Four Pet Peeves with the Framing of the October 7th Attack
by Eliana Fishman
I waited until October 8th to write about my four biggest pet peeves with how many fellow Jews talk about the October 7th attack:
1) Not distinguishing between civilians and military.
Of the 1,139 Israelis and foreign nationals killed on October 7th, 373 were soldiers and 790 were civilians. Those 790 people were killed unjustifiably. (I do not distinguish between those killed by the Hannibal Directive and those killed by Hamas — Hamas bears responsibility for all 790). Those 373 were killed tragically, but justifiably. Similarly some of the 250 people taken were taken hostage, and some of them were taken as military prisoners. I don’t know the exact numbers. I believe the 5 remaining women who are in captivity and presumed alive are all military prisoners.
2) Describing the 10/7 attacks as a pogrom.
A pogrom is when the civilian aggressors are on the same side as the power structure (the police). The victim of a pogrom has no one to call for help because the police support the attackers. When someone call 10/7 a pogrom they are implying that the Israeli military is on the side of Hamas. Of course, that’s not what they’re really saying, they’re just trying to trigger people’s responses to Jewish trauma (as if we need more of that). The settler attack in Huwara was a pogrom. (Most settler attacks are pogroms: they have the backing of the Israeli military, and Palestinian villagers have no one they can call for help.) The October 7 attack was not a pogrom.
3) Calling the 10/7 attack antisemitic.
It wasn’t antisemitic. It was anti-Israel. Not all attacks on Jews are motivated by antisemitism. For example, most people would not describe Yigal Amir’s assassination of Yitzchak Rabin as antisemitic. It was political violence. Palestinians living in Gaza, have really, really good reasons to hate Israel that have absolutely nothing to do with Israel’s status as a Jewish state and absolutely everything to do with ethnic cleansing, decades of violence, 15+ years of siege, the Israeli military shooting fishermen who stray more than 5 miles from the coast, lack of economic opportunity, humanitarian disasters, routine dehumanization (literally referring to carpet-bombing Gaza as “mowing the lawn“) etc. I am not saying this to justify Hamas’s 10/7 attack — I am merely pointing out that it bears no resemblance to antisemitism or to people who blindly hate Jews.
4) Referring to 10/7 as the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
In 1976 between 1900 – 3000 Jews were killed or “disappeared” in Argentina as part of the junta. The response of the American Jewish community was basically nothing (and any response waited for years after). Yes there are many differences between the junta and 10/7: single day vs. 3 month period, the ease of information flow due to the prevalence of smart phones, body cams and the internet. But also really important was that the US was on the side of the junta, the Jews who were killed were communists, and the American Jewish community was focused on the struggle for Soviet Jewry, and didn’t really care all that much about Jews in Latin America. Never let anyone claim the American Jewish community’s response to 10/7 is apolitical, and just about mourning dead Jews. It’s about conflating Jewish identity with Israel.
Pet peeves? Really? Do you have pet peeves with Nazis? Or with Isis? Or Taliban? Or are you prepared to call out actual evil where it raises its head? Stopping to criticize the rhetoric and semantics is the privilege of those who did not face the atrocities, and who repeatedly turn a blind eye to Hamas’ outspoken commitment to kill all Jews.
Arguing that there were hundreds of “justifiable” murders and kidnappings of military personnel to condone the massacre of threefold that amount of civilians is sick. Ignoring the cruelty in which they were all treated is being accomplices to it.
How come there were no such “justifiable” attacks by Palestinians on Egypt who holds the southern border of Gaza?
So let’s drop the pogrom and just call it a massacre. Does that make you feel better? Less of a pet peeve? How about body mutilation and rape, is that a pet peeve? Or is that ok if the women were soldiers? How about burning babies alive, is that atrocious enough to address as something that more than a pet peeve?
This quest for righteousness is sickening in its capacity to condone absolute evil and ignore all blatant declarations of antisemitism by Hamas.
It for the like of the author of this piece and all who accept her words as viable arguments, that the writer of the Hagada said:
לו היה שם, לא היה נגאל!