Israel's Defiant Survival
By Diane Medved
Israel’s war with Hamas is never far from my mind. I’m relieved that as of this writing, Medved family members in Israel remain safe, whether serving in the IDF or actively supporting the soldiers and residents displaced by the fighting.
More than one hundred days after the October 7 attack on towns and a music festival near Gaza, Israel’s ongoing response to Hamas’ terrorism has aroused in the US shocking anti-Semitism, while at the same time coalescing Jewish support and unity. When a local synagogue was defaced with anti-Israel graffiti, and white powder sent to several Seattle synagogues, our community responded with an outpouring of offers to help.
Jewish people who believed that the United States—and our own Northwest—had moved beyond blatant hatred for racial, ethnic or religious groups received a disconcerting awakening. The Anti-Defamation League reported that in the first month after the October 7 attack, Anti-Semitic acts increased 316 percent over the same period a year earlier, and “at least 200 of the 653 anti-Israel rallies held across the US [in the first month] since Oct. 7 featured explicit or strong implicit support for Hamas and/or violence against Jews in Israel.” Reports revealed the sickening torture of women defiled and murdered during the initial Hamas attack, yet there was no feminist outrage. Then came the equivocating answers in a congressional hearing about anti-Semitism by the (women) presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT to Rep. Elise Stefanik’s yes-or-no question, “Is calling for genocide of the Jews in violation of your university’s rules against bullying or harassment?”
Anti-Semitism, we remember, reappears in waves throughout history, even in our techy times when school kids use ChatGPT. It’s fueled by falsehoods, which pop up online and even in news stories, and then echo down politically-charged social media channels.
I’d especially like to correct this whopper: “Israel is a ‘colonialist’ power of European Jews who after World War II pitched Palestinians out of their land and created an ‘apartheid state’.” It’s easy to scratch the “apartheid” accusation with one look at Israel’s racial and geographical immigrant diversity. Two million full Israeli citizens are of Arab descent, holding positions in government and law. Immigration between 1948 and 1967 included 800,000 Jews from North Africa and the Middle East. One hundred thousand came from Morocco; close to that amount from Yemen, and 160,000 from Ethiopia. Fifty-five percent of the total Jewish population in Israel are “Mizrahi Jews” who fled persecution from Islamic nations. Israelis are largely “people of color,” in a wide range of hues.
Far from the myth that Israel arose as a shelter for Holocaust victims, Jews have had a continual presence in “the promised land” since ancient times. In fact, for most of its history, the region was called Judea. Here’s a brief recap of that unbroken lineage.
Archeology provides evidence Jews gathered at a “mishkan,” or place of worship in Shiloh as far back as 1177-980 BC, functioning, according to Jewish literature, for a period of 369 years. Archeologist Dr. Scott Stripling, a Texan, in 2020 found at Shiloh “a trio of rare altar horns on stone blocks,” which join a collection of other finds consonant with biblical accounts.
The first Temple in Jerusalem, constructed according to biblical sources by Solomon, son of Jewish King David, was built in the 10th century BC. A secret dig done 2007-2016 with rare cooperation between Israeli archeologists and the Islamic Waqf, which controls the Temple Mount, produced in situ olive pits, animal bones and pottery shards conclusively dated to the Temple of more than 2,600 years ago. It stood (enduring several attacks) about 1600 years before the birth of Mohammed, destroyed in 586 BC by the Babylonian siege on Jerusalem.
Jews then disbursed, but rebounded to rebuild The Temple around 516 BC. Bountiful evidence and even original remains affirm its ongoing status as the most holy site in Judaism. Just last year, archeologists found a 2,000-year-old Hebrew “receipt” from the second Temple era along a short biblical shopping district road connected to the Temple Mount. The second Temple was destroyed by a Roman siege in 70 AD.
Still, a remnant of Jews persisted in Israel. Jews led the 3-year Bar Kochba revolt in 132 AD against the Roman Empire, falling to the Emperor Hadrian. Despite that enormous setback, Jews repopulated the area, with Judah haNasi writing down the Mishna oral law in about 200 AD. The Talmud, a further elucidation of Torah oral law, was codified about 350-400; one of its two compilations is called “The Jerusalem Talmud.”
