Is the Long Hunting Season Over? Is It Okay to Kill Jews Again?

Although published 35 years ago, “The Siege-the Saga of Israel and Zionism,” by the Irish journalist and politician Conor Cruise O’Brien, is a remarkably perceptive description of Israel and the modern Jewish experience. For example, he notes, “The Jewish State, in the conduct of its own internal affairs, is intensely and jealously democratic: so democratic as to be almost unworkable.” Could there be a better description of the recent Israeli political imbroglio involving four general elections in two years?

But, O’Brien isn’t always right. He notes that with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, “the Jews of the post-Holocaust world need never again go defenceless to their deaths.” But then, quoting the writer Manès Sperber, he adds that the events of 1948 were “meant to let the whole world know that the long hunting season was over for once and for all.”

Sadly, the recent war (May 10–21, 2021) that broke out between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip is an indication that the long hunting season may not be over. This war, yet another in a series, resulted from a decision by Israel in 2005 to unilaterally vacate the Strip by dismantling 21 settlements. (It is often forgotten that four settlements in the West Bank were evacuated as well.)

Why has this war been so disturbing? After all, looking at the results objectively indicates that Israel won. In spite of over 4000 deadly rockets fired by Hamas and its allies, the damage to Israeli infrastructure and the number of Israelis killed and injured were minimized because of the Iron Dome system. Moreover, Israeli counterattacks were remarkably successful at destroying Hamas infrastructure while minimizing civilian casualties. This is difficult to do because Gaza is densely populated and because Hamas operatives deliberately place their rocket sites in civilian buildings and schools in order to maximize civilian casualties. Even the head of UNRWA, Matthias Schmale, got into trouble for commenting on the precision of Israeli airstrikes. Hamas knows the public relations value of high casualty figures. Yet, if you compare the number of casualties in this latest round to those of the 2014 war, it is clear that the numbers were much lower. Any civilian casualties are unacceptable. But this is the strategy that Hamas uses and Israel can only respond after being attacked, as any other nation would.

Why, then, this feeling of unease and distress among many Jews? Because this war makes it clear that the fighting is not really just about battling Israel and resisting the occupation. It is about killing Jews. This time the sympathy for Hamas by much of the world’s media, including that of the U.S. and Canada, indicates that it is acceptable to do so. It is okay to fire rockets indiscriminately at Israeli civilians but it is not okay to respond because an Israeli response results in an imbalance in casualty numbers. The violent protests against Jews in many North American and European cities tell us that only the numbers count.

Why, then, this feeling of unease and distress among many Jews? Because this war makes it clear that the fighting is not really just about battling Israel and resisting the occupation. It is about killing Jews.

Hamas, a fundamentalist Islamic organization that is hardly different from organizations such as ISIS, Hezbollah and Boko Haram, opposes most every current western societal standard, including gender balance, LGBTQ rights, religious freedom, etc. It has no interest in a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. Hamas states its intentions openly for anyone to see, and when it comes to Israel its intentions are the elimination of the world’s only Jewish state. The lesson for Israelis of all political persuasions is that a withdrawal from the West Bank will likely result in another Hamas-ruled territory. In a recent Sky News interview, Hamas co-founder Mahmoud al-Zahar, admitted that the Hamas strategy was to target Israeli population centers. When asked if Israel should exist, he replied no.

The number of the rockets and Hamas’s state of preparedness indicates that the tensions and disputes over Jerusalem were merely a pretext for launching an attack. In fact, the occupation is a pretext too. Between 1948 and 1967 there was no occupation. There was no Palestinian state, either. Gaza was administered by Egypt and the West Bank was a part of Jordan. Yet there were numerous yearly cross-border attacks on Israeli civilians, resulting in countless Israeli casualties. Even before Israel existed, during the period of Mandatory Palestine, there were pogroms that resulted in the deaths of many Jews, including the killing of 69 Jews in Hebron in 1929, triggered by a rumor that the Jews were taking over the al-Aqsa Mosque.

Sound familiar?

In fact, even before the onset of modern Zionism, Jews in Palestine led a precarious existence. As an example, in 1834 the Jews of Palestine were caught between Egyptian and Ottoman rivalries and local Arabs took it out on the Jews of Hebron and Safed. The situation in Safed was particularly appalling. Safed’s Jews, who constituted half of the town’s population, experienced a month-long orgy of looting, raping and killing by the local Arab population. Five hundred Jews were killed.

The words of Bob Dylan’s song about Israel, “Neighborhood Bully,” are especially appropriate: “The neighborhood bully he just lives to survive. He’s criticized and condemned for being alive. He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin. He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.”

Jacob Sivak is a retired scientist affiliated with the University of Waterloo. His work has been published in The Jerusalem Report, The Times of Israel, Algemeiner, The Canadian Jewish News and the Forward.