Israel, Hamas, Gaza

Joan Holtzman

— Most of my friends and many readers of the OWL have lived our long lives in the shadow of the Holocaust. We were all born just before, during, or in its immediate aftermath and probably had relatives who died under Hitler’s reign. Our own parents may well have been holocaust survivors; “Six Million Jews” is etched in our brains.

When the state of Israel was created a few years after WWII ended, surviving Jews welcomed its existence. Whether they regarded Israel as the fulfillment of the long-held Zionist dream or as just compensation for the recent horrors perpetrated against the Jewish people, here, finally, was a place where Jews could live free, on their own terms, without fear of death camps or pogroms.  And they themselves would rule this new country.

That is why so many of us were stricken on October 7 when we learned that Hamas had brutally attacked Israel.  Hamas’ long avowed aim is to eliminate Israel and on that day we saw that their intentions were backed by real power and extreme cruelty.  More than 1200 Israelis were killed, 247 hostages taken, and videos confirm that Israeli women were violently raped, tortured and, in some cases, beheaded.

Moreover, the attack had come as a complete surprise. It took many hours before Israeli forces arrived to engage the terrorists and try to rescue the victims. So, not only had Israel been attacked by a vicious enemy, the Netanyahu  government, with its vaunted intelligence apparatus and state-of-the-art military services, had failed to protect its people.  They had not delivered on their most fundamental promise: to keep Israel safe.

As soon as the news broke, people I know were, calling friends and family both here at home and in Israel. We needed to vent, express our concerns, find out what others knew that we didn’t. Many people I spoke with were overcome with worry. 

There was a feeling of relief, when on October 8th, the Israeli government declared a state of War, announced its intention to destroy Hamas, and launched a blistering aerial bombardment in Gaza. We hoped that this retaliation would be effective and that Israel would quickly defeat Hamas and remove them from power. But of course that is not what happened.

In the ensuing weeks, and now months, we have seen Israel’s ongoing bombing campaign destroy homes and necessary infrastructure, watched as hospitals have been forced to shut down, unable to function without power and medicine. Instead of seeing the faces of Hamas’ leadership captured or killed, we saw the faces or ordinary Palestinians wounded or dying or fleeing, moving further south to ever fewer places of safety.  And then there are the sightings of small white bundles, corpses of babies wrapped in gauze. 

Things have not gone well for the people of Gaza. And they have not gone well for Israel either. 

As the weeks rolled on, conversations with friends took a different turn. With the death toll mounting ever higher in Gaza, we could see that global public opinion was turning against Israel. Its unrelenting bombardment of the Gaza strip was no longer seen as a legitimate response to a terrorist invasion, but as a punishing attack on innocent Gaza civilians. In some quarters, it was described as a genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people.  For a number of us, the biggest worry was that Israel had lost the moral high ground. 

And of course there is worry now about the growing spread of antisemitism. Those of us with grandchildren in college have heard directly from them about antisemitic incidents and pro-Palestinian demonstrations at their schools; some of them are siding with the pro-Palestinian cause because they see them as the underdogs. Incidents occur off-campus as well and people feel threatened by them. One woman I spoke to said she feels uneasy just moving about casually in her community, a mostly liberal town in Silicon Valley. She worries that a clerk in a store, a neighbor she runs into in the street, will no longer regard her in the same friendly way as before.

The people I continue to talk with these days are divided about what should come next. Isn’t it time, perhaps past time, for a cease-fire? Opinions are mixed. One woman I know who grew up in Israel reminded me that she and other Israelis of her generation were raised to be a new kind of Jew, strong and brave, trained and able to take on their enemies.  “Never again” was their banner — never again would Jews submit and be led meekly to their deaths. She agreed that the loss of life in Gaza was terrible, but thought, perhaps, it was a necessary price if Israel is to survive. Others, too, feel it is too soon for a cease-fire, that the war must be pursued until Hamas is defeated and all the hostages returned.  

But increasingly I hear from folks who see things differently and feel that the killing has gone on long enough. They point out that just in the last few days, Israeli hostages have been mistakenly shot by Israeli forces and that Netanyahu has refused to take a more targeted approach. Those who were never big fans of his have, by now, lost all faith in him and his ability to lead. They think his goal, that Hamas must be totally destroyed before the war can end, is unrealistic and don’t believe he has a consistent or workable plan for what should happen in Gaza when the war is over.

My own view (and that of many others) is that Israel cannot win the war in Gaza and that there must be an immediate cease-fire, with mediators and diplomats from all sides coming together quickly to forge a sustainable truce. Unless this happens, we fear that Israel itself will not long survive and that Jews around the world will suffer new rounds of anti-semitism. We all know what that has meant during our long history and remain hopeful that it is not too late to prevent the worst from happening again.

In the meantime,  I want to recommend a book I read several years ago and think is relevant today. It was written by the Israeli philosopher Avashai Margalit and is called The Decent Society.