Thoughts on a Speech From a Member of Zak"a

In modern day Israel, in response to the increasing amount terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, a group of haredi civilian paramedics created a Chesed shel Emet organization to manage the identification and burial of the mutilated bodies from these attacks. As many of the attacks in the 1990s and 2000s were suicide bombings, the bodies of the victims were often in pieces and difficult to identify. 

Traditionally, a Chesed shel Emet organization manages the burial of people who's family's cannot afford their burial. The core value behind the organization is that all Jews deserve to be buried according the Jewish customs whether or not they can afford it. The innovation of Zaka was that they would specialize in collecting the body parts of the victims of gruesome terrorist attacks and also identifying who the body parts belonged to. From this the organization got its name, Zaka, which is an acronym for zihui korbanot ason, or terrorist attack victims identification. 

Zaka fills an important niche in the emergency response to terrorist attacks in the country. Generally civilian EMS are only trained to collect generally in tact corpses, while the army coroners can deal with identifying are collecting the mutilated remains of its soldiers since each soldier has a detailed medical record that can be quickly referenced for identification of the body. Zaka specializes in mangled civilian bodies who are more difficult to identify quickly since detailed medical records are harder to get on short notice. 

Zaka was born out of the haredi community's volunteer EMS service, hatzala, which means that all Zaka personnel are volunteers since the organization operates on much the same model of dispatching. 

Yesterday, on Nov. 21, 2023, the day that all the YU student organizations planned something. (and i mean all, there were like 7 events all planned at about the same time that night, it was kind of wild, but they all wanted to get events done before Thanksgiving.) A senior member of Zaka from Ashdod visited YU on his fundraising tour. Though not mentioned so directly during his talk, the money he was collecting seemed to be intended to fund mental health treatment for all the volunteers who assisted in collecting and identifying the victims of the October 7th massacres. Though I presume Zaka probably needed funding to also generally replenish their supplies that we no doubt exhausted. 

The dynamic of him fundraising felt a little uncomfortable to me, since he had to relive the horrors he witnessed while cleaning up in order to evoke our pity to donate to his organization. Of course he probably agreed out of his own free will and dedication to his noble organization, but nevertheless the dynamic seemed a little improper. The memories of the events should definitely be relayed, but they shouldn't be bought. Though I will stress that I assume the person who spoke volunteered to do this and was more than willing to relay his experiences, the principle of matter is what seems to be slightly bothering me.

I'll put my cynical criticism here in the middle, because I want to end on a more wholesome perspective. Almost all the people who I have heard discuss the current situation in the Jewish community point to a situation of great unity or achdut. However, each faction of Israeli Jewish society is optimistic that the other factions will soften their hardline stance on certain issues. When I heard from the rabbis who visited from Har Eztion, they were optimistic that the charedim would become more willing to serve in the army and support the nationalist vision of a Jewish future. The member of Zaka was himself charedi and his perspective was a little different. The charedim see their main opponents as the secular Jews who are trying to remove the religious aspects of general government policy like allowing public transportation to run on shabbat and the like. After interacting with the some of the relatives of the victims who were secular, he felt hopeful that they would adopt a more open attitude to their charedi neighbors and potentially become more connected to Orthodox Judaism. The Zaka member even requested that we try to donate a Sefer Torah to the secular kibbutsim who were attacked to assist them in the process of returning to religion. 

As part of his address, the Zaka member relayed some of his memories of what happened on October 7 and his team's involvement in the recovery of bodies. I do not remember all the details that relayed, and I don't really want to get too graphic, especially since he was clearly self censoring and not relaying the most disturbing of the details. One of the analogies he used to describe what it was like to enter the houses of the people who were murdered was that the bodies and the walls of the houses talked to you. He repeated this several times. It struck me because this is exactly how Disco Elysium portrays the experience of examining and identifying the mangled corpse of a murdered person. This Zaka member and the writers of Disco Elysium never interacted, so at that moment I knew that the Disco Elysium writers had that seen spot on. They clearly were writing from experience of what its like to examine a corpse like that. Unless I enter a profession that professionally deals with victims of murder, I will never be able to really understand what the person from Zaka or what Disco Elysium meant by the analogy. However, I suspect that when you observe a corpse in situ, exactly at is was when its life was brutally ripped from it, you can immediately spot the clues of how it happened. Whether or not your immediate conclusions of how the murder happened are correct, the bodies and the spilled blood still talk to you, they are trying to explain how it was that they ended up in this mess, but they are mute, for dead man can no longer speak, their lips are frozen. 

