Let’s Talk About Israel

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Yom Kippur 5786

So, my friends, let’s talk about Israel.  It’s Yom Kippur, which means it’s not only acceptable to talk about difficult and controversial concepts, we are required to do so. 

There is an Israeli comedian named Yohay Sponder I have been addicted to this past year.  Perhaps his best routine is a discussion of colonialism, a sensitive subject for Israelis, but one that is poorly understood in general.  Edward Said’s book Orientalism way back in the 1970s began a long trend, in academia but also in public policy, that saw a colonial bias against Arabs and Muslims in the conduct of all western powers.  It helped create a deep sentiment of anti-colonialism that saw such western ideas as representative democracy, a secular justice system and a free press as colonial impositions on the Islamic Middle East, on Africa and on much of the world. Unsurprisingly, although a Protestant Christian, Said himself said that he was a Palestinian with many personal resentments against Israel and Jews, the target of most of the anti-colonial energy was soon directed at Israelis and Israel, although also at the United States as the most powerful Western nation.  Still, the vast majority of the focus of this colonial-settler hostility was aimed at Israel and Israelis, who came to be viewed as Western white people oppressing darker skinned native Middle Eastern Arabs.

It's worth noting that the idea that Israelis are all white-skinned European and American settlers is pretty amusing if you have ever actually been in Israel, where the majority of the population is Sephardic or Eydot HaMizrach, whose skin color is often darker than that of the Israeli Arabs and Palestinians among whom they live. 

In any case, on this subject of colonialism, Comedian Yohay Sponder pulls no punches, and humorously addresses the “colonial” label head on.  I cannot imitate his accent.  But the bit runs like this: “The whole world is colonizers,” he says, “Even the Muslims themselves.  You think 56 countries just boom, became Muslim?  No, they were muslimified.  So we have to decide if we want colonialism or indigenous-ism.  [Colonialism is] Not just Israel, it’s everywhere.  So we need to choose as people of the planet, pick one.  Either you want the colonialists who came to the place, or the indigenous people who were there.  Either everyone comes back to where they were from, or the new people stay.

“Now what I love about this method, it doesn’t matter; for Jews, we were here then, and we are here now.  We are colonialists of our own indigenism.  We were here then, we were there, and we are here now.  It doesn’t matter which side we pick of this worm hole…  [either way, we are indigenous AND colonial.]”  And then he adds, as a stinger, “And if you talk badly about us, we are going to buy your business.”  

These are simply facts, not emotional opinions.  So first, let’s stop pretending that Israelis are some sort of western colonial outpost in the indigenous Arab Muslim Middle East.  The Middle East, and of course Israel, has been colonized many times throughout history.  There were Canaanite pagans there before there were Jews, there were Jews there before there were Christians, there were Christians there before there were Muslims, then there were Christian Crusaders, then Muslims again, then Turks, then the British, and there were many other native peoples there—Canaanites, Israelites, Phoenicians, Hittites, Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, Romans, Edomites, Elamites, Moabites, Ammonites, Arameans—long before there were any Arabs living in Israel.  The history of the region is filled with human migrations and immigrations, conquests and expulsions and resettlements and then more of the same.

Jerusalem, the holy “city of peace,” has been conquered 17 different times in its checkered history, destroyed by a variety of different victorious armies, and then resettled and rebuilt by a new ethnic and national group.  We Jews were there for about 1500 years, we were mostly elsewhere for 1800 years, and we have been back for about 150 years or so now. 

So, let’s just drop the settler-colonial fiction completely.  It’s a constructed fantasy, a deliberate falsehood, a boldfaced lie that does far more harm than good.  Instead, let’s look at the realities that exist now, in the Middle East, in Israel, in Gaza, and in the West Bank.

We must note the obvious: this has been quite a year for Israel, perhaps the most complex and one of the more challenging ones in recent memory. There are three ways to look at Israel’s standing now.  One is its military and geostrategic position.  The second is its diplomatic, public relations, and reputational position.  The third is Israel’s moral and internal political position.  The three are related, of course, but they are distinctly different in many important ways. 

First, let’s explore Israel’s stragetic position now, as opposed to where it was not just one year ago, but nearly two years ago, in the wake of October 7, 2023.

