Return to Jewish History
- Return to Jewish History
October 7, Israel, Hamas, Zionism, Israeli history, Jewish history, Israel and (Diaspora) Jewry, Criticism and Antisemitism
In memory of my PhD student Yinon Fleischman, killed on the border with Lebanon on October 29, 2023, survived by a wife and a baby.
From the eulogies that were given for Yinon at his graveside, perhaps the most moving one concerning Yinon as a scholar was given by one of his brothers, who described how every time he encountered him, Yinon was carrying some esoteric book that he was in the middle of reading. His brother said that he could not possibly understand what or why Yinon was reading. This is a beautiful reflection on the breadth and depth of Yinon’s intellectual mind. His death is a loss to the world and a loss to the world of knowledge.
Among the things that were undone with the experience of October 7, 2023, was confidence in what kind of language and knowledge are even appropriate for addressing them. At this early moment, when we are still well within the events directly unfolding from that day, how can we know what linguistic and intellectual terminology to use in talking about that day, about the responses to that day, and about how to move forward and what we can realistically expect from the future?
In the spirit of Max Weber’s comments on the clarity that can be gained in moments of crisis, alongside recognition of the inherent limitations of scientific investigation, the common thread in the following observations concerns the sense that the gap between Israeli and Jewish history is closing.1 The first part of this piece deals with the experience of October 7th within Israel; the second part reflects on critical and/or hostile responses outside of Israel. While the two parts can be read separately, they are actually very closely related: they basically reflect on the same thing, from the inside and from the outside of Jewish history. [End Page 148]
1. THE EXPERIENCE FROM ISRAEL
While it took place in Israel, October 7th was a Jewish event (Jewish as opposed to Israeli). My starting point here is the sense of shock that so many of us felt: that this day signals the coming of a future that, while uncertain, does not seem to bode well.
If I do not convey the experience of the first day, the first 48 hours, and the first week following October 7th, these remarks will be incomprehensible. Words necessarily fail at conveying experience, but some elements of the experience can, nonetheless, be recounted. Within Israel, a few elements came together to make it instantly clear to us that October 7th marked a watershed in Israeli history. These included the sheer number of casualties, the kinds of deaths, and the kinds of violence. First, the number of casualties, more than 1,200 people killed in one day, has no precedent in Israeli history. Not only that, but it was impossible, for a variety of reasons, to distinguish between military and civilian casualties. Given that altogether, in the roughly 120 years of the Arab–Jewish conflict, a little more than 24,000 people (including both military and civilians) have been killed on the Israeli side, the numbers involved in the October 7th event mark the clear crossing of a threshold. The numbers alone mean we have entered into a new phase in the conflict.
But the kinds of violence and death were also unprecedented in Israeli history, and the number of casualties and kinds of violence mean that there will never be positive identification of hundreds of people who lost their lives on that day. Thousands of others were injured, and almost two hundred and fifty were kidnapped and taken hostage. The kind of language that is required in order to account for the violence—shooting, burning alive, rape, mutilation, mothers found dead in closets hugging their babies or children, five-year-old children whose bodies were found weeks later burned to death in attics, men found dead hidden under their beds, houses burned to the ground with their occupants inside, people hiding in bushes, semi-naked...
