October 7th, the date of the tragic event in Israel, when Hamas murdered 1200 Israelis and took 250 hostages, marked the beginning of a tragic year for the Jewish people. Immediately after that horrifying event, a number of students from elite schools sided with the tactics of Hamas in spite of the fact that many innocent people were quite literally slaughtered. Hamas, in fact, sent videos around the world, boasting of its achievement in the manner in which they raped Israeli women before killing them along with the murder of many children. If you were a Jewish student at an elite university such as Harvard or other Ivy League schools, you were vulnerable to being verbally attacked if you showed any support of the State of Israel.
Let me make it perfectly clear, as a Jewish American, I am not at all happy with the fact that in Gaza there has been some 42,000 deaths. Although the news continually relates that these are all civilians, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), in the past, estimated at least 16 to 17 thousand of those counted as dead were members of the Hamas terrorist group. Unfortunately, the only statistic that is presented to the public is that of total deaths in Gaza that has been said to be somewhere around 42,000. The notion that some of the people being killed in Gaza by the IDF are not only civilians, but also terrorists is lacking in both newspapers and broadcasts. Furthermore, the press continually shows photos of the vast destruction and human suffering of Gaza’s inhabitants, but it has failed to show the constant barrage of rockets attacking Israel.
It was on November 29th, 1947, that the General Assembly of the United Stations adopted a Resolution for the establishment of an independent Jewish State in Palestine. Young people have little understanding of the history of Israel from the start in 1948 that resulted in the surrounding areas controlled by Arabs who refused to accept Israel’s existence as a country in the Middle East. Against all odds, the Jews had to defeat their Arab neighbors to gain their right to exist as a sovereign state. It is an unfortunate piece of history that many Arabs would not accept the decree by the UN, and with a deep hatred, have referred to 1948 as the “Nakba” which translates to “catastrophe” in Arabic. They use this term to describe the mass displacement of Palestinians who fled their homes due to the establishment of the State of Israel. In reality, the seeds of hatred derive from the founding of Israel to the present where terrorist groups have refused to accept the legitimacy of Israel and wish to destroy it forever. Moreover, many Jews living in neighboring Arab states were exiled forcing them to emigrate to Israel where they would be welcomed.
After October 7th, these seeds have taken on a bizarre variation in which much of the young, doctrinated by leftist terminology, at the best universities in the country began to chant: “Free Palestine from the river to the sea.” Probably some of the students involved in these protests had little idea of the meaning nor significance of these words, referring to the Jordanian River and the Mediterranean Sea. The underlying message of these words, in fact, called for the destruction of Israel. I would maintain that a large part of the problem is that many young people are only aware of what they see occurring now with little knowledge of the complicated past that Israel has had with its Arab neighbors. The anti-Israel alliance of leftist subgroups coming from the ivory towers of academia is most strange when one considers that Israel allows women to be treated as equals and is far more accepting of homosexuality and transgender than its Arab neighbors.
Politics make strange bedfellows so they say. And so, we have several groups that call themselves progressives holding hands with some Arab people, led by Iran, that are eager to see the Statehood of Israel come to an end. Their hatred of Israel, that includes Jews throughout the world supportive of Israel, would appear to be greater than their proclaimed dissatisfaction with anyone that would deny both women and other minority groups equal rights. Paradoxically, the rights of both women and minority groups have been the mainstay of much of progressive thinking.
The root of this hatred of Israel displayed on so many university campuses originates from the Manichean belief that breaks down everything into a duality of good or evil. More specifically, many of the Left, in the United States, have made a black and white distinction between the oppressed and the oppressors where the bad guys are seen as those in power, that is the Whites, and the good guys, or the oppressed, are the Blacks. Accordingly, Israel has been lumped with the power-seeking oppressors, thereby, becoming in the eyes of young American progressives: the oppressors. Where Israel was once seen as David fighting its neighbors the size of Goliath, it is now seen as an omnipotent Goliath indiscriminately making war on its Arab neighbors. The sad irony to this is that many of these anti-Israel activists completely have forgotten that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist groups that have little regard for human life.
More than likely, the media portraying the invasion of Israel into Gaza has reinforced this unsympathetic view of Israel. As much as I have not particularly liked Mr. Netanyahu’s leadership in Israel, I believe he has chosen the right tactics in weakening Hezbollah, Iran’s closest and most powerful proxy. Netanyahu so far has accepted Biden’s call for restraint in not attacking the oil fields in Iran nor their nuclear reactors. On the other hand, he has done some of his Arab neighbors, such as Saudi Arabia, the great favor of disabling much of Hezbollah’s forces.
