Two Jewish Views of the War in Gaza

The War in the Long, Tragic History of the Jewish People 

Two articles in the New York Times of April 28, 2024 display two very different views of the war in Gaza. Both articles are by Jews with long experience and deep knowledge of the history of Israel and the politics of the Middle East. Both authors place the security of the State of Israel at the center of the discussion, but they see the Israel’s security in very different ways. Unfortunately, too many Jews share the first of the two views and fail to see the reality in the second.

The first view is contained in an interview with Yair Lapid, the official leader of the opposition in the Knesset. Lapid views the war in Gaza as an extension of the centuries-long struggle against antisemitism. For him, the context of the war is provided by the Holocaust and by Israel's desperate struggle for independence in 1948. When the interviewer asks him who is to blame for the way that young Americans seem to view the war in Gaza, he says,

First and foremost, I blame it on a cynical radical Islamic movement that is using the lack of knowledge from American youngsters, who are buying this as part of an ongoing struggle between the oppressors and those who are oppressed, or between white privileged people and people who are not. We keep telling them: Anne Frank was not a white privileged kid. And the story is not what you are told, and how come you’re marching in favor of people who want to kill Jews because they’re Jews? Because this is the way Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic Jihad are.

Later in the interview, Lapid says,

Right now, to engage in this war has only one alternative, and this is being murdered. We never asked for this war. We never wanted this war, and we only went for this war because our children were burned alive. Because our elderly were killed. Because we have, even right now, still hostages in the terror tunnels. And they raped women, and they conquered villages. And more than that, they have openly said — they meaning Hamas — that if they have a chance, they’ll do it again. And therefore, we are in Gaza to make sure it will never happen again.

“Never again” will defenseless Jews be slaughtered. “Never again” will there be another Holocaust.

The War in the Contemporary Middle East

The second view of the war appears in an article by Thomas Friedman, a journalist and a friend of Israel who has spent a lifetime reporting on events in the Middle East. For Friedman, the context of the war is not the Holocaust but the current geopolitical situation in the Middle East. He says,

U.S. diplomacy to end the Gaza war and forge a new relationship with Saudi Arabia has been converging in recent weeks into a single giant choice for Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: What do you want more — Rafah or Riyadh?

Do you want to mount a full-scale invasion of Rafah to try to finish off Hamas — if that is even possible — without offering any Israeli exit strategy from Gaza or any political horizon for a two-state solution with non-Hamas-led Palestinians? If you go this route, it will only compound Israel’s global isolation and force a real breach with the Biden administration.

Or do you want normalization with Saudi Arabia, an Arab peacekeeping force for Gaza and a U.S.-led security alliance against Iran? This would come with a different price: a commitment from your government to work toward a Palestinian state with a reformed Palestinian Authority — but with the benefit of embedding Israel in the widest U.S.-Arab-Israeli defense coalition the Jewish state has ever enjoyed and the biggest bridge to the rest of the Muslim world Israel has ever been offered, while creating at least some hope that the conflict with the Palestinians will not be a “forever war.’’

A New Thing in Jewish History

Both Lapid and Friedman are concerned about Israel’s security, but for Lapid, the situation has not really changed much since 1948. The Jews still stand alone against a hostile world, and Israel is still a poor, weak country that is just managing to survive in a sea of hostile neighbors. Friedman, on the other hand sees Israel as a strong, rich country that could play a significant role in an alliance with Saudi Arabia and the United States, and he sees such an alliance as offering a better chance for Israel’s security than Lapid’s “go it alone” approach could offer.

The Israel that Friedman sees is a new thing in Jewish history. We Jews have traditionally recounted our history as a series of calamities: the expulsion from the Land of Israel, the massacre of the Jews of the Rhineland by the crusaders, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 and of course, the Holocaust. We have traditionally seen ourselves as the helpless victims of such tragedies.

The State of Israel was established by people who said, “never again.” Never again will we be helpless victims. We will establish our own country, and we will be strong. That was the heart of the Zionist program, and much to the surprise of most people, the program succeeded. Israel is strong, but that reality is hard for us to assimilate. It is easier for us to see Israel’s strength as only a fragile and temporary pause in our long, tragic history and to fear that Hamas’s attack is just one more attempt to exterminate us. 

That fear explains the frenzy of Israel’s response, but that frenzy is wrong, and it will ultimately be ineffective. We must learn to see the Israel that Friedman sees. We must accept that Israel is strong and that its strength provides a new context. We are no longer helpless victims. Hamas cannot return us to what we were before the Holocaust. We must learn to see the attacks on the State of Israel not merely as yet more attempts to exterminate us but as maneuvers in a broader geopolitical struggle, and we must learn to respond in that context.