The next detail was one that I get very emotional thinking about. Part of Zaka's protocol is to collect all pieces of human remains, included residue of blood to be buried in the ground according to Jewish law. While they clean and collect the blood and other dismembered body parts, they also work to clean the house to restore it to a livable condition. Apparently, in one house while they were cleaning, one the Zaka team members complained, what's the point of cleaning up this house. The team leader who visited YU responded that the point was to collect the blood to bring it to kever yisrael (Jewish burial) and to allow the family to return to the house. He responded, they're all dead, there's no one to return to the house.

And if someone’s kinsman . . . comes to carry the remains out of the house, and he calls to the one at the rear of the house, “Are there any alive besides you?” the answer will be, “No, none.” And he will say, “Hush!”—so that no one may utter GOD’s name. (Amos 6:10)

A Rant on Jewish Nationalism

Nationalism began to emerge in the 19th century as a method for creating cohesive modern states. The feeling among the leadership of post revolutionary France was such that a united French national character had to be engraved upon the hearts of all residents of the newly modernized country. A significant portion of the nationalistic idea is tied the concept of nation states made up of one ethnicity or nation. Ethnic groups within multi-ethnic empires began adapting this notion of the nation state as an argument for why they should have self determination.

The impulse to break up oppressive empires was and remains laudable. Allowing territories within an empire the ability to develop democratic self-rule leads to better governance and is a much more moral method of appointing the people to serve in government. Many of the independence movements of 1848 and later rallied around an idea of nationalism as a liberating concept. All the people in this area of the empire deserve to be their own self-governing state.

Towards the 1870s, we witness the development of nationalism as a method of unifying small countries within a larger ethnic group. Italy and Germany's nationalism developed in this way after the two countries were formed out of unifying many small countries that housed people of the same ethnic group. Around the time of WWI, the Arabs considered the idea of a pan-Arab nationalism, though such a pan-Arab state never materialized. 

All these different streams of nationalism encounter a fundamental problem. There never was and never will be an ethnically homogenous country. How do ethnic minorities integrate in a Nationalism context. Especially ethnic groups that are dispersed internationally. In Europe there were Roma people and Jews living in almost every country. Does the nationalism absorb these minorities into the general nation or are they excluded legally or socially from being members of the nation of the nation state. Though there was initial optimism that these minorities would get integrated into the national identity of their respective countries. 

Democracy is of the people, by the people, and for the people, but the people are stupid. The people are highly antisemitic, and nothing united the European economic classes quite like antisemitism. A useful tool in creating unity in all kinds of contexts, it unified by excluding everyone's primary object of hatred, the Jewish community. The roots of antisemitism stretch back remarkably far, so the mere ideal of national unity was not going to destroy it. Rather the empowering of regular people to get involved in politics somewhat increased outright antisemitism, since monarchs generally discouraged messy antisemitism as a destabilizing force in pre-modern and medieval societies. The modern voters of the 19th century felt the benefit of institutional antisemitism was much better than the risk mob violence posed to the economy or general society. 

Jewish intellectuals, mainly in Eastern Europe where their marginalization from society was felt strongest, proposed a development in the concept of nationalism. What if you could develop a Jewish nation to advocate on behalf of the Jews since clearly the German, the French, and the Russian states were really failing to properly integrate their Jewish communities. (There was also a bit of anxiety over the possibility of proper integration that would lead to the complete vanishing of the Jewish people through assimilation.) A Jewish nationalism would be a modern way of connecting to Jewish identity that non-religious people could still engage with, and if successful, a Jewish national government would be able to reliably advocate for the welfare of Jewish communities abroad. Most Jews supported a territorial nationalism in the sense that the Jewish nation state would be a proper state with its own territory. Functionally speaking the Jewish communities were too scattered to have any real Jewish territory around.

