Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place (#1,011)

October 21, 2024 / Kurt F. Stone

With Thursday’s assassination of Yahya Ibrahim Hassan Sinwar, the chair of the Hamas Political Bureau, leader of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, and a chief architect of Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel a little over a year ago, Israel has made a huge dent in a prime objective: eliminating most - if not all - of the prime leaders of both Hamas and Hezbollah. For in addition to Sinwar, whose targeted assassination was captured by an Israeli drone, Israeli intelligence has managed to eliminate, among others, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in a massive Israeli air strike on Beirut this past September 28, and Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas since 2017, who was assassinated in the early hours of July 31 in Teheran. This is only part of Israel’s "Most Wanted” list. Also taken out in recent months have been Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s top commander, senior Hezbollah commander Taleb Abdallah, who led forces in the central and southern border strip firing missiles into Northern Israel, and Mohammed Nasser, who Israel says headed a unite responsible for firing missiles from southwestern Lebanon into Israel.

Despite all these targeted deaths, it does not appear that neither Hamas nor Hezbollah is going to give up attacking Israel. Moreover, Israeli P.M. Benyamin Netanyahu has publicly stated that although the killing of Sinwar et al should end the Gaza War, he won’t let it. He took an ambiguous stance in announcing the death of Sinwar. After speaking with President Biden, his office released a statement that acknowledged “an opportunity to advance the release of the hostages.” But in an earlier video statement, Mr. Netanyahu appeared to side with his coalition partners, warning Israelis of tough challenges ahead and pledging to continue to pursue Hamas’ remaining leadership.

I for one will shed not a single tear over the death of Yahya Sinwar. Regardless of how his early life in a rundown refugee camp (Khan Yunis, which at the time of his 1962 birth was under Egyptian control) how it pushed him towards violent hatred for the Jewish State. The man was, simply stated, a fascist psychopathic, murderer; a man whose repeated gruesome murders of suspected collaborators with Israel earned him both four life sentences in an Israeli prison in 1988, and the nickname “The Butcher of Khan Younis.” What the immediate, mid- and long-range effect his death will have on the future of the bloody struggle between Israel, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon is anyone’s guess.

Still seeking a cease fire as well as the return of all surviving hostages, President Bided has sent American Secretary of State Anthony Blinken back to the region for what will be his 11th trip since October 7, 2023. According to the State Department, Secretary Blinken will visit Jerusalem and a number of Arab countries, once again attempting to hammer out a cease fire. Whether or not this will be in the offing is hard to imagine; this past Saturday, Teheran’s proxy, Hezbollah, launched three drones from Lebanon in an attack targeting PM and Mrs. Netanyahu’s private residence in the central seaside town of Caesarea. Two drones were intercepted over Rosh Hanikra and Nahariya, while the third, according to Axios, hit the Netanyahu’s home. The couple were not at home at the time. This certainly cannot bode well for achieving the POTUS’s goal. Netanyahu’s initial public response was aimed directly at Iran: “The agents of Iran who tried to assassinate me and my wife today made a bitter mistake . . . “

History is replete with fascists (long before the word was first coined by Benito Mussolini in 1915), anti-Semites (first used by German agitator Wilhelm Marr in 1879) and mass murderers who, with or without just cause, sought the utter destruction of a perceived enemy. When it comes to the utter annihilation of the Jews, several names and events stand out:

British Kings Richard I (Richard Coeur de Lion - reigned Sept. 1189-Apr. 1199) and Edward III (known as “Longshanks” and “Hammer of the Scots,” who reigned from Nov. 1272-Jul. 1307): the former was responsible for the total massacre of the Jewish community of York at Clifford’s Tower in 1190; the latter expelled virtually every Jew from England by All Saints Day (November 1, 1290).
The medieval “Black Death” (Bubonic Plague, caused by infection with the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which originated in China and Inner Asia, arrived in Europe in 1347. By a rough estimate, 25 million people died during this pandemic. Members of the clergy and many royals blamed Jews, who died in far fewer numbers (likely as a result of a Jewish law making it mandatory to wash one’s hands before eating). Anti-Semitism greatly intensified throughout Europe as Jews were blamed for the spread of the Black Death. A wave of violent pogroms ensued, and entire Jewish communities were killed throughout Central Europe by mobs, or burned at the stake en masse.
The Ukrainian Hetman (nobleman/military leader) Bohdan Chmielnicki, who between 1648 and 1649 is estimated to have brutally and viciously murdered tens of thousands of Polish Jews, in the process destroying more than 300 Jewish communities. Chmielnicki’s initial agitation against the government was due to a property dispute with a neighboring (Polish) nobleman who tried to steal Chmielnicki’s estate. Jews were easy targets for Chmielnicki and the Cossacks, who joined him in a bloody uprising. Since the Jews were usually well educated, knew mathematics and how to read and write, a substantial number of Jews served as representatives of the Polish nobility and ran their estates.
SS Stadartenfürer Paul Blogel, who was responsible for carrying out the murder of 33,771 Jews over a 2 day period (September 29-30, 1941) at Babyn Yar (sometimes spelled “Babi Yar”), a ravine in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev.

Is it any wonder that a vast majority of Jewish people around the world acted with aggressive solidarity when Sinwar’s Hamas terrorists murdered more than 1,200 men, women and children on October 7, 2023? 1,200 deaths in a country whose Jewish population is approximately 7,208,000, is the equivalent of approximately 57,190 men, women and children of any and all religions in the United States, which had a 2023 population of c. 343,477,335. Could anyone blame the United States - let alone Israel - for retaliating with just about everything in its arsenal? A country or sovereign state can (or should) have the right to defend itself and protect its citizens against those who are its attackers. With Israel (and the United States, its major backer) the rules change when the issue is proportionality . . . i.e. how much tonnage for how much mayhem and murder.

Throughout modern history, the American military - often along with its allies - has decimated entire cities and regions as a means of retaliation. Think of the firebombing of Dresden, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which forever changed human history, and the March 1945 bombing of Tokyo (codenamed Operation Meetinghouse), which killed at least 80.000 people.

When it comes to Israel’s retaliation against both Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, things are far, far more difficult to comprehend. I guess much of the world can no longer accept David’s protecting himself and his kingdom against Goliath and his henchmen. Many people across the globe still view reality as a zero-sum, black-and-white, us-versus-them proposition . . . without possessing a grasp of the history of religion, politics or ethnopsychology. Although reasonably well educated, I find myself in the throes of an emotional/intellectual dilemma . . . that which an Israeli would identify as נתפס בין הפטיש לסדן (neetpas bayn ha-pahsheet l’sadahn . . . “Caught between the hammer and the anvil) e.g. “caught between a rock and a hard place.”

To wit, how to reconcile being foursquarely on the side of the Israelis when it comes to eliminating the bloodthirsty leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, without garnering the world’s utter wrath for killing so many tens of thousands of mostly innocent civilians . . . all the “collateral damage,” the undesired death, injury and damage? How can one be an אוהב ישראל (ohev Yisrael – a “lover of Israel”) while refusing to be a סנקציה של הרס (sanktzya shel heres – a “sanctioner of destruction?” Indeed, it is a disparity which invades my nightly sleep.

I know that I am not alone; most of my family and friends suffer from the same political/psychological bipolarity. Solving this conundrum is never going o be easy. I guess that’s why we’ve long said

("S'iz sjver tsi zayn a yid") .ס'איז שווער צו זײַן אַ ייִד

“It’s hard to be a Jew"

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