Murderous attacks demand revenge

Defending terrorists gives liberals a bad name

I usually don’t feel affected by global events that don’t touch me personally, but the terrorist attacks on innocent Israelis and the inevitably harsh response of the Israeli armed forces has me feeling hopeless. 

I lived in Israel for six months in 1978-’79, arriving at Kibbutz Barkai, about 40 miles north of Tel Aviv, at about this time of year. I was 18. I was assigned to work usually in the avocado groves and took every opportunity to travel around the country, north to Qiryat Shemona and the border with Lebanon, south to Jerusalem and the Dead Sea and Masada.

It was a good time in Israel, a peaceful time, and it felt safe walking the streets and riding the buses, even when soldiers got on with their rifles.

I loved life on the kibbutz, getting up early to work in the fields and lounging by the community pool in the afternoons. It was thrilling to explore the markets in Jerusalem and walk through alleys where people had been bartering for goods for thousands of years. It was awe-inspiring to enter the Dome of the Rock, where, according to Muslim, Jewish and Christian tradition, God created the world.

Kibbutz Barkai is located about 40 miles north of Tel Aviv.

It makes me sick to read about some people in this country — in particular, college students and professors puffed up with self-righteousness — celebrating the massacre of innocent Israelis, including children, as if these murders were acts of courageous rebellion.

The violence of the Israeli response, which is bound to take a far higher toll on innocent people than the Hamas attacks, is upsetting, but what is the alternative? Hamas is insinuated in the civilian population of Gaza, using it for cover. The terrorists rely on the world’s outrage for protection, even though they are the ones responsible for putting the Gazans in danger.

Maybe it’s the lingering effects of Covid — Bella and I had it last week —  that is making me lose hope. Maybe it’s the constant consumption of the news through my phone and the impression that all conflicts trend toward greater polarization, anger and violence.

Probably it’s the real dangers of this time, especially climate change, that make me fear my children face lives more uncertain and precarious than mine.

On the kibbutz, spring brought wildflowers to the rocky hills that rose up from the fields. One day, they would be covered with blue flowers; a couple of days later, with pink. There was nothing wild about that land. People had lived on it for thousands of years, villages rising and falling. A friend and I, walking through a field, turned over a clod of dirt and found a clay oil lamp from some long-forgotten home.

I consider myself a liberal, but I don’t know what other Americans, who call themselves liberals, are thinking when it comes to this situation. 

Imagine that Hamas, enraged by U.S. support for Israel, had been able to infiltrate dozens of fighters into American communities like Glens Falls and on Oct. 7 had also slaughtered hundreds of American civilians in their homes and on the street, marching down Glen Street on a lovely fall morning and machine-gunning couples out for a stroll, setting cars on fire, shooting young mothers and their children. 

Does anyone doubt that the country would have demanded revenge?

Readings

I read “Born to Run,” Bruce Springsteen’s energetic and exhaustive memoir. I picked it up and started browsing and, drawn in by his candor and by curiosity about his life, I read almost to the end. The book loses its tension toward the end, after Springsteen has become a global phenomenon, and the last several chapters feel like they were included simply because they happened. As Springsteen makes clear about himself, he is a completist to the point of obsession, who succeeded largely because he worked tremendously hard every day for many years, but when it came to the memoir, he could have used a more aggressive editor. The writing is outstanding, vivid and honest, but he never makes a point he doesn’t want to reiterate or comes upon an insight that can be explored in a single paragraph. Reading this memoir takes endurance. It’s like listening to one of his epic albums, but without the excitement of the music. No one dances to a book, no matter how well done. This one could have been 100 pages shorter and still rocked.