There is no one left to blame

Years ago, in what feels now like an ancient time – 2013 – when I first came to Israel for an extended time period, I observed how vigilant Israelis were. They were sharp, intelligent, and observant of the world around them. Bags left lying at bus stops or on the street were immediately noticed, and people would come around to ask if the bag belonged to you. 

There was a general sense of safety. All heads were on a swivel; a sharp, hawklike eye missed nothing. Okay, maybe not nothing. But the point is that one could rely upon a critical number of Israelis to be vigilant, proactive, and ready to jump in and deal with a problem. 

At least, that was my impression in what now feels like millennia ago. Perhaps I was viewing Israel to some degree through rose-colored glasses, having been fed with glowing stories of Israel’s strength and heroism all my life. 

If I had any hint of rose-colored glasses left, they have since slipped off and shattered, obliterating any fantasies I’ve held about Israel, our people, and our strength.

Let me first state that I write about my own experiences. I am sure there are many who can write stories of Israel’s heroism during this time period, this time period that has rocked the world and left Jews all over the globe feeling more vulnerable and alone than ever. 

I am sure I will receive contesting responses with anecdotal experiences of Israeli heroism, but I am not here to write about that. I am here to write about cowardice and complacency – and betrayal. 

And I have my own anecdotal evidence to share. 

To begin with, the story of October 7th is suspect. Intelligence failure? Really? In a country which prides itself on the most advanced intelligence and security system in the world? The Gaza fence was the most heavily monitored fence in the world. One couldn’t sneeze in the direction of the fence without an alarm going up (this is an exaggeration for the purposes of illustrating the level of security that previously existed there).

I know there are many Jewish people who balk at the thought that there could be people among us who betray us, but that story is as old as time. Did Cain not kill Hevel? Did Joseph’s brothers not plot to kill him and only sold him into slavery when pressed by the other brothers? We have many, many stories of brothers betraying and killing brothers. Let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that so-called “family” won’t sell us off and prefer to have us killed – or kill us themselves – than do the right thing. 

Like most people, the events of Simchat Torah left my husband, David, and I reeling. But realization of the gravity of the threats we faced – here, on the ground in our west Jerusalem neighborhood – quickly had us springing to action, trying to figure out what the security plans were here. 

It was quickly made clear to us that there were no security plans or security group in our area, if one can believe that in the objectively dangerous State of Israel, there would be entire areas (we were not the only one) with zero security plans or procedures. 

My shock was compounded by the fact that the nearest police station was about 15-20 minutes away, what could feel like a lifetime in a serious situation. It would be prudent for me to mention at this point that this neighborhood in question is one which is infamous for a brutal terrorist attack in 2014. 

We would later learn that any attempts at security in our neighborhood in the aftermath of that attack fizzled out due to lack of interest. We were about to find out why. 

At any rate, the natural response for us was to immediately get involved with local security efforts because we obviously had a vested interest in the safety and security of our lives. While Arabs didn’t live in our neighborhood, they certainly worked here, and we knew there was a real potential – like any town in Israel – for the invasion of roving Hamas terrorists and mobs of Arabs from East Jerusalem. 

We joined a newly formed WhatsApp group for neighborhood patrols, supposedly led by a local business owner, and we did our part to recruit, recruit, recruit. We needed as many people as possible to be involved. In a neighborhood of about 20,000, the group we were in had so far had attracted about 40 people. We felt sure it was merely a matter of awareness. We would later find out it was a general lack of interest. 

A couple days after the massacre, when we realized that messaging all the other local neighborhood groups was mostly fruitless, we took to knocking on doors and walking up to people on the street. We didn’t (and still don’t) have a car, so all of this was done on foot. We quickly learned that people here were not remotely prepared – mentally or physically – for any problems. 

David and I were blasted in local groups for sharing “scary” messages and for “spreading panic.” We found the response on the street equally disturbing. 

“We’re arranging security patrols,” I would begin.

“What for?” the random man on the street would ask, looking mildly perplexed, his gaze wandering off.

“For security,” I would respond, staring at this person who did not seem to realize he was on planet earth. 

“Why?” he would blink at me in confusion.

After explaining that there is a war going on – you know, in case he didn’t notice – sometimes we’d get a straight answer: “I’m not interested.” Most times, they were just evasive. Some people hardly answered and turned away, avoiding eye contact. Some people pretended to express interest but mostly passed the buck. “Oh, reach out to this guy. He’s arranging this stuff.”

