I was riding the train to work last week, when a man sat down in the seat next to me, pulled a Talmudic text (Hebrew text within Hebrew text) from his messenger bag and started reading. I was listening to music on my headphones, and had removed my hat, so he could see my yarmulke. I was reading Al-Jazeera on my tablet and, when I took off my headphones and put them in my bag as we reached my station, he turned to me and said, “I like Al-Jazeera, too. It is my favorite news site.”
Just that; no more. I have been thinking about this encounter for a few days now. I am often self-conscious these days as I ride the train with my hat off, revealing my yarmulke. I rarely get looks from people of Muslim or Middle Eastern descent, but there have been a few times when people in full Ars and Frecha regalia glare at me as I read the news, or that book on the Israeli Communist Party that I am reviewing. The Hasids usually just nod at my yarmulke and leave it at that.
But this was a strange moment of connection. I didn’t really need to know any more than that my neighbor also reads Al-Jazeera, along with the Talmud. That meant a lot to me, as I am sure it meant a lot to him. I am not a person given to wild hopes, but this moment was hopeful.
This was from one of my social media posts, in which I have been chronicling the War on Gaza. My other posts from this week appear below.
These moments have been in short supply since the beginning of October, as the War has ground on, and the IDF has reduced the enclave to rubble. Each day brings new death and grim news from the battleground. Surely, the IDF had achieved its mission of ensuring the State of Israel’s security and had beaten back the Hamas attack weeks ago. Yet the war goes on, in Gaza’s streets, in the sky, and even in hospitals where the Israeli effort seems to have gone far beyond defense to a Biblical retribution visited on the people of Gaza:
“And the Lord sent thee on a journey, and said: Go and utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites, and fight against them until they be consumed.” (I Samuel 15:18)
There is, indeed, something primitive about the State of Israel’s savagery against not merely a military enemy, but against the civilians and noncombatants in the community around it. It is the kind of violence that doubtless made sense to Iron Age Levantine tribes; has our civilization devolved so far that this barbarism makes sense again?
What is there to hope for? Maybe for these unexpected moments of connection which suggest that another way is possible. Maybe for the faint hope that a “pause” in the slaughter is possible. It is a slender reed, perhaps, but our humanity is built on such foundations.
***
A pause in the killing is, of course, welcomed. But a “pause?” What does this mean for a Palestinian mother in Gaza; that she has a few days to scout out a slightly better shelter in the rubble, scrounge some food from a relief depot, and stand in line for days to have her daughter’s broken limb set? All just in time for the bombs and shells to start falling again?
I don’t know if my Zionist friends realize the disproportionate nature of this war. The IDF has 300+ fighter aircraft, 50 Apache attack helicopters, 500 tanks, 1,200 armored personnel carriers, 1,000 155mm howitzers, 15 ships and 38 heavily armed patrol boats off Gaza’s coast, and a force of 630,000 in active service and primary reserve (which has been called up). In contrast, Hamas’s military arm consists of about 30,000 men armed with small arms, rockets, and anti-tank weapons.
The State of Israel has more-than-overwhelming superiority in weapons, resources, and personnel. And when the killing starts again, that vast force and its arsenal, after a few days to regroup and reorganize, will hit Gaza once more like a sledgehammer. The Gazan mother will run for cover and hope that her family can find safety, and her daughter’s wounds have only healed before the next ones.
A pause is welcomed because any interruption in slaughter is welcomed, and because it demonstrates that the State of Israel is at least slightly susceptible to pressure from the United States. But a pause is not a ceasefire, and it does not mean that the Gazan mother’s children will survive the week.
12,300 are dead. There must be a ceasefire now.
***
What would it take to accomplish peace and a just resolution to the 75-year-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict?* The State of Israel has to take the first steps: A ceasefire, and the withdrawal of all Israeli troops from the Occupied territories, followed by the evacuation of all of the illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories.
Only after that can we even begin to discuss one-state or two-state solutions, compensation, and all the rest. Until that time, the conflict will continue. And since neither the State of Israel, nor my Zionist friends are inclined to take even the first step, the conflict will continue.
—
* Yes… The conflict has a longer history, but I am using 1948, perhaps arbitrarily, as a starting point.
***
All states come to an end. Czechoslovakia lasted for 72 years, Yugoslavia for 74; the German Empire lasted for 47 years, the Austro-Hungarian Empire for 51; the French Third Republic lasted for 70 years; United Kingdom, at 316 years, is relatively long-lived, but its days are numbered, and Canada, at 156 years and the United States, at 247, are pushing the limits. Assyria, Babylon, Rome, the Mughal Empire are all mere memories. Sic transit patria.
