Over the weekend, I drove my son to his top choice college to visit, tour, and interview there. In many ways it was a time-honored tradition of our era. We drove many miles through seven states, hit traffic, saw many skylines, towns, rivers, bridges, and because it was the Northeast, many different people. Along the way, we stopped at a friend's house for a too-short visit, who had also recently taken a similar trip with his daughter, who is the same age as my son, for the same reasons. She, a Jewish-American girl, had taken a trip to Israel in the last year and she was wearing a necklace she got on her trip. It was in the shape of the state of Israel, with no borders for Gaza or the West Bank. In Hebrew it read: “The People of Israel Lives” with–I am led to believe by someone who is fluent– an implied future tense. The pendant was made from shrapnel from a Hamas rocket.
The next day, when I was wandering around the city of Annapolis, I went into a shop and noticed the clerk was wearing a gold Israel-shaped pendant the exact size and shape as my friends’ daughter’s pendant. I stopped and said:
“Hey, that necklace,” and took a step closer and peered at it. I am in need of reading glasses, so I didn’t have a good view. The clerk lifted it up for me to see, and said: “Palestine.”
“Interesting,” I said, and though I smiled at the irony of the similarity, my internal reaction was much more discombobulating. The conflict of who I am, what I believe, where I was, this stranger, my friend's daughter, the strain of wanting to talk, fight, argue, discuss, censure, and even defend from censure, this clerk was a lot. I decided a quick exit was likely the most polite move, and chanting, “It’s a free country, it’s a free country,” in my head, I made an awkward exit, repeating “Interesting!” with a dopey forced smile on my face.
“Loud and proud,” he said, as I left the store. I don’t believe I offended him. I am still conflicted as to whether or not I should have.
Yes, the thought about the similarity and unity of desire, the commonality of sentiment, the universalism that Jared wrote about some weeks ago, all of that ran through my head. But in view of the horrors of the last two weeks, there was a stronger urge for me to take stock of what I know, and try and piece together the ramifications, the consequences, of basic truths about the war now raging in the Holy Land:
The state of Israel exists.
The state of Israel exists as a Jewish-majority state.
The state of Israel isn’t going anywhere.
The Palestinians exist.
The Palestinians are a Muslim-majority people who also aren’t going anywhere.
Hamas is currently leading the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas was lawfully elected—and once in power ended lawful elections.
Hamas has turned nearly everything a functional state needs to be a functional state into weapons they use to kill as many innocent people as possible.
The Israeli government has, since it left Gaza and the residents elected Hamas, responded by blockading Gaza in a vain attempt to keep out everything but water and food. I cannot think of, nor have I heard tell of, a more rational response than the blockade.
However, the blockade created a humanitarian crisis while Hamas smuggled weapons anyway.
In the interim, as Hamas’ rockets made of water pipes fell to the Iron Dome, Hamas has moved ideologically from run-of-the-mill terrorism to sheer barbarity, now willing to commit the oldest sins in the newest ways.
Hamas’ strategic aims on October 7th appeared to be to inflict as much horror on civilians as possible, filming their atrocities in an attempt to inflame Israeli sentiment to provoke a war.
Israel has the most powerful military in the region, and perhaps the best trained military in the world.
Hamas has an ill-trained poorly equipped group of monsters, whose most spectacular weapon seems to be a diabolical will to inflict as much damage on the innocent as possible towards achieving their strategic goals.
The Israeli government will now use its military to wage a war (and I use the term “war” technically, not rhetorically) on this ill-trained poorly equipped group of monsters in the Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated places on earth, where nearly half of the population is made up of children under 15.
Hamas has always shown a willingness to sacrifice its own people in the hope of gaining international support.
Caught between the Israeli Defense Force and Hamas are the Palestinian people.
Many Palestinians are now dying in this war.
What do we know about war?
War is the worst thing that groups of humans do.
War is the worst thing because civilians—the innocent—always, always die.
“The Innocent” in war are defined as those who are not waging the war, most often women, children, and the elderly. Despite recent attempts to redefine the word “innocent” by certain university professors, and certain Israeli and Arab leaders, and certain spokesmen for BLM, and Hamas itself, this has not changed and will never change. The innocent are the innocent whether one cares for them or not–it is a state of being that cannot be taken away by political abstractions like “colonizer” or “imperialist.” It cannot be wiped away through association with a powerful group, or individual, and it is not made more noble by being a member of a weak group, or an oppressed minority. Innocent is static and unchanging in its definition.
Young men fight wars, this also will not change.
Young men cannot control themselves as well as old men, which is one reason why we ask them to fight our wars. Young men rape. Young men charge machine-gun nests. Young men murder. Young men throw themselves on grenades to save their brothers in arms. Young men multiply their own brutality in mobs of other young men. Young men fight and die in all of our wars, always, and forever, as long as war is still war.
This is a war.
In the West, we have tried to come up with rules of war to mitigate the horror of war, but it has never, ever, eliminated the horror of war. Young men cannot be ruled by laws, they can only be managed by laws.
