ON HOPE AND HOSTAGES

NAVIGATING IMPOSSIBLE CHOICES HAS A LONG HISTORY IN JEWISH LIFE. THE CURRENT MOMENT IS A TESTAMENT TO THIS TRUTH.

Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

My Substack is not about current events. Billions of words are spilled on the subjects I choose to write about, and my snarky contributions are not so much about day-to-day occurrences as an attempt to find larger threads running through history that relate in some way, however obliquely, to what is happening in the world. To flatter myself, I guess I would say I am trying to put things in a context.

So I do not generally respond to the news of the day. Mine is obviously not a “This Just In!” Substack.

Still, I started this process as a response to the changed world that emerged after October 7. While I write about Israel and Palestine, this is really a Substack about us — Canadians and Americans and Europeans and others who have adopted a deeply perverted response to events in those places and, as a result, are harming our own multicultural societies and, not incidentally, crapping all over our professed values of tolerance, inclusion, progress and human decency.

I have always maintained that peace and coexistence in this context require that neither side “wins.” The hysterical anti-Israel (and, not incidentally, anti-Jewish) frenzy we have seen worldwide since October 7, 2023, will never bring peace or Palestinian self-determination. It pushes these ostensible objectives further away.

A throughline in my writing is that the people who call themselves “pro-Palestinian” aren’t.

They will fight for Palestine to the last dead Palestinian, if necessary — because, not only are dead Palestinians no skin off the noses of Canadian or Swedish activists, the piles of bodies are actually arrows in the quiver of their anti-Israel (and antisemitic) hatred.

Let’s get this on the table, because it’s far too often overlooked: Every Palestinian and Israeli life lost has been lost because Hamas launched and perpetuated this war.

Every action by overseas activists that condemned Israel, rather than demanding the surrender and defeat of Hamas, contributed to these deaths.

With precious few exceptions, the millions who have been marching worldwide in the past year-and-a-half demonstrate little to no interest in the well-being of actual Palestinians. Both Israelis and Palestinians, for most of these people, are avatars in an ideological game. And the more dead Palestinians, the more the “pro-Palestinian” side “wins.”

For peace, coexistence and Palestinian self-determination, we all need to recognize that both sides need to win some, and both sides need to lose some.

We cannot be “pro-Israel” and “anti-Palestinian.”

We cannot be “pro-Palestinian” and “anti-Israel.”

If we genuinely believe in peace and coexistence, we can only choose to be pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian.

Zionism envisioned a Jewish people living in coexistence with their neighbors in their ancient and modern homeland. I mean, what Jew in their right mind would invent an ideology that led to more of the same of 2,000 years of Jews in conflict with their neighbors?

The “pro-Palestinian” narrative blames Jews and Israelis for the lack of peace, but a fair reading of history demonstrates to reasonable people that Israelis have been willing to live in coexistence; leaders of the Palestinians and the broader Arab and Muslim worlds, with a few recent exceptions, have not. Israelis and Jews have been willing to accept half a pie. Overwhelmingly, Palestinians and the rest of the region have demanded the entire pie.

Israel’s enemies love to trot out Israeli extremists as universals. Yeah, yeah, yeah: Kahane, Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, blah, blah, blah.

But these figures emerged in response to Arab intransigence. Has extremism gained strength in Israel recently? It seems to have — in direct correlation with the evidence that there is no partner for peace on the other side. Perhaps Israeli voters, having had the olive branch repeatedly slapped out of their hands — and their entire hand blown off by terrorists — finally decided to fight fire with fire.

But let’s not confuse forests for trees. Israeli extremism is a component of a complex, diverse body politic. If there were any evidence for peace and a two-state solution that would allow both peoples to live in peace, Israelis would grab it with both hands and never let go. The fact that no such evidence exists can only be pinned on the Palestinian side.

Something I have learned in my decades of hanging around Jews is that Jewish people and traditions recognize the inextricability of joy and grief. This is most commonly demonstrated in the smashing of the glass at a wedding to represent the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

This tradition recognizes that life is rarely all one thing or all another. This duality, or plurality, is reflected in Israel’s robust democracy. It is also reflected in the reactions to the current hostage deal.

An Israeli friend I spoke with this week said the atmosphere there is extraordinarily hopeful. But that is a relative term.

The hostage deal that has been announced will seemingly bring to a close a particular chapter in the moment of history we are living through.

If the remaining hostages are released, and the war, in its current incarnation, ends, this will mark in some sense the conclusion of the epoch that began on October 7, 2023.

Of course, things will never be the same. Not for the Palestinians and Israelis killed, obviously. Nor for their families. The mental scars carried by millions of combatants and non-combatants may never heal. For the hostages, we cannot even begin to fathom what reintegration into “ordinary” life could possibly entail. Everyone affected by this war — and that means every person in Israel and every person in Gaza and plenty more besides — is forever changed.

And what happens next?

Will Hamas, which has been weakened but not yet entirely eradicated, rise again as the Taliban has returned to terrorize the people of Afghanistan?

Will the Palestinian people and their leaders accept as, say, the Germans and the Japanese did after the Second World War, that belligerence is not in their people’s best interests? Or will they continue their eight-decade errand to eradicate the Jews from the Middle East? Will Israelis, if convinced that peace is possible, elect a government that reflects a changed reality?

Like everything in the future, these questions are unanswerable.

There is joy and hope mingled with anxiety as Israeli families wait to see which of the remaining hostages are alive, which are dead and which, I hesitate to express this, exist in some in-between condition.

For the people of Gaza, will the future be better? Despite the narrative that things could not possibly get worse for them, one only need look at some other places in the region to see that they absolutely could deteriorate unless some unprecedented political and societal shift takes place toward peace, coexistence and, hope against hope, democracy and progress. That is not something over which Israel has control. If it were, Gaza (and the West Bank) would have opted for peace and democratic coexistence decades ago.

If both sides need to win some, and both sides need to lose some, this is unequivocally embodied in this hostage deal. Israel has promised gargantuan compromises — freeing terrorists responsible for some of the grisliest crimes in human history.

Israelis and their overseas allies are arguing fiercely over whether the cost is worth the reward but, ultimately, the Jewish value of pikuach nefesh, guarding a life, means placing the imperative of saving lives above every other value.

The Talmud declares: “Whoever saves a single life is considered as if he saved an entire world.”

That is the value that seems to motivate this hostage and ceasefire deal.

We hope this current conflict is coming to an end. The longer conflict — the ideological, existential motivation to drive the Jews from their homeland — is not over.

But, like Jews have done throughout history, celebrating joy where it may fleetingly arise, Israelis and those who care about them will rejoice in every freed hostage and pray and strive for a lasting peace.

A personal note …

I started this Substack because I thought my perspective as a progressive, gay, non-Jewish, Zionist Canadian offered something different to the dialogue about antisemitism, anti-Zionism, Palestinians and peace. It actually never crossed my mind that people might give me money for it. When people started generously subscribing and donating, I threw myself into this project more, partly because I am a writer by trade and I am still building my RSPs for some distant retirement. Based on online advice (!) I started making my Saturday posts for “Paid Subscribers Only.” But, I modestly acknowledge, each one is too delicious to paywall. So I am going to assume that, if you like my stuff and want more of it, you’ll give if you can. If not, please share. (Please share regardless!) No more paywalls. But there may be other incentives I could offer. Not sure what. Got any ideas? Do folks want to get together for online discussions or see me compile some of these posts as a book? Let me know. Meanwhile, enjoy! (If that is the right word for these sometimes dark musings.)