Shloshim: 30 Days of Grief

I was young, yet I well remember, when the American hostages were taken in Iran.  Not only was it the top story in the news for the duration (and it was a long duration), it 100% gripped the nation.  America had never (in my young lifetime at that point, anyway) felt so helpless before.  And America, a superpower, was not used to and did not like feeling helpless.  Yellow ribbons adorned trees in every yard, in every park, everywhere.  Many people (not I, but many--mostly Republicans--who didn’t like President Jimmy Carter anyway) were clamoring for President Carter to do something drastic, and tee-shirts abounded that said bellicose things like “Nuke Iran”.  The American people—no matter whether you favored diplomatic channels, full on nuking of the hostage takers and the entire country (including all the innocent civilians in same, presumably) they were in, or anything in between—felt completely committed to getting the hostages back.

Yet now, when the brutal terrorist group, Hamas, has invaded Israel and massacred 1,400 innocent Israeli civilians, including babies in their cribs (shot through their heads and/or worse), elderly Holocaust survivors, entire families, entire (or nearly so) kibbutzim, kids at a peace-oriented music festival, and taken approximately 240 hostages, many of the adult children of those same Americans who, back during the Iranian hostage crisis, wore “Nuke Iran” shirts, are opting to take to the streets to cheer the terrorists who slaughtered innocent Israelis, and who took and still have approximately 240 hostages (including about 20 Americans, by the way).  And people are mischaracterizing Israel’s actions of self-defense after they were attacked brutally and are in an existential fight, and their actions to try to free all the hostages, using terrible and terribly inaccurate words to mischaracterize them, and words which are not only unfair, ignorant (at best) of what those words actually mean/what the actual definitions of them are, and inaccurate, but which are very triggering, to use a pop psychology word de jour which is very apt here, to the Jewish heart and soul, given our history.

Just ask yourselves this:  what would America do if a terrorist group, bent on our destruction (in their written charter, and obviously by their actions), invaded our country via Mexico or Canada, proceeded to massacre 1,400 innocent civilians as I described in more horrific detail above, but it bears repeating that it included babies:  let this sink in, they intentionally massacred babies—and also kidnapped 240 hostages—also including babies, again, let this sink in, please—and proceeded to take the hostages to underground tunnels, strategically and *intentionally* located under civilian-infused places, such as hospitals, apartment buildings, etc.?  Would we have been happy if, *the next day*, people in other countries were out in the streets, cheering for the terrorists?  What if people kept telling us we should stop trying to eradicate the terrorists, who not only did all of the above and are still holding the hostages (did I mention there are BABIES, that there are many CHILDREN, and many are not with their parents, they are just with the terrorists, in God knows what conditions and enduring God knows what treatment?), because innocent civilians—which the terrorists have intentionally put in the line of fire—are getting hurt, and we should have a ceasefire?  What if that terrorist group had been in charge of a territory on our border for YEARS, and had been firing rockets into the US for all those years, even before the above-described massacre/slaughter/pogrom?

I know that there are so many Palestinians who are innocent victims in all this, but it is not doing them any favors to leave a brutal terrorist group that only looks at them as human shields in charge.  Hamas has got to be eradicated from Gaza, period.  What would we do if a terrorist organization on our border had infiltrated America, massacred a bunch of innocents in very brutal fashion, taken HUNDREDS of hostages (did I mention including children?), and was talking loudly about doing more of the same, as well as still firing rockets into the US of A as they did that?

Would we appreciate people cheering in the streets for the terrorists, and telling us to stop trying to save our people (and all the other hostages) and eradicate the terrorists and destroying the terrorist haven they had built on our border?  Would we appreciate people going to City Council meetings, for example (this happened in my city) and saying the Council should not have passed a resolution against hate toward us, and that they should repeal that and another one they passed later that simply stands with us and against the terrorists who attacked us?

I’m just asking.

Am Israel chai!

I was going to take the weekend totally off of being on my laptop, as I finally finished a project at work on Friday, which I've been working arduously on since 6/16/2023.  The project involved overusing my "mouse hand" so much, and I really want to give it a well deserved and needed rest this weekend.  No computer mouse, no trackpad on my personal Chromebook here, nothing, just rest and recovery.  Yet here I find myself on Sunday, unable to take care of myself the way I was hoping to, as I'm unable to stay off this dang thing for even one weekend right now.  Why?

Because I'm so horrified, dismayed, frightened and furious.

I watched a recording of this past week's City Council meeting last night, in which quite a few, mostly quite young, and 100% extremely ignorant of history, and clearly antisemitic people stood up and demanded that the City Council rescind a resolution it passed a few weeks ago, which was against antisemitism.  The resolution was proposed and passed a few weeks ago, after a local synagogue received a threat, and was in response to that and to the rising tide of antisemitism in our city (and country, and the world).  These people, which horrifyingly, disgustingly and infuriatingly to me included the minister of the local UU church, stood up one by one and asked Council to rescind their resolution against antisemitism.  But that's not all.  They also asked them to rescind another, subsequent resolution, passed in response to the horrific October 7th Hamas terrorist attack/massacre/kidnappings, and that resolution which they also asked to have rescinded was in support of Israel.