“Yes, I know. We’re helping him recruit. Would you like to join?”

In short, we came away frustrated at the inaction of the neighborhood residents, and increasingly concerned about the lack of proactive response on the part of the many, many young men here who refuse to join the military due to religious reasons and apparently equally refuse to join any security efforts whatsoever. 

We saw someone message the group in the middle of the night that he wasn’t sure who else was patrolling and he wasn’t sure what was going on. One night of poorly organized and coordinated patrols made me jump in and reach out to all concerned parties. We called a meeting. It felt productive and promising. The actual reality is that most people who came to that first meeting ended up ghosting because of vague reasons they claimed were more important. The rest were very happy to display the semblance of action without actually taking any action – in my opinion, an indication that they liked to appear important and useful without actually doing anything. It quickly became clear that we would be the only ones to organize civilian security. So we were forced to take the reins. 

That first week after the war was the longest of my life. We hardly slept. We hardly ate. All of our focus was on security and getting things set up here. Unfortunately, we seemed to be some of the few (there were maybe four others) who were actually willing to set aside everything to address the very real and frightening situation facing us. Most others quickly showed us, in action and sometimes in speech, that they were not going to make any steps themselves. They were just too busy to focus on security! They had so much to do, even though they had supposedly taken on the leadership positions in the first place. Again – they liked to appear important. The reality was that they were worthless, and they quickly proved this. 

About halfway through that first week, the so-called leader completely ghosted, and David and I were the ones calling and texting people, arranging patrols. If it wasn’t clear before, it was clear to me now that we were now the inadvertent leaders, not by choice or desire, but because people simply refused to do anything. Whenever I would try to press people to action, they would pass the buck and refer me to someone else. When I tried pressing the supposed leader(s) – because by now there were at least three or four men I was told were the “leaders” – they ignored me or claimed they were too busy with other things. When I tried to get help from a woman who had joined the first meeting and shared that she was able to assist with equipment, such as walkie talkies or other emergency equipment, it quickly became clear that she was blowing hot air and would not deliver on a single one of her many, many, many ideas which she kept sending to the group. I even contacted her and told her I had the funding to get stuff, but could she please, for the love of God, arrange it. 

Ghosted. 

In short, what I kept seeing was complete inaction, utter lack of responsibility, the refusal to take any tasks upon oneself, and – worst of all – a tendency to actually just disappear and ghost, never to be heard from again. People were so comfortable passing the buck to others, but never taking responsibility for anything themselves. If they wanted something, they’d vaguely say, “we should get…etc.” In a time of peace, this is enraging. In a time of war, this is suicidal – and worse, genocidal. It was abundantly clear to me that everyone was just so wrapped up in themselves that they couldn’t be bothered to share the load. It all fell upon a very small handful of people – six to seven people at most. For a neighborhood of 20,000. Security, suffice it to say, was virtually nonexistent. 

I had also created a group for the so-called leaders to try to help them organize, sending specific instructions to them about how to proceed. This, of course, was simply my input – but nobody else was bothering. Meanwhile, David and I were the ones actually doing anything. Nobody ever responded to the messages I sent to the “leaders.” Nobody in that group ever took action and organized patrols or even attempted to develop a security plan. 

Soon before that first Shabbat after the war started, with Shabbat looking more and more dangerous based on various reports coming in, one of the so-called leaders messaged me and told me that for personal reasons he couldn’t continue with this and wished me the best of luck. The other so-called leaders didn’t have the good graces to tell me they were dropping it in my lap – mostly mine, in a practical way, since my Hebrew is more functional than David’s – they just did. They dropped it into my lap and one of them would have the gall to message me repeatedly and ask me what the plan was for patrols. He didn’t do anything himself, he would just message me and say, “We need a schedule,” “What’s the plan for patrols?” When I would ask him to please call people and arrange patrols, he didn’t respond and didn’t do so. David and I spent almost every waking moment of that first week calling and texting people – and we hardly slept because when we weren’t contacting people, we were strategizing. 

I write in such detail to emphasis that grown, supposedly wise older men had the shamelessness to dump all of the work on a young woman with zero experience in security and significantly less resources and connections than they do. We’ve lived here for all of nine months. These are residents of the neighborhood who have been here for 10, 20, 30 years. 

