Dead to Us: A Message from Miriam Adelson

The monsters of Hamas took their time in carrying out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Their foreign fans were not so patient. As the machine-gunning, stabbing, dismembering, burning, torturing, raping and kidnapping of Israeli civilians on the Gaza periphery was still proceeding, pro-Palestinian advocates were already surfacing in Western cities to chant their support.

The media described these displays as “protests.” But that was false: Israel had yet to repel the terrorists, let alone retaliate, so there was nothing to “protest” against. No, those ghastly gatherings of radical Muslim activists, ultra-progressives and Jew-hating career agitators were nothing short of street parties. They were akin to celebrations, hallelujahs to the horrors.

For Israelis, for Jews and for our many supporters in the world, this should have been the final unmasking of the “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free” mobs. They do not yearn for Palestinian liberation or advancement. They yearn only to see the end the world’s sole Jewish state. And from the heady remove of their university tenures, NGO jobs or partisan posts, they are willing to countenance an Israeli bloodbath in achieving that goal.

They are our enemies

These people are not our critics. They are our enemies, the ideological enablers in the West of those who would go to any length to eradicate us from the Middle East. And, as such, they should be dead to us.

Like Jews symbolically sitting shiva for a relative who has brought irretrievable disgrace on the family, we need no longer engage them. Indeed, we must disavow and shame them, deny them employment and public office, defund their colleges and political parties.

Doing all this will be easy, because the stakes in Israel’s war of survival have never been so clear.

If you condemn Hamas and then add a “but” followed by condemnation of Israel, you’re dead to us.

Don’t be dead to us. Be decent and fair. Be morally and intellectually clear-eyed. Be brave.

If you thunder at the tactics of Israel’s counter-offensive, without ever having taken an interest in far bloodier campaigns waged in your name, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Somalia, you’re dead to us.

If you quibble about how many babies were beheaded, or how many women were violated, in the October 7 pogrom, you’re dead to us.

If you are more outraged by posters of kidnapped Israeli kids then you are about the fact that they were kidnapped in a vile crime against humanity, you’re dead to us.

If you persecute Diaspora Jews as part of your pretense of merely opposing Israeli policy, you’re dead to us.

If you insist Israel is obligated to seek accommodation with Hamas, an idea you would never have entertained for Western powers that fought the Nazis, Al Qaeda or ISIS, you’re dead to us.

If you fail to recognize that Israel could end the threats to its existence by bringing its power fully to bear and eliminating Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian regime, but does not do so due to its concern for civilian suffering, you’re dead to us.

Be decent and fair

We Israelis, we Jews love life. And we are done with meekly counting our dead. We have given so much to the world, so much to generations of civilization. Now it is time for some reciprocity.

Don’t be dead to us. Be decent and fair. Be morally and intellectually clear-eyed. Be brave.

We will not forgive our enemies in Gaza or anywhere else. Nor would you.

And nor shall we forget the many who stand by us, understanding that our fight is their fight, too.

Originally published in Forbes Israel.