The biggest threat to Israel is Jewish defeatism.
It’s bad enough when Jew-haters attack us. It’s much worse when our own people do.
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This is a guest essay by Forest Rain, an American-born Israeli branding expert and storyteller.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
It is one thing when hateful people spout anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli propaganda.
It is much more hurtful and damaging when it comes from Jews or people who supposedly support Israel. One would think people who follow Israel would know better; after all, the truth is not hard to find for those who wish to do so.
The question is, why would good people find it so easy to believe the lies?
After much thought, I came to the conclusion that defeatism and the inculcation of blood libel have become so prevalent that many are not seeing them for what they are.
Statement: “It’s literally unbearable. This war has to end.”
The Reality: Everyone wants the war to end. The difference is how. Some are willing to stop by surrendering — making the future much worse. Others will only accept victory.
Statement: "There’s no such thing as victory. There are endless numbers of Arabs ready to fight, and at last count, only about 25 percent of the tunnels were destroyed."
I was taken aback by this defeatist statement being presented so adamantly. As if there is no hope for a better future, as if we are doomed to live in terror and suffer from October 7th over and over, as our enemies promised.
The Reality: Of course, there is such a thing as victory! The Arabs know it — even if some Jews have forgotten. Their victory is when they can torture, slaughter, and take hostages, and still control their territory. If they have hope of doing it again, they’ve won.
Our victory is when the place that tried to destroy Jews becomes Jewish. When Jewish homes, schools, businesses, synagogues, and especially playgrounds are built in the place that tried to erase our existence. When that happens, the world sees that attempting to kill us has consequences. That we meant it when we said NEVER AGAIN.
Is victory permanent? No. It must be maintained. But yes, victory is possible, and it’s very easy to recognize when it’s achieved. Like a joke, if you have to explain it, it's no good. When it works, everyone understands.
Statement: “There are very few things I think would be worse than Israel occupying Gaza with two million Arabs.”
The Reality: First, there aren’t two million Arabs in Gaza. Second, the goal is that, in the end, there will be close to none. Also, Gaza belongs to Israel. You can’t occupy your own home.
Statement: “It sounds like more and more are calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. ‘Never again’ is not just for us.”
The Reality: Please, no virtue-signaling. No one said they all have to die. But they can’t be our neighbors anymore — not after what they did, and not after promising to do it again.
Isn’t it interesting how people who express concern over the “ethnic cleansing” of Gaza or “genocide in Gaza” were strangely silent when the new leader of Syria Ahmad Ashara slaughtered Alawites and tried to exterminate the Druze. Where were they when children in Yemen were starving in their civil war? When the Yazidis were being slaughtered? Or the Kurds? Or Africans in the Congo or Rwanda
Actual ethnic cleansing and genocide don’t make the news, or if they do, they don’t worry anyone too much. Those words are somehow only relevant when Jews defend themselves. So strange.
Statement: “The current strategy is to kill them — women, children, and those seeking aid. I’ve heard the stories coming out of Gaza, and it’s sickening. So far, no country is willing to take in 2 million people. Until that happens, do we keep losing soldiers and innocent lives?”
The Reality: There is no “strategy of killing Gazans.” That’s blood libel, no different than the accusation that Jews killed Christian children to make matzah for Passover “as a strategy.”
There is no strategy of killing “women and children and those seeking aid.” The opposite is true. Israeli is so overly careful of the lives of the enemy that it has cost us the lives of way too many of our soldiers, our sons and daughters. No army on earth, in the history of humanity, has ever gone to the lengths that the IDF has. Accusing us of killing “women and children and those seeking aid” is utterly disconnected from the reality on the ground.
Your accusation hides multiple mistaken assumptions:
The idea that women and children can’t be terrorists – In reality, there have been many female terrorists, including the suicide bomber who blew herself up in a restaurant in Haifa, killing entire families having lunch, and child terrorists who have stabbed and murdered grown-ups.
The idea that it’s normal to feed the enemy during a war – Those seeking aid are seeking aid from Israel, from the IDF, a reality that is completely insane. (How can you beat an enemy population while you are feeding them?!) But once that has begun, why in the world would you believe that we are killing people coming to us for aid? And as a strategy?! The idea that this accusation could be true is a product of deeply ingrained demonization of Israel, as if we are the wicked witch who lured Hansel and Gretel to the gingerbread house, fattening them up so she could kill them and eat them.
The idea that propaganda platforms tell the truth – I have heard the statement that you made re killing women, children, and people seeking aid as a policy on Al Jazeera, the propaganda wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is Hamas and funded by Qatar. Other prominent examples of propaganda platforms are BBC and the Jew-haters’ favorite, Haaretz. Do you know who provides these “media” platforms with information? Hamas. What do you think happens to journalists in Gaza if they report anything Hamas doesn’t want them to say?
I would have thought that you knew better. Israel kills terrorists — people who have killed and are planning to kill Jews. The policy is to defend Jewish lives.
Sometimes, innocent people are killed in wars, including women and children. Throughout this war, the IDF has gone to unprecedented lengths to move Gazans from fighting zones so that no innocent people would be hurt (despite there being real questions about who in Gaza is innocent).
