Reflections on October 7th

I have been intending to write down my thoughts on the massacre of Israelis by Hamas terrorists and Gaza civilians on October 7th, 2023, ever since it happened, but I’ve found myself unable to do so until now. The reason it has taken me so long is that I was so profoundly disturbed by the events of that day that I couldn’t put my feelings into words. I felt like my own family had been attacked, which may seem strange for someone living in New Zealand with no close relatives in Israel, but perhaps it was the fact that I have Jewish ancestry (at least one of my great-grandparents was Jewish) that meant it had more of an impact on me than I would have expected.

I felt I had to do something practical in the days immediately after the attacks and, after some investigation, I chose to donate to two organisations, Magen David Adom and the Friends of the IDF. The former is the Israeli affiliate of the Red Cross and was active in treating victims of the Hamas attacks, often while its personnel were still under attack themselves. The latter provides welfare services for the soldiers and veterans of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and their families. I selected these two organisations because I wanted to support those at the frontline of Israel’s response to the attack, and I wanted to be sure no part of my donations would end up in the hands of any organisation providing aid to Hamas or its supporters.

It wasn’t just the attacks of October 7th that appalled me, it was the reaction of so many in the West. Within 24 hours, protestors began to appear on the streets of Western cities, not to condemn the actions of Hamas but to celebrate them. These jubilant supporters were not deterred by the horrific reports that came out of Southern Israel, often substantiated by video and photographic evidence that in many cases was uploaded to the internet by the attackers themselves. As some people pointed out, this was the worst attack in terms of casualties on Jews since the Holocaust, but with the difference that the Nazis tried to hide the evidence of their crimes at the end of the war, whereas these genocidal anti-Semites were so proud of what they had done they were happy to broadcast it to the world.

I am a keen student of history and have had a particular interest in the Holocaust since I studied it at high school, and one of the most troubling questions for me is, how could ordinary Germans have participated in such a monumental crime? I have read many books that address this question, such as Victor Klemperer’s I Shall Bear Witness and To the Bitter End, which are his first person accounts of the inexorable progress of the Nazi persecution of the Jews from the time of Hitler’s rise to power to the collapse of the Third Reich at the end of World War II. These diaries expose the banality of the evil (to use Hannah Arendt’s phrase) perpetrated by the Nazis and the complicity of most of the German people. Another book that I recommend to anyone interested in the subject is Ordinary Men by Christopher R Browning, which describes the journey of regular German policemen who were recruited from towns and village throughout Germany to serve as civilian officers in Poland after the German occupation of that country in 1939. These men were not Nazis (at least not initially) and could elect to return home, but the vast majority of them stayed and ended up committing acts we tend to associate only with the fanatics of the SS - rounding up innocent Jewish men, women and children from the villages, marching them out into the surrounding countryside, and forcing them to dig their own graves before gunning them down.

I’ve been thinking about the connection between those protesting on the streets of Western cities in favour of Hamas’s actions and the ordinary Germans who supported and participated in the Holocaust. The mainstream media has been quick to suggest that these pro-Hamas protestors are only concerned about the welfare of Gaza civilians, but their slogans call for the complete destruction of Israel and the elimination of the 8 million Jews who live there (Hamas leader Khaled Mashal has clarified since October 7th that the slogan “from the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free”, means “we will not give up on our right to Palestine in its entirety, from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea, and from Rosh HaNikra to Eilat or the Gulf of Aqaba…[and we will never recognise] the legitimacy of the Zionist entity”). No one screaming this slogan today, as NZ Green MP Chloe Swarbrick did in Auckland in the weeks following the attacks, could be under any illusions about its message - they are calling for a second Holocaust. 

But it isn’t just the prominent cheerleaders for Hamas who concern me. I have found myself a lone voice amongst my friends and colleagues when it comes to my unalloyed support for Israel in its current struggle. Most New Zealanders seem to have accepted the propaganda (and what else could you call the uncritical reporting of statements from the murderous Hamas) that the IDF is committing war crimes against the people of Gaza in its mission to hunt down and destroy Hamas’s leadership and military capability. What Hamas did to civilians on October 7th is the very definition of a war crime (i.e.“intentionally killing civilians”), but what Israel is doing in response doesn’t begin to fit the definition. In fact, Israel is taking every measure it possibly can to minimise civilian casualties short of abandoning its mission entirely. 

I am prepared to accept that my friends and colleagues are ill-informed but while that is an explanation, it is not an adequate excuse. No decent human being who heard about what happened on October 7th can deny that Israel has a legitimate right to defend itself against such attacks, and no rational person would think that that involves anything other than the IDF going into Gaza, where Hamas is hidden, to find and destroy its attackers before they have the opportunity to repeat that atrocity (which they are committed to doing). The calls for a ceasefire are completely disingenuous. There was a ceasefire in place on October 7th, which Hamas broke in the most irredeemable way. To trust the Hamas leadership to stick to a ceasefire again would be foolhardy in the extreme, and those who are calling for this are complicit in Hamas’s duplicity. Israel must continue its defensive action in Gaza until it is assured that Hamas lacks the capability to repeat its October 7th massacre.

Douglas Murray said recently that “if these people [chanting "from the River to the Sea"] ever got their way, I would pity them, because they would one day wake up and realise they were the Nazis.” I don’t share his pity for the future guilt of the Hamas fans - it would be cold comfort to the surviving Jews around the world to know that those who supported a second Holocaust regretted it. I hope these people realise that they are guilty now, and that anyone who takes the side of those who carried out the mass rape, murder, infanticide, torture, dismemberment and other utterly evil acts that were committed in Southern Israel on October 7th has no claim to any moral discernment in this matter at all.

