Proponents of the two state solution always imagine a peace loving Palestinian state where people have equal rights regardless of religion, sex or ethnicity and where elections are regular, fair and democratic. This fantasy is ridiculous as it is not even close to reality in even one Muslim majority country. Why it would suddenly sprout in a Palestinian state is unfathomable.
You have parsed a complex situation and found the essence of it. Ideas are the most powerful - and often dangerous - engines we have in the world. After October 7, I could have gone either way, as a left-leaning diaspora Jew with limited knowledge of the history of Israel. But I understood two things : 1) that I needed to inform myself of our history, and 2) that if push came to pogrom, I would be judged as a Jew. Nothing else I had supported, believed, voted for, donated to or done over my lifetime would save me. The hypocrisy of those groups and causes I had supported became obvious on October 8, and my faith in them collapsed like a house of cards, along with all the leftist assumptions I had learned.
No one cares about the Jews except the Jews, and I now understand my inherited obligation to stand with my people and everything my ancestors struggled, against all odds, to sustain. Am Yisrael Chai!
It does feel lonely but I know there are MANY of us who have gone through the same process - I have read about it in so many places. As someone said early on, “that pain you feel is peoplehood” - and though we are scattered, we are one people.
PS: the other thought I had was that if Zeigen had given up his beliefs after 7/10, he would have had to come to the realization that his mother’s beliefs and good deeds were in vain, and maybe that would have been too painful for him, so he had to uphold them, as a way of keeping her spirit alive. I know that’s psychologizing him, but as you say, “ideas are not detached from the people who hold them”.
I agreed with every word until your last paragraph. I remember visiting Israel in the middle of the second Intifada. It was 2003, right after the Passover Massacre in Netanyahu. Our lone “Jewish” bus sat next to a dozen Christian buses who braved the fear of being next on the “hit list” after all the scared Jews in America cancelled their trips. It left us proud to have weathered our fear to come, but ashamed some. The 95 million evangelical Christians have been our most loyal friends in the last 30 years, politically and otherwise, and it’s not because they were ever trying to convert us.
“Those that bless the Jewish people will be blessed and those that curse us…….” We’ve got, maybe, 7-8 million of us here. You do the math. We’ve still got folks who care about us.
As I wrote that, I did think of the Evangelicals who support Israel, but I have always wondered if they have an ulterior motive - to eventually claim Israel for themselves or something. But now that everyone on earth seems to be on one side or another of the Israel obsession, I’m grateful for anyone who stands with us - Christian, Muslim, Hindu, whomever.
I think this is an incredibly important point which is immensely overlooked and under-appreciated. Especially by American Jews, who like. most other left wing, urban Americans have a patronizing disdain for evangelicals and their beliefs. Say what you will about the Republican Party, but without their support(which really stems from evangelicals), Israel is an absolute orphan.
Yes Sir. My experience, though, with many in the Jewish community, especially on the Left, has been a misplaced fear that somehow Christian evangelicals are really out to convert the Jews. A rather silly insecurity. Many Jewish people I have come across, sadly, just do not see the true sincerity of Jewish loving Christians.
I am not able to put myself in his shoes. That said, there are ideas that make sense and those that don't. There is no appetite for a Palestinian state because they have no intention of co-existing with Israel.
Just like the parents and families of murderers cannot bring themselves to face and admit that their child/sibling etc committed the foulest of deeds, Yonatan Zeigen cannot bring himself to admit that his mother lived and died for a delusion and that the reward for her life's work was to be brutally murdered by the Gazans she imagined she could help and change.
It is an understandable psychological defense mechanism, especially after such a terrible tragedy. The larger issue is that many others share the same response but for much less understandable reasons, mostly their sacred belief in human universality and the idea that "we're all the same" and that Palestinians might become civilized with enough therapy and with Jews feeling their pain.
Vivian Silver is far from the first person to die for her beliefs, however deluded, but I do salute her for having skin in the game and risking her life for what she thought was right. There's a whole American division of As A Jews like the loathsome Peter Beinart who make their careers by selling the bogus "one state/binational" solution, which is essentially asking other people to bleed and die for your theories and empty idealism. When Beinart et al move as close to Palestinians as Silver did, then they can ask Israelis to face the same risks (which they'd never be stupid enough to do) and bet their lives and the lives of their families on the proposition that Jews can have jihadists for next-door neighbors.
What happened to Vivian Silver and her friends and families is a terrible tragedy, but at least she lived and died with more dignity than the Peter Beinarts of the world. And that's something her son can be proud of.
On 5 May 2024 my wife and I visited Kibbutz Be’eri and stood silently and sadly outside Vivian Silver’s bullet riddled home. I understand that the house has now been demolished alongside the hopes and dreams of peace that many had longed for over the previous 75 years.
