A War of Survival

TRANSCENDING national boundaries and writing about the US one day, Bangladesh the next and Georgia the day after is a romantic aspiration of journalists who came into the profession after watching films where a big story unfolds through the eyes of the man/woman with a notebook. The reality tends to be a little more awkward. The itinerant journalist who is para-dropped to report the big international story invariably tends to excel in the highest standards of superficiality. Unfamiliar with the language, the history and social circumstances of those nameless people that are the objects of reportage, the visiting foreign correspondent is invariably dependant on a blend of the local media and the ‘fixer’ who serves as the local guide. Photographers may successfully transcend national barriers but most journalists (unless they have been covering a region for a long time) fall back on glibness.

Over the past year or so, I have devoted myself to a very difficult project: trying to understand the complexities of the Middle East. The literature on the subject is extensive and right from the time Peter O’Toole added to the romance of TE Lawrence, the Middle East has captured the contemporary imagination. Of course, there is a divide. There are, first, the Arabists who see the region through the eyes of a thwarted nationalist movement, be it Nasserite or Palestinian. Then there are those, and I readily admit to being one of them, who are captivated by the grit and dynamism of the Jewish people in Israel—this tiny enclave in the Middle East that is surrounded by hostile forces.

As an outsider, it is almost impossible for me to fully understand the mental make-up of the Jewish people. It is difficult, for example, to fully gauge what a thousand years of political servitude can do to the national character of the Hindus. Apart from the fact that there can be no consensus on the understanding of this complex subject, being an insider often hinders detachment.

I don’t know if it is at all possible for a Jew to even try to be detached. A religious community that has been persecuted and driven out of their homes at periodic intervals over the centuries and still dreamt of ‘Next Year in Jerusalem’ has a measure of uniqueness that is difficult for outsiders to gauge. More difficult is trying to overcome the deep scars of wholesale massacres in different regions and the elimination of European Jewry in the Holocaust.

Last year, I travelled to Budapest and Vienna. Both these cities once boasted vibrant, prosperous Jewish communities. Like in Germany, the Hungarian and Austrian Jews were completely integrated into their local societies. Yet today, the Jewish quarters of Budapest and Vienna are nothing more than tourist attractions, and an attempt by the local governments to atone for their complicity in driving the Jews to their deaths in the gas chambers. Just as Yiddish is slowly becoming extinct, the distinctly European flavour of Jews will be limited to France and the English-speaking world. Otherwise, these identities will be merged into a new Israeli identity, created by a blend of peoples who returned to Judea after thousands of years to recreate a Jewish homeland.

The reason for this narration isn’t to feed into the conflicting versions of victimhood that dominates discourses on the Israel-Palestine conflict. It is merely to try and understand the resoluteness that Israel has shown in its conflict with the Arabs right from the war of 1948. For the Jews in Israel, it is not merely a border conflict over territory, it is a war of survival. As the supporters and fighters of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah know all too well their fight is not for the creation of a Palestinian state in the land Israel calls Judea and Samaria (and others describe as the West Bank) but for the complete destruction of Israel.

This may explain why there is despondency in Israel that the sacrifices of the Israel Defense Forces from October 7, 2023 to now has been derailed by the extraneous agenda of President Donald Trump. There is no doubt that Trump is a friend of Israel and that he will never allow the likes of Iran to bludgeon the Jewish state into submission. But he has his own agenda that involves the release of thousands of Hamas terrorists without any guarantee that they will not massacre Jews again.

The world may view the hostages ‘deal’ as a respite from the interminable fighting. For some in our external affairs ministry, it offers a breather from the constant balancing act between Israel and the Arab countries. But for Israel it is a big let-down, without even the assurance of all the hostages coming home, dead or alive. On top of that, the resumption of war is almost guaranteed.

Donald TrumpIsrael-HamasIsrael-Palestine conflictJewssurvival