Shabbat drew near. I saw some folks posting on the group chat, “What’s the security plan?” Of course, nobody actually had the desire to look too deeply into the nonexistent security plan. 

On Friday morning, October 13, we still didn’t have a solid plan. A last minute meeting was called by a man who I quickly began working with. Finally, someone who had some experience and connections! He had volunteered in the police force and was quickly concocting a plan for Shabbat. His focus was more on the official government-sanctioned emergency response team (Kitat Konnenut in Hebrew). My inadvertent leadership of the civilian volunteers was meant to support the official emergency response team. 

Until the last minutes before sunset on Friday, we called and harassed people to join armed men to secure the entrances to the neighborhood. I yelled at quite a number of men that day. Men who sounded like they were half-asleep, men who shrugged their shoulders at the real threat that faced us. Men who I can hardly call men. 

We were ghosted, hung up on, harangued about the lack of proper security (we know, that’s why we’re asking for volunteers!) and I was enraged and completely exhausted by the time Shabbat began. I hadn’t even prepared any food for Shabbat. The schedule for security at the entrances throughout the course of Shabbat had a lot of holes – not enough people had volunteered. Everyone was concerned about their Shabbos meal and their sleep. They didn’t give a hoot about security, not if it involved their efforts. We were in God’s hands – as we always were – but we had to rely upon Him for miracles at that point. 

I can’t continue to explain every single minute of every single day since then. But the continued experience of this war has left me with no doubt in my mind that significant numbers of Jews are not only complacent, but willfully endangering the lives of other Jews and will choose to do that rather than take action. After seeing the astonishing response to our attempts at developing security here – which, on the civilian side has yielded rather paltry results – I understand now why and how the Holocaust happened. 

I live in a mostly Haredi neighborhood. And we were told over and over again that to get anywhere with civilian security, we would need the ravs in the community to issue statements. Fine, great. I don’t know any ravs. We tried to get people who did knows ravs to do this. They never did. 

We were also told that ravs of yeshivas specifically did not want their men involved. The whole idea of men standing up and doing something for security was repulsive to them. It became clear that any help we would get would mostly be from older, non-Haredi men. The younger non-Haredi, dati-Leumi types were already called up and in the south. 

The many, many, many young men we saw shuffling about seemed disinterested and disengaged with life. They were too busy reading Shas and, like women, arranging Shas readings and prayers. There’s a time and place for study and prayer. In an obligatory war, a milchemet Mitzvah, even a Chatan should leave the chuppah to go to war. These men were not interested in sacrificing some time for security efforts. 

I was explicitly told by a middle-aged Haredi man that the best approach was not to fight. In all circumstances. 

We also received uneasy responses from people who felt that our call was for “vigilante justice” and how could we ever dare to think of organizing civilian security without the permission of the government, police, etc.? Yes, how could we dare, when the numbers of the dead were mounting over a thousand, and the stories from the south came pouring in of people who were abandoned by the soldiers and police in their time of need? At any rate, their perspective wasn’t entirely true, but most weren’t actually interested in being involved, whether official or not, and they leaned on their excuses to avoid involvement.

In desperation, I started reaching out to people outside of Israel. Besides funds, I emphasized, what we needed most was help on the ground. Entire neighborhoods were left defenseless and vulnerable with many young men called up. My pleas fell on deaf ears. World Jewry, it seems, is interested in two things: raising funds – and raising awareness. The first one is essential. The second one is useless. 

In fact, the main thing Jews outside of Israel seem interested in doing is waving flags, putting on a new profile frame, and posting incessantly about the war in Israel so their non-Jewish friends will see and pity us. 

This is what I say: don’t pity us. Don’t have a drop of mercy for us. Because we brought this on ourselves with inaction – allowing the Arab poison to fester and spread – and even at the critical moment, rather than taking action fighting, and standing up for ourselves, we’d rather whine and bellyache that the world isn’t feeling sorry enough for us. 

Jews who have been shoving the Holocaust story down everyone’s throats, screaming, “Why didn’t the world save us?” do much the same now. They are so invested in making the world care. Why aren’t they more invested in making Jews care? They run to the nations and moan, “Why did you non-Jews let this happen?”

My question is, “Why did us Jews let this happen?”

The question applies today as much as it applies to the Holocaust. 

Why do we insist on being the weak, meek, pathetic loser who wails to non-Jews about their inaction? We are the ones responsible. We are the ones who must take action. 

