Someone, somewhere, is celebrating Trash Day as you read these very words.
Update from David, sent in by Josh Blumenthal:
Day 11
Dear everyone,
We are in Day 11 of the Hamas war.
It is cold here. And there is no sun. And it is autumn. And it is dark in the morning and early evening. And the people work and shop and have traffic jams. It’s another planet.
The update: 199 families have been notified that a member thereof is a hostage of Hamas in Gaza, probably in the tunnels under Gaza. Qatar, the major backer of Hamas is pressing them to release the hostages; so is the Red Cross. No action yet. Israel is restarting water supply to southern Gaza. Americans are exiting Gaza. Israeli civilians are being evacuated along the northern border. The families in the school hosting refugees that Nili helps with will be able to stay longer. There are a lot of Hamas documents that have been recovered showing that killing civilians was the major goal and taking hostages next, plus a guide for how to take hostages. One article reports a document on how to torture hostages. American senators were forced to go to shelters because of rockets and a session of the Israeli parliament was suspended for 40 minutes for the same reason. Pro-Hamas demonstrations are multiplying all over the world. Antisemitic incidents are also multiplying all over the world. The Times of Israel and the Jerusalem Post are dedicating space to photos and write-ups of known hostages and victims.
Many years ago, when I was about to write the concluding chapters of Facing the Abusing God: A Theology of Protest, I fell physically sick for several days, literally. I’m beginning to feel like that now. There are some serious issues to be addressed. Here is the second essay; it’s a little long but the situation is difficult.
The Fog of Peace
David R. Blumenthal
October 17, 2023
The world has stopped counting. Everyone agrees that this was a pogrom, a successful mass-killing of Jews, the worst since the Holocaust. The last tally shows: 1300 Jews killed, 3300 Jews injured many of them seriously, and over 200 Jews and others taken as hostages.
The Israelis have retaliated, killing uncounted numbers of Hamas and Palestinians, and reducing large parts of Gaza to rubble. Everyone agrees that they had a ‘right to defend themselves.’
But, who won the war? What will the peace look like? Now, the real war has begun. It is a second war – a war of words, blackmail, and standing in the world. It is the mid-game battle in a larger chess game, and it is not over yet.
Israel, with the backing of many Jews and others worldwide, wants to ‘eliminate’ Hamas. This cannot actually be done because there are too many Hamas members and way too many Hamas believers, and because this would require a ground invasion that would cost many more Jewish lives. There are also the hostages to take into consideration, including those of its closest ally, the Americans. Nonetheless, after the Holocaust and “Never Again,” the Jewish state, representing dead and living Jews, must make the price of killing Jews with the cruelty that only Jew hatred can evoke as high as possible. The world of Jew haters must know that any such action will evoke a very, very serious response in kind. Jew haters must learn that we will fight back, indeed punish severely, such action against us, no matter what the price to us.
The Jew-hating world wants to recuperate as much as possible and to go on to plan the next step in the war against the Jews. They have two pieces to bargain with: the hostages and the devastation of what they present as innocent civilians whom the west, but not Islam, regard as precious. The center of this movement is Iran. It is the leader of the anti-western and anti-Jewish world. Iran’s leadership of this jihad is at stake here. To win this mid-game battle is to lose a few Palestinian pieces but to be able to advance to the next move toward an ultimate win. The rest of the Islamic world knows this well and is watching very, very carefully. So are the Jew haters in the west - on the right and on the left.
America wants to be a loyal ally of the only democracy in the Middle East. This would restore America as the leader of the western world and the western values of human rights, especially after decades of defeats in the Middle East. The return to leadership is politically crucial for America’s leadership in the South China sea, in the Middle East, and in Europe. Japan, Korea, Australia, Ukraine, NATO, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and others are watching very carefully. So are women everywhere, and gays, blacks, and other persecuted minorities - at home and abroad.
What comes next?
Israel could invade Gaza and occupy the Gaza strip. The Americans, who have long experience with the futility of such occupations, argue (correctly, I think) that that will not work. Israel could invade the Gaza strip, destroy as much as possible of the Hamas personnel and infrastructure, and then withdraw. But, the world of bleeding hearts and the world of Islamic solidarity will pour in enough money to rebuild that human and military infrastructure as well as the ideology of Jew hatred that motivates it.
The Americans could intimidate Iran and its proxies into refraining from intervening. That would result in a ‘check’, but not a ‘check mate.’ The Iranian Jew haters will then do what any chess player would do. They will strategically withdraw, and wait until the next opportunity to attack presents itself. They will take their losses -- the dead Gazans will be declared martyrs who go to paradise and the live Gazans will be declared heroes who will live to fight again -- and the Iranians will declare victory in a serious and successful preliminary battle. This would be a victory for Iran and a major loss for the Americans and the Jews.
