I'll Think of a Catchy Title Later

Trying to find the words to talk about unspeakable violence.

I don’t often spend much time staring at a blank word processing document. Avoiding writer’s block is easy: simply don’t start until you already have something you want to say. I call it the Mr. Ed approach to writing. 

For several days, however, I have had a strong sense that there is something I need to write, a perspective I need to share. Some feelings, prompted by the attack on Israel, that need to be blunted through expression, vented into the ether. 

I dreaded each time I logged onto social media last week. My politics lean heavily left and, with each passing year, are moving further leftward, but this is one issue the left can never seem to get right. After making a rough identification of Israel as oppressors and Palestinians as oppressed, liberals tend to center Palestinian victimhood, rationalizing the killing of Israelis as the revolutionary howls of an oppressed people. 

In this way, the leftists become reactionaries. 

The term “reactionary left” is typically- and inaccurately- used by right wingers. Here, though, I use it to describe people who otherwise have nuanced, well-informed, compassionate views on political issues, but who are grafting a good-versus-evil mentality onto this conflict, where it very definitely does not belong. 

My desire to write was further chilled by observing the reactions to other Jews sharing their thoughts online. A well-known artist I admire posted a heartfelt but politically milquetoast message about grieving, and was attacked as supporting apartheid. Comments on that post included explicit support for Hamas and applause of their violence. 

After speaking to many Jewish-American friends, I heard the same themes time and again. Our views are nuanced as supporters of the state of Israel, but opponents of its current government. Those I spoke with unanimously loathe Netanyahu and his proto-fascist government. We fear tremendous violence in response to these attacks, and recognize that the status quo cannot be maintained in light of last week’s attack. 

Many of those people expressed a newfound fear of being identifiably Jewish at a time when Jews are being targeted, both by violent extremists, and by the reactionary left. 

There are no good or easy ways to resolve the situation in Gaza. That situation arises from complicated history, and finding an unbiased source can be a challenge. It occurs to me that the reasons for how we got here are of much less immediate concern than the question of what comes next. 

Hamas cannot be allowed to continue operating in Gaza. It serves as the de facto government, and its policy is to resist Israel with violence aimed at undermining the existence of Israel. Gaza may live in squalor, but Hamas finds the resources to build weapons factories, rockets, explosives, and other implements of destruction. 

Hamas does not want Palestinians to move out of refugee camps- where some have lived for generations- unless they are moving back into Israel, rectifying the “Nakba,” or catastrophe, of Israeli statehood. Even if Egypt welcomed the Palestinians to resettle in Sinai with open arms, Hamas would resist it, because that would not serve their goal of eradicating Israel. 

Eradicating Hamas is no easy task. As the media and commentators routinely point out, they use civilians as shields, locating their weapons and command facilities in hospitals, mosques, and residential buildings. That way, if their missile launches are met with return fire, they can point to the civilian deaths as additional fuel for their rage against Israel. It is unsurprising that, in response to Israel’s warning that civilians should leave part of Gaza, Hamas ordered them to stay. Without their civilian shield, Hamas stands no chance against the Israeli Defense Forces. They conducted a sneak attack on civilians, hid among civilians in Gaza, and believe this gives them immunity from retribution, because striking a civilian area would be a war crime.

Hamas’ strategy appears to be leveraging world opinion to make Israel functionally helpless to defend itself. Within hours after the attacks came the first calls for a ceasefire. This was likely received in Israel with the same disbelief as if Japan called for a ceasefire the day after Pearl Harbor: we hit you hard, let’s stop fighting before you can hit us back. 

So far, Israel’s allies appear to be giving the Jewish state time to respond as they see fit, without calls for restraint. As the body count in Gaza increases over the next week, I expect the chorus of calls for an Israeli withdrawal to become louder and more widespread. Israel is thus on the clock, and needs to take action to dismantle Hamas with alacrity. Doing a virtually impossible task quickly will come at the cost of doing it efficiently or well. More non-combatants will die because of the time pressure Hamas and its allies are creating, forcing Israel to act rashly or risk not being able to respond at all. 

–

Last week, the leader of Hamas called for a worldwide “day of rage” against Israel, to take place on Friday, October 13th. Just one week before, Hamas launched a surprise assault on Israel, attacking, raping, kidnapping, and murdering as many Jews as they could find. The “day of rage” was in service of Hamas’ stated, overarching goal: elimination of Israel, and an Arab-Muslim state that extends from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea (this is the origin of the chant “from the river to the sea”). 

Several organizations in New York answered Hamas’ call, and a major protest against Israel was scheduled for Friday the 13th in Times Square. 

Fearing violence, many Midtown businesses- including my law firm- shut their doors early. I let curiosity get the better of me, and went to Times Square to see what was happening. I would like to share three of my observations: 

First, when I spoke with several protesters, none said they support Hamas’ attacks. They universally claimed that they were protesting on behalf of Palestinians, not Hamas. Of course, the tragedy of the Gaza Strip is not new- it has been festering since at least 1967- and the call for rage against Israel came from Hamas, not the Palestinian Authority. I find the claim that this day of rage just happened to fall during the week when Israel buried over 1,300 terror victims is more than a little disingenuous. Still, it was encouraging to see that those protesters were self-aware enough not to explicitly celebrate Hamas’ bloodlust. 

