Democrats have been trying to make a case that Republicans are attempting to make Israel a wedge issue in American politics. Pro-Israel Democrats say that it is harmful to the Jewish State to destroy the broad bipartisan support of the only liberal democracy in the Middle East enjoys. Republicans agree and lament that Democrats are addressing the wrong audience.
The charge by centrist Democrats’ about Republicans is designed to be a red herring to cover the infiltration of the anti-Zionist alt-left into the Democratic Party.
Justice Democrats has been growing its influence in Democratic circles, supporting anti-Zionist non-White people in Congress like Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) does the same.
In an attempt to distinguish between their rabid anti-Zionism and antisemitism, the far-left argues that there are good Jews and bad Jews. They embrace the anti-Israel “good Jews” like those from Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow, as if doing so proves they don’t hate Jews. Only those “bad Jews” who support Jews living in the Jewish holy land are targeted for vitriol and harassment.
CAIR, the Council for American-Islamic Relations makes a similar argument. Zahra Billoo made a speech which specifically called out “polite Zionists… which are not your friends” because she argued that any Jew who supports Israel is inherently anti-Muslim. To be an ally in the Islamic world requires that Jews denounce Zionism.
These and similar organizations and countries have been attempting to brand Zionism a form of racism, as so declared in 1975 at the United Nations. They have pushed a narrative in schools and society that everyone actively needs to be anti-racist and consequently anti-Zionist.
Branding Israel as an “apartheid” and “genocidal” country started well before the October 7 massacre by Palestinians. The effort was to not only make Israel a pariah nation devoid of allies, but to convince Jews to abandon their brethren and heritage.
The jihadi-socialist alliance is not only looking to destroy the Jewish State, but to pit Jew against Jew regarding Israel. It is yet another vile form of antisemitism.
May 2021 saw a relatively short war between Hamas in Gaza and Israel. As the battle was coming to a close, Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas’s military, met with Tor Wennesland, the UN Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.
It did not go well.
Yahya Sinwar, leader of the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza, gestures during a rally in Beit Lahiya on May 30, 2021. (Atia Mohammed/ Flash90)
“It was a bad meeting. It was not positive at all, and we clarified to the [United Nations] delegation that we would hold a meeting of Islamic and national factions in Gaza to decide our next steps,” Sinwar told reporters following the meeting. “It seems that the occupation [Israel] did not get our people’s message,” essentially threatening the Jewish State again.
Hamas demanded that Israel lift tightened restrictions on the Gaza Strip in exchange for continued calm, as well as permit Gaza to rebuild after the 11-day battle between Israel and the terror group. But Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said that Israel would not permit a full reconstruction of Gaza — with the resulting influx of materials — without the return of two Israeli civilian captives and the bodies of two Israeli soldiers held by Hamas.
Sinwar rejected the proposal and said Israel is “trying to extort us, the Palestinian people, the Palestinian resistance, when it comes to lifting [the restrictions] on our people.”
A spokesperson for the UN Secretary General was interviewed in June 2021 after Wennesland’s meeting with Sinwar, especially on the topic of Hamas’s use of children in armed conflict. The UN offered generic messaging and would not specifically condemn Hamas.
Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar sits and smiles in his bombed Gaza office when it was above ground, May 27, 2021 (Courtesy)
Two years later, Sinwar launched a massive war against Israel, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages. It seemed that Hamas wanted both the UN and Israel to get the “message” that they will be unbowed by any rules of war, and magnify his violence by a hundred times.
Israel learned Sinwar’s 2021 and 2023 messages and is replying to sender: the Jewish State will defend itself aggressively when attacked in such barbaric fashion, and it will always insist on reclaiming its citizens. Any reconstruction of Gaza will depend on Sinwar’s death or capture this time, in addition to the release of the Israeli hostages whether dead or alive.
For its part, the UN continues to pretend that it does not understand anyone’s messages, offering worthless bobbleheads with microphones attached. If it weren’t so horribly tragic, it would be comical.