With this in mind, I have to wonder how the people of Israel, who have survived 2,500 years during which we had a self-governing state for a mere 178 years, will survive the inevitable end of the State of Israel. All states come to an end; the survival of Am Yisroel demands the persistence of a Diaspora community independent of Medines Yisroel.
***
With all the Zionist accusations that their critics in the Diaspora are “un-Jews” and “not really Jewish,” I find myself wondering if the Israelis are themselves really Jews at all, anymore. Living in a state with a Hebrew calendar punctuated with Jewish holidays, speaking an invented language based on the tongue of our proto-Jewish ancestors, they can be passive Jews, ignoring the obligations of pursuing tzedek and approaching creation with chesed committed to pikuach nefesh, while enjoying their bacon cheeseburgers. And the sages, from Hillel to Maimonides and beyond remind us that being a Jew cannot be passive, it must be a positive act. The Baal Shem Tov said we must sanctify the world with our mitzvahs; to be a Jew is to act like one.
***
“But what about the hostages?” There’s a meme going around, shared in social media by some of my friends who incline Zionist (I still have some), that asks “how are the hostages the footnote in all of this?” As I understand it, the original poster (one Debi Basch-Rudensky) is asking why there is no media coverage or discussion about the plight of the 240 Israelis taken hostage by Hamas terrorists in their 7 October attack on the State of Israel. While I have no doubt that Ms. Basch-Rudensky meant the question rhetorically – that is, not as a query seeking information or knowledge, but as a statement meant to emphasize a moral omission – I can’t resist a good question. And the answers reveal a great deal more about the asker, and the people who uncritically shared the meme, than about the plight of the hostages.
There are a number of reasons why the hostages might not be featured in news coverage, for example. Chief among them is that is that news coverage principally contains information about things that are new (it’s even in the name). If there is no change, then there is no news. There was even a bit on Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” news-satire segment back in the 70s where Chevy Chase would intone, in his best newscaster voice, “Francisco Franco is still dead,” before shuffling some papers and moving on to the next item.
The joke, of course was that the Spanish dictator, who died a few weeks into the sketch comedy series’ first season, could be nothing else than dead after his, er, death, and that, while reporting on that fact might give some joy to the great many people who hated him, it really wasn’t news. As they used to say in the newspaper business, “’dog bites man’ isn’t news; ‘man bites dog’ is news.” There is no point in devoting scarce column inches or TV time to something that is the same as always; what you report on is the exception. And since the condition of the hostages is not known to have changed since they were abducted, there is no news to report.
Nevertheless, for all that, there has in fact been a consistent stream of media reporting on the plight of the hostages almost every day since 7 October. CBC News ran a moving article about Roni Steinbrecher, the father of a woman abducted by Hamas, and their neighbors in the Kfar Aza kibbutz just this weekend. On average the CBC has run a story on its website every day about the hostages.
In the last 24 hours, The Guardian has published at least one story specifically about the hostages, and has the Washington Post, and Al-Jazeera, whose coverage of the hostages has been both deeply sympathetic and exhaustive. These four are the news sites that I read most often, and I cannot speak for the coverage in the New York Times, the Globe and Mail, or other publications, but I am fairly certain that their coverage is not much different in either tone or volume.
In fairness, these are not news stories, per-se, but feature articles, the kind of reporting that newspapers and magazines do to provide background and context to the news, even when there isn’t anything necessarily new to report. Back when I was a newspaperman, we called them “think pieces.” But the sheer volume of them, both in the number of the articles and in the breadth and depth of the reporting certainly indicates that the hostages are not being ignored, nor is their plight a “footnote” to the State of Israel’s war on Gaza.
If the hostages are a footnote to anyone, in fact, they are to Binyamin Netanyahu, who has steadfastly refused to consider a ceasefire in exchange for a hostage release. For the Israeli Prime Minister, the safety of the hostages seems entirely incidental to the punitive destruction of Gaza. I am fairly certain, however, that this is not what Ms. Basch-Rudensky and her proxies – all dutiful Zionist cheerleaders – mean.
One then must wonder what they do mean given that no one in the media has actually forgotten the hostages’ plight. The answer to that head-scratcher, unfortunately, is not very pretty.
What Ms. Basch-Rudensky, and the thousand-or-so people who shared her meme, is saying is that it is morally reprehensible for anyone in the public commons to look away, even for a moment, and consider any other issues and factors in the State of Israel’s war on Gaza – including Israeli violations of International law, atrocities, and the suffering and deaths of thousands of Palestinians, whose butcher’s bill stood at more than 11,000 dead, including more than 8,000 children and women, and 28,000 wounded this weekend. And don’t you dare look away from the hostages and Hamas brutality to consider tragic historical context in which the 7 October attack, the abductions, and the slaughter in Gaza appears. That, they are saying, makes the hostages a mere footnote.
