A wannabe Jew in a protected room in Jerusalem

Editorial note: My latest Op-ed in Arutz 7 - Israel National News.

I am writing this from the safe room in my colleague and friend’s apartment in Jerusalem, my abode since arriving on holiday last Thursday. It is the morning of Sunday 15 June, Day 3 of this stage of the war. My friend or his wife are engaged in their morning tinkering, the soothing sounds of chaim for the still half-asleep.

At 2:30 we were woken by air-raid sirens. It is remarkable how quickly we got used to them. The big blaring thing sounds like it’s right outside our window, the ultimate guard dog. Of course, by ‘window’ I mean the heavy, military-grade steel shield that we pull shut on its embedded track in the extra-thick wall. The whole thing locks down securely at both ends, as does the matching secure door, all in good taste.

That’s an Israeli emergency, all in good taste. Unlike the caricature in antisemitic trash talk, there are no cowards in the air-raid shelter. If they are mocked as cowards for running, then that is the least of the slurs hurled at them by enemies doomed to defeat. They are enemies doomed to defeat because the time spent in bomb shelters and protected rooms are pretty shoddy interruptions: the stories continue where they left off; jokes deliver their punchlines; and everyone shares their thoughts with everyone else - l’chaim.

Shabbat dinner was beautiful, as Shabbat dinners always are, three rude interruptions notwithstanding. Those in the know explained warmly to those not in the know about shrapnel and wall thicknesses, and Houthis and distance and accuracy and debris and I get a whole new take on the meaning of minutes and seconds. Life goes on before, during and after these missile barrages. Cowards? - yeah, right.

On Friday, close to midnight, my hosts and I walked back from the hearty Shabbat dinner at their friends’ place. An hour of rambling conversation through the dimly-lit streets of Jerusalem, impossible not to notice a young woman walking by herself, quite clearly not nervous. A city in the Middle East. Uphill, downhill, uphill, downhill, good for exercise and calculating the distance to the next bench.

“Don’t drink the water from these spouts,” says my friend, “people let their dogs drink from them.” I don’t tell him that I already drank that water earlier in the day, but point taken. A one-hour walk through the open at night in a war; it would never have crossed my mind, not even in a novel. War or no war, my friends know what they’re doing. Note that I say, “war or no war”, not “war or peace”, for there never has been peace, not for Israel, not for the Jewish people, but there has been life, always, consistently, something that enemies who love death can never comprehend.

My friends elsewhere in Israel call or write to check up when they can. I love and appreciate them all. After the first night, one very dear friend quipped, “You wanted to be Jewish…” to which I replied, “Now more than ever, dear sister, now more than ever.” Under missile attack for the first time, my reaction was a mix of anger and indignation: "How dare you!” Who do these people think they are to take a whole nation for fair game?

This gave way to recalling that I was once one of those people, and had I still been one of them, the chances are I would be rejoicing now, confirmed in my correctness and superiority, satisfied in the thought of Jews cowering in fear in their shelters before the wrath of Allah brought down on them by our hand, as he commands of his slaves, us, the best of people. It is one thing to be wrong, but quite another to be ignorant of being wrong, ignorance that they cherish as the greatest wisdom.

Thoughts of once having been Muslim gave way to the people with whom I am now physically squeezed into a tiny room, defying death together. We hear fighter jets overhead, and the dull thuds of missiles cut short mid-air. I realise that my anger and disappointment with the rabbis who had for two years frustrated my conversion have gone. My friends console me that it is much more organised and clearcut to convert in Israel… wisdom to cherish.

I return to the Dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna as the armies of the Pandava and the Kaurava faced each other on the Kurukshetra Plain, ready to start the biggest slaughter the world had ever known. Krishna, like Arjuna, did not want this war, but Krishna, unlike Arjuna, knew that it was a war that was unavoidable. Krishna eventually convinced Arjuna, at the head of the Pandavas, of the need to fight this war. What Arjuna had failed to do, however, was win it. The defeated Pandava had their country taken from them. Wandering the wilderness, stateless and despised, they were invited to negotiate only to lose even more, each time humiliated.

The lesson I take from this is that an existential war only ends when one side utterly destroys the other. The side that hankers for anything less than the utter destruction of its enemy will end up destroyed. May Israel not waver in this profound duty, and withstand all attempts at cajoling her to the negotiating table before there is nothing left to negotiate over.

To destroy the Iranian regime utterly is to secure humanity not only from the evil designs of that regime, but the evil designs of all who would reduce our hard-won civilisation to barbarism and horror. If I were to put it bluntly:

You have messed with Israel, now pay!

Humanity owes Israel and the Jews an epochal debt of gratitude, and I feel enormously privileged to be in Israel, with and amongst the Jewish people, at the start of what I think is an epochal war. It is the last war that Israel will fight for a very long time. The Middle East in general, and the Arabs in particular, will finally board the train of history towards freedom and respect for all. By the end of this, I dream of seeing Arabs weeping as they embrace Jews, racked by remorse for the centuries of hatred and cruelty they have harboured and shown towards a people who have never meant them the slightest bit of harm. The Arabs will recognise and acknowledge what Israel and the Jewish people will have done for them and with heart and spirit they will sing Am Yisrael Chai!