My heart is broken today so I apologize in advance for my bitter response: I think this is a naive response to the true problem. Islamic Jihad is a cancer on the world. Looking too closely at the problems in Israel is to miss the greater problem. The goal of jihad is to annihilate Israel first and then progress to foisting more life negating evil on the world from there. The West and Western theologians in particular have a duty to end this insanity. End the infection at the heart of Islam that spreads. Their is deep cowardice in the jihad rejection of life. Life takes courage; death is cowardice. They tell us again and again and again what they intend to do: love death, die and be killed. Just because this insanity does not align with what we believe does not in any way mean they do not believe it. Think of who they killed at the Nova Festival: the very Israelis who had helped them, the very people who made personal sacrifices to help them, the most peace loving people in the world who offered them their hand. Instead they shot them in the face, and beheaded and raped them, and filmed it and shared that depravity with the world. Islamic jihadists are proud of their depravity. What happened on October 7 was not a momentary lapse of morality. It is their morality. They hate life. They say it openly and behave accordingly.
I want to be softer than you are, but I can't be. A week ago, I had dinner with an old friend, an "intellectual" who could not affirm even Israel's right to exist, refused to call the 9/11 murderers "terrorists", so of course, that term couldn't apply to Hamas or Hezbollah. These beliefs allow her to redefine terms like "genocide" and "apartheid." My heartbreak for the hostages was not acknowledged. Yes, it's a hard day today. My son, the cop, got to police a pro-pal demonstration on Sunday. He called it the Charlottesville of Seattle.
My non-Jewish sister-in-law is a professor and head of a museum; she hung a Palestinian flag from her house on Oct 7. We no longer talk. I do not know how to deal with these people. Today we Jews are in mourning and they are celebrating depravity. They simply follow the leftist herd, no thought whatsoever, they simply repeat the words of others. Phd's may be some of the most thoughtless people in America I am afraid. (I have one, but I think I am still able to think critically at least a little, God willing.)
My heart is also broken. I cannot believe that this evil has once again cast its dark shadow over the world. I am even more horrified that there are open antisemites in the US and Canada. When the subject comes up among my friends and acquaintances, the response is always « I never believed that this would happen in our country, » always spoken in hushed and solemn tones. These are Christians, as am I. My Jewish friends never talk about it. The subject does not belong to me. I share the immense sadness though. It was the first thing I thought of when I opened my eyes today and weighs on my spirit like the evil that it is.
The voices of the malign are loud now, but there are millions of us who love our Jewish brothers and sisters. We appreciate your contribution to the world and to America. Our nation would not be what it is without you.
While I have been grieving for the past year over the many Israeli dead and maimed--and for the hostages and their families--and I have also been appalled at the celebrations of Hamas' actions which are war crimes--I also grieve for the many thousands of innocent Palestinians who have been killed. They were human beings too. That factor receives scant mention in the author's list of horrors. Whether you accept the label of "genocide" or not, this is an overwhelming fact. Was it absolutely necessary to resort to these heavy measures to achieve goals (which to this day have not really been achieved)? Doesn't anyone think beyond their nose? This has poisoned almost any chance for Israelis and Palestinians of good will to come together to find some mode of living going forward. It will take generations for the bitterness to go, if at all. And of course, these heavy measures have rendered Israel practically a pariah state in the eyes of many in the world. The support coming from Western countries and certain Arab countries will not last forever, for even these countries and sizable sectors of their populations are demanding a stoppage of that support. In the contemporary interconnected world, with its international law (particularly as developed after World War II) few states can survive on their own, in defiance of everyone else and of international law.
Israel certainly cannot survive on its own--and it is entering into pariah-ship. And its population has widely coarsened--a state of affairs that its leadership has responsibility for, in addition to any Palestinian terror. Was all this necessary? Does the author have any idea how to move the Israeli public to understand the harm caused to everyone--Palestinians and themselves--by the measures pursued by Israel's current toxic government? I am not only talking about the attempted judicial overhaul which incensed so many people but to what always gets left out: the settlements/occupation, the settlements/occupation, the settlements/occupation--it can't be said enough, yet in the prescriptions of the author's final paragraphs, he can't bring himself to say this explicitly. All this is illegal by international law, but continues on with stupid, brazen defiance because no one among leadership or general public--or pundits writing prescriptions--will address it adequately. I have been struggling against settlements and occupation for 55 years with Israelis much better than me who have repeatedly reached out to all the Palestinians willing to see two states--and we have failed. And as ever more land was eaten up by the settlers and an increasingly brutal occupation went on, those willing Palestinians have lost heart. It was impossible to get beyond the wall of general apathy among Israelis, even in relatively peaceful times. And yes--all this is directly related to what happened on Oct 7--because the settlements and occupation are part of what fueled Hamas in spite of their being guilty of war crimes. There will probably always be terrorism coming from extremists--but by following international law, not to mention by engaging in human decency, we have a chance to gain traction to lessen that. But how will we do that with this: "On Israeli Apathy" (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/07/opinion/on-israeli-apathy.html )? Does the author have any idea of what to do explicitly about that?
