{"id":12766,"date":"2023-12-28T15:51:13","date_gmt":"2023-12-28T13:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/?p=12766"},"modified":"2024-02-27T14:06:01","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T12:06:01","slug":"israel-stopped-apologizing-on-october-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/israel-stopped-apologizing-on-october-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel stopped apologizing on October 7"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since Hamas\u2019s savagery, with young Israelis dying every day, the accusations, anguish, and apologetics must end. The relationship between Israel and the Diaspora needs resetting<\/span><\/h3>\n

For years, too many\u00a0Diaspora Jews\u00a0have treated Israel just a tad condescendingly. They cast Israel as the problem child of the Jewish People, too wild, primitive, militaristic, fundamentalist, forever embarrassing their more enlightened, sophisticated liberal Jewish selves. Many of us in the pro-Israel space unconsciously fed the dynamic. \u201cWe\u2019re really OK,\u201d we insisted. \u201cWe\u2019re Start-up Nation! We save lives with Pillcams! We\u2019re the 4th happiest country!\u201d<\/p>\n

It got worse during the Trump years. Israel, not America, was somehow responsible for Trump because we thanked him for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel\u2019s capital, and facilitating the Abraham Accords. Yet, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s far-Right government emerged, even those of us who hadn\u2019t voted for him, were blamed for him.<\/p>\n

Since Hamas\u2019s savagery, with young Israelis dying every day, the accusations, anguish, and apologetics must end. This relationship needs resetting.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be clear. Israelis feel the love in every solidarity trip, every dollar raised, every tear shed, every meme posted, every prayer uttered, every vigil attended, and every demand made on American leaders to stand up for Israel, for American values, for the West\u2019s future. And the global surge in Jew-hatred appalls us and infuriates us.<\/p>\n

We are grateful and know it\u2019s been tough.<\/p>\n

But many Israelis keep cringing, too. We wince when a synagogue relocates its Saturday afternoon services, fearing protesters across the street. We squirm when Jewish students avoid Hillel or their kosher dining hall because of some online threat. We blush when Jews \u2013 especially young, healthy students \u2013 cower at home because some cowards hiding behind their masks launched yet another \u201cThugs for Palestine\u201d rally.<\/p>\n

Grow a spine! You cannot equate the danger Israelis confront in Gaza or on the border facing Hezbollah, when patrolling hostile Palestinian towns, with threats on leafy campuses or at La Cienega Park.<\/p>\n

Israelis are tired of American-Jewish handwringing<\/h3>\n

ISRAELIS SIGH when Jews blame college Jew-hatred on Israel\u2019s actions rather than\u00a0universities\u2019 inaction – and the pro-Palestinian movement\u2019s instinctive hooliganism. We groan when liberal Jews ignore the way Illiberal Liberals, feminists, and gay activists keep betraying them. We moan as they still parrot the silly yet noxious language of \u201cinclusivity\u201d and \u201cdiversity\u201d \u2013 when it excludes Jewish suffering and anyone who dares defend Israel.<\/p>\n

We fume when liberal Jews worry that because most conservatives support Israel, there must be something wrong with Israel \u2013 rather than wondering where these decolonizing liberals went wrong. As Democratic Sen. John Fetterman insists, progressive anti-Zionism reflects poorly on progressives, not conservatives.<\/p>\n

And we just don\u2019t have patience, during this hard, painful war, for all the American Jewish anguish about Israel\u2019s military tactics. Yes, the IDF prefers keeping our kids alive and Israel safe from Hamas, to looking good on CNN.<\/p>\n

There are serious moral and strategic dilemmas regarding how to fight back against Hamas\u2019s unspeakable crimes and its vows to repeat them. It\u2019s challenging with Hamas so embedded in Gaza \u2013 so popular there, so ubiquitous there, so willing to hide behind Hamospitals, Hamosques, even women and children. Israelis who know how painful it is to bury our young, take no delight in non-combatant casualties.<\/p>\n

We all wish the war could be fought like a video game, with no blood, and constant resets. But we just don\u2019t have the bandwidth for self-pitying concerns and remote-control nitpicking from afar, when we need empathy \u2013 and action: especially political, financial, and moral support.<\/p>\n

Time for some accountability. Anyone who yelled \u201cceasefire\u201d every other time Israel fought Hamas, should shut up this time. And those who shut up when American bombs killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan \u2013 or when Yemen\u2019s Civil War killed 377,000 and Syria\u2019s civil war killed 600,000 \u2013 should question why they\u2019re so focused on preventing Israel from defending itself effectively now.<\/p>\n

Which side are you on, Diaspora Jews?<\/h3>\n

ULTIMATELY, Hamas \u2013 and the entire Palestinian movement that started cheering the terrorists and jeering us on October 7 \u2013 has drawn a clear line in the sand. Every Jew, every Westerner, must decide: which side are you on?<\/p>\n

We withdrew completely from the Gaza Strip \u2013 they kept screaming it was \u201coccupied,\u201d to keep delegitimizing us. We keep building our liberal-democracy \u2013 they hijacked billions sent to help their own people, instead building their totalitarian infrastructure of evil against us. We were attacked \u2013 they attacked, breaking the latest cease-fire and the one before that and the one before that.<\/p>\n

We were partying, praying, sleeping, eating, just living \u2013 and they swooped down on us, killing, beheading, maiming, raping, pillaging, and kidnapping. We don\u2019t target civilians but, like other democracies, sometimes must kill to protect ourselves while keeping the kill-ratio remarkably low, even in this bloody conflict \u2013 they target civilians and celebrate their deaths. We provide the enemy with humanitarian aid \u2013 they shoot Palestinian kids trying to get some of it.<\/p>\n

We lovingly, heartbrokenly, put up posters honoring kidnapped men, women, children, babies, Jews and non-Jews alike, because we value life \u2013 they rip those posters down, denying their crimes when they aren\u2019t boasting about them.<\/p>\n

We protest peacefully \u2013 they bully, harass and vandalize the White House and\u00a0Lincoln Memorial Plaza<\/a>, merging anti-Zionism with anti-Americanism, even if The New York Times and The Washington Post didn\u2019t cover it. We protest openly, proudly \u2013 they cower behind masks, trying to intimidate while dodging any consequences for behaving so undemocratically. And we call Joe Biden \u201cMr. President\u201d \u2013 they call him \u201cGenocide Joe.\u201d<\/p>\n

No, we\u2019re not perfect. But the moral choice is clear. We in Israel, Left and Right, fight proudly together, without kowtowing or breast-beating; affirming life, even in these days haunted with death.<\/p>\n

Join us.<\/p>\n

Published by the Jerusalem Post<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since Hamas\u2019s savagery, with young Israelis dying every day, the accusations, anguish, and apologetics must end. The relationship between Israel and the Diaspora needs resetting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12767,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topics-swords-of-iron","library-op-ed","library-publications"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12766"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14397,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12766\/revisions\/14397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}