This morning as my five year old was having a temper tantrum after spilling his second cup of cereal on the way to the car, I scooped the little guy up, put him in his seat and started to buckle him in. “You’re pushing me!” he shouted. He’s very cute (he looks like his mother) but–especially when we’re late for school because I’ve been glued to the news coming out of Israel–he can really drive me crazy. I had to cut him some slack, though, because when I looked at him I couldn’t help but think, “poor guy, you really have no idea that there are (at least) thousands of people who would slaughter you in your little blue car bed if they only had the chance and countless others around the world who would gleefully defend and even celebrate your killers.” So, I just gave him a kiss on his little head and drove to school thinking about how if, instead of Cleveland we lived in southern Israel, he might be decapitated or burnt to ashes or a hostage in Gaza. After October 7th, it’s hard to look at any of my children without having that thought.
As someone who is familiar with Jewish history, this fear is, unfortunately, not foreign. What is surprising to American Jews is the shockingly open support, justifications and celebrations of the murder and kidnapping of innocent Jews–including infants, elderly and people with disabilities. Evidently, being a Jew makes one ineligible for the protection of intersectionality. BLM Chicago’s logo, lionizing the Hamas baby-killers, apparently has no concern for the suffering of Ethiopian Israelis. The progressive, humanists in Sydney who chanted, “gas the Jews and f… the Jews,” before Israel even responded in Gaza, are happy to cheer for the execution of Israel’s LGBTQ+ community. And, of course, the peaceful supporters of the Global Day of Jihad have no qualms about targeting individuals with disabilities, as long as they’re Jewish. And although Hamas leaders have promised to carry out more gruesome attacks until Israel is annihilated, the only Jewish state now faces mounting pressure to stop defending itself. Israel cannot accept another ceasefire with an enemy who cheers the death of Jewish children and places its own in harm’s way–a repugnant tactic designed to turn Israel into the villain in a war it never wanted.
Fortunately, we do have friends in this world who are willing to call evil what it is and stand for what is right. Among them, the bipartisan speakers at this week’s March for Israel in Washington. The Biden administration has, for the most part, taken a strong moral stand in these horrific times. However, even Israel’s friends have frequently repeated a claim that I wish were true, but I know to be false. The president, secretary of state and countless others continue to remind us that, “we know Hamas doesn’t represent the Palestinian people.” If only they did not elect Hamas after Israel left the Gaza strip in 2005. Is that not the definition of representing a people? And what about the videos of the brutality of October 7th, that show Gazan civilians openly celebrating the violence–just as Palestinians did on 9/11. Every decent person wants to believe that they are just like us. Why would your average person wish harm upon someone they don’t even know? This is not something our western minds can seem to comprehend. We come from a civilization that values all human life and believes that each individual–regardless of identity–has the right to live with dignity. But understand that the “holy warriors” who carried out this stomach-churning violence also come from a civilization.
That is why our hearts break for the children of Gaza as well. Not because they have a bounty on their heads like Jewish children do. It is heartbreaking because their leadership is happy for them to die as a “shaheed” so they can be used as propaganda tools against Israel. I’m not just inferring this from their well-known, cynical tactic of using children and hospital patients as human shields. They say it out loud. For example, in a TV interview, Hamas’s Ali Bakar said plainly, “The Israelis are known to love life. We, on the other hand, sacrifice ourselves. We consider our dead to be martyrs.” We in the West just don’t accept this. That can’t be what he really means. They must just want to live freely like we do. They must want to watch football and play with their kids on Thanksgiving like we do. For how long will we keep lying to ourselves? They have been telling us all along. And although that dark day in October was not the first time they showed us what they want, it was certainly the clearest demonstration of the depths of their hatred and barbarism. Reports of the atrocities committed in Israel have been repeatedly described as “incomprehensible.” Well we’d better start comprehending. We’d better listen to the cries of the children who were forced to watch their parents’ execution. We’d better hear the shreeks of the parents who had to watch their children’s precious bodies defiled. We’d better see the innocent Jewish blood smeared all over the houses and on the diaper-wearing infants of the kibbutzim and towns of southern Israel. We’d better smell the burning flesh of Jewish babies, torched in their own homes–not in Poland of 1943, but in Israel of 2023. For if we don’t–if we continue telling ourselves that this kind of evil is incomprehensible–then the 1200 killed, 240 captured and thousands of injured will be just the beginning. And it won’t stop in Israel, just like Al-Qaeda and ISIS didn’t stop in Afghanistan and Iraq.
If we do want to live in a world in which such evil truly is “incomprehensible,” then we should heed the words of Psalms, some of the greatest poetry of that Western canon upon which our just and decent civilization was built:
Who is the one who desires life? Who loves long days, to see goodness? Guard your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit.
Psalm 34
Those of us who love life and not death, good and not evil–we have a responsibility. Guard your tongue from defending and justifying evil. Guard your lips from equivocating and deceitfully claiming that a massacre of unarmed Jews in their homes is a “political issue.” If you love life, then love Jewish life as well. If you want to see goodness in the world, then speak the truth. If we can’t do that, then what’s next? We’ve suffered the agony of September 11th and the horror of October 7th. Do we dare to imagine what November might bring?
