From Victims To Victors

I have been having trouble sleeping the past few nights. The barrage of thoughts running through my mind is as heavy and chaotic as the barrage of news updates and rockets.

The feelings are indescribable. 2000 years of trauma has been triggered in the nation. A massacre in our sovereign homeland. The murder of our people, the defilement of our women and children broadcast proudly for the world to see, the bloody footage producing a live action horror movie. Decapitation of babies. Women and children raped and taken captive, women raped to death next to the dead bodies of their friends and loved ones.

Dead and alive, scenes of Jewish soldiers, women, children, and elderly (Holocaust survivors!) paraded through the streets of Gaza like trophies. Jews murdered in their homes. Jews burnt alive. Dead Jewish bodies desecrated.

There are simply no words to capture the horror, and the footage is unbearable. We have not yet finished uncovering the details of this event.

This is the most traumatic event in Jewish history since the end of the Holocaust. All of the trauma we endured throughout 2,000 years of exile has been retriggered in the Jewish people. The pain is searing and we are blinded with rage.

Too many feelings about this situation exist. Too many factors are at play here, too many players on the board. I can and will discuss them all elsewhere, but I felt I had a more important message to share first.

As an Israeli, I do not care to cry out to the world for support right now. I do not need to appeal to their sympathies. I am totally indifferent to their condemnations. In fact, I wish the world would stop weighing in. At this critical moment, I feel it’s healthier for us to begin to face the fact that ultimately we are alone in our position.

We were alone when we suffered thousands of years of massacres. We were alone when we survived the fires of the gas chambers. We were alone when we liberated our land from the British empire, our so-called ally that was sending ships of Jewish refugees back to the Nazis while underhandedly working with the Arabs to prevent us from establishing our own state.

Most alliances Jews have managed to forge since the destruction of the temple has been motivated by the self interest of other nations – not some genuine affinity for Israel. How many times throughout history have we let our guards down and relied on the protect of certain relationships only to end up with a knife in our back? Too many times. I refuse to be lured into that same trap of hoping to be saved by the grace of others when we are finally in a position to save ourselves.

I won’t beg my non-Jews to speak up on the situation. Frankly it is humiliating to beg for compassion in the face of such atrocities that are so objectively horrifying.

I will not post an endless stream of violent and graphic images of our precious men, women, and children for the benefit of garnering international sympathies.

Are we to defile the sanctity of our dead by overbroadcasting their mangled and destroyed bodies to the world in order to “prove” this happened? There is enough Jewish horror porn available in the Nazi’s vast collection of photo and video evidence they took to document the crimes of the Holocaust, yet there is a major uptick in people who deny what they did to us.

We are traumatizing ourselves by reliving these horrible events over and over on social media and are intensifying our feelings of despair by pining after support that will not come. We can share these images in attempt to lay a moral foundation for our reaction, but I think if we’re truly being honest with ourselves, the world’s moral compass is beyond broken and unlike the usual, Israel’s primary concern does not seem to be applying a standard of Western moral values right now, but justice.

What happens when suddenly this outpouring of diplomatic support turns into pressure to deescalate? This deep need for justice is a difficult thing to swallow, but it is visceral and inescapable. The cost of Jewish blood has been far too cheap for far too long, and we’re raising the price.

After centuries of being regularly slaughtered and decades of different lopsided wars, we have been dealt a devastating blow to our people’s lives and honor. There’s no looking back now – The gauntlet has been laid down, the challenge has been issued: How much strength will Israel respond with? What are we going to teach the world about the consequences for raping, murder, torturing, and abducting Jews in the sovereign Jewish homeland?

To most, if not all of us, our desire is crystal clear: our response must convey in ZERO uncertain terms that the days of relentless slaughtering of our people have officially come to an end. We are no longer weak and able to be pushed around; We are stronger than ever before, and we are not afraid to use the full force of our power.

The days of fighting with both hands tied behind our backs is over – we have taken off the shackles that once previously chained us and will pursue justice for the nation through all means necessary. The brutality of the Hamas terrorists and the public broadcast of the dishonor and violation of our women and children will cost Palestinians a hefty price, one that they did not anticipate. And with so many players arranged on the geopolitical board (such as Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and several others), Israel knows deterrence is more important now than ever before. And in our grief and anguish, we have never been more ready and willing to strike at anyone else who dares to join this fight.

I’ll be honest, all this is going to be a little scary for Diaspora Jews to hear and internalize, but it is important to say it nonetheless. We all know there’s a strong chance that the more shrewdly and powerfully Israel acts, the more the situation may become complicated and uncomfortable for Jews living abroad. Still – no matter how much or how little restraint we may display, the unavoidable and heartbreaking fact is that anti-Semitism is about to roar its ugly head all over the world.

We need to mentally and physically prepare for this new reality, because it is already here.

This moment calls for a developing deeper and more meaningful connection to ourselves in anticipation of all the challenges ahead of us.

Right now, collectively, our focus needs to be on strengthening Israel on the global stage, and that means feeling prepared and empowered to start forging our own path forward, public opinion be damned.

Why fight a losing battle on social media when we do not owe any person or any nation a single word of explanation or justification for our actions in the coming weeks?

Our journey through history speaks for itself – just because others have not bothered to learn it does not mean you are obligated to expend your precious energy on teaching them. Instead, our energies should be laser focused on ourselves – our future hangs in the balance, and we are facing conflict on military and ideological fronts externally and internally.

In this moment of crisis, instead of trying and failing to prove our worth to the world knowing full well the impossible double standards they have set for us, let us invest our energy in proving our worth to ourselves. It’s time we stop apologizing for who we are and asking to be liked, and fully embrace what makes us different.

We cannot self actualize through some social media war. This is not to say not to post content, but rather to reflect on what kind of content to post. Our ḥesed, tz’daka, mitzvot and tefillot, our love for the people of Israel and our connection to HaShem are the most powerful tools we have in our arsenal right now.

Let us uplift our soldiers and send them to battle in good spirits. Let us connect with each other. Let us abandon our fruitless attempts to get the world to pity us, and instead, remind the nations of the inner greatness of Am Yisrael.

This is not our first massacre, but we should stand strong in our right to fight tooth and nail to ensure it is our last.