Netanyahu has made it clear that Israel will retaliate against Iran after the latter shot hundreds of missiles into Israel recently. Here I would agree with the journalist Bret Stephens, who has said that Israel should go after the head of the octopus, Iran, and not just the tentacles, as represented by the proxies of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. Granted a mission such as this could be perilous, but the dividends to both the West and some of Israel’s Arab neighboring states would not be small. Israel has pretty much succeeded in its tactics to eliminate Hamas but it now needs to focus on the strategy of what comes next. The destruction of Hamas is a necessary condition for the continued existence of Israel but not a sufficient one. The strategy of how to replace Hamas with a leadership in Gaza that will feature a more peaceful existence with Israel is vital. I agree with the journalist, Thomas Friedman, that both Saudi Arabia and other Arab States can be useful in helping to build a peaceful alliance in Gaza resulting in a two-state solution of both Israel and Palestine.
That being said, let us hope that Mr. Netanyahu begins to wind down what is going on in Gaza. Saudi Arabia with its wealth and power would be a huge asset to Israel if the two countries normalized their relationship with one another. This can only happen when the conflict in Gaza comes to an end and a two-state solution becomes an actuality in the Middle East.
Dr. Bernard F. Natelson 
3 replies on “Reflections on a Most Difficult Year”
“Furthermore, the press continually shows photos of the vast destruction and human suffering of Gaza’s inhabitants, but it has failed to show the constant barrage of rockets attacking Israel.”
The media has an ethos of “if it bleeds it leads” and since the constant barrage of rockets attacking Israel are thankfully and mostly routinely intercepted, the images are not as emotionally resonant for the media. It is a technical marvel to see those interceptions in the sky, but the press is drawn to blood, to emotions, to car wrecks… and the Israeli home front thankfully is largely not having that happen on a large scale subsequent to October 7. For you and me every car or mess hall or soccer field hit in Herzliya, Binyamina, or Majdal Shams is a gut punch, but for the press, it is not as resonant visually, hence the imbalance in coverage.
Furthermore, the architecting of the conflict to inflict massive suffering on Gaza’s inhabitants (and a parallel scenario for the residents of southern Lebanon) is by design. Hamas knows the western world will respond emotionally, hence it invested nary a single dollar, shekel, or euro in constructing any protection, shelters, or defense tools for Gaza’s residents who would be vulnerable on the front lines of the Israeli response to the terror group’s barbaric attack on October 7, 2023.
Amit semitism is a mental disorder and should be treated as such. Iran I a totalitarian dictatorship and should be undermined and a democracy established
While I agree with almost all Docallegro’s sentiments here, I disagree with two very simple claims that are frequently made, in my opinion all too casually and unthinkingly, by well-meaning commentators.
First, contrary to one claim, a correct picture does not require young people, or anyone, to know much about the complexities of modern Mideast history. It’s really quite simple: Zionism, and the Jews who already lived in their ancient homeland or migrated to it, had – and largely continue to have – no enmity versus Arabs or Islam. The very concept that the relationship among the peoples should be one of conflict owes strictly to Islamist conflict mongers. And the notion that the Jews and Zionists should be treated as enemies rather than as friends and collaborators was first implemented well before Israel’s creation – e.g. in the 1929 Hebron massacre.
Second, contrary to the blog’s very last phrase, nothing stated earlier, in the blog, or indeed any other fact, calls for ‘a two-state solution’ – at least as understood to mean Israel plus another fully sovereign state west of the Jordan. During 2007-2023 Israel and Hamas’ Gaza were, for practical and purposes, the nearest thing attainable to such a ‘two state solution’.
Well-meaning people should not ape the antisemites who are obsessed with creating precisely one new state in the world, namely a state for the only ‘national’ movement – ‘Palestine’ – whose charters and vocal spokefolk actually demand not a new state for themselves but the obliteration of an existing one, Israel. The well-meaning efforts which now unthinkingly obsess for this toxic concept of ‘Palestine’ should instead be directed toward creating or restoring the independence of states whose people actually want and desperately merit their own new or restored state, e.g. the Kurds and the Tibetans.