Israel, Gaza, And The Terrible Jewish Dilemma
Had the world not cheered the mass slaughter of Jews on October 7th, more Jews would be calling for a ceasefire.
by Ben Cohen
In the aftermath of Hamas’s slaughtering of 1,200 innocent Israelis at a music festival last year, I felt what can only be described as a psychic shift. Many people of Jewish descent have described a similar feelings — as if a sort of genetic ancestral memory kicked in.
The world, it felt, really did hate Jews, and none of us were safe. From the celebrations throughout the Middle East to the astonishing rise in antisemitic hate crimes in the West, Jews began to realize that they had no allies. When George Floyd was murdered by a white policeman in America, it provoked a global awakening on anti-black racism. When 1,200 Jews were murdered by an Islamo-fascist terror group, it just provoked more hatred of Jews.
As a long time critic of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, I finally understood the pro-Israel perspective; it doesn’t matter where Jews go, they will always try to kill us.
This unexpected psychic shift forced me to reevaluate positions I had once strongly held. Was Israel really an occupying, settler colonialist, apartheid regime? Were the Israelis oppressors and Palestinians the oppressed, or had I been filtering the complex history of the region through the lens of Western leftwing ideology?
Several months after the event, I haven’t found definitive answers to these questions. But they still gnaw and I am not the person I once was.
The traumatized nation
I have spent a significant amount of time around Israelis, many of whom I met while working as a Krav Maga instructor in Los Angeles in the early 2000’s. While I very much liked the Israelis I met, I couldn’t help but notice an undercurrent of paranoia in the culture. There are reasons for this, and over many years I have learned to understand it.
As a nation born in the wake of the Holocaust, Israel was founded as a safe haven for Jews around the world. While most of the international community voted for the creation of the state, neighboring Arab countries were vehemently opposed and almost immediately attacked. Since its inception in 1948, Israel has been at war with its neighbors. This means it exists a modern Sparta — a highly militarized society that survives because of its extraordinary fighting ability.
This heightened sense of fear seeps into every aspect of Israeli culture, and I experienced perhaps the most violent product of it; their extremely aggressive Martial Art.
The brutality of Krav Maga
All Israelis (with very few exceptions) have to go through military training when they reach 18, and most of them learn some version of Krav Maga. Having been through instructor training in the system, I am very familiar with how they are taught. Krav Maga is a brutal Martial Art based on applying overwhelming force as quickly as possible. It uses principles from boxing, judo, wrestling, and various kicking arts, combined with head buts, elbows, groin strikes and eye gouges.
Krav Maga is not a theoretical Martial Art either — they train all of these techniques with a frightening degree of realism. The instructor training I went through was extremely savage. We had to spar with full power groin kicks, go through endless aggression building drills, engage in 2 on 1 sparring contests, and hit bags until our knuckles bled. One component of the instructor course was so painful I couldn’t walk properly for three days.
I left Krav Maga after a couple of years because, if I’m being honest, I didn’t like the culture. Training partners were referred to as “targets” and there was a very heavy emphasis on weapons training. I enjoy the sportsmanship aspect of Martial Arts and have little interest in learning how to protect myself against someone wielding a machine gun. The training was producing a lot of extremely aggressive, paranoid students who were eager to test their fighting skills in the real world. This of course, is exactly why the Israeli government developed it in the first place.
More than anything, my Krav Maga training made me think about what kind of a society would create this kind of Martial Art. When you understand the history of Israel and the conflicts it has been through, it begins to make a lot of sense.
Birthing a nation and ignoring the dark side
In synagogues and Jewish communities around the world, the creation of the state of Israel is seen as one of the most important events in Jewish history. The birth of the nation is celebrated, and many Jews ignore the darker side of the story — namely the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their land. The pro Israel argument is that the expulsion happened in response to the Arab nations invading, but either way, hundreds of thousands of innocent Arabs lost their land and have never been compensated for it.
This expulsion laid the foundations of a conflict that has raged for almost 80 years. The one sided nature of the fighting and the constant encroachment onto Palestinian land has turned much of the international community against Israel, and I believe it is extremely important for the nation to acknowledge this.
