Israeli Defense Forces and the Israel-Palestinian War: Why Jews are Lost in Israel, Yet We Do Not Live in the X

There are plenty of anecdotes that show how hard it is to know what’s happening in the war between Israel and the Palestinians. This was true even before social media was invented, and even now, as evidenced by the cesspool of misinformation, hysteria and madness now called X. A conflict that is a hall of mirrors in the best of times and is now careening toward a possible regional war is what people are focusing on right now, with all the propaganda and mass panic. It’s an epistemological catastrophe that is putting people’s lives in danger.

In much of the world, there will be no dissuading people from holding Israel, and by extension America, liable for the hospital bombing. At the same time, Israel will be able to use this episode to deflect criticism of the violence it really is inflicting on the Palestinians. Jews, whatever their views about Zionism, will be placed in greater danger. There are likely to be other enormities when this war is over. We will only make the horrors worse if we are certain about them.

This month, a Hamas suicide bomber blew himself up at a Passover Seder in Netanya, killing 30 people and making it the worst attack on Jews since the founding of Israel. As part of its response, Israeli Defense Forces invaded the West Bank city of Jenin, leveling dozens of refugee camp buildings. Palestinian leaders claimed Israel had committed a massacre; the Palestinian official Saeb Erekat told CNN that at least 500 people had been killed. The stories were believed by people all around the world.

Progressive Jews who have spent years supporting racial equity, gay and transgender rights, abortion rights and other causes on the American left — including opposing Israeli policies in Gaza and the West Bank — are suddenly feeling abandoned by those who they long thought of as allies. This shift in war is a break in the liberal coalition that has long powered the Democratic Party.

In Los Angeles, Rabbi Sharon Brous, who regularly criticizes the Israeli government, described from the pulpit how she felt lonely. It is clear to many in the world that these Israeli victims are deserving of this terrible fate, as those who purport to care the most about justice and human dignity make clear.

Many felt that the Hamas attacks were a threat to the United States due to the memories of the Holocaust and the fear that they would be attacked. They were shocked to learn that many of their ideological allies failed to perceive the threats and instead saw them as oppressors.

Many of the most inflammatory comments came on social media, from progressive groups that responded to the immediate aftermath of the massacre of Israeli civilians by skipping even a moment of mourning and instead moving immediately to try to justify the attack.

And many protests have included chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a slogan that leaves no place for the state of Israel to exist in its own land.

Dehumanizing the Jewish People in America: Nick Melvoin, the Democrat Socialists of America, and the Case of Be’eri

Nick Melvoin, who is running for Congress and keeping a framed, said he was in such a state of despair that his generation had been warned how quickly people would turn on them. When you dehumanize a group, that’s how it happens. This indoctrination that many of us have been warned about hit us like a ton of bricks.”

On college campuses and social media, statements from small organizations have been amplified across the globe and are the most rattling episodes. During a worldwide conflict, those statements became totemic, heightening fears that they are a sign of a more dangerous and lasting shift in the standing of Jews in America.

The Democratic Socialists of America staged a protest in NYC after the attack, and is angry that a lawyer and producer on a Los Angeles municipal board would object to it. He sent hundreds of letters to Los Angeles city officials urging them to denounce the organization and label it a “hate group.” The D.S.A. has since backed away from the protest and apologized “for not making our values explicit.”

Mr. Spiegelman said that he was part of a political group that believed in affordable housing, raising the minimum wage, and the murder of Jews. Two out of three isn’t bad.

“We need to remember that anyone dehumanizing Israelis rightly has zero representation in the United States government, while many federal officials have been dehumanizing Palestinians for decades,” Eva Borgwardt, the political director of IfNotNow, said in an interview.

The village of Be’eri is located in Southern Israel and is the location of the single deadliest attack on civilians in Israel’s 75-year history.

The streets are lined with homes that have been partially destroyed. Some of them were open while others burned. Inside one are blood-splattered walls. In another, two childrens’ rooms are filled with books, binders, stuffed animals and paint supplies. The mattresses lay in white bed frames and are stained with blood.

A backhoe scoops up the dead from the road leading into the kibbutz that is three miles from the border with Gaza.

In recent days, the Israeli military has taken journalists through the village to show them what happened when Hamas crossed the border from Gaza into Israel without being noticed, killing at least 1400 people and taking 200 hostages.

Many residents of the towns hid inside safe rooms waiting for Israeli forces to rescue them. For many hours, no one showed up. When it was finally over and they emerged, the scene was unlike anything they’d ever seen before.

The survivors are still waiting to identify the bodies of those killed in the Hamas attack, which started a war between Israel and Hamas.

Alom told Morning Edition that they are still trying to figure out how they’re going to deal with the number of funerals. “We don’t know where to bury them because it’s not safe.”

“I just don’t know how to deal with it,” he said “For more than four or five hours we were slaughtered and no one came to help us. I don’t know who is to blame. I am aware that we’ve been slaughtered.

The death of a peace activist in the Gazan village of Holit: God’s strength on the right side of the enclave

Their anger is not yet aimed so much at the government for its intelligence failure or Israeli forces for their delayed rescues, but toward the Palestinian enclave.

It’s being crushed by a relentless wave of Israeli airstrikes, choked by a complete siege that’s barred food, fuel, electricity and water from entering, and is bracing for Israel’s ground invasion, all aimed at ridding the territory of Hamas.

NoyKatsman, who is 27 years old, sits in a Jerusalem cafe far away from the border with Gaza. They knows Alom’s pain but wields it differently.

Hayim died in the village of Holit, about a mile from Gaza. Hayim was hiding in the closet when Hamas militants shot him and was one of 30 Americans killed in the attack.

Hayim was a peace activist. He wrote his doctorate on the dangers of the right wing in Israel and was critical of the government for encouraging illegal Israeli settlements and uplifting extreme anti-Arab voices.

That’s why Katsman believes their brother, despite his tragic killing, “would say we should never kill innocent people” and would encourage Israelis to re-think the long-term repercussions of retaliation.

The government is saying that they need to kill more Palestinians, instead of acknowledging that they failed. We need to now destroy Hamas,” said Katsman. The right-wing politicians who gain power from violence and hate are those who gain from it. We lose from it.

They stated that you need a basic understanding of how people feel. “And if after they kill us, a thousand people, we are going to kill three thousand of them, that’s not an understanding of people, because these people will grow up and hate us even more.”

They said that if something is pro-Palestinian or pro-Israel it’s not important. “This question is a distraction. People die. People die from both sides.”

Aziza Hasan, a devout Muslim, looked out at the group gathered around her, spoke of the loved ones who had died in Israel and Gaza and began reciting the first chapter of the Quran.

“On my right side is Gabrielle, God’s strength,” she told the crowd, translating the song. “Behind me, God’s healer, Raphael. Above my head is the presence of God.

NewGround: A Mission to Los Angeles to Help Muslims and Jews Learn to Listen, Disagree, Empathize and Befriend

The two woman can recall details of the long, brutal history of clashes and wars pitting Israel against its neighbors to the north, east and south — and how those clashes sent fearful shock waves through Los Angeles, a city with one of the nation’s largest populations of Muslims and Jews.

Everyone on hand was part of NewGround, a nonprofit fellowship program that has helped more than 500 Los Angeles Muslims and Jews learn to listen, disagree, empathize with one another — and become friends.