When Simchat Torah ended, we made Havdalah with trepidation. A rumor from Israel had filtered its way into our shul from someone’s non-Jewish neighbor, but rumors are often very remote from the truth. People began whispering about a breach in Israel’s fence with Gaza, casualties and even hostages taken.
It was hard to divorce those words from the joy of the festival but of course, rumors are often far from the truth. How far from the truth they were, or at least the truth I imagined, overwhelmed me as I looked at online news. 700 were reported killed, thousands were wounded and over 100 had been kidnapped, old people, men, women and little children, very little children.
Some things are so horrible that words are simply not up to the task. I am convinced my emotions were shared by every Jew who reads this newspaper, shock, fear and deep, deep anger. There was also genuine bafflement. How could Israel not have detected any sign that this was coming?
I went to bed but I knew I wouldn’t be going to sleep. Every half hour I reached for my cell phone to see if there were any updates. Around 3:30 a.m. my second son, Aryeh who lives in England, sent me a text. It read,
“Beyond anger. I can’t unsee what I’ve seen on social media posted by the barbarian, evil savages. It’s beyond anything.”
Aryeh is now forty-two. I suddenly recalled the piece of shrapnel he presented me with over twenty years ago. It was when he returned from yeshiva in Yerushalayim. A terrorist bomb exploded not far outside his dorm window and this piece came bursting through the window into his room. Yet now, over twenty year later, he was struggling with the images he had seen of the slaughter and kidnappings.
By then I had heard about the things he had seen and that was more than enough for me.
It was a taste of the Holocaust all over again. Tiny children herded off to some unknown fate. Jews paraded in the streets to be beaten and spat on. The naked corpse of a Jewish girl driven around Gaza streets in the back of a pickup truck to loud applause from the Palestinians. There was more in the videos that I avoided seeing, of the torture and slaughter that went on in twenty-two Israeli towns and at a music festival.
At the moment of writing this, the overwhelming feeling in western countries is one of sympathy and support for Israel in its “9/11 moment” (the figure three days after the attack is now 800 Jewish dead by the way).
Still, already the sympathy for Israel comes with a “but”. For example, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said, “We will provide all the support that Israel needs” then came the “but” about Israel exercising restraint to make sure things don’t “escalate”.
Two days after the massacre of Israelis, one of the BBC’s major news programs (the BBC refuses to refer to Hamas as terrorists of course) opened with a story about the suffering of the people of Gaza.
The same program then interviewed Hamas’ former Health Minister for Gaza, Basem Naim. He is now the Hamas Head of “International relations.” He is also an enormous liar. Naim denied that any Israeli children had been kidnapped or any Israeli civilians were killed by Hamas! The interviewer was flabbergasted. Then Naim was asked if the hostages would be “looked after.” He replied, “We are obliged to treat our hostages in a very human (sic.) and dignified way…”
The interviewer did not ask him to reconcile that statement with the beatings Gazans had already filmed them enduring when they arrived in Gaza City.
Naturally, there are many in the west who are delighted by the slaughter of Jews, the single largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. Take the attendees at the Pro-Palestinian rally organized in New York by the Democratic Socialists of America. They faced off against pro-Israel supporters and one of them flashed a Nazi Flag at their opponents. That’s a flag you can see a lot of in the West Bank and Gaza. It says more clearly than any other what the goal of the Palestinians and their Iranian paymasters (whose funds have been so generously boosted by Joe Biden’s White House) is; from the river to the sea Palestine will be free… of Jews.
A very kind and gentle Jew called Yitz also sent me a text this morning. It read.
“I have to tell the Rov that this is a very tough time for me. The entire Torah discussion about “This is also for the good” is under attack. How does one understand what happened and is happening in Israel as good? All the innocents slaughtered. The hostages? How do we keep on believing that what Hashem is doing is for the good.”
Of course, that is the question, the one that troubled Moshe Rabbeinu himself. It’s the one that screamed louder than ever before when the concentration camps were liberated. Why do very bad things happen to very good people?
I replied to Yitz with a very large “maybe.”
“When Rashi contrasts the fate of the generation of the flood to the one of the Tower of Babel, he points out that unity is always the most important factor Heaven considers. The latter’s crime was much worse yet, because they were united, they suffered a lesser punishment.
Human nature, including Jewish human nature, only reacts and pulls back from the brink when it realizes the completeness of the disaster that awaits. Now think back only weeks ago to a million Israelis trying to split their country in two and waving Palestinian flags on Tel Aviv’s streets. Several captured Hamas Terrorists say it was a major contributor for launching this attack.
So… in allowing a taste of the Holocaust from Gaza, perhaps Hashem has allowed Israel to pull back from the brink and regain the unity its existence ultimately depends on.”