The Jewish nationalist movement needed to create a shared piece of land for all the Jews to have territorial sovereignty over, the less popular ideas of Jewish autonomism that didn't believe in governing a particular territory seemed too unrealistic. To gather support and legitimacy for a Jewish land, the nationalists turned the to the historic homeland of the Jews, Palestine. Perhaps the more assimilated Jews would have read in the antisemitic magazines of the era that were calling upon Jews to return to their middle-eastern homeland, or perhaps they drew their inspiration for the messianic literature of traditional Jewish religion. But the Zionists, whether secular or religious in philosophical orientation, had their eyes set on Palestine.

In order to reclaim the land, they needed to settle it. Many of the western European Zionists treated it as a contemporary colonization project. They would move to the land as Capitalists, establishing a European Jewish bourgeoisie. These early settlers created agricultural industry that often employed native labor who had expertise in farming in the Palestinian climate. Eastern European Zionists, being more influenced by Marxist economic ideas refused to reestablish Jewish life in Palestine as a bourgeoisie owning class. They were going to only use Jewish labor, and that would mean adopting socialist and planned economy practices to ensure the stability of their small independent economic enclave within Arab Palestinian society. 

Overtime the Zionist settlement in Palestine, the yishuv hachadash, would grow in both numbers and in strength and succeed in getting the United Nations to recognize it as a sovereign nation in the 1947 Palestine partition plan. The Jewish communities globally were ecstatic. No more would the Jews be subject to the whims of nationalism regimes that marginalized them. Finally today, in 1947, Jews could be part of the world as a people with a nation state to advocate for them. The Jews living in a nation comprised entirely of their peers would be safe from antisemitism. 

This idea persists in aliyah narratives to this day. One Ra"m, speaking at the 2023 Har Etzion alumni Shabbaton in Teaneck, NJ, commented how moving to Israel was a healing process in which he shed his insecurities and biases that he gained living in galut, in exile (i.e. the diaspora). He compared growing up in Long Beach, NY, in the United States, to growing up in a home with emotionally absent parents. Upon moving to Israel, his exposure to native born Israeli Jews was healing process in which he recovered from the trauma induced by living in such a fundamentally antisemitic society. 

But there's a problem. Israel is not a utopia. Ethnic violence has raged there on and off since the British mandate. I don't need to carefully check the numbers, in Israel in the present day, a Jew is at greatest risk of dying out of antisemitism. In recent decades, Hamas and other Palestinian Islamic Jihad groups have encouraged their followers to conduct suicide bombing, to fire rockets into Israeli civilian areas to stab Jews with intent to kill in public areas. Such a level of popular violence is not seen in even the most antisemitic countries in Europe. 

The harshness of the present day violence in Israel has been overshadowed by the Holocaust. These deaths are seen as martyrs and heroes who are small sacrifices in a larger positive movement in world where the exiled Jew is reborn and brought home where he can honorably defend himself. There feels like some change in the air. The official authorities are calling the attack on October 7th, the most deadly day for Jewish people since the Holocaust. Now, I won't delude myself, the purpose of this statement is to frame Hamas and by extension the residents of Gaza as Nazis, which justifies the harsh counter offensive currently underway. Nevertheless, it opens us to realize that the country in which 1400 Jews died in one day, in what is probably best compared to a pogrom, was not Ukraine or Russia, as was the case since the days of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, until the pogrom of Kielce in 1946. Nor was it in the United States, whose dense Jewish communities rival in size the Jewish population of the state of Israel. No, it was in the haven, the refuge for the persecuted Jew, the modern State of Israel.  

