Reflections on Jewish wars*

* Rafael Castro, 9 September 2024

It just took finding a room in Jerusalem this October to find myself embroiled in Israel’s internal feuds. After I told an Airbnb host that I intend to visit Israel on a solidarity trip, casually adding that I often write for Arutz 7, the host completely ignored my reservation.

It is deeply discouraging to witness Israelis embroiled in political feuds while fighting an existential war on multiple fronts. From a Gentile perspective, the horrific events of October 7th, combined with the deadly surge in global antisemitism, should unify Jewish society against their common enemies. Yet, both the left and the right appear determined to point fingers, accusing each other of benefiting from, or even orchestrating, unfolding tragedies.

Ever since October 7th louder and louder voices claim that the opposing political camp either masterminded, abetted or is benefitting from October 7th and its aftermath. After ten months of war, rhetoric that was once fringe is now mainstream, with Israelis both on the centre-Left and the centre-Right blaming political adversaries of collaboration with Hamas. And the left, which also holds raucous demonstrations is busy blaming PM Netanyahu for everything.

This behaviour is beyond disgraceful. Not only does it amount to spitting on the graves of fallen soldiers and civilians of all political and religious persuasions. It is also the best way to embolden the enemy and demoralise friends and allies.

Regardless of past mistakes, history demonstrates that changing political leaders in the midst of a war is almost always short-sighted. The reason is simple: Leaders under whose watch a war starts have the highest motivation to bring the war to a successful end. On the other hand, leaders who take over ongoing war efforts have a high incentive to call it quits and blame their predecessor for the price of peace/ceasefire/surrender.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has made many policy mistakes vis-à-vis Hamas. Nevertheless, most of these mistakes were either seconded or tacitly supported by the opposition. For this reason, the logical replacement for Netanyahu are politicians who consistently opposed appeasing Hamas. Yet how many demonstrators in Tel-Aviv want Netanyahu to be replaced by Smotrich, Ben-Gvir or Moshe Feiglin?

This reality exposes the real existential crisis that Zionism and the Jewish State face. Forget the tensions and contradictions involved in Israel striving to be both Jewish and democratic or to accommodate both secularists and religious Israelis. The deep contradiction inherent in Zionism is its striving to be morally Jewish in a region of the world where ruthlessness is essential to survival.

Many highly-educated olim, even devout religious Zionists, regretted that today’s Rightwing Israeli politicians tended to be more “extremist” than their predecessors. Indeed, I would be the first to rejoice if Leftists had been right all along when they claimed that sitting at the table of brotherhood and dancing the Debka together with Arabs would bring peace to the Middle East. Alas, this did not happen.

On the contrary, since October 7th it is clear that most views espoused by Meir Kahane were prescient. And this is Israel’s deep tragedy: Even though 90% of Israeli Jews now understand that Rabbi Kahane’s diagnosis was right, very few Israeli Jews are ready to accept the logical implications of this diagnosis.

Since Zionism has all but failed to end global antisemitism, and since Zionism has little choice but to accept a Middle Eastern moral ethos in order to survive, it will be increasingly tempting for Diaspora Jews and even some sabras to turn their backs on Zionism.

Their erroneous assumption, like that of too many Westerners, is that once Zionism is erased from the pages of history, global antisemitism will wane and so will enmity between Muslims and Jews.

Unfortunately, none of this will happen. As soon as a “liberated Palestine” turns into another Middle Eastern hellhole, Palestinian Arab leaders and Palestinian Arab activists will devote all their energies to extracting immense reparations from world Jewry. They will quickly prove, with the support of conniving historians and economists, that despite Palestinian Arabs getting more aid per capita than any others, Zionism and its aftermath are the real reason the entire MENA region has lower living standards than, say, Greece or Malta.

Thereafter we will soon see Israeli refugees in Boston and elderly Jews in Amsterdam being forced to proffer apologies and pay reparations that will make even Nazi monetary demands from German Jews after Kristallnacht look charitable.

If you don’t believe this, think about all the academics and “experts” claiming with a straight face that Europe is guilty for all the problems affecting Africa sixty years after the end of colonialism. Or think about how in the wake of the US Supreme Court decision to legalise same-sex marriage, the resources and energies of the LGBT lobby were mobilised to persuade public opinion overnight that transphobia is one of America’s most pressing problems.

Israel has no choice but to win the war and crush its enemies. In order to do these things, it needs to define and clearly communicate its goals. Israel has failed to do so. Whereas Palestinian Arabs have been bleating in unison for over ten months “Genocide!” while supplying the world with all the images and numbers to corroborate this claim, Israelis appear to still not know what they want.

Do they want to liberate Gazans from Hamas? Do they want to punish Gazans for supporting Hamas? Do they view Gazans as victims? Or are Gazans willing executioners? Does the IDF prioritise crushing Hamas? Or does Israel primarily want to liberate the hostages and negotiate with Hamas? Does defeating Hamas involve defeating the Izz ad-Din Brigades and toppling the Gaza Strip’s political leadership (realistic) or does defeating Hamas involve discrediting jihadism as an Islamic tenet (unrealistic)?