I know too many Leftist Jews that cling to that fairy tale. Of course they voted for Mamdani and El-Sayed. I have family members who voted against their own survival as well.
It is "suicidal empathy"--"Tikkun Olam" carried to the extreme. They never heard the logic of the flight attendant who instructs"Put YOUR oxygen mask on first--then others". Common sense and logic are overridden by an emotional need to be "caring" and to be viewed as such. Even Spielberg congratulated Mamdani.
One such person (born Jewish) has worked as a psychotherapist in NYC. He gave the poor discounts--and unsurprisingly is low income himself. Yet he adores Mamdani.He never even mentioned Oct 7th. It's as though it never existed for him. I pity his "patients"-"free" or at a discount--his advice would never recognize reality. Who ever coined the adage "The road to hell is paved by. good intentions" --must have had these irrational people in mind.
Yonatan Zeigen’s views, of which he is perfectly entitled to, perfectly reflect the fact that some people don’t see the world for the way it is but the way they are.
His conclusion is entirely irrational. Often, ideology trumps rationality.
Even before October 7, how can anyone possibly conclude that a regime and culture which represses and brutalizes its own people with such sadistic cruelty, would peacefully coexist with Israelis just because they are given formal statehood? It's preposterous.
Why the reluctance to accept the fact that 'palestinians' are driven by their own ideology based on islamic teachings, as is the case in most islamic nations?
Why is it that only Israelis have agency, while 'palestinians' are treated like children who can't be held accountable for their choices and actions?
Well stated. The “Gaza experiment” was, obviously, an abject failure and that Bibi tried to appease Hamas by work permits and Qatar funding, was proven to be naive. The idea that Israel should “sacrifice more” is morally repulsive knowing that those to whom Israel continues to sacrifice continues to demand the destruction of the “sacrificers”.
The Palestinians do not want peace, they want Israel to be conquered and destroyed.
At this point, the Israelis do not care about peace. They care about security.
Idealism is just that. An ideal which seems to not have any basis in reality.
Most people look at a complex, frustrating situation and see reality. A small number see the situation and get attached to a belief system that will "fix it" that is not based upon empirical reality, but it makes sense to them inside. Great comments above. Good article. At some point, you realize there are antisemites and associated haters all over, not everyone, but everywhere, and you deal with it in some way. For Israel it is strength and force. For the diaspora, it is seeking rights in a particular nation and if that fails, moving....
His reaction to his own mother’s death reminds me of the mentality of all of the (mostly) women who are clamoring to defend Lindsey Clancy. These people are impervious to facts and logic and their numbers seem to be growing
I do not think the case of Lindsay Clancy and her killing of her children is a good analogy when it comes to Gazans invading Israel and killing Israelis. The only facts that they have in common is that innocent people were killed. You may not agree with the logic/reasoning of those who believe that Clancy should not be held criminally responsible for killing her children, but the reasons that people have for that are nothing like the reasons which Zeigen uses to explain and excuse what Gazans did to his mother and others on Oct. 7.
I wasn’t trying to draw an analogy between the two events. I was likening the illogical and misguided reactions from certain people regarding both of those horrific events. People that seem increasingly detached from reality
Palestinians refused every offer for their own state that the U.S. tried to negotiate for them. Every single one.
And my understanding is that in 2005 when the Israelis pulled out of Gaza, they left intact functioning infrastructure, greenhouses, irrigation systems, and so on. All of it was destroyed, or traded away for more weapons. Is that correct?
The question that Zeigen’s position raises is what does he believe is required of the Palestinians to break the cycle? If the Palestinians were to be gifted with the “reward” of a state for the atrocity committed on October 7, what would the they take from that? I doubt it would be “okay, now we can make peace with Israel.” More likely, based on their stated goals and actions, they would likely continue their genocidal war against Israel from a position of greater strength. Zeigen seems to believe that Israel can make peace by itself. It cannot and as the article points out it would be suicidal to try.
Proponents of the two state solution always imagine a peace loving Palestinian state where people have equal rights regardless of religion, sex or ethnicity and where elections are regular, fair and democratic. This fantasy is ridiculous as it is not even close to reality in even one Muslim majority country. Why it would suddenly sprout in a Palestinian state is unfathomable.
You have parsed a complex situation and found the essence of it. Ideas are the most powerful - and often dangerous - engines we have in the world. After October 7, I could have gone either way, as a left-leaning diaspora Jew with limited knowledge of the history of Israel. But I understood two things : 1) that I needed to inform myself of our history, and 2) that if push came to pogrom, I would be judged as a Jew. Nothing else I had supported, believed, voted for, donated to or done over my lifetime would save me. The hypocrisy of those groups and causes I had supported became obvious on October 8, and my faith in them collapsed like a house of cards, along with all the leftist assumptions I had learned.
