A year later...

I'm still seething at what occurred on October 7, 2023. What's happened since is doing little to ameliorate my anger.

Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

For Arthur and Nellie. I miss you, and I will never forget your kindness.

A year ago today, October 7, 2023, Israel suffered an attack that is roughly equivalent to what America suffered through on September 11, 2001—at least on a proportional basis. Though I was deep in the nadir of a personal crisis at that time, I was shocked and dismayed at the events as they unfolded. It snapped me right out of my funk. I simply could not understand such a worthy-of-the-mongol-hordes display of barbarity and cruelty in the modern world. My problems paled in comparison.

A year later, I’m still having trouble wrapping my mind around October 7 and what has happened since. In this I’m absolutely guilty of getting crossways with one of my most trusted personal dictums: the futility of assuming that there’s reason at the other end of any of many things.

You want to know what I’ve come to believe is even worse than the events of October 7? Two things, actually. The first is that there is unfortunately something related to October 7 that is arguably worse than October 7. The second is what that is: the victim-blaming by large swaths of the western world concerning atrocities indisputably perpetrated on innocent Jews (many women and children) by Hamas militants.

It gets worse. A sizeable portion of Muslims, even here in the west, believe that it is their sacred duty to aid and abet the eradication of Israel from the face of the earth. Since they can’t achieve that politically or militarily, terrorism is justified. An equally disturbing parallel secular narrative, one that is inexplicably popular among the woke, portrays Israel, a tiny liberal nation and the only progressive society in an area surrounded by mortal enemies, as the aggressor.

That takes some chutzpah.

The former of these conceptions is among the grounds upon which I’ve long concluded that organized religion is, at best, a silly distraction and, at worst, a justification for exercising every totalitarian impulse known to man (I distinguish religion from spirituality, the latter to which I have no objection whatsoever). The latter is why I’m not down in any way, shape, form, manner, or style with the current illiberal and bereft-of-knowledge incarnation of progressivism. There is simply a limit to the ignorance of history, culture, and world events that I can gracefully tolerate.

Lest you wonder about what motivates my rancor in all of this, I am not a Jew. I’m an agnostic atheist hillbilly. Despite this cultural handicap, my eyes and ears work just fine. I can spot bullshit narratives from halfway around the world with ease. On that account alone, I feel enough kinship for the Jewish people to vociferate on their behalf.

But there’s more. For one thing, a long, well-documented history of persecution of the Jewish people. For centuries, the Jews have had a tough row to hoe. Their successes have often been used as excuses for bigotry and bloodshed by those less successful. The Jews have, at one time or another, been screwed with by nearly everyone.

Talk about being on the wrong side of the oppressor-oppressed paradigm.

I once had a relationship with a Jewish woman whose large, extended family took me in and kept me around for many years after the relationship ended. They were first-class people, all highly educated: doctors, lawyers, engineers, and scientists. Their political opinions ran the gamut from very conservative to very liberal. Yet I’ve rarely encountered before or since a group of people so willing to entertain ideas that did not originate in their own craniums. Sunday dinners were awesome.

The parents once told me about the day that while their daughter (my girlfriend) was in kindergarten in Russia, the secret police came to their apartment and arrested them for unspecified crimes. Their frightened 5-year-old girl stood outside of the school in the cold and gathering darkness for hours until neighbors figured out what had happened and picked her up. They fled to Israel soon after.

You Israel-hating progressive social warriors can bloviate all you want. I happen to put a lot more stock in the opinions of those who’ve experienced totalitarianism firsthand than I do in the Ivy League academics and those of their woke ilk who pontificate on the benefits of political theory they don’t actually comprehend even a little bit at a very safe distance.

My friends in that family have all passed for some time now, but I remember them for their dearly-earned humanity. It’s all an anecdote, I know, but it’s persuasive at least to me.

FWIW, all of the Muslims I’ve known as friends through the years have been just as wonderful. A lot of them came from hard circumstances too. The world is an imperfect place, and no one group has a solidary claim to persecution and hard times. I’m grateful for all of my friendships from around the planet and their contributions to my worldview. Most people, no matter where they are from, hate war, murder, and violence against the innocent as much as I do. It’s not a small club.

The difference is that most of the Jews I’ve known were not particularly religious and had no problem with anyone else of any belief system that displayed to them no harm or disrespect. My Muslim friends were the same way, except for the religiously observant, man of whom would have difficulty not getting wound up over Israel.

There’s one more reason that I have sympathy for Jews (or anyone else) behind the cultural 8-ball. The only people other than Jews in this ACE year of 2024 who may validly claim to be even more culturally isolated due to the prejudices of others are secular American conservatives. That is a small club. Don’t ask me how I know.

I’ve ranted about October 7 for a year now and many times had to get in line to do so. I will not belabor that here. Suffice it to say that I approve of every bit of ass-whipping that the IDF has recently handed out to Hamas, Hezbollah, and others working to eradicate Israel. The pager-bombs, in particular, were a work of tactical genius.

I suspect that in the fullness of time Hamas, Hezbollah, et al. will rue the day that they overestimated the strength of their principal sponsor, Iran, and underestimated the resolve of Israel. I suspect that Iran and other faux-intellectual thugs in the Middle East will come to realize that ascertaining the views of Americans from their media and institutions of higher education turns out to be an information gathering system fraught with peril. You might get away with promoting blatant anti-Semitism among the far left at Columbia or at CBS. But I triple-dog dare you to try and pull that crap almost anywhere else in America and see what kind of reception you get.

So here’s the deal. I’m confident enough in that assessment to personally extend an invitation to anyone enamored of the notion that Americans, when it comes to Israel, are a bunch of easily swayed stooges to look me up so that we can chat. I’m quite easy to find.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com.