In addition to failing to deliver a clear message regarding these issues, the role of purity of arms in Gaza hasn’t been clear. On the one hand, Israel argues it does all it can to avoid civilian casualties. On the other hand, for obvious topographic reasons this policy is incompatible with an effective execution of military operations.

Ultimately, Israel zigzagged regarding this issue too. And by doing so it has neither defeated Hamas nor staved off global condemnations.

With hindsight, Israel made a couple of mistakes. Instead of releasing the grim footage of October 7th only to select global leaders, Israel should have flooded the internet with gruesome images of Hamas atrocities. Had this happened, maybe world opinion would have understood much better why Israel needs to destroy Hamas by any means. Instead, respect for the deceased and their loved ones has turned into a weapon for Roger Waters and others to claim that October 7th was a fabrication.

Secondly, Israel should have taken over the Philadelphi Corridor immediately after October 7th and forced Egypt to temporarily accept Gazan refugees (supposing that Biden would have allowed it, Arutz7 ed.). Instead, Egypt appealed to peace agreement terms it has clearly violated in order to force Gaza civilians to serve as human shields for Hamas. Israel’s acquiescence in Egyptian demands has provided pro-Hamas reporters with all the images of dead women and children they needed to persuade the world that Israel is a genocidal state.

As if this weren’t bad enough, Israel slowed down the pace of its operations to minimise civilian casualties. Since these casualties were in any case unavoidable, the end result was that instead of global newscasts showing dead and maimed Gazans for just a few weeks, they have been showing gruesome images for over ten months.

And because public opinion is far more sensitive to images than to numbers, the end result is that the world hates Israel precisely because its war conduct minimised innocent casualties.

As an aside, I would like to share a small episode that proves the dishonesty and bad faith of Israel’s media. In 2018, with the support of my friend Jonny Daniels who runs a wonderful charity devoted to supporting the few surviving Righteous Gentiles in Eastern Europe, I wrote a column in Poland’s main newspaper arguing that it was high-time for Israeli school children visiting Poland to visit not just Nazi death camps, but also meet Polish youths and visit historic Jewish-Polish venues with a more encouraging message. At the time the article appeared, every Polish Jew and Christian expressed heartfelt support and sympathy for suggestions aimed at healing historic wounds and emulating reconciliation initiatives that successfully bring young Jews and young Germans together.

Unlike Israeli policymakers who ignore intelligent op-eds, Polish authorities appear to have taken my suggestions to heart. As soon as the COVID pandemic subsided and before Israeli school delegation visits to Poland resumed, the Israeli and Polish governments signed a protocol incorporating these suggestions to Israeli school visits in Poland.

To my astonishment, this agreement was immediately subject to a barrage of harsh attacks and dishonest libels of unspeakable hatred. Netanyahu was accused by every mainstream Israeli newspaper of collaborating with Polish historical revisionism. To prove this point they highlighted that one of the 50 or so Jewish-Polish sites Israeli delegations can visit praises a Polish antisemite.

Did Israeli academics and intellectuals point out that almost every museum in Europe, including the Louvre and the British Museum, portrays at least one antisemite positively? No. On the contrary, this dead antisemite was paraded as proof that Netanyahu and his government spit on the memory of Holocaust victims, have sold their souls, and will do absolutely anything and everything to advance their selfish political ambitions.

Since my article presumably played a role in these libels, I couldn’t help but also feel on the docket for these unforgivable moral and historical crimes. And yet I knew I was innocent, because apart from citing a Polish Jewish Holocaust historian with an axe to grind against the Polish government, and Israeli pundits eager to portray Bibi as a crook and a criminal, no one bothered to interview the ordinary Polish Jews and Christians who stood to benefit from better relations between young Israelis and young Poles.

If I could meet the Airbnb host in Jerusalem who denied me hospitality, I would urge him to watch Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” and its satire of senseless hatred among Judeans fighting the Romans. If doing so isn’t enough to heal him of his self-righteousness, I would urge him to read Mila 18, the harrowing description of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the even more harrowing enmity among rival Jewish factions which sabotaged each other’s efforts to fight the Nazis prior to perishing together.

The dramatic issue of the day is not Netanyahu, not the Philadelphi Corridor, and not even the tragic fate of the hostages.

The dramatic issue is that Iran’s Ayatollahs are quietly but surely laying the ground for a second Holocaust while Israelis are busy slandering and demonising each other.

History proves that whenever Jews don’t defend each other as brethren, it doesn’t take long for Jews to be butchered and buried as brethren.

Rafael Castro, a Noachide Italian, is a graduate of Yale and Hebrew University. Rafael can be reached at rafaelcastro78@gmail.com

Cross-posted from Arutz7 with permission.