Israel serves quite well as a haven for the Jews persecuted by the specter of nationalisms that marginalize the Jewish residents of their motherland. Perhaps unintentionally, the state of Israel has recklessly allowed another form of antisemitism to brew. To gain traction and legitimacy. This antisemitism is like that of the Orthodox Christian Ukrainian peasants who labored under the boot of their Polish Catholic colonizers. The distant Polish nobility had no interest in directly managing their estates in the conquered provinces. Instead they contracted Jewish notables to manage the land directly. The Arenda system, in which Jews were placed in a marginally high position of power for the first time since the Roman empire. Both the Christians and Muslims had made it illegal for Jews to own slaves in their respective territories, but the Polish crown had found a way to give the Jews slaves once again. Effectively, the Jews were a buffer that allowed the Polish nobility to distance themselves from the mistreatment of the peasants who worked their land. When the peasants revolted in 1648, they targeted the Jews who were settled in their native territories. Some of the Polish generals who were sent to quell the rebellion weren't too fond of Jews either and turned over the Jews they were supposed to be protecting to the rebellious forces of Khmelnytsky. 

The project of the Zionist colonization of Palestine has an ugly secret. It was built on displacing many of Arab residents who once occupied its territory. During the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate, the Zionist settlers would buy the land that they settled on. They set up large funds to manage the purchase and ownership of this land. In the beginning the settlers were more than happy to higher local agricultural workers who were already familiar with best practices in the Palestinian climate. The later National Socialist settlers who believed in creating a new Jewish proletariat refused to higher Arab workers. The intended effect of this system was that it created an independent Jewish economic enclave within the British mandate. 

Practically, it broke the traditional system of leases and residency in Palestinian society. Land could change hands many times, but generally the new owners would continue to lease the land to the local peasants/farmworkers or higher them to work on the new owner's farm. By insisting on using only Jewish labor, the collectivist agricultural settlements that the Zionists created would marginalize the local peasants from the economy, depriving them of jobs and slowly displacing them as they would move to growing Arab urban areas to find better prospects. 

The next step of expulsion was in the 1948 war. Some historians argue that the violent expulsions in 1948 were part of a master plan to rid the nascent Jewish state of its Arab majority, though in practice the expulsions were carried out somewhat uncoordinated by independently acting militias and military groups. Massacres like the one at Dir Yassin scared Palestinian civilians once they realized the extent of the cruelty that Jewish nationalist para-military groups were capable of. Sometimes the Palestinians would flee of their own volition while others were actively removed by Israeli military groups. The end result of the uncoordinated operation was that by the end of the war almost 800,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes in that were located in the newly sovereign Jewish state.

Israel's ultimate preference for their absence was made clear when the new country outright refused to allow the refugees to return home, while resettling a similar number of Jewish refugees in their country. The refugee problem persists. As much as Zionists would wish it would go away and some other country to resettle the Palestinians, it won't happen. Unfortunately, the Jewish people are not the United States, we will have to face the consequences of our actions. Though some may mourn our ability to relive the mythic glorious conquests of Joshua and King David, that era is by-gone. Even the Prophets tell us outright, King David's hand were too bloody to build God's temple. In order for us to merit a peaceful existence in the land we must work out a peaceful compromise. Though we like to blame Palestinian leadership for refusing to make peace, it takes two to tango and the Likud party has been a fierce and consistent opponent of any peace negotiations since the concept was proposed.

We should not think of a peaceful compromise as a failure of Jewish strength to retake the homeland. Though our passion for justice and nationalism runs deep, our sages of old remind us, "Who is the hero? He who conquers his desires." We have to consider the peacemaker, the compromiser as the true hero. It takes much strength to be so vulnerable. Though we may think such ideas of peacemaking be altruistic and impossible, they are necessary for our survival. Either we compromise to end hostilities, or the spirit of the beleaguered Palestinians will radicalize until it destabilizes the Jewish state, threatening anyone there. We'd much rather ensure that the moderates who believe in allowing the Jews to remain in the land are in political control and not the radical antisemites who wish to expel them. 

A compromise that is either a two state solution or a one state solution will not be easy, but it is the more moral thing to do in this situation, and with God's help, the merit of righteousness will protect us. 

