This is the first anniversary of the October 7th attacks. The savage invasion of last year in which Hamas broke through the borders of Israel and proceeded to kill, rape, behead, burn, maim, and kidnap innocent civilians predictably provoked the Israeli government to retaliate.
It was perhaps also unsurprising that Israel’s reprisal would be denounced by the usual unholy alliance of Islamists and leftists. These perennial detractors of Israelis and Jews had, for decades, made a habit of not only excusing Palestinian intransigence but also blaming Israel no matter what.
What was surprising however, given the scale and severity of last year’s attacks, was the success of the anti-Israel propaganda in the West, specially in Britain and America. This propaganda was awfully effective in influencing political, academic, and media leaders against Israel’s right to destroy Hamas and bring back the hostages. The propagandists called for a ceasefire before Israel had responded; they used the UN platform to slander Israel accusing her of committing a genocide and war crimes. They mobilized large groups in the West including student groups on college campuses to demand that Israel stop the mission to bring back the hostages and defeat Hamas.
The anti-Israel Israel propaganda turned the conflict into a polarising issue on the same level as the election of Donald Trump in 2016 or Brexit in the UK. Even Jewish families and communities are disagreeing on the way the Israeli government under the leadership of Bibi Netanyahu is prosecuting this war. It is leading to painful confrontations and even splits.
In my view, Bibi and his cabinet, together with the IDF, have done a brilliant job conducting this mission. Despite the enormous pressures placed on them, and betrayal from their allies, Israelis are succeeding. They have conducted a string of superb military operations like the demolition of the tunnels, the defeat of Hamas, and the destruction of Hezbollah. Israel is determined to continue to take the war to Iran. It is a righteous war if ever there was one.
At Restoration we bring you a remarkable correspondence between two British-Jewish friends, Mr. M. and Mr. P. It captures the dramatic battles of perspective underway in our societies and specially within Jewish groups. In the end it is letters like the one here written by Mr. P that will defeat the propaganda. Truth is the best and most powerful antidote to lies regardless of how slick or expensively such lies are produced. What we can learn from Mr. P is to find the courage in us to express it.
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Letter 1
P, I really haven’t known how to respond but Israel’s killing spree has only increased since you sent this message and yes, my mind is made up. Apart from destroying innocent Palestinian and now Lebanese lives, Netanyahu’s mindless aggression will encourage antisemitism for another 50 years. I don’t care what semantics or legal arguments are used to justify Israel’s military conduct. My heart and common sense tell me something else.
I feel very angry but hope you are well.
Perhaps it would be best if we stick to music.
M
Letter 2
Dear M,
Thanks for your message and I am sorry you have been suffering. It must feel like a horrible time for you. It’s clear from your message that you are a peace loving romantic and would rather pursue diplomatic routes with the Islamists than fight them directly. You are not alone in having this feeling today, or in the historical context. In May 1940 when Britain was already at war and Chamberlain was still prime minister, 281 vs 200 MPs still voted to appease rather than to fight Hitler. Even after he stood down and Churchill took over and after Nazis had invaded Poland and started the slaughter of our ancestors, still 10-15% of MPs in Britain argued to appease Hitler rather than fight him – this was led by Lord Halifax. Thankfully these appeasers were outvoted and the allies managed to destroy Hitler and bomb his ideology into abeyance for a few generations.
If the appeasers had won the day then you and I would have never been born because our parents and grandparents would have been slaughtered in Nazi camps. The well intended peace loving appeasers were on the wrong side of history. Let me ask you if you think that in the last year Israel has been under any less threat than the Sudetenland, Poland or France were in 1939? My view: The threat is actually higher for Israel today because the stated aims of annihilation of Israel’s enemies are even more clearly stated in Iran’s manifesto than Hitler’s was, and Iran and it’s proxies have the massive advantage of numbers and geographic encirclement that Hitler never had. This leads me to conclude that the appeasers like you today, are just as much on the wrong side of history as the appeasers of 1939.
However, I am sure your motives come from a good place, and I sincerely believe that you are a good peace-loving man. From your brief message and our original discussions it feels that you have been convinced that Israeli Jews have been the oppressors of Palestinians for generations. You’ve also made it clear that you feel that the bombing of Gaza and Lebanon is mindless violence, cruel and disproportionate.
I presume you know how many peace agreements have been brokered since 1947…. Each of which offered Palestine its own state. Every single one of these were rejected by Palestine but accepted by Israel: The UN Partition Plan (1947), Madrid Conference (1991), Oslo Accords (1993–1995), Camp David Summit (2000), Taba Summit (2001), Road Map for Peace (2003), Annapolis Conference (2007), 2010 Direct Talks, John Kerry-led Peace Talks (2013–2014), and the Trump Peace Plan (2020). And don’t forget the Gaza withdrawal in 2005. Not one of these have resulted in any less desire by the Arabs to annihilate the Jews. The Jews have been consistently willing to give Palestine its own state, and in fact were the only people who agreed to the recommended partition plan in 1947…. which was rejected the Arabs and also the British. Palestinians do not want their own state. They want Jews out of the entire Middle East. They want the Jew to go back to where they came from… and because we have no state to return to, what they really want is for us all to die. I presented you with the evidence by an international delegation of military generals that visited Gaza recently and who concluded the IDF was governed to exceptionally high moral standards. You have described these findings as “semantic or legal arguments” and seem to prefer the argument of what your heart is telling you. You’re clearly upset by civilian deaths in Lebanon as am I. I have many many Lebanese friends… some of the finest and warmest people I know. That they’ve been held hostage by Hezbollah is a tragedy and that some of their civilians have died as a result of their government not being able to resist a de facto Iranian takeover is horrendous. But after nearly 10,000 rockets being fired into Israel, clearing the population out of 10% of Israel’s territory, and the level of effort the IDF have used to be precise by taking out the military leadership with the pagers, and trying to bomb only military instalments and rocket launchers seems entirely proportionate to me and to legal and military experts. Bear in mind that Israel waited nearly a year to take any material action against Lebanon at all… and Hezbollah’s attack on Oct 8th was completely unprovoked. There is zero territorial dispute between Lebanon and Israel. I do hope that the battle in Lebanon will be short and decisive and that the Lebanese will have the resolve and resources to reclaim their country.