In the aftermath of the worst massacre of Jewish civilians since the end of the Holocaust, with 1200 murdered, as well as the brutal kidnapping and abduction of 250 Israeli citizens, some alive and some already murdered, Israel was forced into a war against the Palestinian terrorists of Hamas that it had avoided for some time.  Over the 20 years since Israel withdrew from Gaza and turned it over to the Palestinians, there had been several limited wars against Hamas in Gaza, all designed by Israel, more or less, to keep things status quo.  As Prime Minister Netanyahu was fond of saying, the Hamas Gaza wars were intended to “mow the grass”, and maintain an acceptable level of hostility.  The terrorists of Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood would shoot frequent rockets at civilians in Sderot and the south of Israel, the IDF would target a few Hamas rocket launchers and even some terrorists, but food and supplies flowed into Gaza without significant interruption.  All of that changed, terribly and suddenly, on Simchat Torah 5784.

At that moment, now nearly two years ago, the strategic situation for Israel was awful.  Its famed intelligence agencies, its vaunted military, and its civilian leadership had all failed catastrophically to prevent or contain the Palestinian atrocities.  On October 8th 2023, Simchat Torah 5784, Israel was essentially surrounded by extremely hostile terror regimes that openly sought its total destruction and dreamed of repeating the Holocaust. 

To the south there was Hamas in Gaza, which had just openly declared war and perpetrated the war crimes of rape, murder, arson, torture and abduction of civilians, as well as expanding its ongoing war crimes of firing rockets at civilian targets on a massive basis.  In the north, the much larger terror network of Hezbollah controlled southern Lebanon, regularly threatening and shooting at Israel, forcing the evacuation of an entire region.  To the east, Syria was an implacable foe under the Asad regime, dedicated officially for over 50 years to the destruction of Israel, allowing a steady flow of huge arms shipments to cross its territory from Iran to the Hezbollah terrorists, as well as allowing the placing of Iranian military units right on Israel’s border.  Farther East, Iran was financing all the terror groups with its oil revenue, and constantly threatening to destroy the Zionist entity, going so far as to have a huge Doomsday clock in Teheran calculating the destruction of Israel as its immediate goal.  Iran was also moving ever closer to possessing nuclear weapons and delivery systems, promising regularly to use those atomic weapons against Israeli civilians to wipe out the Jewish State.  Much further south, the Houthi terror regime in Yemen was lobbing ballistic missiles at Israel on a semi-regular basis from hundreds of miles away. 

And now?  Well, two full years later that strategic situation is completely upended.  Israel is in a vastly stronger position than it was.  Gaza remains a cataclysmic mess, but Hamas has been nearly destroyed, its leadership killed, its massive terrorist army mostly either dead or captured.  Hezbollah was beheaded by the Mossad and the IDF, its leaders are also dead, most of its armaments are destroyed, its position in Lebanon is now precarious.  The Assad regime in Syria has collapsed and the country lapsed into a civil war. Syrians are now intent on attacking each other and not Israel, the conduit to Hezbollah in Lebanon is broken, and Iran is viewed as an enemy by the new Syrian leadership.  Iran itself proved to be a paper tiger, swiftly defeated by Israel in a war that lasted less than two weeks, with some American help at the end.  The Houthis in far-off Yemen have seen their own leaders killed, their harbors bombed, their ability to do more than annoy Israel severely limited.

It’s a new era in the Middle East, in which even oil-rich funders of terror, like Qatar, can no longer provide safe haven to mass-murdering terrorists.

So that has been an extraordinarily positive development.  It’s strategically very important, it’s a dramatic change, and it will have impact for years to come.  Anti-Israel terrorism is far from dead, of course, and since this is the Middle East we cannot easily imagine what will happen next.  But it’s a stunning change from two years ago.  Israel is in a vastly better position now, militarily and strategically, than it could have imagined being in just two years ago.

On the other hand, the Israeli hostages who remain alive—there are now perhaps 15 to 20 of them—have suffered unimaginably for two years, and they are apparently no closer to being freed through this latest Gaza City offensive.  Most of the Israeli public believes that the current Netanyahu regime has not done nearly enough to free the hostages and fulfill the mitzvah of pidyon shevuyim.  I would agree.

Now, as far as the diplomatic and public relations situation for Israel, well, it looks terrible.  Now, mind you, you’d rather be alive and win a war than be loved and dead in a war that you lose—especially a war against terrorists intent on your total destruction and annihilation, entire organizations that promise to commit genocide on the Jews, something Israel is most decidedly not doing in Gaza. 

