Swords of Iron: A view from outside Israel (Guest Post)

This is another guest post by Brian Goldfarb, who sent me a kind of war diary as the horrific events of Simchat Torah, 7th October 2023 unfolded in front of his eyes while he was visiting family in New York:

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Am Yisroel Chai!

Am Yisrael Chai! !עם ישראל חי

In what seems like a lifetime ago (in 2014), given the most recent events, Anne published this article, jointly authored by us both, the first part by me, the second by Anne. The historical context was the withdrawal by Israel from the Gaza Strip of all Israeli citizens, the dismantling of housing and much other infrastructure (much of which could be repurposed within “Green Line” Israel). The first major irony was the following destruction of the remaining Israeli built (mostly agricultural) infrastructure  – which had been left for the use of the Arab population – by Hamas, presumably because it was Israeli built. The following year there was the first (and only) election in Gaza, won by Hamas and which was followed by the murder of those few Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) politicians who had been elected. Mind you, Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the PLO Government in the West Bank is in the…is it the 15th or 16th year of…his 4 year term as President. So not much liberal democracy there either.

Since then, Hamas has ruled (hardly governing in any sense understood by those of us who live in functioning liberal democracies) Gaza, using its geographical base to launch numerous attacks on Israel and getting hammered by the IDF in reply and complaining about Israel’s overwhelming response every time. Some of you may recall that I wrote an article that included a section on what was the legal definition of a proportionate response by a state to being attacked. The answer was not a bullet for a bullet, but a force strong enough to halt the attacker. This means that every response by the IDF, from and including the 1967 war, has been a proportionate response to force and/or threats of force by Israel’s neighbours.

And then came October 7: a brutal, unprovoked attack by a terrorist organisation, so proclaimed by its own pronouncements, so designated by an increasing number of properly elected governments around the world, so defined by its Charter, killing more Jews (and other, non-Jewish Israeli citizens) than had been deliberately killed since the Holocaust. It is, apparently, several times worse, given the size of the population of Israel, than the death toll caused by the terrorists of 9/11. We were in New York, visiting the family there, and we woke up, hours after the event, to this. One notable (positive) event was the sudden switching  (literally as though a switch had been flicked) of MSNBC from its normal programming  as a comment on the politics of the US and some other parts of the world to becoming a news reporting channel.

Suffice to say, we were (and are) traumatised: my wife Ros has family in Israel: she rang them, of course: they were safe (for the time being) in the north of Israel; I emailed Anne: and she and her family were safe: they too live a distance (as these things go) away from Gaza. Still…The younger son of Ros’s family will probably not be called up: he was invalided out during his National Service (a training injury, not a wound), and his older brother is in the UK, posted there by his multinational company employer. Will he go back? No idea, and we haven’t asked…not for us to know or even appear to be pressuring him.

Of course, the IDF response has been aggressive (see the second paragraph of this article) and was even before the scale of the murderous incursion became apparent: Iron Dome did its job. The vast majority of rockets from Gaza were brought down short of their targets. In this regard, Hamas (and Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah) are living proof of Albert Einstein’s definition of madness: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And it’s  only those who mindlessly chant “from the river to the sea…” who really believe that Israel it was that launched the rocket that fell into the hospital car park – you know, the people who don’t care that if “from the river…” came true, there would be another 6 million dead Jews. And, to my astonishment, one of the first non-Israelis to report otherwise was a BBC (yes! a BBC) reporter who was in Gaza and commented that the crater was too small for an Israeli rocket, and that he suspected that it was, as the IDF claimed, an Islamic Jihad rocket that fell  disastrously short.

When Israel’s real response comes, it, I both predict and fear, will be heavy. Those tanks aren’t there on the border for a training exercise. And given his response last time Hezbollah started sending rockets into Northern Israel and got a massive kick-back when Nasrallah (head of Hezbollah) said “Had I known the scale of the response, would I have started the shelling? No.”, we have to wonder what his game is. He must know that Israel has enough fire power to fight on two fronts, even against terrorists rather than regular troops.

And I have even heard a suggestion from a commentator in the area that he suspected that Israel already had agents in the field attempting to locate the hostages.

The contrast between the supporters of the two sides could hardly be more different. 100,000 (it is claimed: really? Who was doing the counting? The organisers?) people in London waving Hamas flags – the flag of an organisation designated as a terrorist organisation – and chanting “from the river to the sea…”

Anti-Israel demonstration in London, October 2023

Sunday 22nd October saw 10,000 (it is claimed) of us in Trafalgar Square. Were we chanting for the destruction of Hamas? Well, one or two of the speakers did (Michael Gove M.P. and the Shadow Minister for International Trade), but beyond condemning the terror, the vast majority of speakers (including the Chief Rabbi of the UK) were demanding that the hostages be brought back (bring them home!). And we sang Hatikvah at the end: not a battle cry, not a call to arms, but a song celebrating Israel, Jerusalem and the Jewish people.

Pro-Israel rally in Trafalgar Square, London, 22 October 2023 (From Times of Israel)

And President Joe Biden has been as good as his word: back in 2020, before the US presidential election, Anne kindly posted this article about whether Biden is good for Israel. There are now 2 (TWO) US Carrier Task Forces in the Eastern Mediterranean. loaded for bear (as the Americans would say) with military re-supplies for Israel. He has been consistent in his support for Israel, even though he and Netanyahu are hardly on the same page re domestic politics. But he did say, pre-election, that “Israel is our only true, true, friend in the region”.

To lighten the mood a bit, we were all so moved by the Canadian pianist Kevin Chen who opened his Carnegie Hall concert on 19th October 2023 with Hatikva in memory of the victims of Hamas:

Am Yisroel Chai!

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Brian, thank you so much for this moving and touching recollection of seeing the terror attack and the atrocities from so far away, amid your very real worry for the safety of family and friends. And kol hakavod for participating in the rally at Trafalgar Square. The support of our Jewish brethren is so important for our morale here in Israel.

Since you wrote this letter – and apologies are owed to you from me for the delay in publishing this – events have overtaken your tale, with the IDF having now entered Gaza in full force, and the northern border heating up with Hezbollah provocations. I might write more about this at some stage but I’m not making any promises!

I would add one small (or not so small!) quibble about the BBC: you wrote that the BBC were the first ones to notice that the crater was too small to be an Israeli rocket. This may be so and I don’t doubt that you saw this comment. But the editors obviously had other ideas and a different agenda (we know what it is: demonise Israel wherever possible, and even wherever technically not possible). And this is not what the BBC eventually put in its headlines. as Camera report.

Those inflammatory and outright false headlines claiming that Israel deliberately targeted the hospital and killed 500 Palestinians incited some of the most massive anti-Israel, and more importantly anti-Jewish riots throughout the world, leading to shuls being burnt down, threats against Jews, chants of genocide and “from the river to the sea” and all the rest of that sickening farrago of racism and bigotry.

In any event, thank you so much also for that beautiful piano recital from Kevin Chien. Just what our aching souls need at the moment.