what is the one thing we could do to make sure that Israel's already battered public image and reputation gets even worse, it would be to hit not just any NGO, but one that's really loved, that fed Israelis in the Gaza envelope following October the 7th, that has unbelievable connections in Washington, that was founded by a beloved TV chef who is a close friend of Joe Biden, and that has workers from several of Israel's allies, Poland, the US, the United Kingdom.” A perfect storm of bad shit for sure.
War is horrible business. If you think Israel is unique in the amount of accidental civilian casualties is has incurred in it’s execution of this war, you would be wrong. In fact, although the news feeds would have you believe the IDF is an aggressive killing machine with no regard for civilians, the opposite is true. Colonel John Spencer from the Marines out of West Point maintains the position that no other Western army takes the same kind of measures that the Israelis have taken in Gaza in order to prevent killing of civilians. And the facts support Israel’s contention that their ratio of combatants killed to civilian deaths is well below the accepted threshold. That does not justify any civilian deaths, but puts some context around the current propaganda perpetuated by the lame stream media. Nuf said.
As Howard Jacobson, Booker prize winning author, said so eloquently in his latest essay, “Will the gathering storm of rage be too much for us this time? Or will we feel obliged to go on salvaging the truth from the noise and cacophony of war, even as those who don’t want to hear us — the libelous, the malevolent, the misinformed and now the usually friendly who are running out of patience — grow in number and in volume?”
No reasonable expert on the region believes that any number of bombs, or years spent in control of the territory, could actually eliminate every Hamas commander, fighter, weapon and underground tunnel from Gaza, never mind prevent the next generation of terrorists from replacing them.
Backstopping this strategy with a brutal and clumsy obstinance is Bibi and his coalition of the callous, who are not only doubling down on it, but still considering storming Rafah with a force that will surely bring more collateral killing and images of dead babies being pulled from the rubble, and will likely bring an end to US support. There is already pressure from legal scholars in Britain to stop supporting arms to Israel, and now other nations are sure to follow. And in the midst of all this, including an eminent retaliation by Iran, the Knesset decides to go on vacation. Unfuckingbelievable.
Jodi Rudoren, Editor in Chief of The Forward, is one of those fervent believers that has wavered in her support, or at least in the current Israeli strategy. In her latest editorial, she writes,
“Six months into the devastating war that Hamas spawned, my head and heart are filled with a single word, one used by both Israelis and Palestinians: Khalas. Enough.
Israel must immediately end the fighting in Gaza, committing to a ceasefire in exchange for the release of as many hostages as possible — and start the hard, hard work of restoring its international standing to ensure its future as a Jewish democracy alongside an independent, unoccupied Palestine.
Stopping the bloodshed and letting the world feed the starving people of Gaza is the clear moral imperative. It is also, now, clearly the only way forward for Israel and world Jewry.”
Rudoren argues that the goal of totally eradicating Hamas is not realistic and impossible to achieve: “Destroy Hamas. That is a slogan, not a strategy — reductive and simplistic, not unlike “Free Palestine.”” She continues:
The Israel Defense Forces said in mid-February that it had killed 12,000 Hamas militants in Gaza, including top commanders Marwan Issa, the No. 3 terrorist leader in the enclave; the head of Hamas’s aerial division; two battalion commanders; a brigade commander; and a deputy brigade commander. The military also has dismantled 20 of 24 Hamas battalions, officials said last week, and rendered inoperable up to 40% of the group’s estimated 300-mile tunnel network.
These are major, historic achievements that have eroded if not erased the threats to Israel from Gaza for the foreseeable future. As an email I got yesterday from the Jewish Federations of North America put it: “The number of Hamas rocket attacks on Israel remains negligible on most days, due to Hamas’ significantly diminished capabilities.”
The IDF could have declared victory on the battlefield weeks or even months ago in order to focus on the war’s other goal, freeing the remaining 134 hostages — several dozen of whom are believed dead — a goal truly essential to the soul of Israel and the Jewish people. Instead, it has promised to press its deadly campaign on through Rafah, the southern Gaza city where some 1 million Palestinian evacuees have been sheltering in tents — an operation that might further degrade but also cannot “destroy” Hamas, and would have disastrous collateral consequences.