No one cares about the Jews except the Jews, and I now understand my inherited obligation to stand with my people and everything my ancestors struggled, against all odds, to sustain. Am Yisrael Chai!
I am not a Jew and I live in England.
Believe me, I support you, I donate to Magen David Adom, I believe in the cause of Israel - I cannot vote for you for obvious reasons.
Believe me, I am in the majority of English opinion - unlike our LibLabCon UniParty.
There will never be a ‘Two State Solution’ and everybody knows this; but Western suicidal empathy appears to insist we must pretend otherwise.
Am Yisrael Chai
I had a similar trajectory, it’s always nice to be reminded that my experience is not unique, even if it feels lonely out here. עם ישראל חי
It does feel lonely but I know there are MANY of us who have gone through the same process - I have read about it in so many places. As someone said early on, “that pain you feel is peoplehood” - and though we are scattered, we are one people.
PS: the other thought I had was that if Zeigen had given up his beliefs after 7/10, he would have had to come to the realization that his mother’s beliefs and good deeds were in vain, and maybe that would have been too painful for him, so he had to uphold them, as a way of keeping her spirit alive. I know that’s psychologizing him, but as you say, “ideas are not detached from the people who hold them”.
I agreed with every word until your last paragraph. I remember visiting Israel in the middle of the second Intifada. It was 2003, right after the Passover Massacre in Netanyahu. Our lone “Jewish” bus sat next to a dozen Christian buses who braved the fear of being next on the “hit list” after all the scared Jews in America cancelled their trips. It left us proud to have weathered our fear to come, but ashamed some. The 95 million evangelical Christians have been our most loyal friends in the last 30 years, politically and otherwise, and it’s not because they were ever trying to convert us.
“Those that bless the Jewish people will be blessed and those that curse us…….” We’ve got, maybe, 7-8 million of us here. You do the math. We’ve still got folks who care about us.
As I wrote that, I did think of the Evangelicals who support Israel, but I have always wondered if they have an ulterior motive - to eventually claim Israel for themselves or something. But now that everyone on earth seems to be on one side or another of the Israel obsession, I’m grateful for anyone who stands with us - Christian, Muslim, Hindu, whomever.
I think this is an incredibly important point which is immensely overlooked and under-appreciated. Especially by American Jews, who like. most other left wing, urban Americans have a patronizing disdain for evangelicals and their beliefs. Say what you will about the Republican Party, but without their support(which really stems from evangelicals), Israel is an absolute orphan.
Yes Sir. My experience, though, with many in the Jewish community, especially on the Left, has been a misplaced fear that somehow Christian evangelicals are really out to convert the Jews. A rather silly insecurity. Many Jewish people I have come across, sadly, just do not see the true sincerity of Jewish loving Christians.
Once the messiah returns, Evangelical Christians are gonna slaughter every jew they can get their hands on.
Well, that’s a cheery delusional thought. Well done, adding comic relief to the discussion. 🙄
Some of us care and pray!🙏🏼
Yasher Koach!
I am not able to put myself in his shoes. That said, there are ideas that make sense and those that don't. There is no appetite for a Palestinian state because they have no intention of co-existing with Israel.
Just like the parents and families of murderers cannot bring themselves to face and admit that their child/sibling etc committed the foulest of deeds, Yonatan Zeigen cannot bring himself to admit that his mother lived and died for a delusion and that the reward for her life's work was to be brutally murdered by the Gazans she imagined she could help and change.
It is an understandable psychological defense mechanism, especially after such a terrible tragedy. The larger issue is that many others share the same response but for much less understandable reasons, mostly their sacred belief in human universality and the idea that "we're all the same" and that Palestinians might become civilized with enough therapy and with Jews feeling their pain.
Vivian Silver is far from the first person to die for her beliefs, however deluded, but I do salute her for having skin in the game and risking her life for what she thought was right. There's a whole American division of As A Jews like the loathsome Peter Beinart who make their careers by selling the bogus "one state/binational" solution, which is essentially asking other people to bleed and die for your theories and empty idealism. When Beinart et al move as close to Palestinians as Silver did, then they can ask Israelis to face the same risks (which they'd never be stupid enough to do) and bet their lives and the lives of their families on the proposition that Jews can have jihadists for next-door neighbors.
What happened to Vivian Silver and her friends and families is a terrible tragedy, but at least she lived and died with more dignity than the Peter Beinarts of the world. And that's something her son can be proud of.