In the process, much fuss will be made over ‘freeing the hostages.’ The price demanded for freeing the innocent people who were unjustly seized will be high. There will be no justice; only bargaining over what the losers should pay for the lives of the women, children, grandmothers, strangers working in the holy land, and soldiers to ‘free’ them, or their dead bodies. Not all of them will be released. Hamas is already claiming that they do not know where all of them are. Whatever is agreed upon, no matter how unjust, the payment is a victory for the Jew haters, not for the Americans, the Jews, or those who value human rights. It is blackmail paid.
Don’t count on Iran or Hamas giving up its ultimate goal of exterminating the Jews. Jew hatred is fundamental to classical and modern political Islam. I’ve written a book on this subject but publishers, even prestigious academic presses, are afraid to publish it: “We don’t want to be another Charlie Hebdo.”
Six after-effects of this war:
The reinforcement of the jihad against the Jews (and also against the Christians though Christians don’t take this seriously, yet) has the secondary effect of being the death of the “two-state solution.” Why, after a great victory against the Jews, should Islamic antisemitism agree to a Palestinian state that would imply the recognition of the legitimacy of the despised Jewish state?! The west will continue to ‘push’ for the two-state solution but the success of the Hamas war in inflicting serious damage on Israel and on the Jews has torpedoed that forever. For that matter, what Jew would ever trust a Jew hater to agree to “peace”?
For the same reasons, the success of the jihad against the Jews probably means the end to “normalization.” Who leads the Islamic world? If Iran wins the mid-game chess battle by taking its Palestinian losses and withdrawing from further military action until the next move, Iran, not the UAE and others, will be the leader, and normalization will have been a great interlude.
Antisemitism, on the right and on the left, will grow. It is already spreading rapidly, particularly on college campuses. Sometimes, antisemitism is violent Jew hatred, and sometimes it is couched in equity, diversity, inclusion language which shrinks from declaring the killing of babies a crime against humanity.
There is a fair chance that, as we get further from the urge to act, Jews will turn against God. This is natural, maybe even healthy spiritually. But, particularly among marginally religious Jews, there will be a despair of believing in a God Who loves us and protects us.
There is a concept called “moral injury” that we discovered among American soldiers returning from wars in the Middle East and Asia. It is not PTSD, for which there are established treatment protocols. Moral injury is the realization that one did something in a war-time situation in which the morality of the military protects us psychologically but which, when we return to normal moral life as civilians, we realize was terribly wrong. For instance: A soldier in the Middle East sees a pregnant-looking woman dressed in Islamic clothing walking toward him. He does not know whether she is pregnant or has a bomb under her clothing. He shouts at her several times in the local language to stop. He fires into the air to deter her. But she keeps coming toward him. In the end, he follows standard instructions to protect himself and his unit, and he kills her. But, she turns out to have been pregnant, and not a terrorist. After release from the army, he returns home and sees his pregnant wife walking toward him. The scene comes back to him and the soldier turns violent, or turns to drugs or alcohol, or commits suicide. This is “moral injury.” He did what he should have done in the situation but, in a normal context, he realizes it was a terribly wrong thing to have done. I think that, for many Israelis and Jews, the anger, indeed the rage, that we are experiencing now and our intense desire for revenge as we read the stories and watch the videos of this horror, are going to become moral injury as life moves forward.
Finally, remember that 2033 is the hundredth anniversary of the rise to power of Hitler; that 2038 is the hundredth anniversary of Kristallnacht; and that 2041-44 is the hundredth anniversary of the nazi death camps. The Jew haters know this, for sure. I won’t be around to see this. Many of you won’t either. But our children and grandchildren will.
In the end, it is my thinking that: Iran will play it rationally. They will not risk nuclear war for Palestine. They will, therefore, take their Palestinian losses, restrain Hizbollah and other pawns from intervening, declare victory, and return to planning the next major step in their jihad against Jews, Christians, and the west. Israel will do something in Gaza but will not be able to ‘eliminate’ Hamas or Islamic Jew hatred. Hamas will suffer, will declare victory over the impregnable Jews, and will succeed in getting more money to rebuild. America will claim to have prevented another damaging war and will go on believing that it leads the free world in its march for justice and peace. Jews everywhere will grudgingly be forced to acknowledge that ‘there is nothing new under the sun’; that Jew hatred is here to stay. The Hamas War will take its place, alongside other pogroms against Jews, as the first pogrom of the 21st century. Welcome to Jewish history.
David
I just updated the top page with David Blumenthal's latest letter to Josh. Substack wouldn't post it for some reason, likely it hit the system comment limit.
Thank you, Josh and David. I have read every letter posted, and I’ll keep reading.