And while some think Israel may be suffering from PTSD after the horrors of October 7, most Israelis will tell you they are not post trauma, but still in trauma! As a diaspora Jew, my feelings are more aligned with anger - anger at the mainstream media, anger with Nut-and-yahoo, anger with the woke nut jobs on US campuses and around the world supporting Hamas and their brothers’ jihadist genocide against Jews. And lost in the daily cacophony of death and destruction and main stream media propaganda is the fate of the hostages. Where are the campus protests to release the Israeli hostages? This war after all, would end immediately if Hamas laid down their weapons and released them!
Jacobson goes on, much more eloquently than I:
And here is another of the truths we save from that most terrible event. That we do our humanity a great wrong when we let theories of power rule our politics and politics rule our hearts. Nothing that Zionism had done or ever could do would justify this glorying in the torture of individual Israelis. That so many of those doing the glorying were, on the face of it, highly educated put paid to our sentimental faith in education as our final and most reliable bulwark against the hysteria of race-hatred. Voice for voice, the educated out-sang the ignorant in bigotry and bloodlust. As did the highly principled out-sing the more ideologically easy-going when it came to such causes as the inviolability of a woman’s body.
And he continues:
I don’t want to be sentimental about Israel, but it’s enjoyed no peace from the beginning. It is a country that has lived under arms since before its declaration of independence. And on the very day independence was granted it was attacked once more. No, no, and no again. No to Jews. Not here. Not ever. No, no, no.
For Israel to have thrived in the face of a hostility with no end is remarkable. But there can be no denying that the fighting, the conscription of almost all its citizens, the having to live cheek by jowl with a people who cannot and will not accept its presence anywhere “between the river and the sea” has been a toughening, not to say desensitising, experience.
In defence of last year’s massacre, it was argued that it could not be understood independently of the circumstances that led to it. Hamas’s attack, its apologists insisted, was the child of the Israeli occupation. I have always resisted the word “occupation” because it suggests a pre-planned policy, rather than — as I see it — the consequence of all the wars between the two people, most of them instigated by the Palestinians, after which Israel found itself with territory it needed to demilitarise for its own safety. But alright — an occupation it became. After which, what were Palestinians expected to do?
The elusive two-state solution was presented to them several times. Not equitable enough, they said, even when it was the United Nations that had done the divvying up. “Don’t accept,” the cosmopolitan Palestinian writer Edward Said urged from the comfort of his home in North America. “Demand more.” Was he right? Wouldn’t an inequitable divvying up have given Palestinians better if not perfect lives? Well, it’s not for one person to tell another what’s fair. But right or wrong, there was to be no deal.
And so the bloody impasse — a tragedy, as Amos Oz saw it, of two rights. Later, a tragedy of two wrongs. For calling it a tragedy, Oz’s erstwhile Palestinian supporters deserted him. Tragedy meant there was no villain. And the Palestinians needed a villain.
Netanyahu fitted the bill. Netanyahu put his hand out and took. In retaliation for which — though nothing in the history of the two people would ever justify its extreme and twisted violence — the massacre of October 7. But if Israel must take some blame for the massacre, the Palestinians must, by the same token, take some blame for Netanyahu, the lumbering, unsubtle child of unrelenting war, a man hardened in suspicion and fear who does not know the difference between justice and revenge.
To hold out against the Palestinian narrative of dispossession, while allowing that not all of it is fantasy or self-pity, has necessitated, these last few years, more flexibility of mind than dedicated anti-Zionists are willing to try. That’s how we know they are wrong: they do not attempt to understand their enemy and do not cry for him. Did Gazans — educated in their schoolbooks to loathe Jews — dance in the streets on October 7? Whatever the truth, may Israelis never dance the dance of blood.
The heart breaks, seeing the destruction of Gaza. But seeing the destruction of Tel Aviv will hurt no less. Do I fear that? Yes. I sense a change of mood. The constant chanting on the streets of London and elsewhere has, to a degree, contributed to that change. One lie, endlessly retold, can weaken the cause of truth eventually.
But, all on his own, Netanyahu is enough to try the patience of the West whose leaders have little appetite for sticking to a mission. There is a flaw in our natures that leads to our growing bored with even the noblest causes, let alone those grown stale in their own complacency. Oh, what the hell. Enough of them. So those are swastikas. So what? It’s all just a matter of context.
I fear they — papers and commentators and politicians — are losing interest and sympathy at the same rate. They’ve heard it all before. We Jews need to find other ways to make our harrowing history compelling. We’ve tried losing. We’ve tried winning. I’m not sure what’s left.
