Since the dreadful October 7 massacre, traumatized Israelis are doing their best to voice their horror to the world, mainly through social media. We want the world to know, we want the world to believe us, we want the world on our side for a change, because it hadn't been for the last – oh, I don’t know – 2000 years?
Tales of tumult: Israeli authors decode war
- Your prisoner is only a baby: a letter to the jailer/ Sagit Emmet
- A call: Help release the Israeli captives/ Yishai Sarid
- October 7 2023, a day that will live in infamy/ Noa Menhaim
Antisemitism is at its worst not when overtly chanted by skinheads flinging swastika flags, but when it's smartly packaged by attention-seeking scholars as a fake "freedom fight" campaign, fashionably spread around by clueless celebrities to be adopted by easily influenced collage-students. When pure evil passes as underdog, it's at its most contagious, dangerous form. It cunningly and very persuasively latches itself onto the naïve and ignorant, who are soon reluctant to learn any narrative-challenging facts. They eventually metamorphosis into complacent hypocrites, always on the lookout for the right opinion to have.
We've tried everything with these people, to no avail. We've shown horrific footage; played-back futile heartbreaking pleads of parents to spear their children's lives; shown Hamas's sadism at its raw form – yet somehow, we're still the bad-guy in this story.
Well, here's a little newsflash for you: we're done explaining. The tables have turned, the kibbutz's actual tables and then all the proverbial ones.
Don't tell us to stop the war in Gaza
Almost everyone in Israel who was holding out their hand in peace, is now clenching a fist. We have lost all hope to live alongside our Palestinian neighbors; and we definitely don't care what Greta Turnberg says about us to her supercool friends, not when our lives are on the line, and apparently our deaths.
Almost everyone in Israel who was holding out their hand in peace, is now clenching a fist. We have lost all hope to live alongside our Palestinian neighbors
The right side in the October 7 atrocities is the Israeli one, anyone in their right mind understands that. Decapitation of babies, rape, obduction of children, holocaust survivors and disabled people - can't be justified in any context. These are not the acts of an underdog; these are the acts of tyrants.
But this is like talking to a brick wall, absolutely useless. And if no one is listening, why should we? So don't tell us to stop the war in Gaza, it's not going to happen. Frankly, we don't need your permission or approval anymore. If we don't go in and find our loved-ones, what kind of Jews are we? What kind of Israelis? What kind of human beings? And know that: if we don't hunt down and eradicate these sickos, they will go on killing us and their own, and eventually they will come for you, too. Take a little look at Europe.
I live in the middle of Israel, in the greater Tel-Aviv area, not in some distant settlement in the occupied territories. Today I hurried my family into the safe room 3 times, because missiles were fired at our town. Tow years ago, a missile destroyed our pediatrician's clinic, luckily it was closed and only one homeless guy was killed. My bad, his soul was liberated from his body by Hamas. I had to explain that to my children, who currently have not had a regular day of school in over a month. Now I have to explain to them why a 9-month-old baby is held captive in the underground dungeons of Hamas for almost a month. But to the people still siding with Hamas, I don't feel I need to explain anything, not anymore. As far as I'm concerned, they're either antisemites or idiots, and most probably both.
- Jonathan Yavin is an Israeli novelist and writer for children of 17 books that were translated into many languages. His picture books “Pumpkin the Kitten” and “A Night at the Play-ground”, were published In the USA 2023 (Gefen Publishers, Ohio-Jerusalem.) In 2012, Yavin was awarded the Prime Minister Levi Eshkol Prize for Writers. In 2022 Yavin founded “Mellel Publishing House”, launching his 4th fiction novel, “Loyal to None but Himself.”
Tales of tumult: Israeli authors decode war
- I feel like the person in 'The Scream' painting/ Ricki Cohen
- War and pogroms: From 2023 to 1903 in just one day/ Dorit Silverman