אם יתמהמה חכה לו כי בא יבוא לא יאחר    

Bibliography for YU AEPi

Articles

David J Susskind, “Letters From Alumni,” The Commentator, April 19, 1978. [page 11]

Meir Zeitchik, “YU Students Initiate First Ever Fraternity On Campus,” The Commentator, Sept. 13, 1995

Steven Miodownik, “Dorm Talks: Rabbi Lamm Speaks Out About Frat and Other Issues,” The Commentator, Oct. 31, 1995. [page 8]

Dov Simmons, “Letter to the Editor: Destroy AEPi? Destroy its Causes First,” The Commentator, Nov. 15, 1995. [page 11]

Zev Nagel, “Fraternity-Wannabes Pose Challenges for Wilf Campus,” The Commentator, March 8, 2005.

Gideon Shiffman, “Letter to the Editor: Frat Pack,” The Commentator, March 29, 2005.

Elyasaf Schwarz, “Frat Race: AEPi Up Against Firm University Policy,” The Commentator, Oct. 10, 2005.

Tamara Frieden, “Students Start First Fraternity in YC History,” The Observer, Nov. 10, 2010. 

Noah Botwinick, “Fighting for Fraternity; Will AEPi Find a Home in Yeshiva?” The Commentator, Nov. 18, 2010.

“Clarification. . . Yeshiva College Students Started a Chapter of the AEPi Fraternity in 2005,” The Observer, Dec. 15, 2010. [page 3]

“Student Pulse [Survey on Opinions of AEPi on Campus,”] The Commentator, Dec. 30, 2010. [page 14]

Moshe Genet, “Yeshiva Students Attend AEPi Conclave,” The Commentator, March 1, 2011. [page 12]

Shmuel Goldman, “President Joel Adopts Reassuring Tone During Contentious Town Hall Meeting,” The Commentator, April 5, 2012. 

Elana Luban, “Greek Life At a Jewish College?” The Commentator, March 19, 2017. 

Elana Luban, “New ZBT Fraternity Chapter Opens on Wilf Campus,” The Commentator, Dec. 3, 2017. 

Ellie Parker, “AEPi On Campus: Fact or Fiction?” The Commentator, March 3, 2019. 

“Affidavit of Chaim Nissel,” Supreme Court of the State of New York, [page 5]

Social Media

https://www.facebook.com/YUAEPI 

https://twitter.com/YUAEPi

Website

sites.google.com/site/yuaepi/

yuaepi.com

Bibliography for 1993 Israel Day Parade

Norman Lamm, “The New Dispensation On Homosexuality: A Jewish Reaction to a Developing Christian Attitude,” Jewish Life, Jan. 1968.

Marc Angel, Hillel Goldberg and Pinchas Stolper, “Homosexuality and the Orthodox Jewish Community,” Jewish Action, Dec. 1992.

Shawn G. Kennedy, “Gay Synagogue Seeks to March in Salute to Israel,” New York Times (New York, NY), March 23, 1993.

Dennis Hevesi, “Predominantly Gay Synagogue Won't March Without Banner,” New York Times (New York, NY), March 31, 1993.

“Should Gays March in Israel Day Parade,” Jewish Post & Opinion (Indianapolis, IN), March 31, 1993.  

Debra Nussbaum Cohen, “N.Y.’s Gay Synagogue Won’t March in Israel Parade Without Banner,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency (New York, NY), April 1, 1993.  

Shawn G. Kennedy, “Israel Parade To Include A Gay Group,” New York Times (New York, NY), April 21, 1993.  

Eric Creizman. “Lamm Addresses Controversial Issues at Dorm Talks.” The Commentator (New York, NY), April 28, 1993. [page 4]

Gene Alperovich, “Parade Participation Awaits Decision on Gays,” The Commentator (New York, NY), April 28, 1993. [page 19]  

Alex Witchel, “Luckiest Rabbi In America' Holds Faith Amid the Hate,” New York Times (New York, NY), May 5, 1993.  

Larry Yudelson, “N.Y. Orthodox Community Divided on Marching in Israel Day Parade,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency (New York, NY), May 5, 1993.  

Alan Finder, “Another Parade Furor: Salute to Israel Uninvites Gay Group Israel Salute Uninvites Gay Group,” New York Times (New York, NY), May 8, 1993.  

