In the Wake of Oct. 7, More and More Jews are Going Tribal

I can’t recall a time when so many Jews have become so tribal. I don’t mean the quaint MOT (member of the tribe) kind of tribal. I mean the more hardcore, unapologetic now-it’s-only-us kind of tribal.

I felt it in a palpable way the other night at a gathering of highly sophisticated LA Jews. These looked like the kind of knowledgeable people who would embrace the universal side of Judaism and would have no problem criticizing Israel.

And yet, there was little universalism going on that night. Rather, there was a sense of alarm that Jews have reached a dangerous low point and must stick together if they are going to get through this.

Later that night, I tried to put my finger on where this renewed sense of tribalism is coming from.

My gut feel is simply that Jews feel cheated by the world. At the lowest moment of modern Jewish history, when we could have expected a sea of global sympathy, we got the opposite. We got attacked.

We feel abandoned. We feel alone.

This has brought many Jews closer together, to the point that we have no problem putting our own people first. Our message: “Now that we’ve seen your despicable reaction to Oct. 7, dear world, many of us have concluded that we have little to gain by trying to be nice. We’re better off sticking to ourselves and joining our collective fight for survival.”

I never thought I would actually write those words, because “worrying about the world” is hard-wired into Jews. We must be nice, we must contribute, we must not cause trouble, lest they turn against us.

But while we still value that universalist impulse, it’s been superseded by one hard fact: We lost 1400 Jewish souls, massacred in the most brutal and barbaric way possible, and much of the world still turned against us.

The signs are everywhere. The head of the FBI says antisemitism is at historic levels. The ADL reported a 400% increase in Jew hatred. A headline from this morning on I24News: “Pro-Palestinian protesters worldwide call for Israel’s elimination.” Jew hatred across college campuses has become an epidemic. It’s hard to keep track of it all.

Besides the hatred, though, there’s something almost worse: the viciousness. Watch any video of protesters yelling, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” or “We don’t want no two states, we want all of it” or “Globalize the Intifada.” These are not protestors chanting and marching with nobility and conviction.

These are haters screaming in a frenzy of fury, a fury that is threatening and intimidating. You can see a good example from last night with wild protestors at the gates of the White House. The rage was truly scary. No wonder so many Jewish college students are feeling unsafe.

Many Jews have noticed this ugliness and are wondering: “If the haters are treating this like a war, shouldn’t we?”

The good news is that there are still plenty of Jewish supporters out there, and we should express our gratitude to those outside the Jewish community who have shown our community both empathy and solidarity. Tribal or not, we need them as allies.

The problem is that the haters make most of the noise.

The result is that on the streets and campuses of the world, and on social media platforms that reach hundreds of millions, the optics are clearly on the side of demonizing the Jews. Needless to say, the haters have been using Israel’s justified war against Hamas as a convenient cover for their hatred.

More and more Jews, however, are refusing to get sucked in by the old anti-war talking points. As much as they care for the lives of innocent civilians, they have come to understand two things: One, Hamas is murdering their own people, and two, crushing Hamas is a matter of survival. As even Bernie Sanders conceded today on CNN, “I don’t know how you can have a ceasefire, a permanent ceasefire, with an organization like Hamas, which is dedicated to turmoil and chaos and destroying the state of Israel.”

It is this hard, brutal reality that has turned many Jews inward. In a sense, Jews of the Diaspora have caught up to their brethren in Israel. Talk to virtually any Israeli today and they’ll tell you the same thing: If we don’t crush Hamas, we may not survive. A leftist, peacenik friend from Israel captured his dilemma this way: “I hate being tribal, but that’s the reality now.”

But here’s the great irony—crushing Hamas goes beyond the tribe. For one thing, it will improve the chances of normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia. How? Because no Arab country wants to make an alliance with a weak Israel. Israel’s military might, especially against a common enemy like Iran, is the #1 benefit it has to offer.

Crushing Hamas is also good for the Palestinians. Ever since Israel evacuated the Gaza Strip in 2005, the biggest enemy of Palestinians has been Hamas. The terror group has stolen billions in humanitarian aid to build weapons of war instead of schools. So when you hear people call Gaza an open-air prison, you can respond that it is Hamas who are the jailors, and that eliminating Hamas will benefit Palestinians as well as Israelis.

At the moment, however, all of that is secondary.

What is primary is that many Jews around the world feel under siege. They feel cheated. They feel scared. They feel abandoned. And they see their brothers and sisters in Israel in a war of survival.

Faced with such chronic hostility, these Jews have decided they have little choice but to stick together, at least for now, and go tribal.