There is a perverse kind of moral math at work here, and we need to recognize it: Ms. Basch-Rudensky is saying that the plight of 240 Israeli hostages who, as heartbreaking and tragic as their plight might be, are still alive (though certainly imperiled by the country’s punitive assault on Gaza), is far more important than the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been killed and maimed, and the many more who continue to suffer. The math says that Israeli lives are worth more than Palestinian lives, by a factor of at least 50-to-1, and maybe even by a factor of almost 10,000-to-1.
Let that sink in. That is the kind of calculus made by Japanese nationalists in the 1920s and 1930s about Manchurians, Koreans, and Chinese; by Russian Pan-Slavic nationalists about Poles, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Samoyeds, and also Jews; by the British about Indians and Africans at the height of their Empire. Ms. Basch-Rudensky and her proxies are demanding that we regard the stateless, rightless Palestinians as entirely superfluous just as, Hannah Arendt wrote, European imperialists regarded the “black masses” they ruled as superfluous.
This is an ideological premise of maximalist Zionism and underpins the willingness of the State of Israel to butcher what they regard as an undifferentiated mass of Palestinian terrorists. The fact that Ms. Basch-Rudensky seems to embrace this premise and so many people who, for whatever reason, approve enough to amplify her message, agree should give us all pause.
***
How did advocating for Palestinians become “antisemitism?” Are you an antisemite if you are pro-Roma, pro-Catalan, pro-Scottish, or pro-Indigenous? It sure is a headscratcher. 🤔
(This is a rhetorical question. I know. I know.)
***
Whatever one thinks about the rectitude of the Israeli war on Gaza (for the record, I oppose it), surely even my most Zionist-inclined friends must recognize that it is rapidly eroding whatever good will and support the rest of the world might have for the State of Israel. It is entirely possible that the IDF can, at least in the short term, “eliminate” Hamas by leveling Gaza and slaughtering its population. But its allies and sponsors in the United States, Canada, the EU, Britain and elsewhere are already tiring of the State of Israel’s excesses. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the quiet part out loud, only to be publicly scolded by Benjamin Netanyahu. This is not a productive strategy for building or maintaining goodwill and, whether or not Zionists and Israelis know this, the State of Israel’s continued existence – indeed, its very birth in 1948 – relies very much on international goodwill.
There is an image that remains in my imagination: The State of Israel, dressed in the uniform of an IDF infantryman, is standing among the ruins of Gaza, up to its knees in Palestinian dead. The figure is looking around for its erstwhile friends, who have abandoned it, and asking “where did everyone go?” This is an image of a Pyrrhic victory. I can only guess that this is what my Zionist friends want for their homeland.
Maybe one of my artistic friends can illustrate this?
***
When I say “decolonize Judaism” I am, of course, being provocative. But what I mean is that there was a time, even after 1948, when Diaspora Jewish life was not completely dominated by Zionism and the State of Israel. The Blue and White did not appear on the bima of every shul, we didn’t recite the Prayer for the Welfare of the State of Israel every Shabbes, although many of our community organizations were or inclined Zionist, like B’Nai B’rith and Hadassah, many others, like the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Publication Society did not. In fact, AJC was often a fierce critic of the State of Israel. It was possible to be a Jew in the Diaspora without coming under intense pressure to conform to Zionism and blindly support Israeli policy.
That changed after 1967, as the State of Israel, through a number of means – not the least its Ministry of Diaspora Affairs – began to exert a near-complete hegemony over Diaspora Jewish life, controlling community organizations and Shul services, to enlist Diaspora Jews as uncritical foot soldiers. This was an and is an explicit policy meant to negate the very possibility of a Diaspora Jewish life independent of the State of Israel. It was a triumph of “Diaspora negation.”
In other words, Diaspora Jews have been fully colonized by the State of Israel. If we are going to survive as a community, we must decolonize. We must reclaim Israel from the State of Israel.
***
With regard to Zionism: I really don’t have any more argument with Zionism than I have with any other ethnonationalist ideology. I am sure that many Zionists have what they believe are perfectly good reasons to embrace it. And I am not even remotely interested in arguing about those reasons, since I rarely argue ideology. If you want to be a Zionist, then fine – just as it’s fine with me if you want to be a Christian, or a Russian nationalist, or a flat-earther, or a furry.
I simply decline to embrace your ideology. This is a fundamental disagreement that I can live with. I have a good many Christian friends and family, and very likely more than a few furries.
However, I object to two things: 1. When your ideology justifies the violation of other people’s human rights, international law, and common decency, and you use it to excuse war and violence. 2. When you try to force your ideology on me or abuse me for not sharing its parochial “truths.”