Jacques Steinberg, “Gay Dispute Fails to Dim Israel Parade: 73,000 Spectators Cheer Jewish State,” New York Times (New York, NY), May 10, 1993.  

Larry Yudelson, “Gay Synagogue Holds Separate Event After Exclusion from Israel Day Parade,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency (New York, NY), May 10, 1993.  

Gene Alperovich, “YU Marches On — But Only After a Fight.” The Commentator (New York, NY), May 11, 1993. 

Judith Solomon, “YU Demonstrates Support for Israel: Parade 1993,” The Observer (New York, NY), May 12, 1993. [page 7]

Michael Broyde, “Bullets that Kill on the Rebound: Discrimination Against Homosexuals and Orthodox Public Policy,” Jewish Action, Sept. 1993.

Marc Angel, Hillel Goldberg and Pinchas Stolper, “Rending the Body Politic: Where the Bullets Really Go,” Jewish Action, Sept. 1993.

Larry Yudelson, “Clouds of Last Year Won’t Rain on This Year’s Parade for Israel,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency (New York, NY), May 19, 1994.

The Jewish Defense League

Pulse

Vol. 1 No. 6 — Nov. 7, 1968

The Jewish Defense League

An interview with Jack Lazaros, head of the recently organized Yeshiva College chapter of the Jewish Defense League. The Interview was conducted by Abby Leizerwski, '71.

Question: What is the Jewish Defense League?

Answer: One of the best ways of defining the J.D.L. is telling you what it is not. First, we are not an extremist organization, we are not a racist organization, we are not affiliated with any political party, we are neither right nor left in our philosophy, and we reject hatred and illegality. What we want to do is combat racism and we are pro-Israel.

Our primary purpose is to alert the New York City population about the growing anti-Semitism here. Many people are unaware that there is a vast and growing anti-Semitic movement at the present time. First, the J.D.L is issuing publications and pamphlets at the college campuses to inform the Jewish and non-Jewish people about the underground anti-Semitism in the city. After everyone has been alerted, the J.D.L. hopes to unite the Jewish people in this issue as well as all decent people of any race or religion. The City administration has been lax on this issue, and the J.D.L. wants to stimulate it to do more.

Question: What are these underground, anti-Semitic movements in the city that you mention?

Answer: They are not so underground. For example, there have been incidents, in which members of the Black Panthers Party went into Ocean-Hill Brownsville and told the Jewish merchants there to leave their stores by a certain date. J.D.L. told the people not to leave and that we would protect them, and we were effective.

Question: Do you expect a physical confrontation with these black militants?

Answer: We hope not. We are primarily interested in working through legal channels in curbing this black anti-Semitism. But if we cannot get the city administration to offer assistance, we are prepared to meet force with force. But the J.D.L. is not just opposed to black militants. J.D.L. is against any type of anti-Semitism. We have enemies who are white, who are part of the far right and new left, some of whom are Jewish.

Question: If legislative means fail, what will the J.D.L. do?

Answer: As in any movement, we have hawks and doves. The hawks favor teaching Karate to our members and also arming them. The doves want to work only in the legislative and publicity areas.

Question: Do you think that the black militants feel that legislative means have failed them and therefore they have resorted to physical force?

Answer: I resent any comparison between J.D.L. and black militant groups. J.D.L. is a defensive organization, we do not go around harassing blacks or whites. However, some black militants have printed anti-Semitic leaflets and are trying to incite other Negroes for their own purposes. J.D.L. is the defensive organization that fights all offensive ones.

Question: Could you tell me specifically what J.D.L. plans to do at Yeshiva?

Answer: Next week we would like one of our founders to come down and address the student body. He will let them know the facts and he will tell them how they can help. I have already spoken to some faculty members, including Drs. Dunner and Bevan, who seem to favor this idea. They said that, depending upon further examination, they would tentatively support our organization. I certainly would like to see many students join.

Question: Do you plan to incorporate karate and rifle shooting in your program at Yeshiva?