Fortunately for the Jewish people, Israel exists as their sanctuary and it has the military capability to fight back against modern day pogroms. I console myself by knowing the Israeli people are overwhelmingly united in the current struggle and that no Israeli leader will be allowed to accept a ceasefire until the threat from Hamas is substantially eliminated. It doesn’t matter what my friends and colleagues think. What matters is that Israel exists and continues to do so.

Am Yisrael Chai. Forever!

Anti-Semitism Lies Beneath Anti-Israel Bias

Anti-Semitism “is to be regarded not as the enemy of the Jewish people… but as the common enemy of humanity and of civilization” 
~ Christopher Hitchens

Several years ago I had a friend to dinner, a highly educated and cultured man with whom I enjoyed discussing all manner of social and political issues. We agreed on much that was wrong with the world and on what the solutions were but I was shocked when he announced that Israel should be wiped from the face of the earth. He admitted that his views were based mainly on his experiences during a visit to Israel a few years before. I thought it a bit extreme to advocate the destruction of a country based on a few negative experiences as a tourist but when he went on to say, "They are an arrogant people, they think they are superior to everyone else," I realised that, of course, he was not talking about getting rid of Israel but rather the Jews. And I think it is that sentiment that is at the heart of everyone who opposes the state of Israel.

Israel is not a bad country by any measure. It is a democracy with universal suffrage and is a relatively prosperous, uncorrupt and tolerant society. The Basic Laws of Israel define the country as a 'Jewish state' but they protect freedom of religion and establish equal legal rights for the more than 20% of the Israeli population that are Arabs - to an extent that is exceptional in the Middle East. The effectiveness of the Basic Laws has been demonstrated by the willingness of the Israeli Supreme Court to rule against the government in matters such as settlement in the occupied territories, the conduct of the Israeli armed forces in conflict zones, and protecting the rights of its Arab citizens. Successive Israeli governments have repeatedly demonstrated the country wishes to live in peace with its neighbours, having handed back territory it occupied in defensive wars to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority.

The reason for the current actions of the Israeli armed forces in Gaza is the legitimate protection of Israeli citizens against the unprovoked aggression of the Hamas government in Gaza. After months of enduring escalating rocket attacks by Hamas against population centres in Israel, the Government of Israel did what any other government would be applauded for doing - sending its armed forces into the aggressor's territory to stop the attacks. The fact that there are inevitable civilian casualties does not make the actions of the Israeli government any less legitimate or any different to any other combat situation. A few media outlets have reported the incredible efforts of the Israeli armed forces to avoid civilian casualties such as telephoning occupants of buildings in advance of bombing and detonating small charges in advance of the main strike. Israel is taking these extraordinary measures to ensure civilian casualties are minimised despite the illegal actions of Hamas in using civilian facilities such as hospitals as launch sites for missile attacks on Israel and despite the likelihood that Hamas combatants are able to escape from the targets before they are hit.

It has been interesting to note that hardly any of Israel's neighbours have condemned its current actions in Gaza. This is because almost all other Arab nations regard Gaza under Hamas as more dangerous than their traditional enemy in the Jewish State. They rightly see Hamas as a puppet of the Iranian regime and it is Iran, not Israel, that they truly fear. Extraordinarily, it has been left to the 'liberal' Western media to condemn Israel in some of the most ill-informed and one-sided reporting of any conflict in modern history. Why has the Western media condemned Israel to an extent that is not evident in the coverage of say, France's intervention in Mali, or Barack Obama's use of drone strikes against targets in Northern Pakistan?

I have recently read some interesting theories that explain this highly selective and biased coverage. Douglas Murray, the British conservative commentator, in this interview with podcaster James Delingpole put forward what I'd term the 'guilt complex' explanation. In short, Murray believes the European commentariat are still trying to live down the Holocaust and by projecting some of the characteristics of the Nazis onto the Israelis they can say that, yes, even Jews can be indiscriminate killers so we're not that bad after all. This explanation has some resonance when you hear the references to 'genocide' that are used in regard to the relatively few civilian casualties of the Israeli military action.

Jonah Goldberg, in his book Liberal Fascism, is more blunt. Western liberalism has its roots in the progressivism of the early 20th Century, which was also the root of...well, that political movement started by Benito Mussolini. Incredible as this may seem after decades of the political left-wing labelling its opponents Fascists, Goldberg makes a pretty good case for the common roots of Fascism and modern liberalism. If you accept his argument it explains a lot, such as why Western liberals find common ground with murderous thugs like Hamas and the ISIS army in Syria rather than with a genuinely liberal country like Israel.

I don't know whether Murray's or Goldberg's theories have any basis in reality but I do know the current vilification of Israel is completely inconsistent with any regard for freedom, democracy and the legitimate rights of a nation state to defend itself. The hypocrisy of Western media and commentators means we must ask ourselves what is so different about Israel. The answer is obvious - it is the Jewish state. Anti-Israeli views cannot be separated from anti-Semitism, despite efforts of some Western liberal commentators to finesse the issue.

I should declare that while I am not Jewish, I have Jewish blood on my mother's side (which - and I cannot escape the sobering thought - would have made me eligible for the gas chambers had I lived under Nazi rule). I like to think I would feel the same way even if I did not have Jewish blood, but I admit I find myself getting angry about the treatment of Israel to an extent that I do with few other issues. My response to my friend's comments over dinner were a little less considered than what I've said above so I won't repeat those words here, but instead I will bookend this post with another quotation - the words of the great David Ben Gurion, the founding prime minister of Israel:

"Let me first tell you one thing: It doesn't matter what the world says about Israel; it doesn't matter what they say about us anywhere else. The only thing that matters is that we can exist here on the land of our forefathers. And unless we show the Arabs that there is a high price to pay for murdering Jews, we won't survive."