Shortly after the events in the south, when people were asking how the hell this could happen in the Jewish state, I already had an answer. 

Deliberate betrayal on the highest levels – and complete and utter negligence. 

A man in Kibbutz Be’eri shared his harrowing account of fighting tooth and nail against the invading terrorists for hours. Where were the big, mighty soldiers of Israel? 

Twiddling their thumbs outside, waiting for their commander to give the order. 

Israel Defense Forces troops refused to engage terrorists in Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7 and left members of the kibbutz to fight them off alone, amember of the community’s civilian security team recounted.

“The thing I remember the most, and the most traumatizing thing for me from this ordeal, was [being evacuated after hours of fighting and] arriving at the entrance to the kibbutz and seeing 500 soldiers stationed in an organized and orderly manner, standing and looking at us,” Yair Avital, one of the surviving members of the kibbutz’s security team, told Channel 12 in a segment aired on Wednesday, referring to the situation at 6.30 on the evening of the massacre.

Be’eri was one of the hardest-hit communities on that Saturday. More than 10 percent of its 1,200 residents were wiped out when some 3,000 Hamas terrorists stormed across the Gaza border into Israel, killing 1,400 people in southern towns, army bases and at a music festival, injuring more than 5,400 and taking at least 240 hostages….

By 7:30 a.m., less than an hour after the terrorists entered the kibbutz through its main entrance and through holes in the fence, two members of the security team were dead and another three were wounded, Avital recalled…

At 6:30 p.m., IDF troops finally arrived at the clinic, where Avital and the kibbutz nurse, Nirit, were the only survivors.

“Hundreds of soldiers waited outside Be’eri with terrorists still inside, survivor says” – Times of Israel

Accounts of helicopter pilots were similar. They did not rain down destruction on terrorists’ heads. What did they do? 

They twiddled their thumbs and waited for their commander to give the order. 

Families living in the south reported that it took hours for any police or soldiers to appear. Where were they? The nearest bases, police stations, etc. were no more than 15 minutes away at most. Intelligence failure? How about the hundreds of soldiers who stood outside of Kibbutz Be’eri and did nothing while the last members of the security team struggled against their attackers? 

That was not an intelligence failure. That was a moral failure. 

To say that I am enraged is an understatement. But to say that I am surprised by all this? Not remotely. Jews didn’t fight for themselves in the Holocaust. They walked willingly into the gas chambers. They wouldn’t even fight when they had nothing left to lose. Many of these same Jews told other Jews not to leave Europe, they fought against migration to Israel, and they kept telling everyone it would be fine. It would all be fine. Stay put, don’t fight, give up your guns, comply with the enemy, be pleasant so the non-Jews will like you, and all will be well. 

The same is true now. Don’t fight. Be compliant. Don’t you dare try to stand up for yourself. We have big daddy government and big, scary IDF soldiers and policemen for that. Nevermind that the residents of the south were left to their own devices when they actually needed help. 

What we forget is that we have the Creator of the universe on our side, and that among other things, He commanded us to fight. When people attack the Jews, it is a desecration of Hashem’s name. We are obligated to wage war against them. The great leaders of Israel, such as Joshua and King David, knew that very well. 

It has become clear to me that the fighting Jew – the likes of Joshua, King David, Shimshon, the Maccabees, even vilified Zionist figures like Jabotinsky – is the extreme minority in a vast majority of cowards. Jews prefer to accept the blows of their enemy – Germans, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Arabs, even their own, and especially their own – than fight. And, when it’s all over and we’ve been wiped out, who do they run to?

The non-Jews. And they scream, whine, and complain. “Why didn’t you do something?” “Never again means never again!” “Where were you when we were slaughtered?”

To any non-Jews reading this, don’t feel sorry for us. Don’t shed a tear over us. The responsibility doesn’t lie with you. The responsibility lies with us. And after witnessing what I’ve witnessed and hearing what I’ve heard these last few weeks – the longest weeks of my life to date – I see that only an extreme minority of Jews is willing to take responsibility. Most of them will just pass the buck, evade responsibility, shrug their shoulders, and then cry when the world doesn’t give a crap about a people who won’t do anything for themselves. 

In the Tanach, Hashem tells us He will not forgive the nations for the Jewish blood they have spilled. But I wonder if He will forgive the Jews who stood by while their own brothers were slaughtered. They are just as guilty as the terrorists who slaughtered the residents of communities in the south. Their guilt is on their heads – they can’t pass the buck on that. 