One by one, I saw people stand up and rail against Israel, and call it a bunch of horrific names which I refuse to even give oxygen to by listing here, but they are all FALSE, and based on a very clear and shocking ignorance of history and facts.  So let me just say this:

1.  Israel is not a colonizer.  You cannot colonize your own home, from whence you originate.  Both Jews and Palestinians come from the same place.  We are cousins.  There is genetic evidence of this--scientific proof:  "Archaeologic and genetic data support that both Jews and Palestinians came from the ancient Canaanites, who extensively mixed with Egyptians, Mesopotamian, and Anatolian peoples in ancient times. Thus, Palestinian-Jewish rivalry is based in cultural and religious, but not in genetic, differences."  (Source:  NIH National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information, readily accessible with two seconds of Googling).  Repeat:  we're cousins.  Therefore:

2.  Jews are not, as I just said, "colonizing"/"colonizers", and are not "white supremacists".  We are from the land, just as our cousins are.

3.  We didn't just decide to leave, we were driven out by *truly* colonizing, occupying powers.

4.  Fast foward to 1948, the then British territory which they dubbed Palestine was going to be split in two, between the Jews and the Arabs, but the latter said no, we want it all and we will drive the Jews into the sea.  So the original boundaries of the modern state of Israel instead were larger than what they would have otherwise been, had the Palestinians accepted the original, fair, two-state partition plan.

5.  In response to being attacked in later years, by neighboring states going to war against Israel, and the subsequent self defense response of Israel, yes, Israel's territory expanded.  Because Israel won those wars which they did not start.

6.  Israel is still a tiny nation, geographically, surrounded by enemies (except Egypt, which has been living in peace with Israel for some time now, although clearly they are still not huge fans).

7.  I had a great, very wise teacher in college.  She told us that, often in life, people will try to tell you that a given situation is "either/or".  But really it's "both/and".  To be for Israel, you do not need to be against Palestinians.  And, please hear and understand this, to be for Palestinians, you do not need to be against Israel.  The two are cousins.  The two are both from the same land.  The two both have the right to live there.  No one is some "colonizing" group of "white supremacists" and no one is, or is doing, the other horrific labels and words I heard flung around City Council chambers by clueless mostly 20-somethings in this horrific and frankly seriously traumatizing City Council meeting, after which I personally will never be the same.  I've now gone completely tribal and no one is going to hurt my tribe if I have anything to say about it.  But I digress.  Wait, no, actually, I don't digress, because that's precisely the point of this post:  I DO have something to say about it:  stop all the ignorant, history-denying, antisemitic, LYING disinformation and misinformation!  Israel and Israelis have a right to exist, to be there, to be HOME.  So do the Palestinians.  We have to find a way to shut out all the noise from ignorant, hate-inciting, clueless, history-altering outsiders such as those speaking (and yelling) at the City Council meeting I saw the recording of yesterday, and we, Jews and Palestinians, have to find a way to realize that we are family.  We have to start from realizing we both have a right to be there.  Then, somehow, we have to figure out a way to make it safe and rights-infused and healthy and wonderful--let's aim for the stars--for us to be there.  Together.  There's no other way but together.  We have to get it together, literally.

I'd love to end this post there but, honestly, realistically, I have to add that I know it is going to get a whole lot worse before we get to that much better place--if we can--that I just dared hope for in that last paragraph.  Frankly, this ex-flower child doesn't want a ceasefire right now, and I don't think it is right that some are asking Israel to "consider a pause".  Frankly:  eff that, Israel was attacked and massacred and the attackers and massacre-ers, namely Hamas, MUST BE TAKEN OUT OF THE EQUATION.  Now.  Also, Hamas took 210-ish hostages and we must try to get them out of there alive, if possible, too.  Do I want innocent Palestinian civilians to be hurt in the process?  NO, but that is the fault of Hamas, they (Hamas) created this untenable situation in which Israel has to act in self defense.

There is a difference, I have concluded after decades of wrestling with this, between self defense and violence.  Not that the former doesn't unfortunately involve the latter sometimes, but they are not the same, morally.  If you walked into your house and saw someone there murdering your child, would you stage a non-violent protest?  Would you "take a pause" and try to work it out?  Or would you stop the killer from killing your child by any means necessary?  That is self defense, which in my strong and long-thought-about opinion extends out from one's self to one's family, and really to one's people/country/tribe.  Are we all one human tribe?  Yes.  But do we have "families" within that?  Also yes.  And no one is going to hurt my Jewish family without me speaking up and saying:  we have the right to exist, we have the right to exist in our homeland, and we have the right to defend those two rights.  And anyone who says we don't, and who further decides to hurl a bunch of horrific, ignorant of history/facts/reality, inaccurate and attacking labels and names at us, doesn't know what they are talking about, and is also WRONG.

Am Israel chai!