The War We Never Wanted (with Elisa Albert)

Kristallnacht, "Free Palestine," and the October 7 Hamas terror attacks.

November 8-9 marked the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht—what Seth Mandel, in a piece in Commentary this week, called “the German pogrom that served as the starter pistol for the Nazi horrors that followed.” In English, it’s known as the Night of Broken Glass, for the glass shards littering the streets after the windows of Jewish homes and businesses were shattered—a poetic euphemism for the horrors of the coordinated, violent anti-Jewish pogroms in Germany, Austria, and the Czech Sudetenland.

The late Paul Rothkopf, father of the author and Daily Beast columnist David Rothkopf, was an eyewitness to the atrocities. In November 1938, he was two months shy of his 13th birthday, and living in Vienna. When the Nazis came to take away his grandfather, Paul had to step in for him on his delivery route. So it was that he was riding through the streets of the city on horseback on the morning of the 9th. As he later recalled:

Groups of people were standing in front of the broken windows of Jewish stores, gawking while Brownshirts were putting their owners through their paces — handing over business papers, washing the sidewalk with lye, licking Aryan employees shoes clean. Anything that would keep the cultured Viennese crowds amused. We passed a narrow street that led to one of Vienna’s larger synagogue.  The alley was jammed with jeering onlookers. Stormtroopers were throwing furniture and Torah scrolls through the big main door into the street. One side of the roof (I couldn’t see the other and you know what a sceptic I am ) was afire. I remember very vividly the twists of whitish-yellow smoke that were curling up the slope of blue tiles.

Farther on we passed another synagogue that was fully ablaze. The police had made people stand back from it. I suppose they feared for their safety. A fire truck was parked down the street. The firemen were leaning against their equipment, talking and smoking cigarettes. Everywhere there were clusters of people, in a holiday mood, gathering around smashed Jewish stores. Little groups of Jews, both men and women, were being led along the sidewalk flanked by squads of SA men. The Jews were made to do all sorts of menial chores. Someone told me later, that one elderly Jew asked to go to the toilet. They made him go in a bucket and then forced him to eat his feces.

For Nazis, party members and otherwise, Kristallnacht was a catharsis of hate. Years of pent-up grievance against Jews (bullshit scapegoating) and pure loathing of Jews (all too real) exploded. There’d been ominous signs of what was to come, as Hitler rose to power. But the end was worse than anyone imagined. Seven years later, six million Jews were dead—exterminated in Nazi death camps.

This is not ancient history. This is not a Biblical chronicle about something Pharaoh did. This happened less than a century ago. There are people who survived it who are still alive.

Needless to say, the massive “Free Palestine” protests across the country this past November 9 were not even remotely equivalent to Kristallnacht. The lion’s share of the protestors did not show up because they hate Jews—some percentage of the protestors were Jews—but because they are rightly appalled by how the Bibi Netanyahu government is conducting the war in Gaza. It appears that the IDF is trying to eradicate Hamas with as little civilian loss of life as possible. Despite these efforts, thousands of innocent Palestinians have died this past month, many of them children. Journalists have been killed, as well as doctors and aid workers. The infrastructure damage is astonishing. The upsetting images coming out of Gaza do not help Israel’s cause. Neither do comments from some of Bibi’s more hardline advisors, who seem incapable of differentiating Hamas terrorists from Palestinian civilians.

Hamas does not speak for most of the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel’s current government, led by the crooked shithead Netanyahu, does not represent the views of most Israeli citizens—who have participated in mass protests for months, demanding Bibi’s ouster—and represents the views of the Jewish diaspora even less. Most people, Israeli and Palestinian, want to live in peace. And anyone with even a shred of empathy feels for the Gaza civilians right now.

With those caveats in mind, it still must be said: to organize “Free Palestine” protests, in which slogans calling for the eradication of Israel are zealously chanted, on the anniversary of the start of Nazi anti-Jewish pogroms that culminated in the extermination of six million Jews, is tone-deaf, if coincidental—and, if deliberate, chilling.

As Mandel put it, pulling no punches:

I was not surprised to see one reporter bursting with pride over New York’s courageous youth: “Among the demonstrators were hundreds of New York City public school students who had walked out of their classrooms earlier that day in protest. Together they chanted, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ as they stood atop the library’s iconic lions, proudly waving Palestinian flags.”

Must’ve been one hell of a moment, crowds swelling at public landmarks shouting genocidal slogans on the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht. In a city with more Jews than Tel Aviv.

What the mostly well-meaning people at the protests—not to mention the galaxy of sudden experts on Israel-Palestine found on every social media platform—seem to have forgotten over this past month is why Israel is at war with Hamas. It’s because there was a terrorist attack. On October 7, just over a month ago, fourteen hundred innocent Israelis were savagely slaughtered by rampaging Hamas terrorists: festival goers, kibbutzniks, families, the elderly, children, babies. Two hundred more were taken hostage, and remain in the tunnels beneath the Strip. Furthermore, what’s going on in Gaza right now is not something Israel sought out. Unlike in the West Bank, the Israelis withdrew from Gaza completely, years ago. And whatever one’s feelings about Israel’s handling of the Palestinians during the last half century, there is no justification, none, for what Hamas did. As the Israeli author David Grossman put it in a recent piece in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

With all the fury at Netanyahu and his people and his policies, the horror of these past few days was not caused by Israel. It was effected by Hamas. The occupation is a crime, but to shoot hundreds of civilians—children and parents, elderly and sick in cold blood—that is a worse crime. Even in the hierarchy of evil, there is a “ranking.” There is a scale of severity that common sense and natural instincts can identify. And when you see the killing fields of the music festival site, when you see Hamas terrorists on motorcycles chasing young partiers, some of whom are still dancing without realizing what’s going on … I do not know whether Hamas operatives should be called “animals,” but they have undoubtedly lost their humanity.

