No illusions

October 7th 2023 hit hard, but its aftermath is hitting infinitely harder.

We, the Golani brotherhood, were going to commemorate 50 years one day prior to October 7th. Events changed all of that.

I go back in time to the 1970’s. I lived on a Kibbutz just north of the Gaza Strip, and I was able to go and come to and from the Strip along with all of the Arabs who lived there. Many worked in Israel. Indeed, some worked in my community; plumbers, electricians, laborers. Some were contractors helping to pick fruit and others buying up the manure of the dairy and poultry branches.

I was in the Gaza Strip at the very beginning of the first Intifada. On December 8th, 1987 I was coming back from a packing plant, my truck and trailer fully loaded with packaged corn. Each pallet ready to be dropped off at designated wholesalers. The CB that carried security information warned that the Erez Crossing was temporarily shut down due to a traffic accident.

I managed to turn around and go through the Nahal Oz crossing, past Kfar Aza, Sderot and back to the main highway north. Despite events becoming progressively worse, I continued to bring double thirty cubic meter container loads of freshly harvested corn to the packing plant in the Gaza Strip. The Arab workers continued to work and get paid. When there were restrictions preventing the Arabs who lived in the Strip from working in Israel, these workers continued, and continued to get paid and provide for their families.

When restrictions were lifted, I myself brought Arabs who worked as mechanics in central Israeli garages back to their homes. I myself brought some of them clothes for their children, extra fruit from our orchards.

All of that and more, will not ever happen again. Never.

The murderers who perpetrated, planned and carried out the slaughter of Israelis on October 7th, 2023, made absolutely sure of that. They took the lives of Israelis who lived around the Gaza Strip, many of whom were involved in helping Arabs: driving the sick to hospitals in Israel; offering work within the very communities where the worst of the atrocities were committed.

The slaughtered innocent revelers who danced and listened to music at the Nova Music Festival, near Kibbutz Re’im.
The murderers took hostages back to the Gaza Strip, some dead, some wounded, and some alive. More than two hundred and fifty. These images would be burned into the Israeli national psyche, with worse images yet to come. The Arab crowds, jeering, cheering. The body cameras of the murderers documenting their atrocities. With worse images yet to come.
Perhaps there were some German or Polish or Czech or Hungarian people who tried to save Jews during the Holocaust. Perhaps some even tried to help members of my family. I will never know. Those who did help to save Jews from Nazi murderers are memorialized at Yad VaShem.

So, who are the Arabs who helped the Israelis held captive by Hamas? Where are the decent Arabs standing up against the brutal oppressors in their midst? Where are the sermons of the Imams denouncing the murder of innocents? Of the more than two million Arabs living in the Gaza Strip, would none overthrow their oppressors, the death cult that rules and sacrifices their very lives for an imoral jihad?

And I ask myself, what about right here, in the personal circle of friends and acquaintances I’ve made over the years living in the US? Arabs, some from the Gaza Strip, some from Judea and Samaria, some from Jordan, US citizens all. We’ve had coffee together. We’ve stood together in solidarity when the Muslim ban was first declared here, back in January 2017. We spoke out when mosques were attacked.

Well, guess what! Not a one of them even asked if my family in Israel was ok during the countless rocket and missile attacks. Not a one of them bothered to ask how my grandchildren were doing, having to rush to a safe room or stairwell or concrete public bunker during drone and missile attacks. The best I could hope for was for some acquaintances to equivocate, “and the poor women and children in the Gaza Strip are also under attack, and that too is a terrible tragedy…”

I know that I have changed since October 7th, 2023. I can no longer have any illusions. Existing together next to a neighbor whose open declaration is to murder all Jews, anywhere and everywhere is not possible. Creating a state next to Israel whose aim would be to carry out another October 7th, and then again another, is anathema to me.

I’m not naive, and events leading up to October 7th have certainly chipped away much of my prior idealism. And, while I certainly do not support the messianic and ultra-nationalistic political wing keeping the current government in Israel in power, I am even more distrustful of those Arab nations trying to force a Palestine down Israel’s throat.

A Palestine that declares “From the River to the Sea”? A Palestine that declares “Butcher the Jew”? A Palestine that chants “Khaybar, Khaybar, Oh Jews! The army of Muhammad will return!”?

I’m not naive about the Hamas murderers suddenly releasing all of the hostages tomorrow, unconditionally. Returning the bodies of the dead. No, the Hamas murderers will continue their psychological war, parading the hostages in front of empty and meaningless propaganda slogans.

The Arabs of the Gaza Strip will also find that many Israeli Jews, like myself, have become hard. No idealistic illusions about two states living side by side in harmony and peace. With their support of Hamas that is what they have achieved. It will be incumbent upon the Arabs of the Gaza Strip and of the West Bank to renounce and denounce Hamas and its murderous ideology in order for many of us to again reach out a hand of peace.

I remain naive in awaiting that day.