by Gil Troy
The American Jewish community has been equally inept in explaining why Israel was forced to fight as it did, that America acted similarly in Iraq and Afghanistan – and that Israel won!
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Once again, a post-October 7 American lecture tour moved me. Yes, the headlines scream about Jew-hatred and about many Jews “blue-and-white-washing” Jew-bashers like Zohran Mamdani. But most Jews – and Americans – remain with Israel.
Still, multiple interactions with “Federation Jews,” loyal, generous, pro-Israel Jews, propping up “the tent,” not just in it, left me worried. Many echo the multi-dimensional, stinging Israel critique pushed by The New York Times, the Democratic establishment, and their most radical kids or peers.
Everyone loves complaining that Israel hasn’t explained itself well – I agree. However, the American Jewish community has been equally inept in explaining why Israel was forced to fight as it did, that America acted similarly in Iraq and Afghanistan – and that Israel won!
Lies on Israel from US Jews
I kept encountering these questions and misconceptions. Each subject deserves a book, but brief rejoinders can help:- “The war was too brutal.” Wars are brutal. Urban warfare, with terrorists hiding behind civilians, is even harsher. Without offering realistic alternatives for an Israel threatened with Iran’s seven-fronted ring of fire, critics also miss fundamental benchmarks.
Moreover, reflecting urban warfare’s savage calculus, the UN estimates that democratic armies often kill ten civilians for every combatant. America often averaged four to one. Israel averaged between one and two civilians for every combatant – even with Hamas’s claims of 60,000 dead, but factoring in 25,000 terrorists. Finally, had Hamas allowed the Gazans into its 400-mile tunnel network, tens of thousands more would be alive today.
- “Netanyahu unnecessarily prolonged the war for political reasons.” Often, the more brutal the war, the longer it is. I recently saw a cartoon of a vampire menacing a young woman – a classic antisemitic image. The caption read: He “is a vampire, sucking the blood and life of” his country, “prolonging the war to protect his own power.” Oops! The cartoon, from November 26, 1864, and displayed in the Lincoln presidential museum in Springfield, Illinois, imagines a monstrous Abraham Lincoln sucking the blood of “Columbia,” representing America.
- “Israel would be popular if not for Bibi, Ben-Gvir, and Smotrich (O my!).” The venom with which people spit out those names often eclipses their Hamas-hatred. I have long criticized this government’s domestic politics and its deference to its goonatics. Still, considering how quickly critics blasted Israel for defending itself – buying the big lie that Israel killed 500 people in Al-Ahli Hospital on October 17 – the world gave Israel 10 days to defend itself. Then, “ceasefire” demands already began, a week before Israel invaded Gaza.
- “Look how unpopular Israel is - Hamas won.” To jihadists, “victory” means Israel’s eradication. If forced to choose between winning the war versus being popular – better for us to survive, stronger than ever. Besides, Hamas and the Palestinians are not stupid. They see the devastation of Gaza the terrorist group’s barbaric attack triggered. They feel the abandonment of a reeling Iran, the blocked Hezbollah-Syria arms smuggling pipeline, the loss of their top commanders, and the Arab world blasting Hamas. Can Hamas really afford such “victories?”
- “Why didn’t Israel free the Palestinian ‘Mandela,’ Marwan Barghouti?” What an insult to Mandela’s nonviolence! Marwan Barghouti headed the armed Tanzim. Accused of 30 murders, judges convicted him of five. That reflects his lethality and the court’s credibility in weighing the evidence. He claimed he never targeted civilians “in Israel,” making anyone in the territories fair game, including the Greek Orthodox monk Father Georgios Tsibouktzakis.
- “And I won’t even mention the settlers!” I’m not afraid to talk about the settlers and the settlements. Start by acknowledging, “It’s complicated.” Skipping the history lecture justifying Israel’s ties to the land, I’m shocked that people uncritically accept the Palestinian spin that Israelis don’t belong there, making every disputed Israeli community illegitimate.
ISRAEL HAS done much right – while inevitably erring, too – since Hamas foisted this horrific war upon it, and since Palestinian extremists blew up the Oslo peace process 25 years ago. The biased narrative, however, is not only anti-Israel, it also disrespects Palestinians. Depriving them of any moral agency, holding them to no responsibility, it reduces them to putty, molded by Jews.
In fact, they are historical actors whose national movement remains pathologically addicted to antisemitism, Israel-exterminationism, and terrorism to progress – because Western dupes keep validating their violence.
Gil Troy is an American presidential historian and Zionist activist born in Queens, living in Jerusalem. He has published To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream and The Essential Guide to October 7th and its Aftermath. His latest e-book, The Essential Guide to Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, and Jew-hatred, can be downloaded on the Jewish People Policy Institute website.
Source: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-873515
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