This is a war.
Israel has a policy of following the rules of war. But policy, like law, is nothing that can touch the ferocity of young men in war.
This is a war.
Hamas is not in any way interested in the rules of war, and has never been interested in the rules of war. Hamas has raped, kidnapped, tortured, and murdered, not because young men are fighting this war, but because it is their strategic aim to inflame the Israelis, and to provoke this war. The excesses of young men are not a problem for Hamas, they are their tools. This is not “war is hell,” it is “We make hell, to bring war.”
Hamas did not wage a war on October 7th. They brought hell so the Israeli government would bring war.
War has come.
Hamas has made a suicide pact with the Palestinian people at the point of a gun, a death cult with a slim hope that somehow the West will turn against Israel, and then, through the magic of wishful thinking, Israel will cease to exist.
And so, war has come.
We in the West do not know war.
If you study war and listen to warriors, you know there is no “good war” and “bad war;” there is only “bad war” and “worse war.” You know that the unwritten rules of war haven’t changed; you know that this war will be like many before it and many to come.
If you do not study war, or if you do not understand war, you may try and justify war, but there is no such thing as justified war. There is only war by choice and no-choice war.
We have eliminated war in our lands.
We have made a society so secure we can make the choice to eliminate wars.
That choice was made by other men in other times, most of whom saw the face of war.
War happens in other places to other people–even when we wage war we use such a small percent of our population that when those men and women return, we do not see them.
We use words like “rules of war,” and “proportional response,” and “ceasefire” as bodies still burn, because we are naïve, soft, bloodless weaklings who will rarely if ever face violence in our lives.
The Israelis have lived with war a long time.
The Palestinians have lived with war a long time.
They are both strong, determined, stubborn, fierce, and both have their backs to the wall. Both believe they have the right to the land. Both wear their pendants.
Israel has the most powerful military in the region.
Hamas has an ill-trained poorly equipped group of monsters.
Caught between the Israeli Defense Force and Hamas are the Palestinian people.
Many Palestinians are now dying in this war.
Many, many more Palestinians will continue to die.
Many Israelis will also die. The hundreds of hostages Hamas has taken will likely be tortured, raped, and murdered. Some of those hostages aren’t Israeli. Some aren’t Jews at all.
This is war.
Buildings will fall on children, enraged young men will target civilians, missiles will go awry, munitions will explode by accident, fighters will use civilians as human shields, young men will continue to rape, the strong will do what they will, and the weak will suffer what they must.
This is war.
This has always been war. War is cruelty; there is no use trying to reform it. You can deny what it is, and be a fool, or you can look into the face of war.
Israelis believe that there is no choice. I cannot think of, nor have I heard tell of, a more rational response as I am not a pacifist.
Hamas had a choice, and made it. They chose to bring hell to provoke war.
Hamas may not survive this war, for they made their choice.
The Palestinians have no choice. Most are innocent.
No one in the West or the Middle East has an answer that will stop this war.
This war will proceed, innocence will continue to die, no one can stop it now. Fingers will point, blame will be ascribed, the dead will still be dead, the tears will still fall down the faces of mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers. Ideologues will continue to cram their dogmatic frameworks onto this war.
But those false pieties will not change the war.
Those false pieties cannot change war.
They will not save a single life.
And the truth is still the truth, the facts are not debatable.
The state of Israel exists.
The state of Israel exists as a Jewish-majority state.
The state of Israel isn’t going anywhere.
The Palestinians exist.
The Palestinians are a Muslim-majority people.
The Palestinians also aren’t going anywhere.
That is all that is important to know at this moment. The rest is wind.
And when it is over, we will haggle over the history. And the dead will still be dead.
For today, I will keep my haggling mostly in private. And pray for the dead, and the living.
Left and right will bark and haggle and declare ideologies, but the dead will still be dead.
“International law” (whatever that means), border disputes, lines in desert sands, all are nothing to the dead.
The history—the many wars that came before, the expulsions by Israelis, by Jordanians, by Syrians, by Egyptians, by Turks, by Christians, by Crusaders, by Romans, by Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and the Hebrews; the Expulsions of Jews, Palestinians, Muslims, Saracens, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, Hittites, Ancient Egyptians, and Babylonians, etc. etc.; the massacres and mass rapes and genocides in this Holy Land—the history has made this land holy, it has made this land sacred ground. And created a place where blood seems to flow with every tide of history out into the sea. Where suffering will continue. Where David ruled under the eyes of God, and Jesus walked and was tortured to death and rose again, and where the Prophet ascended to heaven. Where half the world shares in the provenance of their souls. Where the three great faiths meet to suffer at each other's hands.
My friend, father of the girl with the Israel pendant, believes I am being too fatalistic, and that there has been progress, and there may be hope.
I try to remember Hope. She is the right hand of God.
But today, War has come, and the innocent are dying.
Powerful piece!