When the Roman Empire split in about 400 AD, the Eastern faction became the Byzantine Empire (forming the Eastern Orthodox Church), taking over the region, though Jews remained populous. Few Arabs lived there until 638 when the Muslim conquest superseded Byzantine Christian rule.
Finally, the Ottoman Empire prevailed from 1517 until the British Mandate for Palestine in 1917, after Britain defeated the corrupt Turks. The word “Palestine” referred to territory Jews even in the mandate document itself insisted on designating “Eretz Yisroyel”. The Mandate came shortly after the Balfour Declaration, in which Britain promised to establish a Jewish “national home.” Faced with Arab revolts, Britain put Israel’s future to a vote at the United Nations, which on November 29, 1947 formed the Jewish State of Israel, as well as a new, first-ever Palestinian state, an offer angrily declined by local and international Arab leadership. An attack by mostly Iraqi and Egyptian troops quickly followed.
The point of this history lesson is to demonstrate continual Jewish presence in Israel dating thousands of years back; Jews didn’t forcefully displace long-term Palestinian inhabitants (as winners of wars do), but purchased land and properties. In fact, Jews erecting new cities (including Tel Aviv), kibbutzim, farms and factories in the new state attracted thousands of Arab immigrants eager to benefit financially from the building boom.
Just as the United States was a nation founded on principles, elucidated in our Constitution, Israel, while a secular nation legally, relies on its religious roots to inform its direction. And this is what Israelis call upon now, as they face a foe whose stated goal is their elimination. Yes, my family in Israel, like most everyone there, is working actively on behalf of the soldiers. My sister-in-law put together a charity to purchase supermarket credits for families crushed economically by the deployment of breadwinners. My teacher, Rabbi Hanoch Teller, father of 18 kids living in Jerusalem, still provides his laundromat-sized washer and dryer to clean displaced families’ clothes, and organized cadres of transporters still pick up neatly-folded packages and deliver them to their owners residing in cramped hotel quarters. That teacher’s squash (the game) partner owns a bourbon distillery and now makes bourbon-infused beef jerky to sustain troops with no access to fresh food. I’m not sure how he removes the alcohol from the finished product.
Finally, one of the people I follow on Instagram goes by the name JudgeGorgeous. She’s 95-year-old retired jurist Lee First (she was a supervising judge for the Workers Compensation Board for the State of New York for her career, and she’s also written two autobiographies). She earned the nickname JudgeGorgeous because she’s always dolled-up and decked-out, with false eyelashes, blond hair, long manicured fingernails, with glitzy outfits or even costumes. She remains articulate, active and incredibly upbeat, offering commentaries with biblical basis and present-moment relevance.
“The Israeli army, which is mostly secular, has adopted a new ‘war song,’” she says excitedly, in a recently-posted reel. “What is it? It’s [Jews’ declaration of love for God,] ‘Hear, O Israel, The one God is our God; one and only.’ Which means they’ve taken God as part of the army!” Then she asks: “So what happened next? The secular army decided to put on tzit-tzit!” Those are knotted strings attached to the corners of shirts, reminders of their connection to God. “Undershirts with tzit-tzit flying! Whoever heard of such a thing?”
“So now there’s a shortage of tzit-tzit fringes!” she exclaims, “Every soldier going in to fight wants to put on tzit-tzit! So our synagogue in New York City, yesterday, decided to hire tzit-tzit teachers (to teach the knotting technique), and I went there also, so many people, men, women and children! To make enough tzit-tzit for the soldiers! We were there until late at night, and I want you to see a picture of me making tzit-tzit! After every knot, we say, ‘thank you God! I’m making tzit-tzit!’ People should know what’s going on in the world today!”
To Judge Gorgeous, there’s a miracle in soldiers’ desires to be close to God. And another miracle that so many people want to join together to provide for them. This is the message we take as we stand up against anti-Semitism, and band together for rallies, and to pray. We are united in supporting Israel and at the same time, taking on personal outreach and improvement. We appreciate the kind words, donations and deeds our non-Jewish friends continue to provide, as we join together to bring peace to Israel and the world.
Diane Medved, Ph.D. is a psychologist, speaker and author of seven books. She and her husband, radio host, author and columnist Michael Medved raised their three children in the Seattle area, where they can often be seen walking with some of their five grandchildren picking up litter with grabber and bag. Reach Diane at DianeMedved.com.