I wrote the other day, HERE, about how I was taking a financial hit because of my support for Israel and the wider Jewish community. Hell what does money matter? I shall not be silenced. But now, perhaps, a more personal hit.
I was silenced once before, some twelve years ago, in my support for Israel when the compliance officer at the firm I then ran, RSH, denied my right to write now and again about this issue. I had free rein to write on all other matters but writing in defence of the Jewish state was banned. It is one reason I could never work for anybody else, I know that at some point my free speech would be restricted. Now I can write what I wish. However..
After my wife, the person who is/was my best friend wrote to me today:
And what on earth could you possibly say in defence of Israel? Just send me 2 plain and simple sentences as to why you would take their side and how you can justify the killing of thousands of children. I am struggling with the news.
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I do not think this person has an anti-semitic bone in their body. I hate to say they are ill acquainted with the facts. I studied this region at Oxford, have visited Israel, the West Bank and Jordan and read about it all the time, but I do not wish to presume others don’t although the level of ignorance of some of those protesting is chilling. I did respond in rather more than two sentences as one cannot explain why supporting Israel does not mean you like seeing children killed in 140 words.
I hope very much that I have not lost a friend. Maybe we can agree to disagree and not discuss it. Or maybe there might be an acceptance that my position is really not that unreasonable. I hope so very much that this is the case. But if it comes to a choice between reaching out to Jewish friends and very publicly calling out the evils of Hamas and those in the West who, whether through ignorance or malice, do not do the same, or do worse, or staying silent , I have no choice, whatever the consequences. I could not live with myself if I stayed silent at this time.
My, slightly edited to protect innocent folk, response was:
The difference is that Hamas targets civilians just because they are Jews, the pogrom of October 7 was the worst since 1945. Babies were beheaded or baked alive in an oven as their mothers were gang raped and fathers shot. But Hamas has tried to kill Jews just for being Jews daily ever since Gaza elected it in 2007 with missile launches into Israel. The Hamas charter explicitly demands that it eradicates the Jews from the region. That is what “from the river to the sea” means.
Israel is targeting combatants. Yes: I weep for the civilians killed because Hamas uses them as human shields deliberately siting its troops in or underneath hospitals, schools and mosques. But Israel is not targeting civilians. That is the difference.
There are no Jews in Gaza. The last ones were those in graves who were pulled out in 2005 along with the living. 20% of Israel’s population are Arabs and most of them of the right age are fighting in the IDF. All can vote for the Knesset, there are Arab supreme court justices. Most of the Israel football team are arabs. I am not sure that Miss Israel has been an Arab but Miss Israel 2013 was a black Jew from Ethiopia, a Falasha, folks Israel had to airlift out en masse from their homes for 2000 years to stop Never Again becoming, It’s time again. Jews need a safe home because of that hatred they suffer. But which is the apartheid state, Israel or Hamas run Gaza?
In 1948 when Israel was established by the UN almost 70% of the folks living there were Jews. Today it is 80% as Jews from across the world have sought sanctuary there. In 1949 there were thriving Jewish populations running into 6 figures in many Arab countries. Today the Jewish communities have 100% disappeared in ALL Arab countries as the alternative to fleeing to Israel was death.
So yes, I support Israel as if it disappears there will be another holocaust. And in the battle underway I lament all civilian deaths on both sides but only 1 side is targeting civilians and that is not Israel.
I l hope you are not offended by this but in an era when Jews across Britain and America are terrified in a way not witnessed for 78 years I do reach out to them, my old babysitter now terrified of wearing a star of David in London, to my father’s godson in LA ( whose grandfather was in a camp), to an elderly lady who once offered me shelter in New York with folks marching into her neighbourhood BECAUSE its a Jewish neighbourhood. I reach out to a mutual Israeli friend asking after October 7 if his family was alright and hoping he does not mind having to lock himself inside every Saturday as folks march through London waving ISIS banners and chanting from the River to the Sea. He knows what that means.
I’d hate myself if I was not reaching out to terrified folks now and offering a fact based counter-narrative to what a hostile press says.
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