Holding Complexity: A Lesson We Must Learn From Israel

American society’s lockstep attitudes toward politics and ideology have led some to see terrorism as a just cause. Opening our minds can save us.

A frightening message: Many pro-Palestine advocates have justified the Oct. 7 massacre as a form of “resistance.”

It Can Happen Here

In the early 1920s, my wife’s father, Aaron Turk, left Poland for America as a young boy and settled in Chicago with his parents and 10 siblings.

Some years later, his older brother, Wolf, decided to return to Poland. He and his wife and young daughter were never heard from again, presumably perishing in the Holocaust.  

Like many of his generation, my father-in-law spoke often with bitterness of the anti-Semitism that Polish Jews endured, and of how Germans embraced Hitler’s demonic obsession to destroy the Jewish people. Though he loved America, he warned us that virulent Jew-hatred could happen anywhere, even in the Land of the Free. 

We insisted that America was different, that its commitment to liberty, justice and human rights was a foundational belief and that virulent anti-Semitism was confined to the fringes of our enlightened society.

We were wrong.

October 7 brought that hard lesson home.

The Hamas pogrom that was carried out that day with such savage enthusiasm, and hailed by many here and around the world in the name of “resistance,” not only murdered 1,2000 Israeli souls but killed any belief that open, widespread Jew-hatred in a civil society was beyond the pale.

I have been covering Jewish life professionally for almost all of my adult life and I have never seen, or even imagined, the grim, frightening reality we are facing. Israel is engaged in a potentially existential fight at home, where the enemy’s target is the citizens of the state, not just the IDF, and anti-Semitism is rampant not only around the world but here in the U.S., and, especially disturbing, on college campuses.

Despite the heroic embrace of Israel by President Biden, who has passionately supported Jerusalem’s right to defend its citizens and put an end to Hamas terror, large numbers of our countrymen have taken up the cause of Hamas, chanting, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” 

Free of Jews, that is.

“We are living the ultimate Jewish nightmare,” author and educator Yossi Klein Halevi has written. “To be slaughtered and then branded the criminal.”

Justifying Evil

Perhaps most devastating after absorbing the shock of the Simchat Torah pogrom is the sharp and historically high level of anti-Semitsm we see all around us, with a significant number of young American Jews taking sides against Israel. 

Erin Axelman, director of the controversial new documentary “Israelism,” which asserts that our Jewish youth are being “brainwashed” by Jewish schools and organizations into supporting immoral Zionism, told The Guardian newspaper: “It’s true that Hamas murdered innocent civilians on a mass scale that is unbelievably traumatizing for Jewish people.” Axelman went on to say the attack must be seen “in the context of brutal occupation.” 

Please read that first Axelman quote again. And then ask yourself: Is it possible that only Jews found slaughtering, torturing, beheading, burning and raping of families, children and the elderly to be traumatizing? 

What moral person, regardless of political views, is not pained by the deliberate murder of innocents? 

Axelman’s comments are a vivid example of justifying pure evil acts in the name of a higher cause, indicative of a dangerous trend in our society: Adhering to one belief – politically, culturally and ideologically,  based more on emotions than facts – and ignoring or discounting other viewpoints. 

Social scientists explain that when we are confronted with facts that contradict our beliefs, we tend to double-down, placing heart over mind. We stick  with our views and ignore reality or come up with conspiracy theories to explain away the discrepancies. 

Another example: what are we to make of anti-Israel protesters holding signs like “Queers for Palestine”? They either don’t know or choose to dismiss the fact that Israel has been and continues to be an LGBTQ haven, while much of the Arab world bans gay practices. Hamas has executed some offenders. Some gay Arabs flee to Israel to live without fear of arrest.

Rather than assessing facts, making logical decisions based on reality and holding to a moral compass of right vs. wrong, large numbers of college students – and their professors – have come to view the world narrowly, in terms of oppressed vs. oppressor, with no room for history, context or the calculus of simple decency. 

Only in that way could the Hamas pogrom be defended as a form of “resistance” and 3-year-olds viewed as legitimate targets. 

“We are being bombarded with rhetoric that seeks to persuade us not to believe what we see,” observed Gerard Baker in a recent Wall Street Journal column, “to convince us that right is wrong, justice is tyranny, terrorism is heroism.” 

Even George Orwell would be shocked.

Tunnel Vision Is Blinding

The inability or unwillingness to hold two different, and sometimes competing, ideas at the same time is, as Edieal Pinker, writing in The Jewish Review of Books, noted, “at the heart of a pervasive wrongheadedness and moral failure in our public discourse.” 

Being so committed to one point of view, regardless of changing circumstances, precludes the possibilities for creative uses of imagination. Consider how Israeli society was able to avoid that pitfall in dramatic fashion. 

Brothers In Arms, the group that led 10 months of huge protests against the Netanyahu government’s slide toward autocracy, changed overnight after the Oct. 7 attack. The group immediately suspended all protests and political action and organized a vast range of volunteer assistance and relief efforts for soldiers and others in need, under the name Brothers and Sisters for Israel. 

One day decrying the government, the next day coming to its aid.

Likewise, most Israelis are fiercely opposed to and deeply distrustful of the prime minister – a poll last week found 4 percent believe what he says – but they are fully supportive of the government’s commitment to end Hamas’s reign of terror.

To the detriment of our society, though, too many of us hold fast to our views  – and tunnel vision can be blinding. People tend to vote the party line, Red or Blue, and seek news and information only from like-minded sources, at the price of keeping an open mind and making choices based on a wide range of perceptions.

Venturing away from one’s base and looking both ways can be enlightening, like my discovering that Fox News coverage of this war is more favorable to Israel than some left-leaning networks. Similarly, The Wall Street Journal’s lenient approach to Donald Trump may upset me, but I appreciate the fullness of their coverage of the war. The New York Times is an excellent source on a wide range of issues but I find their scrutiny of Israel excessive. 

Many major media outlets highlight dramatic photos and reporting of Gazans suffering while barely noting that they are held hostage and used as human shields by Hamas. And little attention is given to the multiple and incredibly complex “Sophie’s Choice” issues facing Israel, adding rescuing more than 200 hostages to the delicate mix.

Many in the mainstream acknowledge Israel’s right to defeat Hamas terrorists – as long as the IDF keeps civilian casualties to a minimum. But no one has offered a viable solution to how that can be accomplished. Because it can’t. 

It’s like tying Israel’s hands behind its back, and when it uses its legs to stave off further attacks, the world cries, “fight fair.”

Fending Off Despair

The feelings so many of us share now are a blend of fear, anger, humility and pride. What helps keep me grounded in these dark days are the two WhatsApp chats on my phone that I check most regularly. 

One is “Israel Realtime,” an Israel-based, around-the-clock summary of the latest news on the war, written concisely and using a variety of sources, mostly the IDF. I find it invaluable. And hard to read, describing the ground war in Gaza, rocket attacks in the north, violence in the West Bank, and the names and ages of fallen soldiers. 

As an antidote to the grim news of the day, I rely on “Only Good News From Israel,” mostly videos that inspire. They show members of the IDF singing, praying and celebrating simchas, as well as a wide range of creative and dedicated efforts by volunteers, including providing food, clothing and love for the soldiers.

Trying to keep an emotional and ethical balance at this delicate and dangerous moment in Jewish history, I struggle to uphold Israel as family, making the case for its renewed strengthened deterrence while acknowledging the tragic suffering of innocent Gazans. Everyday I find myself seeking out news reports, analyses and words of wisdom wherever I can find them, from Israeli media and timely podcasts to daily prayers and poignant Tehillim (The Book of Psalms).

Being a part of the huge crowd at the National Mall in Washington this past week was a deeply inspirational experience. I was in awe of how the organizers put together in about two weeks what turned out to be the largest Jewish rally in  U.S. history. It was gratifying to hear the many speakers, including leaders of Congress from both parties, express their support for Israel, and painfully moving to absorb the messages from family members of hostages in Gaza urging us to keep their loved ones uppermost in our minds and hearts. 

For those of us who were at the famous Soviet Jewry rally at the National Mall in December 1987, which drew 250,000 people, it was especially meaningful to see and hear Natan Sharansky, the most famous refusenik, on the stage, reminding us how people like us with a cause and commitment can change history. 

(On an otherwise balanced program, I couldn’t help notice that while no rabbis addressed the crowd, the only clergy to do so was Rev. John Hagee, the televangelist who founded Christians United for Israel. His organization has been a major source of political and financial support, but he has made a number of controversial statements about our people, including that Jews have suffered persecution as punishment for not obeying God.)

The most powerful feelings I had that day, though, were of pride and solidarity, knowing we are not alone in our devotion to Israel, particularly at a time when so many in this country whose causes we supported have been silent when it comes to ours. But we have taken comfort in and strength from each other, and in an Israeli society that has joined arms, at least for now, to ensure the survival and future of the Jewish state.

Rabbi Shai Held, president and a founder of the Hadar Institute, concluded a powerful address the other day by reminding his audience that “despair is not a luxury we are permitted,” according to Jewish tradition. “I am not optimistic about the future,” he said, “but I am hopeful.”

He asserted that “genuine hope requires commitment” and action, and that as Jews, it is essential for us to hope. 

That message resonates for me, and I take comfort in the words from Psalm 30 that we recite every morning: “At night there may be weeping, but in the morning there is joy.”