As you are a musician and a romantic it is natural that your emotional response to the world takes on an even higher status than it would for the average person, and I am sure that this heightened faculty serves you well when you’re listening to Chopin Ballades. It may be less valuable an asset when analysing the justification for war. War is horrendous and it is understandable that anyone would recoil from the images of death, and particularly the death of the innocent. I can tell that you are suffering when confronted by these images and this reality of war. I will conclude by just making two comments about this:
There is an important distinction between feeling good, and doing good. I understand that images of war don’t make you feel good about yourself and this leads to the naturally reflexive response of just urging it all to stop. Here I would just remind you that you owe your life to the courage of allies and Jews who lived before you and fought in the trenches and gave their lives to grant you a lifetime of relative peace that you’ve lived in. Your life of wallowing in classical music in the safety and luxury of North London owes its existence to your courageous ancestors who actually had the courage to look into the face of the horror of warfare and do the right thing, even when it didn’t make them feel good at all. That peace dividend is coming to an end. Islamists and Jihadis have organised themselves internationally to attack the Jews in their homeland and once again the world is being challenged to do the right thing and resist another genocide. Like there was in 1939, there will still be a group of people who are so caught up in cowardly denial and the desire to feel good about themselves they will choose to be on the wrong side of history. They will choose to appease. They will pretend that a diplomatic solution with Islamists is possible even when presented with the above overwhelming evidence that all past diplomatic attempts have ended in failure, have been interpreted as signs of Weakness by the Islamists and have given them time to rally and consolidate their forces. Just like Lord Halifax and his shameful legacy, you are presenting as one of those cowards today.
Lastly, you have explained that you fear Israel’s actions will drive another 50 years of antisemitism. I have bad news for you. The presence of antisemitism amongst the liberal elite that you and I live in was revealed on October 8th, as celebrations broke out around the world to celebrate the Pogrom against the Jews. You and I likely both felt that antisemitism in our time was restricted to Jihadists in the Muslim world, or deadhead white suprematists who never make it into the kind of piano recitals that you and I like to attend. The bad news is that you and I are already surrounded by the antisemites within the chattering British middle-classes. They have revealed themselves to be reflexively Jew hating by their instinctive support for the 3 blood libels against Israel… that it is a colonialist settler state, that it is apartheid and that it is genocidal. Three claims that are simply and demonstrably untrue. It is likely that many of your non Jewish piano students are themselves antisemitic and have grown up in antisemitic homes. It’s quite possible that your anti-Israel stance coming from a Jew will give you extra levers of ingratiation amongst this community. Your virtue signalling and transparent desire to feel good about yourself will have a heightened currency amongst your liberal elite friends, not because your position is original or insightful, but because being Jewish and anti-Israel (and therefore Pro-Islamism) makes you particularly intriguing. You likely hope this will make it easier for you to assimilate, to remain acceptable, and to avoid the wall of antisemitism that you rightly feel is swelling internationally. Sadly it will not help you because the liberal-elite distaste for Jews will ultimately be directed to you as well… Just like the assimilators were thrown into the gas chambers in WWII amongst the ultra-orthodox, you with your distinctively Ashkenazy name, won’t be spared their disdain or their cruelty.
What you say it is certainly true… that the actions of Netanyahu are going to make life harder for the diaspora Jews, who make up around 50% of the Jews on the planet. The war has made acceptable the more latent and hidden antisemitism that was clearly rife within our communities. All I would say to you is this: 50% of your ethnic community are literally fighting for their lives and for the survival of Israel. They are giving up their children to die in the IDF. They have entered Lebanon because it was discovered that an Oct 7th like pogrom was being planned and was imminent in the north of the country. These young soldiers are the frontline against a 21st-century Jihad whose pogroms promise to extend far beyond Israel as you will see on your TV from the protests currently on our streets and will climax on Oct 7 2024. Every time you hear a protestor calling “River to the Sea” you must recognise that these people are not calling for a territorial redistribution… much like the Middle Eastern Islamists have no interest in settling a territorial dispute. These people are calling for an annihilation of Jewry… and you are one of these Jews that their hatred extends to you. So to conclude, I am sorry if the Israeli fight for survival makes you feel a little uncomfortable in North London. It must be a terrible affront to your karma that more people are likely speaking behind your back about you in your favourite Coffee shops or in the Wigmore Hall, while the children of your cousins in Israel are being slaughtered while fighting against the massive odds in Lebanon and likely soon in Iran. I am sure that this leaves you with a whole range of horrible and fear-filled feelings. Nevertheless, I still hope that you will find a way to dig deep and find a little dignity and courage. Even if this creates a little discomfort, you owe it to your heritage to find a way to become a better man.
P
