Alan Zendell, October 11, 2024

October 12th is the Day of Atonement Jews call Yom Kippur. There’s so much irony in that, it’s hard to know where to begin. Perhaps most striking is that it occurs five days after the anniversary of Hamas’ attack that killed more than 1,200 Israeli civilians, including children and young people attending a concert. The terrorists committed gruesome acts of savagery like rapes, beheadings, and mutilations. Neither Hamas, it’s sponsor, Iran, nor its counterparts in Lebanon and Yemen, Hezbolah and the Houthis feel any need to atone for those acts. Rather, they rejoice at the deaths of innocents.

The people who plotted the October 7th, 2023 attack did it as much to bait Israel into become embroiled in a multi-front war with its neighbors as to satisfy their lust for killing Jews. The world knows well how these terrorist organizations embed themselves in civilian infrastructure. We used to accuse them of using their own civilian populations as human shields, but this time they used the Palestinian people as cannon fodder, forcing Israel to attack their cities. Part of the terrorists’ plan was to see their own people killed, maimed, and starved, the more the better if it led to world condemnation of Israel.

Some of my military friends tell me that anything Israel does in its quest to destroy Hamas, and now, Hezbolah, is acceptable because anything less will eventually destroy Israel. They believe leaving any Hamas terrorists alive and functioning is like failing to kill every cancer cell in a sick patient. It’s easy to view metastasizing cancer cells in the same light as Hamas survivors rebuilding their organization when the fighting stops, but that only addresses one aspect of the problem.

As an American Jew, I have to ask when enough is enough. Israel does not have the manpower or the resources to extinguish Hamas without unleashing the kind of mass destruction on the Palestinian people that the Nazis used against Jews eighty years ago. To Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Holocaust is sufficient justification to do whatever is necessary to protect his people.

That sounds frighteningly Trumpian. I don’t doubt that Netanyahu wants to protect Israel, but like Trump, he is desperate to stay in office to avoid dealing with his criminal indictments. It’s been almost five years since he was indicted for breach of trust, accepting bribes, and fraud, and his trial is still ongoing.

Netanyahu has a serious conflict of interest. Many Israelis believe he is playing the hostage crisis for his own benefit to keep prosecuting a war that has almost no chance of destroying Israel’s enemies but is certain to continue killing thousands of noncombatants and destroy the homes of millions. It is also certain to either isolate Israel from its allies or plunge the entire Middle East into a major war that no one will win.

No one talks about it, but Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons. Would Netanyahu use them? That’s like asking if Trump would carry out his threats to destroy our democracy and Constitution. If ever there was a time for a Jew to look at himself in a mirror and atone for his actions, tomorrow is that time for Netanyahu.

Regardless of what faith you practice, or even if religion is not your cup of tea, a day of introspection and atonement would serve all of us well. We make New Year’s resolutions, and look back on our lives on birthdays and anniversaries. If we’re honest with ourselves, there are always things we wish we’d done better or not done at all. Without such an annual self-examination, we can truly lose our way.

Most of us are not evil. Very few of us are so sociopathic that we completely lack empathy or a basic understanding of what other people feel and need. That kind of narcissistic view of the world is the province of people like Donald Trump. For the rest of us who have healthy, active consciences, a regular assessment of our own actions is necessary to keep us from going astray, especially when we’re faced with constant stress and threats.

It does us good to scrutinize our actions during the past year as we embark on a new one. It’s like sending astronauts to the moon. They take off from Earth on a precise trajectory, but if they don’t constantly re-evaluate their path and make course corrections, they’ll never reach their destination. It’s like that with our daily lives. We strive to be true to our principles and values, but sometimes that can be a challenge. We may not have to atone for anything, but if we don’t measure our actions against our expectations this year, we may not recognize ourselves next year.