Many political experts have offered that there is no way to defeat Hamas’ ideology though military means. Israel’s war effort will only be successful in defeating the military capabilities of the political-terrorist group, much like allied forces defeated Nazi Germany in World War II, and US and other allies defeated al-Qaeda and ISIS in the 21st century. The ultimate driver of Hamas, to destroy the Jewish State, will continue to fuel another generation of Palestinian radicals.
What goes unmentioned is that this “ideology” is rooted in religious fanaticism, much like al Qaeda and ISIS, among others. This potentially makes the ideology eternal, so any notion of defeating the ideology would be nonsensical.
Consider that there are only 900 Christian Arabs in Gaza out of a population of roughly 2.2 million, a paltry 0.04% of the region, with the rest being Muslim. The strip is deeply religious under a strictly Islamic religious regime enforcing sharia law. Hamas is attempting to use its Gaza foothold as the launching pad for a caliphate with the help of other Islamic regimes including Iran and Qatar, to consume Israel next door.
Last week, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas came clean about his fanatical Islamic and antisemitic and anti-US beliefs in front of the Turkish parliament as he declared “we implement sharia law: victory or martyrdom!” and “America is the plague and the plague is America.”
The Israel-Arab war is a religious war for Palestinian Arabs and the Islamic Republic of Iran, not a territorial war. It is therefore not surprising that Jews in the diaspora are being attacked by antisemites who berate Jews as murderers, racists and robbers who are “colonizers,” not indigenous to the land of Israel. It is an unhinged rant of fanatics who celebrate the slaughter of unbelievers unmoored in reality, not a reasoned opinion capable of being addressed.
The United Nations’ role in the Middle East is a dangerous farce. It pretends to be an impartial party attempting to bring peace to the volatile region, when in fact it takes only sides with Palestinian Arabs.
The UN has a person appointed to be the “Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process,” Tor Wennesland. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres appointed Wennesland to that role in December 2020 and simultaneously to act as Guterres’ “Personal Representative to the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority.” How could Israel possibly take the position of such a biased representative seriously? Guterres shot the messenger by cementing him with Palestinian cement shoes from the outset.
Not surprisingly, the “peace process” floundered under Guterres and Wennesland, with the Palestinian Arabs together with backers in Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Yemen all coming for the Jewish State in a regional assault.
The biased and tarnished Wennesland continues to address the UN Security Council and the world via social media. Various biases can be found throughout his comments.
On August 16, 2024, Wennesland tweeted that he condemned settler violence and wanted “to ensure full accountability for all involved,” and further called “on the Israeli government to stop settler violence.”
August 16, 2024 tweet calling out Israelis for violence and demanding full accountability
But Wennesland did the opposite regarding Hamas and other terrorist groups attacking Israel, where he did not call out “Hezbollah” and demanded that Israel use “maximum restraint” in responding to terror.
July 27, 2024 tweet not naming Hezbollah terrorists and urging Israel respond with “maximum restraint”
The hypocrisy is a designed feature of the UN. When Wennesland addressed the UN Security Council on May 29, 2024, he acknowledged the “breakdown of law and order” in Gaza as well as the “well-organized looting of the UNRWA Rafah log base,” but deliberately omitted saying that the looting was done by Hamas. In fact, he implied the opposite, that because Hamas was no longer in charge, there was a breakdown of order.
Comments to UNSC on May 29, 2024
Wennesland treats Hamas as a trusted partner and uses the political-terrorist group’s talking points. On August 10, 2024, Wennesland condemned on the “devastating strike on a school sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinian, with dozens of fatalities.” The UN itself admitted that those “dozens of fatalities” were terrorists, yet the UN’s “Coordinator for Peace” parroted jihadi terrorist propaganda.
Official statement condemning the killing of terrorists on August 10, 2024
Wennesland views his role as protecting and promoting Palestinian Arabs, not securing peace. It means advancing their narrative, excusing their terrorism, and preventing Israel from eliminating jihadi terrorists.
