I’ve thought a lot about what to share in my October blog. I could talk about how we need to take good care of ourselves during this chaotic election cycle, but I did that in August. I could talk about all sorts of mindful self-compassion and mindfulness techniques, but I’ve been doing that every month for 10 years. What I want to say may be controversial.
We are coming up on the one-year anniversary of the Hamas atrocities in Israel Oct. 7, and the start of the resulting war. Hamas — the Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement — killed more than 1,300 Israelis and third-country nationals, including at least 29 Americans, in a country whose population is less than 10 million. In America, that would be equivalent to killing nearly 40,000 — 13 times more than the number of Al Qaeda victims on 9/11. Hamas is a proxy of Iran like Hezbollah, a terrorist militia operating out of Lebanon in the north of Israel.
The images of individualized inhumanity — face to face between the perpetrator and the victim, often recorded live on film or audio — will never fade. I am attending a documentary tonight here in San Diego about the massacre at the Nova Music Festival, called “We Will Dance Again,” where hundreds of peace-loving young adults, my children’s ages, were savagely murdered. “We Will Dance Again” premiered on Paramount+ Sept. 24 and should be available for viewing for several months. It is excellent, and I hope it is viewed widely.
We are coming up on the one-year loss of innocence for me and many of my contemporary American Jews – the shocking reality that we are less safe than we thought, less assimilated than we thought, less liked or loved than we thought.
Our allies in the fight for social justice flew the coop. We are alone in our shock and suffering.
The day that the bloodbath in Israel occurred, while body parts were still being found, before any response could be mounted by the Israel military, there was rejoicing in the streets in major cities all over the world.
Please read that sentence again. The day that the bloodbath in Israel occurred, while body parts were still being found, before any response could be mounted by the Israel military, there was rejoicing in the streets in major cities all over the world. Some commentators are rewriting that history now, saying there was compassion for Israel until Israel started obliterating the Gaza strip. No. That. Is. Not. True. I could not understand why millions of Muslims weren’t filling the streets shouting, “Not in my name!”
People were celebrating an Islamic Jihad victory. I can’t fathom humans that do not belong to a death cult celebrating a death cult’s victory. They don’t understand or want to understand that Palestinian lives in Gaza are meaningless to Hamas. They are useful dead.
I write poetry as part of my spiritual practice, helping me to make sense of my feelings. Two poems with reference to this difficult material have been accepted in The Jewish Writing project. The first, written shortly after Oct. 7, tries to illustrate how surreal my wedding anniversary felt on Oct. 8.
The second piece was written about the full wolf moon. I love the science and folklore around moon cycles. This poem originally had much more specific gore, which was wisely and intelligently edited out by the smart guy who produces the journal.
Some months into the war, while encampments were flourishing on US college campuses and Jewish students were being harassed, I was sitting in my morning birdwatching chair in the courtyard under the eaves feeling exhausted and hopeless. I wrote this little piece trying to make sense of it all.
The last line is me recognizing that we can only do the next right thing, like fix the crack in the wooden bird. I decided not to fix it. It sits there, crack and all, as a reminder of all that is cracked.
For the past year I have spoken out about Israel’s right to exist, and to defend itself. I’ve explained that if Hamas let the hostages go, put down their weapons, and agreed to share the land, this war would have stopped. Hamas does not want to do it.
In the battle for public opinion, Israel has lost and Hamas has won. They offered up tens of thousands of their neighbors, including women and children, to be killed by Israeli bombs. They use schools and hospitals as combat centers, in violation of international law. They have an underground terror tunnel system like a subway system they have built with millions (some say billions) of dollars of aid money that could have been used for bettering their society; instead, those resources were used for terror. Their mission, from day one, including today, is the genocide of the Jews in the land of Israel.
At the time of this writing violence is escalating in northern Israel, where 70,000 Israelis have been forced to abandon their homes and neighborhoods because of Hezbollah rocket attacks since Oct. 7. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah condemned recent walkie-talkie and pager explosions, calling them “massacres” that “crossed all the red lines” because the devices exploded in public areas, with civilians among those harmed. Yet the terrorists have no “red lines” when firing hundreds of rockets into Israel, causing tens of thousands of people to abandon their homes, businesses, schools.
I admit that Israel has done itself no favors these past 10-15 years with their treatment and oppression of the Palestinian people in the West Bank, under the Palestinian Authority and Israel. The settlements are illegal and yet they keep doing it. Some of the settler communities are right-wing radicals. The right-wing government is discriminating against its non-Jewish citizens. It is a bad situation. This makes the world less sympathetic to Israel’s plight. This is a different geographical area and issue than the Gaza strip, where the Palestinian people voted in Hamas and have been governed by Hamas for almost 20 years, with no Israeli interference.
Yes, Israel built a wall — because Hamas suicide bombers and knife fighters and missile launchers kept coming from Gaza to kill innocent Israeli citizens. Israelis were blown up on buses, in shopping areas, in pizza parlors, and at a college cafeteria. And Egypt built a wall too, on the other side, to keep the Jihadists out of Egypt. So I want to scream at all the well-meaning Americans that repeat the phrase that Gaza is an “open air prison” that was destined to blow, and that Oct. 7 was a justified armed response to their living situation. Do you realize that the Gaza strip could have been like the French Riviera if they used their money for good instead of evil?
I know this situation is more complicated than I can express in this blog. There are centuries of conflict involving masses of humanity expelled and moved throughout time. I understand how opposite the origin story is for the two main people sharing the land. In November of 1947, when the UN General Assembly passed a resolution partitioning the land of Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish, with Jerusalem under UN administration, the Jews accepted, and the Arabs rejected the plan. This is the Arab catastrophe, their Nakba — their origin story, a dispossession and displacement of approximately 750,000 Palestinians from their ancestral land.
The Jews’ origin story is the tiny piece of land they were given to be a Jewish homeland, to be safe after the horrors of the Holocaust, where “Never Again” could be a reality. It’s important to remember that more than 850,000 Jews were forced to leave their homes in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Morocco, and several other Arab countries — they were expelled, after living there for generations. The Jews were returning to the homeland of their Old Testament, the Jerusalem in their prayer book, the place they called home for a millennium until 70AD when they were driven out by the Romans.
What can we do with this intractable impasse?
All we can do is the best we can with what we’ve got — and what I’ve got is my pen and courage to tell my truth. I hope that by the time you read this blog, the remaining hostages are released, and that there is a permanent cease-fire, with tons of humanitarian aid flowing into Gaza. I hope Hamas is crushed, never able to re-group, and that a sane governing body that values the lives of their citizens is running their government. The idea that if you kill your enemy, you will be exalted in heaven and your family will get cash, needs to change. That’s the Jihadist ideology. I hope the right-wing nationalist government in Israel is voted out and a moderate government is voted in — they have a democracy so that is possible if the voting public has the will, after all the trauma, to do it.
Egypt and Jordan have normalized relations with Israel. Saudi Arabia almost got there, which many think prompted Hamas’s attack, to quash the Israel/Saudi deal. I hope the Middle East can get there, to a peaceful co-existence, where no one needs to fear those across their border are the enemy.
Here in the United States, I hope we can see each other as citizens that may not see eye-to-eye but are not enemies. Whether we are red, blue, or purple, let’s try not to vilify the other team. We are not Jihadists. We are Americans. Let’s try to get through this election season to see a peaceful transfer of power, together.
Wow!