The day the music died

“The victims of the Holocaust deserved to die!”

Silence filled the room like poisonous gas. How could the shy, pensive boy in the back of the class have said something so… offensive?

I hardly said a word at school. I loved learning and assumed teachers were the custodians of truth, so I consumed knowledge, mostly with my mouth shut. But when I first heard the horror stories of Europe in the 1940’s, I was perplexed.

Men and women patiently waiting in line to be put down.  The lamb kept silent as it was being led to the slaughter, as survivor David Sierakowiak recorded in his diary.

“Why didn’t they fight?”

It was the early 90’s in South Africa, so the foul odour of Apartheid was still fresh. I marched home that evening and interrogated my dad. There were 30 million blacks in South Africa, how did they let 10 million white people treat them so badly?

His answer was chilling.

“We had the guns.”

We. Not they. My father was not a racist, but he was white. 

The inmates run the prison

Gaza is described as an open-air prison. In January 2006, they elected the Wardens. Over a million people voted, and Hamas won 74 of the 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council, securing majority power. 73 years earlier – almost to the day – Adolf Hitler took power in Germany. (Interestingly, Hitler wasn’t voted in, he was appointed Chancellor by the president).

The Palestinians chose Hamas. My understanding is that most of them now regret picking murderous rapists to captain their team.

This begs another offensive question:

“Why don’t they fight?”

If the answer is “because they have the guns”, why are no Palestinian supporters calling for Hamas to relinquish power? 

The Modern Language of Politics

In his remarkable book, Arnold Kling explains that the “progressive” world view of today sees everything through a single lens: Oppressors vs. Oppressed. 

Oppressors are those who hold (or are perceived to hold) positions of power and privilege in society. The Oppressed, on the other hand, are those who are seen as marginalized, disadvantaged, or victimized by the prevailing power structures.

There is no room for nuance. God forbid! That might lead to tolerance. The fancy term he uses is affective polarization, which I think means this:

You must love your side and you must hate the other side.  

It’s not about persuasion, it’s about demonisation. Those who subscribe to this world view do not even attempt to understand the Causes they support, they default to supporting the party that is portrayed as Oppressed. This is the mind virus that propogates ingenius movements like “Queers for Palestine”.

I had forgotten most of what I learned at school about the history of this conflict (which was probably biased), so I spent a few hours this week revising from both sides. It’s a shit-show, and both teams have legitimate grievances. Netanyahu is toxic, and Israel is not innocent. But mere empathy for either side of the conflict does not help create a pragmatic solution.

I have nothing useful to say about the political history – but I have one (seemingly obvious) insight: it is impossible to apply the Oppressed vs. Oppressor rule to this case, because there are allegedly three independent parties involved.  Palestine, Israel and Hamas.

When there are 3, the only way there can be an Oppressed is if 1 of them is getting bullied by 2. “Israel Oppresses Palestinians” might be a true statement by some definitions, but then we must also say “Hamas Oppresses Palestinians”, because if that isn’t true, then either Hamas and Palestine are the same entity, or Palestinians are happy with how Hamas treats them.

There is another option: Palestine and/or Hamas are oppressing Israel. But that’s impossible right?

Where words fail, music speaks.

Music is the universal language of mankind, it’s the only thing God let us keep from the Garden of Eden. It touches the soul of those who believe in such things, and it makes those who don’t, wish they did.

We’ve all heard the bone chilling tales from that fateful day. Last night, my friend shared a story he heard first-hand about a baby being put in an oven while its mother was raped.  That hits home. I read about a boy with special needs at one kibbutz who was savagely beaten to death in front of his mother, who sadly survived to tell the tale. That one affected me personally.

But when I think about the massacre at the Nova dance festival, I shiver.

Thousands of young men and women gathered at a vast field near the Gaza border to dance without a care. In the name of peace. And they were raped and slaughtered.

We all got up to dance

Oh, but we never got the chance

'Cause the players tried to take the field

The marching band refused to yield

Do you recall what was revealed

The day the music died?

Cut out the cancer

There are 3 actors in this movie, and we all know who the true villain is.

Hamas is a death cult, and they must be stopped at all costs. When a surgeon removes a cancer, there are two unintended consequences: healthy cells die, and sometimes the cancer spreads. But we still cut it out.

Why didn’t the Jews fight back against the Nazis?

Of course they did. "It is often said that the Jews were led like sheep to the slaughter. In a certain sense, it is true. But on the way, they found out that they were going to be slaughtered, and they fought like lions."  (Abba Kovner, the Jewish poet, who led the Vilna Ghetto uprising).

Unfortunately, they were overpowered.

Jews have been persecuted since records began. Passivity, or appearing non-threatening, was sometimes a means of self-preservation in a world where they were often targeted.

Any human who denies that Hamas must be destroyed is either an intellectual midget or complicit. Perhaps it’s kinder to say that good people refuse to recognise the totality of evil - until it is too late.

The world can blame Israel and Jews, and obsessively condemn them for defending themselves. They can engage in their anti-Semitic orgies and cry about the dead women and children who Hamas are using as shields.  

Let them cry.

As Yair Lapid said so beautifully in his speech at Auschwitz, from the Judenrampe platform where millions were delivered to their death: the days where Jews ran away from you are over.

Evil is here, and we will fight you with everything.

We will not board the trains again.