Wennesland knows that there are numerous allies of Palestinians all attacking Israel; he names Hizbullah, Iran and the Houthis, even while treading gingerly around Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It’s because he sees his goal as supporting the creation of a Palestinian state first and foremost, and that means calling for international support for a Palestinian government, even knowing it to be deeply corrupt and antisemitic.
May 29 comments to UNSC
The UN’s idea of a “peace process” is deeply and fundamentally flawed. The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Coordinator for Middle East Peace Tor Wennesland should both be fired for abetting terrorism, and all UN agencies in the region should be shuttered.
For decades, Palestinians put on a dance that they had two personas: one peaceful and secular, the other militant and Islamist. In August 2024, they shed the former and fully embraced the latter.
Palestinian Arabs had two principal parties in their government: the more secular Fatah and the Islamist Hamas. The Palestinian Authority has been ruled by President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, who the west presents as a moderate voice of reason, despite being a Holocaust denier and being deeply unpopular amongst local Palestinians. Abbas has ruled E49, the area east of the 1949 Armistice Lines, commonly called the “West Bank” by Palestinians and “Judea and Samaria” by Israelis.
Hamas is the more popular political party amongst local Palestinian Arabs and has ruled Gaza since 2007. It is a designated terrorist organization according to the United States, European Union, Israel and many other countries. It nominally divided the organization between its political wing and its military wing, much like Nazi Germany had different divisions of the SS, Gestapo, Waffen, Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and Wehrmacht.
On July 31, 2024, Israel killed Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, while he was in Iran. In response to the vacated position, on August 6, Hamas announced that Yahya Sinwar who is the group’s military leader, will also assume the role of diplomatic leader. The move consolidated the diplomatic and terrorist faces of the organization.
Just over a week later on August 15, President Abbas spoke to the government of Turkey in a large address. In his remarks, he made clear that the Palestinian Authority is not a secular party but a religious one, intent on “implement[ing] Islamic sharia law: victory or martyrdom.”
PA President Mahmoud Abbas addressing government of Turkey on August 15, 2024
He called for Islamic prayers to mourn for the slain leader of Hamas with reciting prayers from the Quran to wide applause.
And then called the United States a “plague,” something nefarious and detrimental to humankind which must be destroyed.
Palestinian leadership has shed the polite diplomatic facade and embraced the genocidal jihadi mantra of the foundational Hamas Charter, in line with the desires of the Palestinian Arab public and radical jihadists around the world. It remains to be seen if this will expand the war against the Jewish State or initiates a global recognition that an antisemitic genocidal regime next to the only Jewish State is untenable in the extreme.
Jewish students were physically blocked from sections of UCLA’s campus by anti-Israel protestors, many covering their faces with kaffiyehs in the Spring 2024 semester. Three students consequently sued to have the university ensure that they have equal rights to use and enjoy the campus facilities.
U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi agreed with the plaintiffs that UCLA knew students could not enter parts of campus because of their religious beliefs. His ruling ordered UCLA to stop “knowingly allowing or facilitating the exclusion of Jewish students from ordinarily available portions of UCLA’s programs, activities, and campus areas, whether as a result of a de-escalation strategy or otherwise.”
UCLA strongly disagreed.
Mary Osako, UCLA vice chancellor for strategic communications, said “the district court’s ruling would improperly hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground and to meet the needs of the Bruin community. We’re closely reviewing the Judge’s ruling and considering all our options moving forward.”
Thomas Harvey, the lawyer representing Faculty for Justice in Palestine, came up with the absurd notion that the ruling “paves the way for total removal of pro-Palestinian activity on campus. If the sincerely held religious belief being protected here is the belief in the Jewish state of Israel, any class, campus event or speaker that criticizes that nation’s legal or political decisions might be prohibited.”
Jewish student at UCLA denied entry to campus while police looked on
UCLA and the lawyer’s arguments aren’t just ridiculous but make one wonder if they are deeply antisemitic. The ruling doesn’t say anything about criticizing “political decisions” of any country; it is about free and fair access for all students to use every corner of the university campus.