But that’s not how the rest of the world tends to see it.  Israelis, and Jews, have been attacked by antisemites the world over with phrases like “Free Palestine”, “globalize the intifada”, and “Israel = Genocide.”  It’s based in a foundational falsehood, in a number of falsehoods, but the public relations have been, and are, awful.  European, Latin American and Pacific rim countries are choosing to symbolically recognize a Palestinian State to punish Israel for its war in Gaza, and even Hollywood actors and writers are joining the anti-Israel effort to punish anyone who is Zionist or Israeli or proudly Jewish. 

While winning the shooting war, you’d certainly want to avoid having a number of nations, many of them your own allies, recognize your enemies as having a nation when in fact they don’t.  And you’d certainly prefer not to be ostracized, hatefully characterized and generally despised for doing what you were forced to do to for your nation and your people.  The public response to the Gaza war has been overwhelmingly negative all around the world, and that hurts Israel, and Jews everywhere. 

The past year has seen a flood of anti-Israel propaganda normalized.  We are fortunate that the current Administration refuses to play this game.  But world opinion—always fickle, never especially rational, typically not ethical—nonetheless now sees the Palestinians as innocent victims being attacked by the big, bad Israeli military.  You know, the evil Jews. The war in Gaza has normalized a form of Anti-Zionism that is the old-style Antisemitism reworked into Jew hatred. 

The truth is not that, and the facts don’t support the wild claims being made that demonize Israel and say that Israelis are perpetrating genocide.  War is terrible.  Innocent people, tragically including children, die in war.  The facts are that there are 2 million Palestinians still alive in Gaza, and there were that many there two years ago.  If this is genocide, it’s stunningly ineffective. 

In a brutal war against committed terrorists who have no regard for human life, including that of their Palestinian brothers and sisters and their children, it is statistically amazing that so few Palestinian civilians have been killed.  But of course, that’s not how it’s viewed in the press, online, on college campuses, at the UN, and in so many other places.

To be clear: the death of a single innocent civilian in war is a tragedy.  The death of 1200 Israelis, murdered deliberately by Palestinian terrorists, was a war-crime atrocity.  The deaths of many civilians in Gaza, whether killed in IDF bombing, by Islamic Jihad rockets misfiring, or by getting caught in the crossfire between Hamas terrorists and Israeli soldiers in an urban war, are all tragic and terrible.  It’s awful, and these deaths will only end when the war itself ends.   It is tragic that children are dying.  The only real end to this is an end to the war.

Has Israel acted morally during this war?  On balance, yes.  What other army in human history has ever warned its enemies of its upcoming attacks?  The IDF has done so throughout the Gaza War.  Have there been mistakes and deliberate attacks on civilians that should never have happened?  Very likely.  When Israeli soldiers have committed crimes against Palestinian civilians, or on Hamas prisoners, they have been brought up on charges and punished.  Is that how it works for Palestinians who committed the deliberate war crimes of October 7th?  Is that how it works for Russian soldiers?  Those fighting in any war going on now in Europe, Africa or Asia?  Is that how our Department of War intends things to work for American soldiers going forward?

Now, has this Israeli government stonewalled peace initiatives in order to maximize its gains in the war?  Perhaps.  Has Netanyahu chosen to keep fighting to avoid losing his Prime Ministerial post, and having to face corruption charges and perhaps go to jail?  Perhaps.  Bibi Netanyahu has failed to take any responsibility for the original catastrophe of October 7th, nor has anyone in the civilian side of government.  And he is certainly not above virtually any political manipulation to stay in power.

But it is notable that all the peace initiatives proposed now, by the US this week, but also by European and Arab leaders, begin with Hamas being removed from any position of influence and fully disarmed.  That’s new.  That wasn’t the way people were talking about ending the Gaza War even a year ago.  They are now.

Perhaps the worst issue in all of this mess has been the moral problem of potential starvation in Gaza.  There is no doubt that the Palestinian terrorists of Hamas have long weaponized food in the territory, hoarding it, controlling the aid supplies, profiting off it by charging usurious rates for stolen food, using food to reward allies and denying it to their Palestinian opponents.  But when Israel stepped in to try to create a less-terrorist controlled form of feeding the people of Gaza, the whole thing blew up in their faces, and it gave the awful impression that Jews were denying food to the hungry.  That simply can’t be allowed to happen.