Answer: These are not yet set programs but tentative ideas by some of our members. But, in the event that the upper echelons of J.D.L decide to incorporate these courses, we would expect all of our members to take these courses, including these Y.U. students.

Question: Do you think that Jews might better invest their efforts in broader cooperation with the non-militant black majority or would it be better to offer added fuel to the already bitter conflagration inspired by reactionary groups in the U.S.?

Answer: One must differentiate between a reactionary group and a legitimate group dedicated to the prevention of anti-Semitism. We are all for curbing anti-Semitism by helping the Negro achieve civil rights. Jewish organizations such the American Jewish Congress and B'nai B'rith currently work in this area. However, when people equate the struggle for human rights with harassment of the Jews, then a new group, such as J.D.L., must intervene. 

Yeshiva University Archives

This interview from a young recruit to the recently birthed Jewish Defense League provides a fascinating glimpse into the recruitment rhetoric of the JDL in its early days. Though the interviewee stresses that the JDL is not racist and supports civil rights, you cannot help but notice how he is willing to go beyond the boundaries of the law to fight anything the JDL might understand as antisemitism. 

A Rant on Zionism and the Current Conflict

This semester I'm taking a class with Professor Steven Fine on his research with the Arch of Titus. Since the arch itself is a rather small object, the class focuses on how the arch and its elements were understood and used throughout the lifetime of the monument, from when it was erected during the reign of the last Flavian Emperor Domitian until the present day.

We spent some time in class discussing why the arch was initially erected and used other artifacts and literary sources from the era to approximate a picture of the socio-political climate that led to the construction of the monumental arch. 

When Emperor Nero died without a successor, the Roman empire plunged into a state of chaos with three more Roman nobles attempting a failing to secure the imperial seat. The last and only successful contender was Vespasian who returned from his campaign in Judea to seize the imperial seat. Vespasian understood that his position as emperor was precarious. He was not part of the old Julio-Claudian dynasty that had ruled Rome for the past century. In an effort to legitimize his position, he turned to the old republican period for inspiration. During his day, it was considered the good-old-days of Rome. His portrait rejected the stylized youthful and divine faces of the Julio-Claudians. Vespasian had his visage sculpted in a manner reminiscent of the realist portraits of the Republican era, that honored the wisdom and humanity of Rome's nobility. 

Portraits that reminded people a prosperous by-gone age were not enough, Vespasian needed to look like the generals of the old days like Pompey and Julius Caesar who conquered vast swaths of land for the rapidly expanding empire. The problem was that by Vespasian ascent, the empire had reached its governable limits, so he turned to his successful quelling of the Jewish revolt of 66 CE.

Judea had been a Roman province for decades since Pompey annexed it over a century earlier in 63 BCE following the dissolution of the Hasmonean dynasty. The Jewish revolt was an internal revolt, a sign of unrest in an unstable empire. But the story of a costly repression of a small revolt was not one associated with glory and might. Instead Vespasian and his son Titus who lead the Roman response to the revolt portrayed it as a mighty victory against a foreign nation.

They paraded the spoils of war through Rome in a Triumphal parade just like the generals of old did when they conquered new territory. Using the spoils of war looted from the destroyed Judea, Vespasian renovated the Circus Maximus and built the Coliseum with the spoils of war. These new public works were adorned with inscriptions that boasted of the Flavian dynasty's victory over Judea. 

This tactic of portraying a revolt as a war against a foreign adversary is not at all a new rhetorical strategy for ensuring popular support for a cause. Sometimes the difference between a rebellion and a war can be quite vague. Take for instance the United States Civil War. Technically the Confederate States of America was an illegitimate rebel group within the United States that sought to break away from the country. The Confederates posed a formidable threat to the continuity of the United States and occupied close to half of the entire country's organized territory. To call the Civil War a quashing of an internal rebellion would be an understatement. 

As I write this piece, the Israel Defense Force, the Israeli army has invaded the Gaza strip. The relentless bombing of the urban areas of the territory that preceded the land invasion has likely killed 10,000 civilians. This brutal offensive was initiated in response to the bloodiest attack on Israeli territory in the countries history. On October 7th, hundreds of Hamas militants invades the area surrounding the Gaza strip and murders 1400 civilians living in the area, men women and children. They took around 200 hostages as well. 