Second, among the many chants I heard was “This is what you get!” with verbal emphasis on the first, third, and fifth words in rhythmic intonation. I wondered what the above-referenced protesters would say to make this sound like anything other than gleeful support of rape and murder. 

Third, I saw a small group of Hasidic Jews. They were not a part of the protest or the counter-protest: they were just in Times Square. More specifically, they were doing something many New Yorkers will recognize, handing out business cards that inform the recipient that their late Rabbi was actually the Messiah, and we should do good deeds to help him bring about paradise, find out more by scanning the QR code. They’ve been doing this for years. These guys aren’t Israelis (probably), weren’t yelling anything for or against Israel or the Palestinians, and were likely born and raised in the city, but they did commit the cardinal sin of being obviously, visibly Jewish. 

I watched multiple protesters screaming at them from just a few paces away, things like “Stop stealing land! Stop stealing land!” 

I wondered where the well-meaning protesters were to explain to me again that their rage is targeted at Zionism, not Jewish people. 

–

Nobody knows how to talk about this war. Language models strain to their breaking point. Historical comparisons are clumsy at best, and more often veer into hyperbole, appropriation, and Godwin’s Law. It has been nine days since the attack, and today’s memetic example is the comparisons between pro-Palestinian advocacy and “all lives matter.” If you squint, you can see the resonance, but I find this more appropriative than appropriate. 

What is missing from the discourse is any reasonable plan of action. If Israel invades Gaza, what is expected to follow? Surely, more death. Hopefully, major degradation of Hamas and its ability to wage war. Bad infrastructure will become worse infrastructure, and then the rebuilding will start, but with whose money? And to build what? And where will two million Palestinians live in the meantime?

If Israel accepts a ceasefire and stops its siege of Gaza, what then? Hamas will regroup, and surely they will attack again. The population of Gaza has proven unwilling or unable to restrain them. Israel’s government would surely fall, if it takes any action short of eradicating Hamas, and it will be replaced by one that vows to be ruthless. What then of the hostages? Hamas keeps people for years, they don’t even voluntarily return the remains of dead hostages. Will Israel be expected to let captured terrorists go free in exchange for hostages? 

Is that what fidelity to human rights requires? 

–

Slogans only get you so far. Eventually, one must articulate something concrete to support or oppose, understanding that the former is always harder than the latter. I am against violence. I am against theocracy. I am against war. I am against murder and rape. I am against the existence of an “open air prison” of concentrated human misery. I am against everything that is currently happening. 

But what am I for? 

I am for a strong, safe, and secure Israel. 

I am for self-determination and independence for the Palestinians. 

I am for human dignity. 

–

So we end where we started: what can I possibly say? Fifteen hundred words in, and I feel I haven’t really said anything. 

I feel sadness, mixed with fear, mixed with rage. I resist countless urges to post something, to comment something, to say something, to take a stand. I resent being forced to take so many stands on so many fraught issues. 

When I do speak, what do people hear? They hear a Jew talking. My views are assumed biased, and perhaps they are; that assumption is certainly a racist one regardless. I am more than my Judaism, more than my family history. So were the people at that music festival. So are the families living in Gaza. 

I feel deep disappointment with so many people around me who are quick to post snarky takes, seemingly eager to find some little way to use this crisis to signal to their fellow leftists that they are on the side of the metaphorical angels, before the literal bodies of the civilians they allegedly care about have cooled. 

I begin to question whether I have done this in the past, with other crises that don’t affect me as deeply as this one. 

That thought leads to another: why do I feel so affected by this? I am not Israeli, and have only been there once, as a child. I loathe their current government, and have for more than a decade. Why, then, does this feel like it was an attack on me? 

I may be more than my identity, but I also cannot escape it. I was born in America because my great grandparents fled violence in Europe, violence specifically aimed at Jews. Back then, Jews had nowhere to go: my forebears were lucky to get into the United States before it effectively closed its borders before and during the Holocaust. During World War II, there was no safe haven for the Jews. 

Identity means more than what you consider yourself to be: too often, it is how society views you. As a Jew, I am viewed as being a part of this cycle of violence, whether I want to be or not. The Hasidic Jews in Times Square could not escape it, and neither can I. My special affinity for Israel as a haven for Jews is not incompatible with respecting Palestinian rights. Neither of those beliefs is inconsistent with condemning senseless violence. 

When the United States misbehaves on the world stage, I feel empowered to speak out against it, and trust that people will not conflate me, an American, with everything America does. I do not feel the safety of that separation with Israel. Though I am not an Israeli, I feel that others hold me accountable for the actions of Israel, because I am Jewish. I do not vote in their elections, and I do not support their leaders, but it doesn’t matter: as a Jew, I will always be held in some quarters to be answerable for Israeli violence. 

–

Reach out to your Jewish friends, see if they are okay. Offer an ear, and try to really listen. One person among my social-media-alleged thousand friends reached out to me last week, and it helped. I didn’t know what to say to him, either, but it felt good to be heard. 

Thank you for reading. 

-AG