Zeigen apparently suffers from suicidal empathy, and the murder of his mother appears to have made it worse!
On 5 May 2024 my wife and I visited Kibbutz Be’eri and stood silently and sadly outside Vivian Silver’s bullet riddled home. I understand that the house has now been demolished alongside the hopes and dreams of peace that many had longed for over the previous 75 years.
I know too many Leftist Jews that cling to that fairy tale. Of course they voted for Mamdani and El-Sayed. I have family members who voted against their own survival as well.
It is "suicidal empathy"--"Tikkun Olam" carried to the extreme. They never heard the logic of the flight attendant who instructs"Put YOUR oxygen mask on first--then others". Common sense and logic are overridden by an emotional need to be "caring" and to be viewed as such. Even Spielberg congratulated Mamdani.
One such person (born Jewish) has worked as a psychotherapist in NYC. He gave the poor discounts--and unsurprisingly is low income himself. Yet he adores Mamdani.He never even mentioned Oct 7th. It's as though it never existed for him. I pity his "patients"-"free" or at a discount--his advice would never recognize reality. Who ever coined the adage "The road to hell is paved by. good intentions" --must have had these irrational people in mind.
Yonatan Zeigen’s views, of which he is perfectly entitled to, perfectly reflect the fact that some people don’t see the world for the way it is but the way they are.
he's entitled to his views- he should just keep them to himself. He is a lackey pawn in the libelous narrative against Israel.
Excellent piece. You explain the true situation perfectly 👌
His conclusion is entirely irrational. Often, ideology trumps rationality.
Even before October 7, how can anyone possibly conclude that a regime and culture which represses and brutalizes its own people with such sadistic cruelty, would peacefully coexist with Israelis just because they are given formal statehood? It's preposterous.
Why the reluctance to accept the fact that 'palestinians' are driven by their own ideology based on islamic teachings, as is the case in most islamic nations?
Why is it that only Israelis have agency, while 'palestinians' are treated like children who can't be held accountable for their choices and actions?
Well stated. The “Gaza experiment” was, obviously, an abject failure and that Bibi tried to appease Hamas by work permits and Qatar funding, was proven to be naive. The idea that Israel should “sacrifice more” is morally repulsive knowing that those to whom Israel continues to sacrifice continues to demand the destruction of the “sacrificers”.
The Palestinians do not want peace, they want Israel to be conquered and destroyed.
At this point, the Israelis do not care about peace. They care about security.
Idealism is just that. An ideal which seems to not have any basis in reality.
Most people look at a complex, frustrating situation and see reality. A small number see the situation and get attached to a belief system that will "fix it" that is not based upon empirical reality, but it makes sense to them inside. Great comments above. Good article. At some point, you realize there are antisemites and associated haters all over, not everyone, but everywhere, and you deal with it in some way. For Israel it is strength and force. For the diaspora, it is seeking rights in a particular nation and if that fails, moving....
A great essay and a great author. I know Yonatan on a personal level, such a passionate person he is.
His reaction to his own mother’s death reminds me of the mentality of all of the (mostly) women who are clamoring to defend Lindsey Clancy. These people are impervious to facts and logic and their numbers seem to be growing
I do not think the case of Lindsay Clancy and her killing of her children is a good analogy when it comes to Gazans invading Israel and killing Israelis. The only facts that they have in common is that innocent people were killed. You may not agree with the logic/reasoning of those who believe that Clancy should not be held criminally responsible for killing her children, but the reasons that people have for that are nothing like the reasons which Zeigen uses to explain and excuse what Gazans did to his mother and others on Oct. 7.
I wasn’t trying to draw an analogy between the two events. I was likening the illogical and misguided reactions from certain people regarding both of those horrific events. People that seem increasingly detached from reality
Palestinians refused every offer for their own state that the U.S. tried to negotiate for them. Every single one.
And my understanding is that in 2005 when the Israelis pulled out of Gaza, they left intact functioning infrastructure, greenhouses, irrigation systems, and so on. All of it was destroyed, or traded away for more weapons. Is that correct?
It was destroyed for no materialistic gain. It was sheer nihilistic destruction.
Yes. All paid for by American Jewish donors to donate to the Gazans.
The question that Zeigen’s position raises is what does he believe is required of the Palestinians to break the cycle? If the Palestinians were to be gifted with the “reward” of a state for the atrocity committed on October 7, what would the they take from that? I doubt it would be “okay, now we can make peace with Israel.” More likely, based on their stated goals and actions, they would likely continue their genocidal war against Israel from a position of greater strength. Zeigen seems to believe that Israel can make peace by itself. It cannot and as the article points out it would be suicidal to try.