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A View From Here
Troy asked me some time ago to contribute some perspective on the current situation here in Israel, where I’ve been living for the past 13 years. For weeks, I’ve been unable to write anything (a first for me during Israel’s crises). I haven’t been able to get into the cool, dispassionate head I need to be in to present you with any kind of cogent analysis. I’ve always tried to maintain some baseline standard of composure when discussing the lunatic hell of this endless war. I think that ship might have sailed, at least for the time being.
So why am I back, you ask? Well, I’ll be honest. We are alone out here, more and more so every day, and I’m finding our isolation harder and harder to tolerate. It might be a little unseemly, I guess, but I can’t resist reaching out to you — not in the spirit of geopolitical analysis and the plucky fisking of media talking points, but out of an increasingly desperate need simply to communicate, to send a flare out to a part of the world that’s still relatively normal. I need you to understand our reality here.
On the surface, our world is strikingly similar to the world you live in. Anyone who has visited Israel can tell you this is a thoroughly first-world environment. Now superimpose the rest of our reality onto that physical world: the air raid sirens, the whisking of the kids into the shelter, the daily funerals of the young heroes who put their bodies between our children and the monsters, the fathers’ knees buckling while they try to choke out the Kaddish over their fallen sons, the hollow-eyed mothers, the sobbing children, the tableaux of soldiers weeping on each other’s shoulders as they bury their dead.
Most of the horrors of this go-round are sadly familiar, but there is a new development this time around that has kicked all of this into a whole new realm of nightmare. That’s the network of tunnels, as vast and complex as a subway system, dug under the very ground on which Israelis walk. The soldiers braving and destroying these tunnels are discovering not only vast supplies of machine guns and ammunition and grenades, but also stores of handcuffs and tranquilizers. Consider the reality of that for a moment. Not only are our people meant to be mown down in large numbers, but we are also intended to be dragged down, alive, into the darkness.
Nothing about any of this is theoretical. Heavily armed men have already come up out of the ground inside our territory — disguised in IDF uniforms, a further nauseating touch — and have engaged and killed our soldiers, 18- and 19- and 20-year-olds who died preventing vastly greater carnage within the kibbutzim. A close school friend of my 11-year-old son does not know his uncle because he was shot to death by a Palestinian terrorist, and this same child’s first cousin just came back from Gaza with grave head injuries. One of the three teenaged boys snatched and murdered by Palestinian terrorists on their way home from school earlier this summer was the nephew of a friend of ours. The wedding of our friend’s daughter coincided with the shiva (the mourning period). The sanctified name of the murdered boy was invoked under the chupah (the wedding canopy). Can you conceive of this? It is close; it is personal. This is the reality of our lives here.
I am in the challenging position of having to maintain a chipper front for my three young children while a) finding some language with which to explain the war to them; b) pretending everything is normal; and c) pretending everything will eventually be okay. I do not believe everything will be okay. It requires a monumental effort to manufacture an optimistic front. Now, don’t get me wrong: this is absolutely not to say I have lost faith in our army. Quite the opposite: I could not possibly have greater faith in our army, and I thank God for our soldiers every day. The trouble is that our very acts of self-defense are automatically read by most of the world as offense, so anything we do to protect ourselves — anything at all, right down to building bomb shelters for our civilians — is evidence of our aggression. The world is filled with outrage that so few of us are dead. How dare you protect yourselves, Jews? How dare you not die in larger numbers?
Our enemies try to kill us while hiding behind the bodies of their own children, and we are heaped with opprobrium when those children are killed in the crossfire. Does anyone think we are not filled with anguish over dead Gazan civilians? Does anyone believe we want to kill a single Gazan child? The only option we are to be permitted is not to respond at all: to turn the other cheek, to let them savage us with impunity and then bare our throats for the final slaughter. There has never in the history of human warfare been an army as conscientious about avoiding civilian casualties as the IDF, but facts don’t matter. Jews are fighting back, and that is not to be tolerated.
And so we are vilified. I respond very carefully to an old high school friend on Facebook who has shared an article by a Hamas apologist, pointing out that the piece is a fact-free piece of Hamas propaganda written specifically to hoodwink well-intentioned people like him. He responds with kindness, but then someone else pops up to accuse me of “shaming” — of being someone who insists — how backward! — that there is any such thing as wrong and right. There is the ultimately trivial but intensely depressing litany of celebrities who are cheerfully spitting in the face of every Jew who ever admired them (Mark Ruffalo, Mia Farrow, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Elvis Costello, Roger Waters, Jon Stewart, Rihanna, Whoopi Goldberg, Ryan Gosling, Eddie Vedder, John Cusack, the list goes on). Hamas hanged some Palestinian civilians from cranes in Gaza this past weekend. ISIS is literally crucifying their enemies. In Syria they slaughter children by the dozen and throw their bodies in the street to rot as a warning to others. And Bar Refaeli and Gal Gadot are denounced as genocidal baby-killers for tweeting their love and concern for their own country.
Suck it up. I know. That’s not important. But layer that festering hate on top of the demonstrations, the throngs of Israel-bashers marching through Berlin, London, Stockholm, Edinburgh, Belfast, Dublin, Geneva, Brussels, Amsterdam, Madrid, Ottawa. Luxembourg. Costa Rica. Mexico. The Hague. Limpopo. Manchester. Capetown. Rotterdam. Auckland. Sao Paolo. Santiago. Atlanta. Houston. Boston. Portland. Philadelphia. Chicago. If you pluck individuals out of these demonstrations and ask them their motivations — I’m talking about civilized people, mind you, not the ones screaming “Gas the Jews” and doing the Nazi salute — most of them will offer some variant of “killing children is not the answer” or “civilians are not legitimate targets.” Unless they are Jews, that is. That is as it should be.
I take this personally. The crux of the matter apparently is that this country was born in sin (so says the world), and everyone in it, down to the most innocent child, is therefore a sinner. Anything done to us, no matter how savage or cynical, is justified by our original sin, and anything we do to fend off the blows is morally repugnant. How are we supposed to battle this? How am I supposed to protect my children when this is what much of the world believes about them?
The mounting crises and disasters of this summer have left me feeling underwater, as though I’m watching the world go about its business but am somehow disconnected from everything. It feels a little like what I imagine it’s like to discover you have a terminal disease. The whole world is chattering away, gabble gabble gabble, but no one is saying or hearing anything important, and they’re certainly not listening to anyone like me. And why should they? It doesn’t matter what we say or do; it doesn’t matter what the truth is. It doesn’t matter what will happen the next day if God forbid the monsters win in Gaza. Everyone shrugs when “militants” smash Buddhist temples; they’ll shrug (probably cheer) when they burn down the synagogues. They look away when they tear the crosses from the ancient churches of Mosul; they’ll shrug some more when they come for the Caravaggios.
My heart aches. This wretched, beautiful, forsaken little country is the lamb of God. We have been chosen to be heaped with blame and loathing and then chased off the cliff, so that we might die for everyone else’s sins — or at least make everyone else feel a little better about their world, until the monsters start coming in their direction. It’s extremely odd to know that your own death, the death of your own children and your whole nation along with them, will imbue vast swaths of humanity with a glow of warm satisfaction. We have the temerity to exist at all, so we have it coming.
Published in General
You’re onto something, Stad. There most definitely are Jew-haters, but I think a number of westerners just instinctively want to root for the underdogs and that’s how they see the Palestinians. To people who do not view economics the way we do, they think that the Palestinians are poor because the Israelis are rich. I think the “Occupy Wall Street” mentality explains some of the sympathy for Hamas.
What a wonderful and moving post! I’m at a loss for words. Stay safe and God bless.
Judith, thank you for sharing your reality.
The moral ambiguity demonstrated by many in the West is not only infuriating, but mirroring the U.S. and Western Europe in the 1930’s.
The time for IDF to take out Hamas is now. Screw world opinion and forget about the U.S. political leadership supporting you. You ARE alone, but not in spirit. A majority of the U.S. are with you, even if the media make it not seem so.
Yivarechech Adonai L’Olam Va’ed
Both!
You’re onto something there. Many of the protesters are college students looking for a cause to support, and what have they learned from their liberal professors? That the entire Third World is poor because of the legacy of colonialism and ongoing “exploitation” by rich Western nations, especially the US.
According to this ideology Israel is the last remaining European colony: the British left India, the Americans were driven from Vietnam, apartheid ended in South Africa, and now the one spot left on the globe where white Europeans still rule land “stolen” from oppressed minorities is Israel.
Spot on. Israel is the liberal’s scapegoat for all the historical sins of Western Civilization, real and imagined.
Judith, for two days I have wondered what to write. I have started several times, and it just seems so inadequate. I’m no closer now.
In my own paltry way, I am frustrated beyond writing about things. What is there to say that still needs saying? After a certain point all there is left to do is fight.
—
Some things are so obviously wrong, so transparently evil that it should be enough to call the thing by its name and watch it fall to dust. Those who missed the implications should be convinced, and those who revel in the darkness should be exposed. Yet there it stands, staring back at your incredulous gaze, mocking your righteousness, absorbing people you once knew, calling the innocent to itself to make them corrupt, and the spotlight falls on you as the shadows gather again to protect it.
—
At the same time, the first and most powerful sensation I had when reading and re-reading your post is love for you, all of you, in your time of need.
I am agnostic, but for you I will pray. You and all yours, and especially the IDF, may you all be safe and secure.
Absolutely beautiful. I hope Judith can use your words and all others posted here as inspiration and fortification. You are not alone Judith…….
Very well said.
In their view, the world is the victim while any single country that has worked hard, educated their youth and respected human rights while defending themselves from barbarians, are the problem.
I started to write something yesterday, but it seemed terribly inadequate. Like so many others I didn’t know how to put into words what I was feeling about you and your precious country. I’ll try again today, feebly.
Mona Charen posted something that chilled me to the bone:
“The only oasis is the United States, and perhaps not for much longer if you look at polling of younger Americans.”
What it will take to reverse this trend is a new leader with a stiff spine who recognizes, with no equivocation, the stark difference between good and evil, right and wrong. And stands tall to announce that position to the world, regardless of the consequences. That position, among other things, will go a great distance to counter the disgusting moral equivalency position that pervades the world MSM (used here for convenient shorthand).
I honestly believe attitudes among our young can be changed – and that our country and her ally will come through this.
God bless you and your fellow countrymen and keep you safe. Millions of us are with you.
God bless you Judith, and all Israelis for your suffering. You bring light to dark and ignorant places. I pray for your deliverance.
For your kids, I’d suggest a simplified version of the truth. They’ll worry more if you refuse to discuss it, or tell fibs that they can see through. The worst truth is always better than the best lie – or so I’ve believed since my own childhood. God bless you, God keep you, God defend you.
It’s the soft bigotry of low expectations. Beneath the facade of worldliness, those rooting for the underdogs see the arabs as noble savages who can do no better.
Judith,
I am at a loss. I just returned from a trip to Europe where I ran into vicious anti Israel demonstrations in Amsterdam, Vienna and Berlin. The line to the Ann Franke House is 2 blocks long, and a couple of miles away the antisemitism is palpable. The demonstration in Berlin was about 100 yards from the Holocaust Memorial. Despite streets, plazas, memorials, mandatory classes and repeated lip service the Beast is loose in Europe again.
During my trip I shared a train car with an Israeli business man who opened up to me, once he discovered I was a sympathetic soul. He told me of being called up for reserve duty, while his children and wife had to shelter from the rockets. Getting back to work in Europe, his boss publicly humiliated him on the corporate email for failing to complete a task while on military duty. When he pointed out the facts his English boss responded in an email to the entire company “I don’t give a sh#t about your excuses or your sh#itty country”.
