The War for Love

There are rare times when the complexity we routinely navigate condenses; variables fall out, and like reducing a complicated equation, suddenly we have clarity – an epiphany. So it happened to me.  I realized that our conflict with the Palestinians surrounding us, including the October 7^th war, quintessentially is an epic multigenerational battle of Love against Hate.

Israelis are taught to love the land starting with field trips where students are taken to natural, geological, and historic sites around the country. Caring for the land is an Israeli obsession. It is one of the few countries in the world that has more trees now than it had 100 years ago. A full twenty percent of the land area of this tiny country is protected in national parks and reserves.

Israelis are taught to love their people and be willing to sacrifice for them. When you walk down a street in Israel it is likely that the person walking past you has risked their life to protect you, as you or your children have done for them.  In school, Israelis are taught to love their history, ancient and modern, and their heritage including all the holidays. They are taught to love their writings, particularly the Bible, even in secular schools. They are taught to love Hebrew and Eliezer Ben-Yehuda is a national hero for resurrecting Hebrew into a modern language. In some Israeli religious homes, honey is put on the Hebrew letters so that when the children start to learn the alphabet they think of it as sweet.  The song book of Israeli music is filled with love songs, love songs to the land, to its Holy City, and to its people.¹

Beyond national love, Judaism demands Jews to love. Religious Jews recite the Shema prayer twice a day which starts, “You shall love the lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your might…”.  In the religious and Mizrachi (eastern) segment of our population there is a lot of kissing! When Jews recite the Shema, every time the fringes of their tallit (prayer shawl) are mentioned, those fringes are kissed.  The Mezuzah on the door post of any dwelling is kissed every time they walk through, the scroll of the Bible is kissed when it is paraded around the synagogue, they kiss the Hebrew letter where they start and stop reading the scroll of the Bible, they kiss the ground when they return to Israel, they kiss a holy book if it should fall to the ground.

More secular Israelis might never kiss the ground or a Mezuzah on a door post, but they also are raised to love.  It’s a more western love of all humanity, but it is still love.  They volunteer at shelters for battered women, in organizations that try to help women that have fallen into prostitution, for disadvantaged youth, for groups that help bring Arab Israelis to vote, to drive Palestinians to their jobs in Israel or to Israeli hospitals, or even just taking Palestinian families from Judea and Samaria on trips to the sea. In our post October 7 situation they volunteer to help the farmers harvest their crops and milk their cows. They donate and volunteer for the internally displaced refugees from the North and South.

So what do we hate here in Israel?  I’ll use myself as an example. What or who do I hate?  Well strangely, even after October 7^th, I don’t hate our enemies.  Don’t misunderstand me, I want the evil geniuses² of Hamas destroyed.  I hope this war ends with their complete defeat, and yet I don’t hate them.  In spite of how well they’ve analyzed and exploited our weaknesses and how difficult they have made this war, I find them too pathetic to hate.  With all their genius they will never accomplish anything constructive. Their motivation is hatred of Jews and all other ‘infidels’. Their goals are to destroy Israel, and then destroy the West.  And to accomplish these debased goals, which they will never achieve, no savagery is too grotesque for them.

I also don’t hate those who cover for Hamas and their ilk, those who have corroded great universities and corrupted Western young people with self hatred that all too often is directed towards Israel. These ‘scholars’ sit in their ivory towers, spewing libels against us, and as Mark Twain said, “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes”.  These elites don’t suffer the consequences of their hatred like the Palestinians do, they live in a virtual reality where neither the Palestinians or the Israelis are real. All is sublimated to their made up world of oppressed versus oppressor or/and settler colonialist versus ‘people of color’ ad infinitum. I have a deep contempt for them, but it’s impossible for me to hate people whose thinking is only skin deep.

I said it was strange that I don’t hate our enemies, but it’s commanded in the Bible, “Do not hate an Edomite, because he is your brother. Do not hate an Egyptian, because you were a stranger in his land.” (Deut. 23:8)  Excuse me?  Do not hate the Egyptians after they enslaved us and oppressed us for 400 odd years and then killed our baby boys?  That’s crazy, but that is what was demanded of us when we entered the land of Israel. It makes sense because we needed to enter the land as a free people, but when you hate you’re a slave to your hatred.³ 

Finally the main reason I’m not filled with hatred for our external enemies is because I live in this little land that offers all of us a wonderful life: prosperous but also meaningful, connected but also free to be individuals.  It is hard to be filled with hate when you are thriving.

Sometimes I do hate.  I feel myself slipping into a hatred of those of us who don’t agree with me. I feel they are hurting our beloved country.  But NO.  When I feel that happening I stop.  I remember that they would die to protect me and my sons and grandchild as I would to protect theirs.  So what do we hate here in Israel?  Some of us slip into hating each other.  I fear these internal hatreds more than I fear our external enemies.  W.H Auden in his poem called September 1, 1939  wrote, “We must love each other or die”.  He later thought this line in the poem was glib; but even if it is, nevertheless, right now, where we stand, it is true.

It was a monstrous hate, cultivated over generations, that motivated the October 7^th invasion of Israel and the brutality that followed.  In the wake of that invasion 300,000 Israelis were able to mobilize in 48 hours. They came from all walks of life, from all over Israel, and from all over the world. They saved our country.  Such a massive mobilization done in such a short time was never achieved before.

It wasn’t hate that inspired these heroes to leave everything and risk their lives. It was an overriding need to protect their land and their people.  It was love.

1. Children’s song “Our land of Israel” iconic “Jerusalem of Gold” and “They say we have a land”. more recent pop song  “What remains?  Only love”
2. Behold our Enemy essay about the evil genius of Hamas
3. Letting go of Hate, essay by Rabbi Jonathan Sachs of blessed memory.
4. September 1, 1939 Poem by W.H Auden after Germany invaded Poland War was coming.