The response from the Israeli government to this attack has pretty consistent. The Israeli government narrative is that Hamas has effectively declared war on Israel, and now Israel will retaliate with more war. The US media has caught on to this and adopted the term "Israel Hamas War" to define the current conflict. This fundamental problem with this framing is that this conflict is not exactly a war. A war is fought between two states, and a state will generally admit defeat and surrender in following the rules of war as a means of diplomacy. 

Israel is in fact quelling the rebellion of its unhappy vassal state. Though it would not entirely honest to call pre-Oct. 7th Gaza occupied territory, many Palestinian advocates refer to it as such, since Israel is able to exert significant control over what happens in the technically autonomous self-governing Palestinian territory. Hamas is more like a frustrated vassal state, rebelling against its overlord. 

Everyone knows that this is really a rebellion, since Hamas fighters will never be fully eradicated from Gaza. The attacks of Oct. 7 were just an overly successful rendition of an attack that Palestinian refugees and their descendants have been inflicting upon southern Israel since the 1950s. These incursions are not acts of war, but rather attempts of rebellion to try to somehow reclaim some amount the property that the refugees lost in the Nakba. 

The Israeli response to this feels more like the violent quelling of a rebellion, and not a war. Though some elements of expansionist Zionists in Israel may see this reoccupation of Gaza as an opportunity to build new Israeli settlements there, this war will probably not end in informal annexation of land.

The question stands about whether or not Netanyahu will benefit from the stabilizing benefits of being seen as a war hero. By painting this as a war and not a quashed rebellion, a victorious Netanyahu could strengthen his weakening grasp of Israeli politics. Or will his failure to secure his citizens from the attack of October 7th spell his downfall? Only time will tell of these things.

For the moment, I advocate for a ceasefire. The needless slaughter of Palestinian civilians is numbing to witness, just as the slaughter of Israeli civilians was one month ago. I have friends in the Israeli army who are most likely currently in Gaza and in constant danger of local insurgents killing or wounding them. A reality that I try to avoid thinking about because of how painful it is to consider. This quashing of rebellion is not worth the cost. 

The promise of Zionism was a safe haven for the Jews, where they could live without fear of antisemitism. Clearly that promise has failed to come to fruition. Some well respected Jews would advocate the extermination of Palestinians from the land. Morally speaking, their plans are abhorrent and in a perfect world they would be dismissed on such grounds. But we live in a flawed world, so I must offer a Judeo-centric critique of such a plan in hopes that it will prevent them from entertaining the thought of such monstrous violence.

Antisemitism is not a genetic condition, you cannot rid yourself of ideological threats by murdering those who believe in the ideas. Especially such a global idea as antisemitism. The Palestinian antisemites exist in a relatively unique position. Unlike most antisemites, the Jews have actually hurt them. We as a community have not ever experienced such legitimate grievances vocalized in the form of antisemitism. The only thing that remotely compares were the Ukrainian peasants who participated in the Khmelnytsky revolt in 1648. The lives of those peasants were often mismanaged by Jewish Arendars who managed the land they worked on for their Polish noble landlords who lived far away in the Polish heartlands. 

Though I am conscious of how similar my arguments sound to the Jewish assimilators of the late 19th century, who's belief that antisemitism would vanish if Jews assimilated. Perhaps the arrival of the parallel of Nazi Germany will come to disprove my beliefs. In the present I feel morally justified in advocating for the human rights of the Palestinians to be allowed to exist in a democratic country and to not be living in a situation in which they are caught in the cross-fire between two groups of elites who want to demonstrate their own military power. 

Perhaps the solution is a secular one state solution that is neither Zionist nor Palestinian nationalist. History has shown that integration breeds tolerance and is a more effective cure to bigotry that violence. However overcoming the religious-nationalist visions of the Israeli Jews and the Palestinian Muslims will be a miraculous act, more impressive than the splitting of the Red Sea.