In a strange bit of coincidence, on October 6, 2023, one day before the barbaric Palestinian massacre of Israelis, UCLA announced the UCLA Research Hub on Antisemitism, funded by a $600,000 gift by the Pritzker family. The hub is a joint effort between the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate and the Center for Jewish Studies. In announcing the new effort, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said “It is critical that we do more than condemn the recent surge in antisemitism — we must actively work against it.”
Chancellor Block was pushed to resign in May 2024 by anti-Israel protestors who also called for canceling the school’s Israel Studies Department and for boycotting all Israeli universities.
UCLA is tacking to the jihadi fringe to remove any tolerance of contrary points of view and freedom of access in an undemocratic purge of Zionists and Jews. It is displaying a frightful lack of basic civility and critical thinking.
UCLA is so infected with anti-Zionism, that it is fighting to ban pro-Zionist students from campus and an education. It says a great deal about California and the terrible state of education today.
The United Nations General Assembly was wrapping up its 78th session on August 13, 2024, and was going to pass a resolution about racism with seemingly little objection. At the last minute, South Africa asked for the resolution to include a reference to the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action from 2001. The resolution quickly lost overwhelming support, with only 61 votes in favor, 78 abstentions, and a single opposing vote by Israel.
UN press release on August 13, 2024
The action was deliberate and calculating by South Africa, which recently pursued a case at the International Court of Justice charging Israel with committing genocide in Gaza. The African nation wanted to make Israel appear as a racist entity by opposing a resolution condemning racism.
It was specifically the inclusion of that Durban document that made Israel oppose the resolution. The Programme of Action was a lengthy document discussing racism and xenophobia which veered into the Palestinian-Israel conflict at several points, as jihadi regimes attempted to bundle condemnation of Israel into a document which was designed to confront racism.
Durban conference of 2002 preamble mentioning that “Palestinian people [are] under foreign occupation” and that they have a “right to an independent state.”
The document included a call for Palestinian refugees “to return voluntarily to their homes and properties,” making it an individual right outside of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In a 100+ page global document about racism.
The 2001 event, just days before the terrorist attacks on the United States on 9/11, was deliberately inflammatory and made many countries send lower level officials or not vote for the programme.
The United Nations Press team published its usual anti-Israel smear on August 13, 2024, as it described the latest Gaza war. In a headline that read “Humanitarian official describes pitiful regard for International Law, as delegates deplore continued attacks on civilians, suffering of Palestinians,” one would imagine another one-sided piece only critical of Israel. The sub-header about a “financial liquidity crisis” at the UN requiring a shortened article, may explain why the text of the article wasn’t scrubbed of any Israeli narrative.
While the article began that there was a “desperate need to reach a ceasefire” after an Israeli strike on a school in Gaza on August 10, the article – remarkably – included quotes from Israeli sources about who was killed in the attack, rather than only parrot Hamas’ figures which refers to every Palestinian as a civilian and every Israeli as a colonizing terrorist.
The UN article quoted Israeli officials that “its forces targeted a Hamas command centre in a mosque inside the compound and killed at least 31 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters.” Just a couple of paragraphs later the text would cover an August 3 Israeli strike in Tulkarem where nine Palestinians were killed who were planning “an attack inside Israel.”
While the article did quote Palestinian officials as well, that is routine. What was exceptional in this case was that the Israeli version of events was included in the press release, which is normally absent.
It would appear that the best way to get the United Nations to treat Israel with a modicum of respect and fairness is to starve it of funds.
An anti-Israel group called Palestine Action broke into the offices of an Israeli company in Bristol, England and smashed equipment. The seven people, aged between 20 and 51, are being charged with terrorism under the UK’s Terrorism Act of 2000, which aggravates Amnesty International and The New York Times.
The Times ran a headline that the terrorists were simply “pro-Palestinian activists,” making them sound like peaceful protestors sitting on a field with placards revealing their sadness about people dying in Gaza, not members of a group which have repeatedly targeted Elbit Systems UK. One of the terrorists allegedly hit a police officer with a sledgehammer during the arrest, which I guess makes him really, really “active.”
