20/20 Vision 4/15/24
As I sat in a hotel room in Durham, North Carolina on Saturday night, impatiently waiting for my daughter and her friends to finish prepping for their latest Bat Mitzvah, I heard the news: The Islamic Republic of Iran had directly attacked Israel, launching over 300 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and suicide drones. There’s nothing like hearing bad news when you’re on the road to make you feel particularly helpless…or when you’re poised to fly your family to Israel in a few days’ time, which, as of this moment, we still intend to do.
Via its proxies, Iran has been indirectly attacking Israel long before October 7th, but this was its first direct approach. Who knows what motivated it to step out of the shadows, but rest assured that we only know the partial picture. Iran is playing three-dimensional chess and the West is still playing checkers. Even if we’re unsure of the game, Saturday hopefully made it clear to everyone that what’s been transpiring in the Middle East is not about Gaza, but something bigger and shadier.
At this point, everyone is familiar with the narrative, curated to inflame the West and erode its support; it pits Israeli soldiers against Palestinian civilians. Hamas has perfected the art of embedding in civilian populations, putting them at risk, all the while churning out false casualty figures and ignoring the Gaza Health Ministry’s acknowledgment that ⅓ of the “casualties” are unverified. It’s worked: worldwide animosity against Israel and Jews in general has sky-rocketed. Forget about old-fashioned Holocaust-denial and blood libel, a credulous press has made it open-season to call Jews, not just Israelis, oppressors, colonizers, and committers of genocide. As Dara Horn so eloquently put it in her recent Atlantic article: “these lies are all part of the foundational big lie: that anti-Semitism itself is a righteous act of resistance against evil, because Jews are collectively evil and have no right to exist. Today, the big lie is winning.”
To be 1000% clear, the big lie is that Antisemitism is just - reminder, it’s not! Here are my issues right now:
This is not a Regional Conflict. This is not about an isolated Israeli and Palestinian problem. What’s actually been percolating in the background for over a century is an Arab-Muslim conflict that pits 6 million Jews against hundreds of millions of Arabs. This also isn’t a Shia Muslim versus Sunni Muslim conflict, which has also been bubbling for far longer than 100 years. Does anyone even remember that brutal Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s? Since Ayatollah’s came to power in 1979, this has been about the Islamic Republic of Iran’s regional and world power, and its demonization and destruction of Israel. It’s chosen its “friends” wisely. Watch as Russia and China continue to turn a blind eye, and these three upend the post-WW2 lifestyle we’ve grown so capricious about. Israel is in a no-win situation. If it doesn’t respond to Iran, it means ballistic missiles are an acceptable new-normal, while a response seriously stokes the prospect of a larger war.
Iran has created a Regional Noose. It’s around Israel’s neck, but if tightened, it will cut-off air for the entire West. There’s Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, Houthis in Yemen, militias in Iraq, Iranian forces in Syria, and Iran’s ever-growing long-range military capabilities from home. The encirclement makes it easier to comprehend why even Saudi Arabia and Jordan came to Israel’s defense, shooting down dozens of projectiles. Iran’s attack impinged upon Israel’s sovereignty, but also blatantly violated the safety and airspace of several Sunni neighbors in the process. Might other Sunni neighbors relunctanly support Israel to temper Iran’s antics? Long shot, but one can hope.
Iran versus the Islamic Republic of Iran. I might use the terms interchangeably for the sake of abbreviated writing, but let's not conflate the two. The people of Iran are not the fundamentalist government of Iran, which begs the question: where are the protests and outrage on their behalf? When was the last time you heard anything about Mahsa Amini? Citizens live under the thumb of the Islamic Republic’s barbarity. The West missed a real opportunity two years ago to topple the fundamentalists, when the people flooded the streets in outcry, and we abandoned them. I often think of my Persian Jewish friends, who were always the first and the loudest to decry this regime.
The UN is broken. Fun fact? Iran is currently the Chair of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament and the Chair of the Human Rights Council. How ironic. It must have been a busy news day, because it took UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres hours to finally issue a statement, which then called for restraint instead of condemnation. How about something stronger than an eye roll as discipline? I repeat, the UN is a joke and requires a complete rehaul or it should be defunded.
Millennials deserve respect. This is a war of the young. The 18-23 year olds in the IDF are fighting for the survival of Israel and the entire West. In Israel, there has been a real cultural shift–Millennials deserve nothing but our utmost thanks and respect. And not just the Israeli kids. Rumors have circulated that Princess Salma, the fighter-pilot daughter of King Hussein and Queen Rania, was personally responsible for downing several drones. That fact that the palace hasn’t issued a denial or rebuke speaks volumes, as does the careful silence from any Sunni-leaning press.
A victory for Jewish education. Israel hasn’t spent its money on building tunnels, funding terrorism or isolating its society. It flung open its doors to the world, invested in science and human capital, making things like the Iron Dome possible - this pursuit of knowledge, and investment in its future, is what makes its very existence possible.
Names to remember: 9 House members to vote out of office. If you’re represented by one these deadbeats, I strongly urge you to vote them out. They all voted against the Iron Dome, which would have guaranteed the destruction of Israel this past weekend; as if they didn’t know that. Democrats: Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Johnson (GA), Omar (MN), Carson (IN), Tlaib (MI), Newman (IL), Pressley (MA), Grijalva (AZ), Garcia (IL) and Bush (MO). Republican: Massie (KY).
Names to remember: the 5 AMERICANS still held hostage. Know their names. Don’t forget them. Their only crime was being Jewish. If they were anything else, this country would be up in arms, trying to get them back. Eden Alexander, Sagui Dekel-Chen, Omer Neutra, Hersh Goldberg-Polin and Keith Siegel. I pray they’re still alive, but we all heard the news loud and clear last week, when Hamas said it couldn’t consider the cease-fire deal because it simply didn't have 40 living hostages to trade, yet there are 129 hostages still missing.
Am Yisrael Chai
Kelly