That is where I draw the line. And Zionism has so colonized the Diaspora Jewish community that Zionists have the gall to tell me that I am not a Jew, or that criticism of the State of Israel is antisemitic.
***
I just got a PM from a relative: “I appreciate and support your opinions, but why do you have to be so provocative about it?” I do appreciate this comment from a shvesterkind who might not be quite as willing to speak out. That’s why I won’t name them. But I wanted to share my PM answer publicly:
I have to be provocative because I need to provoke. I believe that dissent is not only a right, but a moral obligation, no matter how uncomfortable. I can’t blindly rally around the Blue-and-White, or quietly slink in the corners where no one will notice me. Philosophically, it is a principal going back to Socrates and, above all to the Zugos, which informs everything that I believe in: that we much question.
I am under no illusions that I will be martyred by the Kings of Israel like the 800 Pharisees crucified by Alexander Jannaeus in Jerusalem. I face discomfort and insult, and not bodily harm. And yet, the moral obligation to speak – to Speak Truth to Power, as it were – is there.
Hannah Arendt wrote that “Politically speaking, it is that under conditions of terror, most people will comply but some people will no… Humanly speaking, no more is required, and no more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation.”
That is my homily for today.
***
Just received in a PM: “The principle of Pikuach Nefesh applies only to fellow Jews.”
So, there you have it.
***
I see a great many of my Zionist Jewish friends posting that they “support” or “stand with” the State of Israel. “Support” what, exactly? “Stand with” the State of Israel as it does what? Hamas’s 7 October attack was successfully beaten back and the border with Gaza secured more than a month ago. Israelis have not been under any immediate threat for several weeks, and there have been no known Israeli civilian casualties since the attack.
So, what do they “support?” Perhaps the deployment of overwhelming military force from the air, land, and sea against a numerically, materially, and strategically inferior enemy with no air force, navy, or armor to exterminate a group of terrorists? Maybe they support the utter destruction of an enclave completely within the State of Israel’s power, at the cost of tens of thousands of dead and maimed civilians – 40% of whom are children? Maybe they support a bombardment that will almost certainly result in the deaths of the hostages?
I really don’t know. It’s easy to say that you “support” something if you don’t actually enunciate what it is. It is easy to “stand with” a party in a conflict if you are vague about what that party is actually doing.
I guess I would like to see some moral courage from my Zionist shvesterkind. I would respect them, and their principled stand with the State of Israel is they could just come out and say it: “Yes, I support the vast, disproportionate killing of Palestinian civilians, women and children in order to utterly exterminate Hamas.” Or, “I stand with the State of Israel as it pummels the ghetto that it has kept locked behind walls and barbed wire for decades.”
I would not agree; in fact, I would be nauseated. But I would respect their honesty and the courage of their convictions.
***
When Benjamin Netanyahu says that his goal is “the elimination of Hamas,” does he mean only the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, its military force? Or does he also mean anyone in the political bureau and people employed by the Hamas-controlled government, including local police, doctors and administrative personnel at the hospitals, bus drivers, public works technicians, sanitation workers, and anyone who has ever had any interactions with Hamas.
My guess is it’s the latter.
***
Whether it is acceptable to kill 200 civilians to “neutralize”* one terrorist is an ethical calculus. So is the question of whether it is acceptable to kill and maim tens of thousands civilians to “neutalize” Hamas when the security of Israelis and the State of Israel has already been secured is also an ethical calculus.
But, that the State of Israel, Israelis and, above all, Disapora Zionists, have made this reveals to all of us their ethics, their values, what they prize over human lives, and what passes for Zionist morality.
A spoiler: This is not pikuach nefesh.
—
* The sanitized language of war is almost as terrifying as war itself.
***
One great Zionist canard is that they want the State of Israel to be treated as “a state like any other” (as David Ben-Gurion put it). That is, of course, a complete lie. Were we to treat the State of Israel as “a state like any other,” the US, Canada, the EU, and many other countries would be imposing sanctions on it to force it to stop the slaughter of Gazan civilians. The UN Security Council would be passing a censure resolution, and you can be pretty damned sure that the US would have cut off the supply of weapons by now.
No, despite what Zionists say, they do NOT want the State of Israel to be treated as “a state like any other,” but as a special case that can do whatever it wants, violate whatever treaties and international laws that it chooses, and get away with it. And, if you criticize the State of Israel, as one might criticize any other state for atrocities and potential war crimes, you are an antisemite. That is what Zionists want.
***
It’s going to take a very long time for me to be able to look those members of my community who called me a “kapo,” “traitor,” “un-Jew,” etc. in the eye again and call them shvesterkind. In many cases, probably never.
***