It is true that the Palestinians have turned down settlement after settlement, and it is true that Palestinian leadership has been disastrous. But Israel was granted permission to exist by the international community, and it should therefore abide by international law — even if the Palestinians and neighboring Arab countries do not. This means a return to the pre-1967 borders and some sort of settlement for those who lost their land.
If there is no hope for the Palestinians of a decent future, there will be no end to this conflict.
The quagmire
The appalling scenes from Gaza after the Israeli invasion should be enough to turn the most hawkish Israel supporter into a peacenik. The death toll is now over well over 30,000 people, the majority women and children. A humanitarian crisis of stunning proportions is unfolding as hundreds of thousands of desperate Palestinians are herded from one region to another to avoid death.
There are growing global protests demanding a ceasefire, and it isn’t hard to see why. Whatever harm Hamas caused Israel on October 7th has been repaid with interest, and it is hard to see how Israel benefits from further bloodshed.
That being said, Hamas has put Israel in an impossible predicament. If Israel pulls out of Gaza now and allows Hamas to stay in power, they will be attacked again. We know this because Hamas has declared their mission to eradicate Jews from the region. Senior Hamas officials have called Israelis “filthy, ugly animals like apes and pigs,” and said they “will not recognize Israel,” and that “Palestine must stretch from the River to the Sea.”
Previously, I ignored much of this rhetoric and didn’t believe Hamas would act on its promise to kill as many Jews as they could. Now they have acted on it, it is only rational to take them at their word.
This is why many Jews around the world feel deeply conflicted about the current fighting. Most despise Benjamin Netanyahu and want a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians, but most also understand what will happen if Hamas stays in power. It is important for the rest of the world to understand the Jewish predicament: it isn’t that we want to see more deaths in Gaza, it’s that we are deathly afraid of what happens if Hamas is not destroyed.
The events on October 7th were to most Jews, a reminder of why the state of Israel was created in the first place. Because the hatred of Jews is a global phenomenon, and without a nation state of their own, Jews will never, ever be safe.
The killing of 1,200 innocent people happened on Israeli soil, and Jews now feel Israel’s very survival is at stake. If they do not eradicate Hamas, Israel is no longer safe for Jews. And to a nation built by the most persecuted ethnic group in history, the eradication of Hamas is non-negotiable.
There are many Jews speaking out about Israel’s actions in Gaza and demanding a ceasefire. There are many Jews who don’t care about the death toll and believe it is a price worth paying. There are also many Jews — like myself — who feel torn over this horrible conflict and have no idea what to say or do.
Had the world not cheered the mass slaughter of Jews on October 7th, I might be calling for a ceasefire too. But they did, and it isn’t something I, or any Israeli, can forget.
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Thank you for this. I have been feeling this as well since 10/7 and I haven’t really known how to process it. I felt so much anger that day. And admittedly, it hasn't subsided. That doesn't mean I don't feel sadness at the horrific death toll of innocent Palestinians as well. The bottom line is that the media wants to divide us when it is possible to have empathy for both, while also understanding the histories of both parties.
I think something that so many people that are hardliners on this issue (on both sides) don’t understand is that many things can be true at the same time. You can support both groups of people without supporting their leadership.
But nuance seems to be lost on most. Its easy to pick a side without even trying to understand the plight of your 'enemy'.
Therein lies the problem.
Diaspora Jews who feel the urge to be token Jews for anti-Jewish racists can figure out in their own head what they personally gain from their virtue signaling of throwing Israeli Jews under the bus. It’s not done for any moral reasons, so spare me. It’s not just October 7 these faux Jews ignore, it’s history in it’s entirety - the 138 suicide bombings of the second intifada, the lack of real interest the Palestinians have had to sign any peace deal, it’s Palestinian terrorism long before “the occupation”, it’s the fact that Palestinians have always had the goal of a genocide and ethnic cleansing for Jews since before the state of Israel, it’s the fact that when Arabs were the majority they behaved worse than racist Whites did in the south to the black minority - endless pogroms and lynchings of Jewish refugees by Arabs.
The problem progressive Jews have is with reality, and being gullible fools for the far left and Islamists.