In addition, the situation on the West Bank this year has flown mostly under the radar.  That shouldn’t be the case, but with all the high-profile wars going on it is.  And what Israeli settlers have been doing in the West Bank this year has not been good.  In fact, while Palestinian terrorists have murdered people in the West Bank—and recently Jerusalem—Jewish settlers have been aggressively attacking Palestinians with regularity.  It’s a bad situation on the ground, and more violence won’t improve things.  Are the settlers in the West Bank taking advantage of the situation in Gaza to attack their neighbors, often without provocation?  Yes.  Is it morally wrong?  Yes.  Should it stop?  Certainly.  Will Israel do so now?  No.  And because of the focus on Gaza, it’s unlikely that this situation will improve until the Gaza War ends.

Mind you, Israel is a free country with a vigorous opposition, free press, and lively culture of civil protest.  Most Israelis are not fans of the current government, or the Prime Minister.  And after this war ends—and God-willing it will do so soon!—it is obvious that a new government will be elected.  That is how it is supposed to work in democracies, and that is how it will be in Israel.  There will be accountability for October 7th, and there will be a changing of the guard.  Israel is justly famous for its ability to analyze its own failings and to seek to repair them.  It will do so, no matter what the outside world thinks or says.

It is worthwhile mentioning that how we understand the situation is framed, in large part, by which media we consume.  Matti Friedman, an outstanding Israeli journalist and author, a guest of mine on the Too Jewish Radio Show and Podcast several times, was a reporter and editor for the AP from 2006 through 2011.  He notes that, besides the completely disproportionate press attention paid to tiny, relatively unimportant Israel.  During [his] tenure at the AP, they had 40 reporters covering Israel, more reporters covering Israel than China; Israel has 10 million people, while China has 1.4 billion people.  They had more people covering Israel than India.  India has 1.5 billion people.  There were more AP journalists covering Israel than covering all of sub-Saharan Africa, which covers over 15% of the world’s surface.  Tiny Israel takes up 1/10th of 1 percent of the world’s surface. 

And of course, Israel’s situation is always framed as an Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  The issue is that, according to Friedman, there is not an Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  What exists is a regional conflict.  Israel has fought wars, unfortunately, against Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan, and now Iran, not an Arab country at all and predominantly Shia Muslims, a minority religion to the Sunni Islam that predominates throughout the Arab world.  Israel has been attacked by rockets in just the past two years by forces from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Yemen.  None of these are Palestinians.  This is a regional conflict, not an internal one.

The Arab world includes 300,000,000 people, mostly Arab Muslims, covering 5 million square miles of the planet.  The Islamic population of the world is perhaps 2 billion over a much larger range, about ¼ of the world’s population.  There are just 7 million Israeli Jews in one tiny corner of that world, fewer people than live in Cairo alone, for example.  If you take a larger regional conflict and reduce it to a simplistic view of powerful Israelis punishing weak Palestinians, you find it much easier to demonize Israel as a pariah nation. 

We hope and pray that this end-of-the-war peace offer from the United States is accepted by Hamas, as it has been accepted by Israel, the Arab states, and Europeans. It is certainly time for the hostages to be at long last released, and for this awful war to end.  The damage being done to Israel’s diplomatic and public relations can only begin to be remedied once the open wound of Gaza starts to heal.

We will continue to pray for the peace of Israel and to pray for peace throughout the region.  May this coming year prove to be a far less eventful one for Israel, and for Jews everywhere.  As the Psalm says,

שַׁ֭אֲלוּ שְׁלֹ֣ום יְרוּשָׁלִָ֑ם יִ֝שְׁלָ֗יוּ אֹהֲבָֽיִךְ׃

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem; may those who love you find contentment

יְהִי־שָׁל֥וֹם בְּחֵילֵ֑ךְ שַׁ֝לְוָ֗ה בְּאַרְמְנוֹתָֽיִךְ׃

May there be well-being within your ramparts,
peace in your citadels.”

לְ֭מַעַן אַחַ֣י וְרֵעָ֑י אֲדַבְּרָה־נָּ֖א שָׁל֣וֹם בָּֽךְ׃

For the sake of my kin and friends,
I pray for your peace;

לְ֭מַעַן בֵּית־יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֵ֑ינוּ אֲבַקְשָׁ֖ה ט֣וֹב לָֽךְ׃ {פ}

for the sake of the house of the LORD our God,
I seek your good.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah