The "Palestinians" don't deserve their own state, unless it's situated as far away from Israel as possible! Otherwise, they deserve nothing, least of all our patient explanations and our generosity.
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October 7 Should Have Caused A Massive Return To Reality: It Didn’t
10/7 Ought To Have Been A Wake Up Call To Each Of Us. It Wasn’t.
Joshua Namm, 10-9-26
Like everyone else, the anniversary of October 7 always brings up memories and the feelings which they cause. The latter always include deep sorrow and rage.
Each year, the memorials, social media posts, and everything else – brings me right back to what I felt, thought, and experienced that day.
I also know that I am not the same person I was before the worst day for the Jewish people since the Shoah. Each 10/7 anniversary I am reminded why, and in ways that are starker than during the other 364 days of the year.
I know that many of us feel the same way. One of the ways in which the differences manifest is that there are things in my life that now seem trivial, or at the very least – far less important, than they did before.
It didn’t “wake me up,” as much as it made it impossible for the real world not to be front and center every single day. By the “real world” I mean one that is no longer a product of the “golden age” of American Jewry where Holocaust level antisemitism seemed a thing of the past. One in which I increasingly understand what it must have felt like for Jews of the 1930s. A day doesn’t go by in which I don’t see a Palestinian flag (which, like it or not, is today’s Nazi flag), anti-Israel protests, or even just the explosion of Arab Muslim “culture” were I live (Hollywood, California).
Yes, some of it is on social media, and some of it is in person. Does that even matter? If anything, while social media can magnify the views of a few, it is also a much wider lens in which to view world events than humans have ever had.
The view is not good.
Thinking about that yesterday inspired me to write a quick article about my personal “take aways” from the three years following the barbaric, subhuman attack on our people.
1. It is an absolute abomination and travesty that Hamas still exists. I don’t care about the “progress” Israel has made, and I don’t care about the same excuses we’ve heard since it became clear that Israel was “mowing the lawn” once again, albeit in a much more intense fashion.
It is bizarre to me to deem a three-year war against a bunch of murderous, low IQ, rapist barbarians as “progress.” Israel has the most powerful military in the Middle East (a fact which has become crystal clear, even to the Arabs, since 10/7). The weakness we project feeding our enemy, giving them electricity, and wringing our hands over their safety is phenomenal.
Every single person who so much as smiled at the evil of 10/7 in Israel and Gaza should be dead today, and the name “Hamas” a decaying memory.
And no, it doesn’t “take time,” and no they haven’t been “permanently disabled,” and no some massive action to finally demolish them is not “just around the corner.”
And for much of that time the ONLY legitimate argument against attacking Gaza with every bit of Israeli force available was that the hostages would potentially be harmed. I saw both sides of that argument, risking Jewish lives to protect hostages which may, or may not, have even still be alive was a tough choice. One that I was never fully comfortable having a definitive opinion about.
But on the other hand – it was also a favorite excuse of people who couldn’t accept any serious attack on Gaza.
I can’t count how many times I was told “after the hostages are released, Israel will go in and completely destroy Hamas. You’ll see.”
Yeah. Right.
Like so many of the lazy excuses people make for people/causes they want to believe in, it was usually invoked reflexively. In retrospect, and even at the time, it seems clear that it was just something to say - either out of comfort or naivete.
But given Israel’s history of choosing the politically easy way out, right up to 10/7, a mindset that allowed 10/7 to happen – I was never convinced that it was anything but a truly hollow excuse.
I was right.
2. There is no genocide. Israel has been accused of genocide, literally since its inception. So, the continued, foolish, policy to risk Israeli soldiers to save Arab civilians (meaning: Hamas voters/supporters) is despicable, as is the refusal to bring the full force of every aspect of Israel’s military to utterly destroy the enemy (and not just Hamas).
No matter what: Israel was always going to be accused of genocide. So, if the goal was good PR, then it clearly didn’t work. Risking Jewish lives to avoid a label that was always going to be falsely applied anyway was an abomination.
Instead we have record antisemitism globally, a mayor of New York City who, along with his repugnant wife, supports what happened. As do a legion of American politicians, mayors, congresspeople, city council members, etc. And soon a Senator from Michigan.
The United Kingdom and France are worse.
All of academia, completely unsurprisingly, is ok with 10/7, as is almost all of the entertainment world.
You get the idea. I write about it every single month.
3. Antisemitism across the globe has exploded. “Zionist” is now used interchangeably for “Jew,” in the way that word was used in the 1930s.
The usual fools who believe that the massive protests which broke out on 10/8/23 were mere political protests, and not mass expressions of Nazi-like Jew hatred.
What was the point of trying to be the “nice guy” (again) for the last six decades? As it turned out, there was no good will in the bank for Israel or the Jewish people. At least not enough to matter, and in reality, there was far less than even general decency required.
Proving once again, that Israel is always best served by ignoring public opinion. I despise the weak position that “we need the world on our side,” when “the world” has chosen to let us burn time after time.
How can even a single person still be that foolish?
In large part, Israel was founded to protect Jewish lives at all costs. Therefore, Israel should have taken as many lives as necessary to win this war decisively, with finality, and most importantly: conduct war in a way that would strike absolute fear in our enemies.
They need to KNOW that if they touch a hair on one of our heads, death will knock on their doors either so quickly that they won’t even have time to notice, or if that’s not possible: that there is no escape from Jewish justice and you will be tracked down, and eventually eliminated.
That’s how the Middle East works.
After 77 years of having our own state (again) - we are still too dependent.
Allies are great. Dependence is dangerous.
Nothing should deter us from doing whatever is necessary to protect what we are: the remnant of the 16.5 million of us who existed before the Shoah (we are FAR more than “just” that, but you get my point).
4. As I alluded to before, another lesson is that we were wrong to believe that antisemitism was significantly eradicated. We learned that it was just not socially polite to be a Jew hater for the last 87 years. The second that permission was granted again on 10/8/23: millions got the message that it’s “ok” again, And now it’s back in vogue.
5. It is amazing to me how after the past three years, so many people still haven’t learned the lessons of 10/7, and behave like it never happened.
I get the trauma of that day. Obviously, I feel it too.
But trauma of that magnitude ought to have woken all of us up. Instead for many, it caused recession into a mental fetal position of self-delusion. Pretending that there can still be a “two state solution” (almost exclusively a Diaspora position, or a convenient talking point for our enemies at this point), or even peace with any nation, group, or individual that takes Islam seriously is a joke.
The more I learn about Islam, the more that I understand that it is not a religion, but instead a cultish political ideology that demands total obedience – with hatred of Jews as its central motivating factor. “Allah” is just the excuse for the pre-civilizational behavior. It is clear that there is no such thing as an Islam able to co-exist with Western values and culture.
None of that is easy to say for an educated guy who grew up bathed in the classically liberal American obsession with pluralism.
I know that it’s scary. It is also true. So wake up.
6. It may have been a mistake to rely on the horrors of that day to “convince” people that they should side with us. I have come to realize that most people just don’t care.
I had lunch with a non-Jew I went to high school with about a year and a half after 10/7. The subject came up and I was stunned as I listened to him ask “Oh yeah, didn’t something bad happen to the Jews that day?”
This is also an educated person, who grew up in Los Angeles, and went to a high school that while secular, was majority Jewish. As far as I know he has no history of antisemitism. And no, he wasn’t joking - he was absolutely serious. That day just isn’t something that made any impression on him at all. Any more than an earthquake in South America, a flood in Japan, or riots in France, etc. truly have an impact on most of our lives.
Particularly, more than a year later.
Even decent people have an amazing capacity to mentally distance themselves from things that they just don’t care about.
But at the same time, our enemies are perversely excited by the carnage of 10/7.
So in retrospect, it probably would have been more valuable to turn Gaza into a parking lot/beach front property and make a film about that.
I don’t know about you, but I would definitely prefer being feared than being seen as a victim. More than anything else, seeing our suffering and Jews as victims has always been what gets our non-Jewish enemies going.
The failure of Holocaust education has proven that Western liberals only really like dead Jews (G-d forbid), and Jewish suffering is merely a convenient talking point for our enemies who exploit it for their own gain.
Islamist-in-chief Zohran Mamdani’s despicably evil 10/7 speech is a prime example.
We need strength. We need to be feared. (See #3)
Part of that is that we absolutely need to stop being “ghetto Jews” expressing (or even feeling) gratitude just for being treated like equal human beings. I’ve seen WAY too much obsequious groveling at every expression of basic decency, especially when they come from celebrities.
And stop thanking famous people in social media posts that will never see the “thank you.” It’s pathetic.
7. Our secular Jewish organizations are pointless. They excel at raising money. Other than that, they are pretty good at issuing statements, pretending that they and their statements are relevant, and planning utterly useless “Jewish” events, to raise more money – often with no actual Jewish content.
The same goes for all of our secular leaders. They have failed us. We need serious leadership because we now live in a serious time.
You know it’s true.
I detailed that failure many times, but most recently: here.
8. I’m not sure that we have a future in the West. My father served in WW II and I’m all for fighting for our deserved places in the West. But was it ever really our home?
I’m not so sure anymore.
Our home is Eretz Yisrael. Its importance, and the necessity of our own country, in our land, has never been clearer. As proud as I am of being an American, and I have been VERY proud, it has become crystal clear to me that we only have two things that will keep us safe:
1. Hashem
2. Living in our own land.
We can’t depend on anyone else. They may be our neighbors, or our countrymen, etc. But we’ve seen this show before, and the Germans, Poles, French, Russians, and even Arab Muslims were also those things. It means nothing.
It’s great that Israel has done so much to defang Hezbollah, it’s great that it severely weakened Iran, the same with the damage it has done to Hamas. Israeli soldiers are absolutely heroes. But, all of it should have been done decades ago. We cannot keep deluding ourselves into believing that Israel, the nation and the people, can exist in peace without being the strong, warrior nation of our forefathers and mothers.
Not that we need to be depressed, but instead redouble your commitment to Jewish life, to Torah, mitzvot, supporting and protecting our people. We will come through this, and I believe better than ever before.
Chazak ve’ematz.
Never give in. Never give up.
Am Yisrael Chai.
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