We Are in The Middle of the Next War and We are Losing
Live From the War in Israel - Day 231
As shocking as things have been lately, this week was one of the worst. I have been watching with disbelief, as many Jews have, as the Western world turns against Israel. The cause of the war has been all but forgotten. Even our staunchest allies are starting to waver.
They say, Israel has the right to defend itself, but not like this. It is an overreaction. You cannot starve a population. You cannot harm civilians. The response is necessary but disproportionate. You cannot get rid of an idea. If you remove Hamas, who will run Gaza? We need a two-state solution.
Who broke the ceasefire has been forgotten. The savage butchery that was committed has become irrelevant. The fact that Hamas has purposely put their own people in danger is no longer discussed, nor is the fact that the war stops tomorrow if they release the hostages.
If you care to or actually know some of the facts, it is too much to listen to. In the last few weeks, the UN has admitted that the casualty numbers that Hamas has given are up to 50% wrong. The UN has been telling us for 7 months that famine is out of control, but even according to Hamas, about 50 people out of 2.5 million have died from lack of nutrition, and even that does not prove there is a lack of food. As a matter of fact, this week a report came out saying that since January, more than enough food has been sent into Gaza, it just hasn’t been reaching the Gazans. Israel has repeatedly said this and the USA, who started to deliver food through a newly built pier under it’s control, now admits that as of today none of the aid they have brought in has reached the distribution centers; they are being taken by Hamas.
No matter how many times Hamas has been caught lying and manipulating facts, they are still the main source of information that the world quotes.
It is infuriating, but this and the other issues we are trying to debunk are nothing but a distraction. I am very afraid that we are not grasping the full war we are in the midst of, one that we are losing badly.
I have said in the past that one of the main problems of the Israeli government (all of them, past and present) has been a lack of humility. After all, what we have accomplished in just over 75 years is unparalleled in modern history. The democracy, economy, research, etc., that we have built is nothing short of a miracle given the small number of people that actually live here and the short amount of time we have existed as a modern nation. We have made major contributions to all fields of medicine, computer science, cyber security, food tech, etc. You would be hard-pressed to think of any area of modern science and innovation that we are not part of, and it was because of this that we felt we were accepted by the world of nations.
I remember when BDS ( the modern boycott movement against Israel) was picking up steam and someone made a list of the things that people should stop using if they were really serious about the boycott. To do so, you would need to start living in a cave. It was a joke. Our contribution to the world was too great for us to be ignored.
Or so we told ourselves.
Our lack of humility allowed us to think that finally we had been accepted, and as such we did not have to defend ourselves in the theatre of public opinion. Now the issue is no longer whether the war is just or not, whether we are acting properly or not; the issue has become whether or not we have the right to exist at all, and more and more people are coming to the conclusion that we do not.
I know this sounds extreme, but we ignore this at our own peril. The Palestinians have always maintained the position that Israel has no right to exist. They said this before 1948 and have continued to do so. No matter how many wars they start and no matter how many peace treaties they reject, the majority of the world sees the entire issue as the fault of Israel. The only logical conclusion for people to come to is that we should not exist.
It sounds ridiculous. Something that should not even waste our time defending. What other country has to defend its right to exist? What other country has enemies who are not calling for their defeat but their annihilation? And while we felt this was not an issue we needed to dirty our hands with, educated youth around the world are accepting this as fact: Israel should not exist.
We can fool ourselves and question whether these people are smart or not, but it is irrelevant; they will be the future leaders of society. I watch Bill Maher and read The Free Press, and I know that there are thinking people who truly understand the importance of truth, history, and facts. It is nice to hear Hillary Clinton tell today's youth that they know nothing of history, that they know nothing of how the Palestinians have rejected peace time and time again. It is nice to hear Salman Rushdie tell people that Hamas is a terrorist group and supporting them will not get the Palestinians a country.
Here is the problem. Maher is 68 years old; Clinton and Rushdie are 76. As time goes on, truth becomes forgotten. The people who yell the loudest are the ones who are believed. The ones who are too arrogant to defend themselves become footnotes. When Dave Chappelle can get up in an Arab country and tell his audience that Israel is committing genocide and there is no pushback, you have to realize the problem is much bigger than we want to admit. He is not a stupid comedian. He is highly intelligent, and what he actually said was much more insidious. He said that antisemitism needed to be eradicated in the USA so that the Jews would not feel that they needed Israel to back them up. The implication being, that then, there would be no reason for Israel to exist.
I know it is a crazy thought that the Jews would have to argue that they are the true indigenous people of this land. All monotheistic religions say this. Our uninterrupted longing, for over thousands of years, to return to our homeland should be proof enough.
It isn’t.
While we felt it was beneath us to respond, our history was being rewritten.
We went from being the oppressed to being the oppressors. From the victims of genocide and ethnic cleansing to the perpetrators of these crimes and, most egregiously, from being the indigenous people of this land to its occupiers.
We ignored this while our story was being retold, and now we are starting to pay the price.
I say starting because I fear this is just the beginning. There are 15-18 million Jews in the world, with about half living in Israel. Most Jews outside of Israel do not know its history or care to learn it. There are 1.4 BILLION Muslims. The majority of these Muslims are brought up believing that the Jews are the oppressors (if not much worse).
Who is someone more likely to meet? A Jew with the knowledge of his own history, or a Muslim who was brought up with the lies of Jewish oppression?
We need to realize that this is the war we are in. I hope it is not too late.
We have 4,000 years of history - they have 60 years of lies . It is very sad that we need to deal with this right now. In the end the Muslims will go the ay of the Greeks and the Romans nd be a rounding error in Hashem's Plan. It is painful to live through this but this is the reason we are here and remember our history in Egypt, under Roman, Greek Persecution, Persia , Spain the Ottomans and Germans and many other in between. It's our turn now to be uncomfortable in order that our great grandchildren have Shabbat Dinners. It's Never Fair.
This is right on target. History is written by the loudest not the truest? We are engaged, as always, in an existential war in which the whole world is against us. The Christians are only on our side until a new messiah appears. We are on our own as usual.