I have relied heavily this week on other’s essays since I am having trouble mustering the words that express how dreadful I am feeling right now about Israel and for what might lie ahead. I wish I could be offering my usual light-hearted and smarmy commentary, or writing about the fabulous Caitlin Clark, the coming eclipse, the surprisingly excellent Red Sox pitching staff, or the Bruins and Celtics chances in the playoffs. But my heart remains heavy, and I worry about my friends in Israel, and what the fucking Iranians may be doing in retaliation for a suspected Israeli strike that killed a top Revolutionary Guard general earlier this week in Syria.’
Despite all the bad and ominous news, I remain a stalwart defender of Israel and everything she stands for. For sure, Bibi needs to go. For sure, moderate Arab countries need to de-radicalize their jihadism, as Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka have done. For sure, Hamas needs to be neutered, however that is best defined, and a new generation of Gazans needs to accept Israel. For sure, as Golda Meir once said, "Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us."
Instead of my usual buffet of carefully curated news items, below are a few links to podcasts and essays about Israel you might find interesting.
Eve Barlow’s rant on so called “progressives” really captured the anger I feel toward the pro-Palestine imbeciles who have no concept of moral clarity.
Today the IDF accidentally killed seven aid workers in Gaza, and admitted to this tragic error and issued a statement. The uproar and outrage and incessant posting by the parasites was insufferable. It was an accident. Hamas, however, do not kill anyone by accident. Death for Hamas is a strategy. The entire Bibas family has been in capitivity for 180 days. These same puritans have said not a single word about Shiri, Yarden, Ariel and Kfir Bibas. Not one! What kind of humanitarian is that? Oh but the International Court of Justice says… Who gives a shit? Iran pays for that.
Susan Bordo’s Substack Essay, “The Rhetorical Escalator” - Susan is a journalist who has been observing and writing on the coverage of Israel in the main stream media.
When I posted a note about a particularly anti-Semitic stack and questioned why there wasn’t any “progressive” protest against it, I was pelted with: “Have you rebuked Israel for killing innocent kids? Do you object to Israel killing non-combatants?” And “Are you at all concerned about the mass slaughter by Israel since the Hamas attack?”
This rhetorical move can be likened to a child’s “Oh yeah? So what about you?” Nowadays, though, it’s all over social media, as those, sure of their own moral high ground, applaud each other for exposing the callousness of what they assume (often unjustifiably) is a “pro-Israel” position on the war. I very rarely comment on the war itself. Virtually everything I’ve written has been—to put it simply—about the way we talk about the war, particularly the way the mainstream media reports on the war. There’s a lot to be criticized there. Apparently, though, concerns about the imbalances and distortions of discourse about the war—which I believe have inflamed and divided people who otherwise could be working together toward peace—just show I’m in league with baby-killers.
Finally, I would like to end this week on a more positive note. Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, considered one of the most influential rabbis in the country, was asked this week about how best to deal with the fear and anxiety of being Jewish in these challenging times. She offered 3 strategies to help: 1. Love and kindness - do something good for others, 2. Celebrate Shabbat and be present with other Jews, and 3. Do something to experience wonder and awe. I found the following musical performances to be awesome. I hope you do to.
I hope you all have a great rest of the weekend. And please, be safe out there.
Bring them home.
Brad out.
Awful. I can only hope that Jacobson is right, "But there can be no denying that the fighting, the conscription of almost all its citizens, the having to live cheek by jowl with a people who cannot and will not accept its presence anywhere “between the river and the sea” has been a toughening, not to say desensitising, experience." I guess its a poor excuse at best.
It's hard times to be Jewish...thanks for sharing the thoughts and quotes, especially Jacobson's. The unfathomable thing is that the drone attack on the WSK aid convoy was no accident. An internal Israeli military probe revealed that rogue commanders deliberately targeted the food convoy, knowing exactly who was in the cars while falsely believing a Hamas terrorist was hiding among them. "The probe found that the strike was ordered against the convoy of WCK vehicles after officers suspected they carried a Hamas gunman, despite a low level of confidence, and against army regulations." I'm afraid Israel is on the precipice of losing more than the world's support. I'm afraid for its soul.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-dismisses-2-senior-officers-over-deadly-drone-strike-on-gaza-aid-convoy/