I know and respect Amichai Magen, and this is the most optimistic and yet measured response to the unspeakable tragedy of October 7 that I can find. I agree with everything here, but I want to shift the focus a bit: from the Middle East to the West. Israel will survive. The war will be over. A national reckoning will happen. Iran's regime will collapse from within. But what can be said about hundreds of thousands in the "liberal" West celebrating rape, torture and hostage-taking? This should be a real awakening, and not just for the Jews but for everybody who still believes in the ideas of liberal democracy. The Holocaust happened in the heart of civilized Europe. The last year has taught us how and why.
Some of this analysis is good and I have no real disagreement with the prescriptions of "what comes next". The obvious anti-right bias is unfortunate and leads to sloganeering and errors, as in "The social contract between the People of Israel and the State of Israel has been broken." What does that mean? Do Israelis go about their days with the assumption that their garbage won't be collected, that they can enter and leave the country without passport control, that their healthcare and education are their own problem? Do they think they won't be able to vote the current government out when its term is up? If you want to say that people are outraged, furious and disappointed, you can do that (there, I just did) without resorting to hifalutin yet meaningless phrases.
More revealing is "The consequence of the last year is that virtually all Israelis—and the majority of Jews in other countries—now understand the world to be far more ominous, far more callous, and far more antisemitic than they suspected before October 7. This plays straight into the hands of the far right in Israel." He's defined the acceptable range of political opinion for the electorate and declared the danger that it may draw conclusions from events that put it outside that range. It got a chuckle out of me, like the meme that's been making the rounds, where a boy tells his father "My leg hurts" and the father asks "Which one? The left or the far-right?" An unbiased writer would have simply written "The consequences... now understand the world to be far more ominous... and... antisemitic than... before October 7. 𝘠𝘶𝘱."
Nothing changed in the murderous terrorist death cult of Islam. What changed is that Israel had finally had enough and made the final binary decision to rid the world of it. If we had real leadership in the US, we would join Israel in this decision to finally destroy all of Iran's proxies and also destroy Iran's nuclear ambitions. But nothing changed with respect to the feckless ruling class regime that seems to like perpetual global conflict for the defense industry stock value they will take advantage of.
"The social contract between the People of Israel and the State of Israel has been broken." ???? I think I understand your argument, but it appears to that your logic is completely incorrect. It looks rather that the social contract between the People of Israel and the West has been broken.
My heart is broken today so I apologize in advance for my bitter response: I think this is a naive response to the true problem. Islamic Jihad is a cancer on the world. Looking too closely at the problems in Israel is to miss the greater problem. The goal of jihad is to annihilate Israel first and then progress to foisting more life negating evil on the world from there. The West and Western theologians in particular have a duty to end this insanity. End the infection at the heart of Islam that spreads. Their is deep cowardice in the jihad rejection of life. Life takes courage; death is cowardice. They tell us again and again and again what they intend to do: love death, die and be killed. Just because this insanity does not align with what we believe does not in any way mean they do not believe it. Think of who they killed at the Nova Festival: the very Israelis who had helped them, the very people who made personal sacrifices to help them, the most peace loving people in the world who offered them their hand. Instead they shot them in the face, and beheaded and raped them, and filmed it and shared that depravity with the world. Islamic jihadists are proud of their depravity. What happened on October 7 was not a momentary lapse of morality. It is their morality. They hate life. They say it openly and behave accordingly.
I want to be softer than you are, but I can't be. A week ago, I had dinner with an old friend, an "intellectual" who could not affirm even Israel's right to exist, refused to call the 9/11 murderers "terrorists", so of course, that term couldn't apply to Hamas or Hezbollah. These beliefs allow her to redefine terms like "genocide" and "apartheid." My heartbreak for the hostages was not acknowledged. Yes, it's a hard day today. My son, the cop, got to police a pro-pal demonstration on Sunday. He called it the Charlottesville of Seattle.
My non-Jewish sister-in-law is a professor and head of a museum; she hung a Palestinian flag from her house on Oct 7. We no longer talk. I do not know how to deal with these people. Today we Jews are in mourning and they are celebrating depravity. They simply follow the leftist herd, no thought whatsoever, they simply repeat the words of others. Phd's may be some of the most thoughtless people in America I am afraid. (I have one, but I think I am still able to think critically at least a little, God willing.)
My heart is also broken. I cannot believe that this evil has once again cast its dark shadow over the world. I am even more horrified that there are open antisemites in the US and Canada. When the subject comes up among my friends and acquaintances, the response is always « I never believed that this would happen in our country, » always spoken in hushed and solemn tones. These are Christians, as am I. My Jewish friends never talk about it. The subject does not belong to me. I share the immense sadness though. It was the first thing I thought of when I opened my eyes today and weighs on my spirit like the evil that it is.
