F*ck The Noise

Children Of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe.

Shavua tov.

It’s been an interesting day so far. I try hard to keep my thoughts and feelings about Israel compartmentalized in this newsletter 98% of the time. Even when I’m heartsick over or furious at the Israeli government or certain subsets of the Israeli population, I prefer to share the angst only with other Jews.

Many of my Black friends told me at the time that they were loathe to criticize Obama in public; they only did so in private, with other members of the Black community. I feel similarly and never more so than now, when so much demonization and such insufferable double standards are being brought to bear on the discussion of this war.

But because the national conversation about the war is 75% of what I’m seeing on my Facebook news feed, today I kind of snapped and typed an impassioned plea to our Jewish family which I then chose to make public on my own Facebook page.

I did this for several reasons:

1. I’m seeing countless Jewish strangers engage in these conversations and I can’t help wanting to reach the ones who aren’t reading this newsletter.
   

2. I want Jewish strangers who might need our community to know about it, and a post that picks up some traction and is widely shared is one way to make that happen.
   

3. I made it clear that non-Jews were not invited to the conversation beneath that post, but at the same time, I wanted them to at least read it and get just a faint idea of the impossible complexity of the strategic calculus we are grappling with and the many terrible ramifications and risks of literally ANY choice Israel makes.
   

4. I wanted them to know at least a few of the most basic truths that most of them seem utterly unaware of — like the fact that Israel *is* providing plenty of aid that the UN refuses to distribute, and that it is life-threatening for ANYONE to try to distribute because Hamas desperately WANTS their own people to starve.
   

5. I want, as always, to be a force for Jewish unity, even and especially when we see this conundrum differently.
   

Here is what I wrote. Feel free to share far and wide. We need to stop fighting. There is so little we can control, but that we can do.

THIS POST IS ONLY FOR JEWS.

Fam, we are in hell and so is Gaza and I don't have any overpowering convictions about the way out with an enemy as sociopathic, murderous, heedless and insane as Hamas and a world who refuses to respond with anything but a child's binaries and one-sided lethal condemnation of Jews.

There is only one thing I know for sure:

****There are no good choices for Israel and we absolutely have to stop attacking each other for intuitively veering toward one lesser evil vs. another.****

You're not evil if you want to do anything in the world to get the hostages back and stop the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, even if it means releasing thousands of Sinwars who will recreate the situation we're in a thousand times, and necessitate that Israel do even more to maintain the blockade and the checkpoints and the walls and every other non-lethal measure she tries to take to protect against that. Of course the hatred of Israel will not abate one shred even if that happens -- it will just shift back into the usual dreary labels of apartheid, colonizers, occupiers, etc.

You're not evil if you believe Israel should take back the Strip, because we tried to give it to Gaza and what they did with it was spend years and billions and nearly all the international aid money not on civic infrastructure, but on a 400-mile terror complex underneath every square millimeter of the 25-mile Strip, while brutalizing their own women, gays, moderates and peace-seekers with the viciousness of any mafia -- and absolutely anything is better than repeating this cycle another time or ten. You're not evil if you reason that Jews were ethnically cleansed from the Strip in 2005 and now it's totally Judenrein and absolutely none of these "humanitarians" gave or give a f*ck, and that both populations will continue to be in hell if Hamas remains in power, and we would make infinitely better use of it.

You're not evil if you think sacrificing more soldiers than hostages, now and multiple times in the future, is too high a price to get our hostages back because our soldiers and their families are just as human and grieve just as piteously as the hostage families, and we are rewarding Hamas for hostage-taking and reinforcing their intention to do it again and again if we meet their ransom and withdraw.

You're not evil if -- again -- you think we have to get our hostages back at any cost at all, because otherwise mothers will not send their children to the IDF, because otherwise we have broken our sacred pact to each other when we created Israel, because otherwise we aren't the same people, the same family.

You're not evil if you talk about Israel ONLY with other Jews and refuse to join the thunderous mob watching Hamas do what it's done to both Israel and their own people and yet screaming ONLY at Israel, rallying and protesting and boycotting and taking countless political actions ONLY against Israel while not being able to find Gaza on a map, while not even being aware that Israel has sent so much aid that the UN won't distribute so it's languishing right at this moment on the Gazan side of the border.

You are not evil if you refuse to write performative posts to convince anyone of your human decency.

You are not evil if you tune out the noise. I BEG YOU: TUNE OUT THE NOISE. If you have to leave social media for a while, do it.

Do not listen. Do not be gaslit. Do not appease. Do not internalize.

We can't create good choices and we can't control the outcome of this war, but WE CAN STOP ATTACKING EACH OTHER and WE ABSOLUTELY MUST. This is all I know for sure.

*

Okay, fam. I will be back with you soon.

I send you love and light and strength.

Mir Veln Zey Iberlebn — I promise you: we will outlive them.

Am Yisrael Chai.