Every Gazan who remained in fighting zones was someone who wanted to fight or someone forced to stay so that they could serve as a human shield (which is a war crime), so that people like you would conclude that Israel is slaughtering women and children.
You say: “I’ve heard the stories coming out of Gaza and they are sickening.”
I wonder which stories you are referring to? The lies propagated by the “Gazan Health Ministry” (which is Hamas)? By Al Jazeera (which is Hamas)? The Gazan participating in the Pallywood industry, faking travesties to pull at the heartstrings of bleeding-heart liberals who don’t use critical thinking to tell the difference between the innocent and the guilty, action and consequences, lies and reality?
Or perhaps you mean the stories about the consequences of war, started by people who invade, rape, slaughter, and take hostages, and as a result lose their homes and have to live in tents and eat food from aid packages in bad weather?
You know which stories coming out of Gaza horrify me? Those of the liberated hostages who talk about being given one moldy pita to share between four grown men. The beatings. The sexual abuse. The mental torture. What they did to Yarden Bibas. That sickens me.
All the suffering in Gaza is a result of the choices made by the people of Gaza. Theirs and ours. All they have to do is stop, but they don’t and won’t because they have a higher goal in mind: our extermination, and that is something we cannot allow.
It’s not kind, good, or moral to allow people who want to torture and slaughter your children to be next to your children. It’s not complicated. No one would agree to have genocidal neighbors, particularly those who have already proved their capabilities and vowed to do the same the moment they get the chance to do so.
You say, “So far, no country is willing to take in 2 million people.”
That is also wrong, in more than one way. First, it’s unclear exactly how many people are in Gaza, but it’s not 2 million; it’s much less. Secondly, it’s not true that no country is willing to take them in. Israel has helped some (as of now it seems like only a few thousand which is a very small amount) leave to countries willing to accept them. Many more Gazans have left by smuggling themselves out through Egypt, but they need an enormous amount of money to do that and this has been a barrier for others who also want to leave.
Gazans are not being allowed to leave, unlike any other war-torn nation on earth, where bordering countries take in refugees. (Look what happened when Ukrainians wanted to leave.)
Hating the Jewish state is big business, and Gaza is key to painting Israel as the villain. Many, many countries, organizations, and powerful individuals don’t want that to change.
Basically, everything is Israel’s fault, even the deaths of Israeli soldiers and civilians, as if we can just stop the war, and the death will stop. That completely disregards the reality of terrorists shooting rockets at us, attacking us, vowing to kill all of us. As if we are throwing away precious lives for no reason. As if we don’t care about all the lives lost: the lives of our precious sons, fathers, friends, and daughters.
Jew-haters across centuries have portrayed Jews as blood thirsty, heartless killers, “as a policy.” That blood libel is so prevalent that I’ve almost come to expect it from those who hate us, but those accusations, outright or as veiled insinuations from Jews? Or others who say they support Israel? That makes me feel sick.
I don’t understand how Jews could actually believe such things. If someone told you that your father or brother was killing innocent people as a policy, would you believe them? Or would you go ask your relative what was happening? It’s no different when it comes to Israel. The soldiers in Gaza are my son and his friends. My neighbors. Our relatives. You are accusing them (or, at best, assuming that the absolute worst lies are true). Your words are aimed at our sons, not some amorphous, theoretical entity.
Why would you — who supposedly cares about Israel, who supposedly supports Israel — choose to believe lies, when the truth is easy to find?
Has hating Israel become so normalized that people like you don’t even realize they are spouting anti-Israel, anti-Jewish, defeatist propaganda?
 | A guest post by
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There are no Schindlers or righteous Gentiles in Gaza and Douglas Murray wrote that almost every house searched by the IDF has a copy of the Koran Mein Kamph and anti Semitic tracts together with tunnels that start in infants’s rooms .What Israel is fighting is the continuation of Nazism in this century
I attended the local county fair this last weekend, a large county just west of a major metro area, and stopped at the Democrat Party table for a lively discussion with the folks there. I told them that there are two policies that animate me. Support for the 2nd amendment to the U.S. Constitution and support for Israel. I will not spend too much time on the first one except to say that we disagreed; however, on the second point, they were just about in lock-step with everything that you have just written. "Israel has killed over 60,000 innocent women and children in Gaza. Don't you care about these innocent people?" First of all ( and I do not apologize for this), "No. I do not care about them. I care about the Israelis who were murdered and the fact that their young men and women have to again fight another war to protect themselves." Secondly, it is not 60,000 women and children. The Hamas Health Ministry (now there's an oxymoron if I ever heard one) classifies all deaths in Gaza as caused by Israel. Battle deaths, heart attacks, killed while trying to get aid from a truck, death by scorpion bite, Does not matter. All Israel's fault. Furthermore, the U.N. itself has revised those numbers down. "What about the two-state solution?" Me, "Pppffftttt" I suspect that I did not change any opinions. And these are the people for whom over 80% of the Jews in the U.S. voted last time around. Years ago, as a young engineer, my Chief Engineer at the time had a small plaque on his wall which said, "Can we find at least one reason why it CAN be done?" In other words, when all around you are giving you excuses of why we can not achieve a certain goal, find the reason, however crazy it may seem, why we can. Then patiently persist and persevere (my there "Ps"). We will get it done regardless of those on our side who think it cannot be done. And later, they will thank us.