Months ago, when we moved back to Israel, I said to a friend that I was shocked by the complacency and lack of attention by Israelis. If years ago I had noticed Israelis being proactive and attentive, I now noticed their laziness and disengagement with the world. They were too busy staring at their phones to notice the Arabs dressed up as Jews (yes, I caught them); the backpack by itself, sitting upright, at a park; the closed box sitting at the bus stop. 

In fact, riding around on buses and trains, when one’s head should be on a swivel, I noticed that nobody paid attention anymore. Everyone was staring at their phone, wrapped up in their own small minds. 

My conclusion after months of observation, and very harrowing weeks following Simchat Torah, is that the majority of Jews are unwilling to fight. They would much rather whine to the world than fight. They would much rather wave a flag, send emojis, post inane slogans like “We will win this together!” than actually work together and share the load to make something happen. 

And it’s strange, but somehow, Jewish ingenuity is amazing and incredible – up until you touch this topic. All of a sudden, if there are no guns, there is an unwillingness to even attempt to think of alternate solutions. 

Because ultimately, the real problem is willpower. Jews lack the willpower to deal with the problems. They lacked the willpower years ago during the intifadas, and they lack the willpower perhaps even more so nowadays. Unfortunately, the approach has been, “Let the army and police deal with it – and let’s not get involved.” Clearly, that didn’t work out so well for the residents of the south. 

It’s important to note that I am no weapons expert. I’ve never been in the military. However, I’ve already thought of multiple different approaches that can be taken to fend off attackers. I am not a man, but actual men are cringing at the thought of dealing with anything if they aren’t armed. And yet there are many ways to defend and to fight, to hold off Arabs until the police arrive. I get it – if we’re talking about Hamas guys who have been armed to the teeth with machine guns, fine, that’s another story. But we’re talking, especially here, about local Arab residents who would more likely come with molotov cocktails and stones (as they did in the riots two years ago). Maybe they’d also bring some knives and some poorly engineered homemade guns, but the point is that we’re not really talking about Hamas guys with machine guns. Look at the Warsaw ghetto uprising – too little too late, but at least they finally did something, and fended off the Germans for three months. These were starved men and women with far more limited resources.

The point is that people don’t even want to consider doing anything or being creative and doing what is necessary to fight against roving bands of Arabs. The reality is that the Arabs have what we do not have – they have willpower. They are willing to do everything they can by whatever means necessary. They are not afraid of any repercussions for what they do. They are not even afraid to die in the act. On the contrary, they are ready to do whatever it takes – whether with molotovs, stones, knives, or their bare hands – and act together and work together. They are united in their hatred of Jews. 

We are not united on anything. And where there’s a will, there’s a way. But there is no will. That’s the point.

Another major difference between this war and other wars in history is that there is no home front. We are all on the front lines. And when there is no home front in a time of war, every home, every family must be prepared to defend and to fight. Unfortunately, people refuse to acknowledge this reality. Their creativity and genius has clearly definable boundaries: if it involves self-defense or related action of any type outside of having a gun, their creativity stops. They prefer to bury their heads in the sand.

A few days ago, a female Arab worker at a store down the street started screaming, “Allahu akbar!” and laughing heartily at videos of Hamas butchering babies. 

The response?

Well, it sounds like she was fired. But of course, this twisted lunatic is still walking. And the neighborhood response?

“We have guns and an army.”

To which David responded, “Do you remember what happened on Simchat Torah?” There was, of course, no response to that. 

People already don’t remember – and yet the threat is real. And one would think that an Arab laughing at Hamas videos, an explosion set off by an Arab at a gas station down the street (yes, that also happened within the past couple weeks), and a horde of Arab workers at the local Rami Levi singing in unison, “Nova, Nova,” (the name of the music festival where Jews were slaughtered) would wake people up a bit more. 

It doesn’t. 

So if you hear of more destruction and chaos in Israel, don’t bother worrying yourself over it. The responsibility lies on the Jewish people. And the Jewish people refuse to take up the mantle. 

And, judging by the prophecies (not to mention past precedent), we will refuse right up until we’re in the gas chambers once again (metaphorically speaking, or perhaps literally) – only this time, it will be ghettos and camps and chambers of our own making. 

Why did we ever wonder about the lack of humanity in the world? 

That lack of humanity is in us. 

And we are responsible. 

There is no one left to blame.