The New York Times on August 13, 2024 soft pedaling anti-Israel terrorists
Amnesty International also attempted to shield the anti-Israel terrorists, arguing that the arrested members of Palestine Action should simply be charged with “ordinary criminal offenses” without any “terrorist connection.”
Yet Palestine Action itself made very clear that the action directed at Elbit was “to prevent its manufacture of weapons for genocide.” The Terrorism Act of 2000 is very clear that damaging property for the purpose of advancing a political cause is terrorism, making the charge appropriate.
UK Terrorism Act of 2000
The NY Times and Amnesty International are attempting to whitewash anti-Israel terrorism as mere pro-Palestine activism, a mild inconvenience which should not alarm anyone. This too is unholy.
ACTION ITEM
Contact NY Times to stop deliberately mischaracterizing anti-Israel terrorism as pro-Palestine activism
I have been fortunate to visit Israel dozens of times. I have come for work and to vacation. To celebrate Jewish holidays and family and friends’ celebrations. During wars and “intifadas” as well as times of peace.
July 2024 was different. I came to a country held hostage.
The Individual Hostages In Gaza
The first thing one sees upon arrival at the airport is a large sign “Bring them home now!” with sample dog tags showing the date October 7 when over 250 people from Israel – living and dead – were seized by Palestinian Arabs and hauled into Gaza.
The faces of the hostages were found everywhere: in the airport, on the streets and in office lobbies. On stickers, banners and shirts. Israel is consumed with the people abducted by terrorists. Their faces, names and stories refuse to be forgotten.
Hostage To Memories And Emotions
Outside the Tel Aviv Museum is Hostage Square, an encampment of families and friends who sit in shelters to talk to people about the abducted amidst a range of emotional tributes and installations. Most of the people try to avoid talking about politics or the war, and are solely focused on the innocent people ripped from their homes and regular lives.
One of people I met in a tent for one of the kibbutz communities attacked was a Ukrainian-Israeli who confided that she liked to talk to tourists. She felt it difficult to talk to fellow Israelis who were enmeshed in the ongoing tragedy but could “unload” to strangers and not be alone.
She pointed to a picture over the door and said that the bearded man was her old boyfriend who was killed on October 7 and his body was hauled into Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces retrieved his body just a few weeks earlier.
While this woman talked to me, another women from the kibbutz had been talking to another female visitor. That kibbutz woman introduced a middle aged lady who shared that she was a neighbor of the Ukrainian’s old boyfriend. The Ukrainian covered her mouth and began to bawl. She attempted to speak and then fled the tent.
Hostages To War
I have visited the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem many times. In 2003, during the Second ‘Intifada’, I had the opportunity to get a tour of the new emergency room by Dr. David Applebaum two weeks before he and his daughter were killed in a Palestinian terrorist bombing on the eve of her wedding. I came to visit now to see how the hospital was functioning during a war.
The hospital lobby has a long table filled with pictures of family members of hospital workers who were killed over the nine months of war. Some were killed during the October 7 massacre while others died in the fighting to free the hostages and to bring the terrorists to justice.
Lobby of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, July 2024
The guide shared that this war had an enormous casualty-to-death ratio relative to past wars. The reason is that many soldiers who would have been killed in the past were saved due to some tactical measures.
Firstly, Israeli soldiers entered the hornet’s nest of Gaza wearing tourniquets. With a battlefield loaded with booby traps, many people were losing limbs as bombs exploded. In the past, those soldiers would have bled to death but now, tourniquets provided precious time for them to be rescued.
Behind the wave of infantry were medics equipped with various equipment to stabilize the injured quickly for immediate transfer out of Gaza into Israel a short distance away. As soon as the injured entered Israel, well-equipped medical helicopters flew the seriously injured to hospitals like Shaare Zedek, a short 15 minute flight, while those in non-life threatening situations were transferred via ambulance. The sophisticated medical helicopters had advanced equipment like sonars which evaluate the soldier’s condition to prepare the emergency room at the hospital to receive the injured and operate quickly. There were cases that a person was on an operating table less than 45 minutes from the moment of attack.