And yet, despite the heinous events of October 7, public opinion seems to have shifted, especially among young people. Sympathies now seem to lie with the Palestinians. And in a vacuum, there’s nothing wrong with that; the people of Gaza deserve our sympathies. The problem is that there is a fine line between sympathizing with the innocents of Gaza and defending the tactics of Hamas—and, for that matter, a fine line between protesting the Israeli government and engaging in overt anti-Semitism.

After monitoring the social media response these past few weeks, Elisa Albert, a novelist and essayist and my guest on today’s PREVAIL podcast, wrote a piece for Tablet on November 2 called “An Open Letter to Hamas’ Defenders.” The first three words are “Hi, terror apologist!” She writes:

Perhaps you’re a gentile with a social justice bent and you’ve recently become interested in a centuries-old conflict between people you don’t know in a place you’ve never been near. Perhaps you are on an exciting algorithmic adrenaline ride, learning as you go. Perhaps you are an assimilated Jew with some intellectual curiosity and the epigenetic trauma response of trying to cover your ass so you’ll be accepted by the secular world. Whatever the case, you are alive and well and safe enough in this moment to be putting forth some sort of argument for—or implicit defense of—terrorism. You might be doing so from an Israel bomb shelter, in which case I salute you and would love to discuss the absolute necessity of a two-state solution, the complete removal of Netanyahu and his cronies, a total withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, and the travesty of what unfolded in Gaza since we unilaterally withdrew in 2005 and found ourselves under rocket fire literally two hours later—once our hostages are home and Hamas is destroyed. Assuming you aren’t a random careless internet dilettante who will be on to the next “cause” by then.

The impetus for her open letter was a well-intentioned but vapid comment on Instagram. There were many such comments floating around social media in the weeks after the attacks. Albert felt the need to respond.

“I’ve been in dialogue with so many friends and family members, and we’re all so distraught, and we’re in so much pain,” she tells me. “And a lot of that pain is compounded by how absolutely clueless, and yet entitled to vehement opinion, so many people in our secular circles, and our academic circles, and our creative circles, and our art and literature circles, in our social justice circles, seem to be.”

Albert has a unique perspective. She is both American and Jewish, and she was in Israel last month with her mother, to attend the installation of the Codex Sassoon, the oldest known copy of the Hebrew Bible, at the ANU Museum of the Jewish People. So she was there on October 7, when the attacks took place. She knows what it felt like in the country that day. She was not near the border with Gaza, but she was in Israel, which is roughly the size of New Jersey.

“Everybody kept saying, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry you’re there. Oh my God.’ I’m like, ‘I’m not.’ This is very real and very horrible, but I was grateful to be there and it felt meaningful,” she tells me. “I’m not sorry I was there.”

Towards the end of our discussion, Albert cited the previously quoted essay by David Grossman—no friend of the Bibi regime—who, unlike the cadre of social media diplomats, sees no easy solution to the crisis.

“Is it possible that what was lost—or indefinitely suspended—on Oct. 7 was the minuscule chance for real dialogue, for each nation’s true acceptance of the other’s existence?” Grossman asks. “And what do those who brandished the absurd notion of a ‘binational state’ say now? Israel and Palestine, two nations distorted and corrupted by endless war, cannot even be cousins to each other—does anyone still believe they can be conjoined twins? Many warless years will have to pass before acceptance and healing can even be considered. In the meantime, we can only imagine the magnitude of fear and hatred that will now rise to the surface.”

He concludes:

Even Israel’s conduct and its crimes in the occupied territories for 56 years cannot justify or soften what has been laid bare: the depth of hatred towards Israel, the painful understanding that we Israelis will always have to live here in heightened alertness and constant preparedness for war. In an unceasing effort to be both Athens and Sparta at once. And a fundamental doubt that we might ever be able to lead a normal, free life, unfettered by threats and anxieties. A stable, secure life. A life that is home.

What happens now? Will this be a moment that brings both sides to their collective senses? Will the crisis somehow resolve? Or will the recent spike in anti-Semitic incidents, in the United States and around the world, mutate into something uglier, as it did 85 years ago?

“It’s so hard,” Albert tells me. “Because it’s human nature—we want to plug into something, have our questions answered, have the complexities smoothed out, and be able to move on with our day and not trouble ourselves any further. But we can’t do that right now.”

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LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

S6 E11: The War We Never Wanted (with Elisa Albert)

In October, the novelist Elisa Albert went with her mother on a trip to Israel, to attend the installation of the Codex Sassoon, the oldest known copy of the Hebrew Bible, at the ANU Museum of the Jewish People. She was anticipating a fun, festive vacation. Hamas had other plans. Greg Olear talks to her about her experience being in Israel on the night of the October 7 terrorist attacks, the subsequent Hamas War, the intricacies of the situation, and the response in the United States. Plus: a new app.

Follow Elisa:
https://www.instagram.com/elisatamar

Visit her website:
https://www.elisaalbert.com/

Buy her books:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Elisa-Albert/author/B001ILKI6G?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Read her essay, “An Open Letter to Hamas’ Defenders”:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/open-letter-hamas-defenders

MEMRI:
https://www.memri.org/

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Note: New episodes of the PREVAIL podcast will resume on Friday, December 1.

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Photo credit: Yours Truly. “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe,” the Holocaust memorial in Berlin.