Neighborhood Bully: Israel Under Attack

Last week, into the wee hours of the morning, my family and I debated about the nature of evil, its origin, and its impact on humanity.

We debated the issue from different religious and philosophical perspectives and still managed to end up on differing sides of the issue.

I have difficulty bandying about the term because, to me, it implies a supernatural foundation to the disposition, and in a world of infinite nuance, subjectivity, and context, it feels as if it’s approaching impossible to narrow down the terms of what qualifies as evil.

As it happens, sometimes there are events in the world that remind us that - yes, in fact - evil does exist, and frequently exacts its desires on the innocent. Unfortunately, this weekend was one of those times.

On Saturday morning, the Jewish holiday of Shabbat, Israel was simultaneously attacked and invaded by Hamas terrorists at its southern border. Following no warning, Hamas had shockingly infiltrated Israel’s state-of-the-art defenses.

Paragliders and soldiers on foot stormed into communities near the border and proceeded to wreak havoc on those who lived there; Israeli citizens were subjected to the whims and predations of these marauders as their military forces were caught off guard - and therefore, its response was delayed.

What happened in the interim is almost impossible for any Western individual to imagine happening in their backyard. The elderly were killed, children were kidnapped and taken hostage, women were raped, and the bodies of the deceased were taken back across the border where they were desecrated while their deaths were celebrated.

Unspeakable atrocities occurred across several Kibbutzs in Southern Israel while Netanyahu’s government struggled to take control of the situation. Two days later with the death count now over 700 - and hundreds missing or injured - war has been justly declared by the Israeli Prime Minister and an ariel bombardment of Gaza has commenced.

Whenever Israel is involved in conflict, misinformation and antisemitism abound. Over the last 48 hours, countless Western media publications have published headlines either obfuscating how this war began or ignoring the role that Palestinian terrorists played altogether.

Over the last several decades, Israel has been forced to fight with one hand tied behind its back. The small nation has been besieged, the aggressor, and the invader simultaneously. Dylan’s ‘Neighborhood Bully’ captures the incoherence of the prevailing ‘sophisticated’ opinions of the country perfectly.

Pundits and commentators will remark how Gaza is an ‘open-air prison’ but will not question why it is that though it shares a border with Egypt, the North African nation has no intentions of admitting refugees; the same can be said about Jordan and Lebanon with displaced Palestinians. Brace yourself for calls to end this ‘cycle of violence’ and tone-deaf assertions of moral equivalency between the two Middle Eastern civilizations.

Since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, there have been 5 wars in the region but none of them escalated to current proportions. The invasion from Hamas - which was no doubt aided by terror experts, Iran - resembles the Yom Kippur War of 1973 where a coalition of Arab nations led by Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. Israelis had only just celebrated the 50th anniversary of that unlikely victory when the Holy Land was once again under siege.

Photo by Taylor Brandon on Unsplash

Hamas’ motivations aren’t entirely transparent at this moment. It’s apparent to any observer that the terrorist organization, despite having some level of technical and organizational skill, doesn’t possess the military might to actually defeat Israel on the battlefield. A prolonged, expanded military exchange doesn’t exactly suit the Palestinian cause either, but it’s not as if Hamas has a great humanitarian record to the people for whom they claim to be fighting.

The attacks come after the news that an unprecedented peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia was in the works - a hot war between Middle Eastern belligerents could certainly forestall any deal and could keep Iran in the driver’s seat of future negotiations - nuclear and otherwise. The other aim that Hamas and Iran could be targeting is the worldwide support of the Palestinian cause - if they could galvanize the support of a couple of billion people globally, they might be willing to trade the lives of a million Gazans.

That tactic appears to be working. Over the weekend, Western cities like Toronto, Washington, D.C., New York City, London, and Sydney all saw large demonstrations in support of the attacks on Israel. Palestinian flags held high, the crowds cheered for the barrage of missiles that fell on Jerusalem, praised the killing of innocent civilians, and applauded the defiling of young women and children. Where are the New York Times or Washington Post headlines detailing the savagery in their own cities?

Predictably, Western institutions are nowhere to be found, and when they do try their hands at actual journalism, they hide behind euphemisms like ‘decolonization’ and ‘cycles of violence.’ The words you won’t hear from the most venerated journalistic outposts are ‘pogroms’ and ‘antisemitism.’

So, now, Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government are in a difficult position. The policy of containment and limited rebuttal of the past two decades has this weekend’s devastating attacks for which to account. However, total war will not only inevitably cost innocent lives, but will likely cast the Jewish state as the oppressor in the false dichotomy of settler/subject that Western media and governments have so willingly propped up. How far is Netanyahu willing to go in order to protect his people? What is the most consequential measure one is morally justified in taking in combatting evil?

Friedrich Nietzsche said, “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.” It’s apparent to me that every one of us contains a predilection for monstrosity deep within us, and I fear that to conquer evil, that monster may have to rear its head.

The costs of modern warfare are disproportionately borne by the citizens, and when your enemy embeds itself in schools, hospitals, and apartment buildings, the Palestinian people are not the exception.

You can pray for the innocent civilians in Gaza, you can acknowledge that many of them are victims of circumstance. You can also pray for those Israelis who lost family members and are now subjected to the horrors of what became of them in their final hours.

You also ought to pray for the swift and just dispensation of the evil that is Hamas by the hand of Israeli forces.

~FDA