The voices of the malign are loud now, but there are millions of us who love our Jewish brothers and sisters. We appreciate your contribution to the world and to America. Our nation would not be what it is without you.
While I have been grieving for the past year over the many Israeli dead and maimed--and for the hostages and their families--and I have also been appalled at the celebrations of Hamas' actions which are war crimes--I also grieve for the many thousands of innocent Palestinians who have been killed. They were human beings too. That factor receives scant mention in the author's list of horrors. Whether you accept the label of "genocide" or not, this is an overwhelming fact. Was it absolutely necessary to resort to these heavy measures to achieve goals (which to this day have not really been achieved)? Doesn't anyone think beyond their nose? This has poisoned almost any chance for Israelis and Palestinians of good will to come together to find some mode of living going forward. It will take generations for the bitterness to go, if at all. And of course, these heavy measures have rendered Israel practically a pariah state in the eyes of many in the world. The support coming from Western countries and certain Arab countries will not last forever, for even these countries and sizable sectors of their populations are demanding a stoppage of that support. In the contemporary interconnected world, with its international law (particularly as developed after World War II) few states can survive on their own, in defiance of everyone else and of international law.
Israel certainly cannot survive on its own--and it is entering into pariah-ship. And its population has widely coarsened--a state of affairs that its leadership has responsibility for, in addition to any Palestinian terror. Was all this necessary? Does the author have any idea how to move the Israeli public to understand the harm caused to everyone--Palestinians and themselves--by the measures pursued by Israel's current toxic government? I am not only talking about the attempted judicial overhaul which incensed so many people but to what always gets left out: the settlements/occupation, the settlements/occupation, the settlements/occupation--it can't be said enough, yet in the prescriptions of the author's final paragraphs, he can't bring himself to say this explicitly. All this is illegal by international law, but continues on with stupid, brazen defiance because no one among leadership or general public--or pundits writing prescriptions--will address it adequately. I have been struggling against settlements and occupation for 55 years with Israelis much better than me who have repeatedly reached out to all the Palestinians willing to see two states--and we have failed. And as ever more land was eaten up by the settlers and an increasingly brutal occupation went on, those willing Palestinians have lost heart. It was impossible to get beyond the wall of general apathy among Israelis, even in relatively peaceful times. And yes--all this is directly related to what happened on Oct 7--because the settlements and occupation are part of what fueled Hamas in spite of their being guilty of war crimes. There will probably always be terrorism coming from extremists--but by following international law, not to mention by engaging in human decency, we have a chance to gain traction to lessen that. But how will we do that with this: "On Israeli Apathy" (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/07/opinion/on-israeli-apathy.html )? Does the author have any idea of what to do explicitly about that?
I know and respect Amichai Magen, and this is the most optimistic and yet measured response to the unspeakable tragedy of October 7 that I can find. I agree with everything here, but I want to shift the focus a bit: from the Middle East to the West. Israel will survive. The war will be over. A national reckoning will happen. Iran's regime will collapse from within. But what can be said about hundreds of thousands in the "liberal" West celebrating rape, torture and hostage-taking? This should be a real awakening, and not just for the Jews but for everybody who still believes in the ideas of liberal democracy. The Holocaust happened in the heart of civilized Europe. The last year has taught us how and why.
Some of this analysis is good and I have no real disagreement with the prescriptions of "what comes next". The obvious anti-right bias is unfortunate and leads to sloganeering and errors, as in "The social contract between the People of Israel and the State of Israel has been broken." What does that mean? Do Israelis go about their days with the assumption that their garbage won't be collected, that they can enter and leave the country without passport control, that their healthcare and education are their own problem? Do they think they won't be able to vote the current government out when its term is up? If you want to say that people are outraged, furious and disappointed, you can do that (there, I just did) without resorting to hifalutin yet meaningless phrases.
More revealing is "The consequence of the last year is that virtually all Israelis—and the majority of Jews in other countries—now understand the world to be far more ominous, far more callous, and far more antisemitic than they suspected before October 7. This plays straight into the hands of the far right in Israel." He's defined the acceptable range of political opinion for the electorate and declared the danger that it may draw conclusions from events that put it outside that range. It got a chuckle out of me, like the meme that's been making the rounds, where a boy tells his father "My leg hurts" and the father asks "Which one? The left or the far-right?" An unbiased writer would have simply written "The consequences... now understand the world to be far more ominous... and... antisemitic than... before October 7. 𝘠𝘶𝘱."
Nothing changed in the murderous terrorist death cult of Islam. What changed is that Israel had finally had enough and made the final binary decision to rid the world of it. If we had real leadership in the US, we would join Israel in this decision to finally destroy all of Iran's proxies and also destroy Iran's nuclear ambitions. But nothing changed with respect to the feckless ruling class regime that seems to like perpetual global conflict for the defense industry stock value they will take advantage of.
"The social contract between the People of Israel and the State of Israel has been broken." ???? I think I understand your argument, but it appears to that your logic is completely incorrect. It looks rather that the social contract between the People of Israel and the West has been broken.