The tour of the hospital also featured a large empty underground intensive care unit, should air sirens be blasted in Jerusalem and very sick patients need to be moved into a shelter.
Underground ICU in case of bombing
Hostages To The Government
Many Israelis are deeply upset with their leadership and Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu. They are angry at the failure to protect the border, allowing the October 7th massacre to occur. They are furious at the inability to finish off Hamas and release the hostages.
Graffiti around Jerusalem angry at Netanyahu
They are angry at Bibi’s failure to conclude a hostage deal and his refusal to step down and hold elections. They feel trapped by his incompetence and ego but have few tools to call for an early election.
The Saturday night protest near the prime minister’s house in Jerusalem was not shrill and it seemed like the the crowd was worn out from many months of little progress.
But they keep turning out.
Hostages To Family Fighting
Many Israelis are exhausted in every manner of the word. They have family members who have been fighting in Gaza or up north on-and-off for nine months. They all have or know of families who have lost loved ones. They are desperate to leave the country for a much needed respite but feel unable to do so while family is on the front lines.
Those who remain in the country ask each other difficult questions: do you postpone a wedding until after the war? Do you start dating someone who is on the front lines, who might suffer a terrible injury or death?
The soldiers occupy their every action and prayers. They have also been captured into a war zone since October 7, a war which no one wanted.
Hostages To Tradition
In the Jerusalem neighborhood of Romema, many new buildings are going up to accommodate the rapidly growing numbers of ultra-Orthodox Haredi Jews who want to live in Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest city. While the vast majority of that community do not serve in the army, many are trying to contribute to the war effort in their own way.
On the first floor of a small building, a cramped kitchen has been set up by volunteers who cook and pack meals for families who have people fighting in Gaza or the Lebanese border. They pack hundreds of meals including soup, meatballs, spaghetti and dessert. Each package is customized according to the size of the family who has asked to receive the meals. The day I came to help pack, the meals were going to the community in Beit El.
Car packed with meals for families with people serving in the army, cooked and prepared by Haredi Jews in Jerusalem, July 2024
Economy Held Hostage
Israel has a citizen army in which everyone serves. While 18 to 21 year olds serve before they attend college, people also continue to get called up for milu’im, occasional service as the army needs people. In the course of this war, thousands of people in their 30s, 40s and 50s have left their jobs to fight the Palestinian Arab terrorists. Beyond the direct financial cost of the war, the impact on the country’s economy has been dramatic as millions of work-hours have vanished to defend the country.
There is still no end in sight all these months later, as fronts with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houtis in Yemen open up further.
Homes Held Hostage
Many hotels and apartments in Jerusalem have unusual activity. Whole families from the country’s north near Lebanon, as well as from near the Gaza Strip have relocated to the middle of the country. For nine months, they have been living as internally-displaced people. In the immediate aftermath of October 7, the numbers surpassed 200,000 but is now closer to 90,000.
According to UN Watch, “Despite the unprecedented massive displacement within Israel, both the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and the UN Special Rapporteur on Internally displaced people (IDPs), Paula Gaviria Betancur—the two UN representatives one would expect to champion the rights of the displaced Israelis—have been largely silent on the issue.”
Israelis – roughly the population of Duluth, MN – have lost access to their homes, and the world has remained silent.
Hostages To Creeping Ambivalence
So many Israelis share the refrain that they “do not want the situation of hostages to become normalized.” They refuse to live in a country in which it is accepted that more than one hundred people are trapped in Gaza. They rail against a world which cannot fathom the deep trauma of the country that innocent civilians were kidnapped from their homes by thousands of terrorists.
As each day morphs to another, people afix new numbers to tape on their chests: 278, 279, 280, 281… People are not only more fearful about the fate of the hostages as time goes by but that their lives and stories grow more distant to the world.