I reassured him that Israel still has many good friends in America, just not in the current regime.
Judith, please let your compatriots know that there is deep sympathy with your country and its necessary efforts from parts of America (e.g., the state of Georgia). My fellow Bible-thumping goyim here feel a close connection to the Israeli people who are merely defending themselves against a bloodthirsty enemy.
I wish we could do something more concrete, yet please know that you are not alone.
Something occurred to me listening to Judith on the recent podcast. While the media refers to the IDF like it is some group of stormtroopers or Saddam’s republican guard, it is (as Peter points out) much closer tied to the Israeli population than even our military. They are constantly referred to as brutal oppressors or an occupying force. It is good to keep in mind that most of them are ordinary Israelis taking their turn in defending their country.
The Pew organization has published the results of a survey taken late last month on the opinions of the American public about the situation in Israel and Gaza. I find it mildly comforting. It is published here:
http://www.people-press.org/2014/07/28/hamas-seen-as-more-to-blame-than-israel-for-current-violence/
The differences between white Americans and those “of color”, the generational discrepancies, as well as the differences between declared Republicans and Democrats disappointed but did not surprise me.
Israel is going to crush Hamas. Even Kerry and Obama, begrudgingly, had to admit that Hamas broke the truce. The kidnapping only adds to the contempt most Americans feel towards Hamas. The idiot celebrities you mention don’t matter. What’s important is the number of movie stars who haven’t spoken out against the invasion of Gaza. Not that they wouldn’t love to, but there are enough Jews and friends of Zionism around who understand what’s going on, so they keep shut for fear of violating some temporary PC code. Antisemitism, especially in Europe, isn’t going away. Neither in America, but it’s not as acceptable, and as long as Hamas is depicted as the terrorist equivalent of Issis and the 9/11 bombers it can be muted. I think the dead baby strategy is running out of gas with more irrefutable blame being put on Hamas. You’ll never win over the jew haters on the left, but they can be boxed in on this one.
The mourn the Israeli deaths, the Goldin family and your predicament.
Surely to God, Judith, after this abomination of a presidency is over, we’ll return to a reasonable view of what’s going on, and support our only ally there.
I am not as eloquent as the others, but let me join in their support and encouragement. And thank you so much for sharing, both here and on the podcast. God bless.
You are not alone. Israel is not really alone – though it must feel that way. As Churchill said, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.”
Our current administration is one such experiment. At least half of the electorate would like a “Do-over” on their choice.
Hamas is winning the propaganda war (for now). Their credibility derives partially from their perceived status as the underdog and because a generation of westerners have learned there is no Right or Wrong. Moral relativism leaves them unable to recognize the difference between the Evil of an enemy that deliberately provokes a self-defense response in order to inflict video-worthy casualties on their own populace, and the Rightness of the side responding to such provocation. Small consolation. Israel must do what needs to be done and let the devil take the hindmost. Let Mr. Netanyahu continue to argue your case. Some may be beyond the reach of truth, but others thirst for it. May God be with you.
I came late to this post, because work responsibilities interfered with my Ricochet-reading and podcast-listening until today. But I want to join with the rest of the Ricochetti in letting you know that a substantial majority of Americans still love Israel and the Israeli people. Do you know about this poll, that shows that Jews are the most positively rated religious group in America? Or this one that shows that twice as many Americans blame Hamas as blame Israel? I would prefer it to be 10 times as many, but it surely is better than what you must be thinking from reading Facebook and the media.
Our love and prayers are with you.
Judith,
I hope this brings you a little smile
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer
We support Israel and will not be silent.
Things have gone quiet on this post, but I’m sure no one has forgotten Judith, her family or the situation in Israel.
Prayers for Blessings, Peace, and Safety to you all.
Because often when I miss Judith Levy and her perspective, I visit her profile to see if I’ve missed posts. And I find this one, so drop into it to say, even though Israel has not been too much in the headlines…
Prayers for health and happiness in Tel Aviv.