Extra: October 7 A Year Later
By
Leonard Zwelling
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/04/opinion/israel-jews-antisemitism.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/07/opinion/oct-7-anniversary-israel-hamas.html
Not surprisingly, The New York Times is filled with articles about the October 7 invasion of Israel by Hamas and what has transpired since. I have included three op-eds, two by prominent Jewish columnists (Bret Stephens and Tom Friedman) and one by an elderly Israeli woman captured on October 7 and later freed during the brief cease-fire.
Reading these and other stories, many about the rise of antisemitism since October 7, I kept trying to get my head around what this actually means for my life and for that of the Jewish community of Houston and the greater Jewish community in America.
I’m still mulling, but I have concluded a few things.
First, our synagogue, Beth Israel on North Braeswood, has hugely bolstered its security with a new, surrounding steel fence. At services for Rosh Hashanah last week, the police presence was far greater than ever before with several cruisers with lights ablaze and armed police at the doors. As a practical matter, we Jews have to be more careful than ever before. We have become greater targets than ever before in my lifetime.
Second, the antisemitism that permeated college campuses has not gone away as today’s news showed. Jewish students at many of our “finest” universities are still targets there and will remain so as long as these places are bastions of left-wing hostility to Israel and sources of comfort to terrorists.
Third, the plight of the Palestinian people in both the West Bank and Gaza is real. Many are at fault: Yasir Arafat for not taking the deal he had at Camp David in 2000 for a Palestinian state; the current Israeli government which does indeed treat West Bank Arabs like second class citizens; the flawed leadership of the Palestinian Authority; and the rest of the Sunni Arab world which has never really embraced the Palestinian cause in a meaningful way.
Fourth, the present government of the United States is it fault. It keeps invoking the need for diplomacy when it is clear that Iran is driving the chaos in and around Israel and the U.S. refuses to do anything about it. Diplomacy has failed. Get on with what needs to be done next.
October 7, 2023 was the worst day for Jews since the end of the Holocaust. It also unleashed a multi-front war around Israel, unmasked latent antisemitism around the world, and empowered our enemies in Russia, China, North Korea, and especially Iran because the United States has no influence on its allies (Israel) and that Israel itself is under the grip of a tyrant who cares more about staying out of jail than the security of his people or the well-being of the hostages.
This blog maintains that the fighting around Israel with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and militias in Syria and Iraq is all beside the point. Iran is the problem. All the rest are symptoms of a Shia fanaticism plaguing the region by using proxies to do its dirty work of trying to annihilate Israel. If you really want to start the ball rolling in the right direction, deal with the disease, not the symptoms.
Iran is perfectly happy staking its proxies to more and more weapons to destroy Israel slowly and drain its resources and its will. This has failed so far, but the well is not bottomless and support for Israel is always only an inch deep, even in the United States. If the forces for good in the world really care about October 7, go after the source of the problem—Iran.
Iran attacked Israel for the second time. Isn’t that enough? End this. Biden, I’m talking to you. You’re a lame duck. Show you’re not. Man up! Take on Iran directly and not with diplomacy.