Resistance
While many feel trapped by the current war, Israelis are taking action incorporating the new reality. They try to transform points of pain to rays of light.
Shuva Junction, about 5km from Gaza, was originally the location where people brought dead and wounded people from the October 7 massacre. Since that time, it has become a makeshift hub where Israeli soldiers come to rest and get food. Roughly 1,500 people are fed every day at a cost of roughly $5,000, all done by volunteers.
Already an outlier among countries allowing sperm extraction from a dead man by a spouse, Israel is debating allowing parents to do posthumous sperm retrieval for their fallen sons post-October 7. The bereaved parents want their sons to live on somehow, after sacrificing everything for the nation.
Beyond the war is living life. While it felt strange to go out for dinner or shop while a war was raging and over a hundred people were still being held hostage, the overall environment always felt like it included both fighters and hostages.
I was fortunate to attend a Hanan Ben Ari concert in the Sultan’s Pool right outside the Old City of Jerusalem. The stage was illuminated by the number of days that hostages were captive along with a yellow ribbon.
Stage for Hanan Ben Ari concert at Sultan’s Pool, Jerusalem in July 2024
I was unfamiliar with the singer and my Hebrew is not great, so I needed to listen particularly closely to the words. I heard a man praying for his children. I listened to a singer honoring his grandfather who was buried on Har Meuchut, on the other side of the Old City walls.
Hanan Ben Ari at Sultan’s Pool
And I watched the crowd of secular, modern and ultra-Orthodox Jews sing along. I saw young and old, men and women dance and sway to the music.
And cry.
Hanan Ben Ari put up a picture of one of his road managers, along with one of him with his family. Hanan spoke of him and how he was working the Nova music festival and slaughtered on October 7. Ben Ari then showed two people in his crew who were still held captive in Gaza.
He then asked people to hold the flashlights on their phones if they know of someone killed in the war. All 6,000 people in the audience raised their arms and began crying to a mournful song, Shvurei lev, a song of a broken heart.
I have been to Israel durings wars and sensed a people who had long ago accepted that they lived in a region amongst people who did not accept their basic presence or humanity. Still, they believed the episode would pass; the country will prevail in the near-term battles and in the longer-term, peace will prevail when the Jewish State’s enemies internalize that they are never leaving.
But that was not the nation I visited in July 2024.
Woman crying over fate of the murdered, the fallen and the hostages while she surveyed her fellow countrymen raising their arms at a Hanan Ben Ari concert, that they have suffered deeply in the 2023-4 Hamas war.
Israelis are deeply scarred by those killed and the manner in which they were butchered on October 7. They were rocked by the government and army’s failure to protect them. They are tortured by the ongoing hostage situation. They are deeply troubled by their strongest ally of the United States being rocked with rabid antisemitism which had previously only been displayed in Europe. They are livid at being blamed for a war they never wanted and want to end as quickly as possible.
The Jewish State is being held hostage in Gaza because Judaism believes that every life is a world. It is being held hostage by the scars of the barbarity of October 7 massacre. It is being held hostage by the fear of living next door to people who support such crimes against humanity. It is being held hostage by its own government that won’t step down and hold new elections. It is being held hostage by a false narrative at the United Nations and the ICC. It is being held hostage by a single powerful ally fading in its support.
There are more than 100 hostages. There are millions.
Israel has long known war and is confident that it can defeat Palestinian terrorists.
This is more than a war against a weak genocidal foe. This is a battle in the cramped crevices of hearts and minds to salvage humanity. Alone.
Air traffic control of Tel Aviv airport – the main international airport for the entire country – lit up with yellow ribbon for hostages held in Gaza, July 2024. Over the first nine months of the year, before the October 7 attacks by Hamas, passenger traffic surged by an annual 38.5 percent, to 19.1 million. But since then, traffic has plunged, culminating in a 78 percent drop in November and 71 percent dive in December, according to the Israel Airports Authority.
First One Through 