RSS
The Hamas attack wasn’t the Holocaust. But it must be understood in terms of Jewish trauma.
(JTA) — When unspeakable tragedy hits the Jewish people, we turn to memory — we ask not just, “what happened?” We also ask: “What does this remind us of?”
Maybe refusing to heal from the tragedies of the past is pathological; maybe we are holding on too tight. Maybe it is epigenetic. Mostly, however, I see it as a coping mechanism developed over time, an interpretive strategy we use both to preserve our past and to create continuity. It makes it possible for a persecuted people to promise themselves they will survive whatever they face in the moment. “Never forget” is not merely a slogan to preserve the past; it is also a means of trying to ensure a future.
And, sometimes, I think that our insistence on seeing the past reawakened in the present is a right that we have earned in blood. We are entitled to use our suffering however we would like, and if we find it helpful to keep it close, to use it as a means of understanding and thus surviving the present, we can and should do so.
Throughout the last week, Jews have responded to the violent atrocities in Israel by analogizing Hamas’ horrific attacks to stories seared in our memories. I am sure you heard at least one version of the statistic that on Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas carried out the deadliest one-day attack on Jews since the Holocaust. The more liturgically oriented are reading from the biblical books of Lamentations and Job. Some have described the burned bodies strewn across southern Israel with the single word “pogrom,” evoking the sorrows of the Eastern European Jewish experience.
Throughout the week, I felt — and I continue to feel — that it is our right to see this story through the prism of our particularistic collective experience. Gideon Hausner, the prosecutor at Adolf Eichmann’s trial, called this “a historical principle stretching from Pharaoh to Haman.”
Jewish tradition reserves the name “Amalek” for the worst of our enemies, suggesting that they share a lineage back to the biblical Amalekites whose unforgivable sin was to attack the Israelites from the rear, picking off the most vulnerable, refusing to spare the weakest and most weary. I do not need Hamas to be Amalek; our post-biblical sages tell us not to draw straight lines when it comes to connecting the dots between the historical Amalekites and contemporary villains. But the callous murder of infants, the snatching of Holocaust survivors, the vicious murder of young people dancing — all of this is Amalekite behavior. This theological vocabulary allows us to name and understand the depths of the depravity that are facing, and then to marshal our resolve to face it for what it is. Our Jewish souls demand it.
I know that this sort of rhetoric is loaded and risky. I am writing this now precisely because I am seeing pushback online against it — suggestions that comparing this week’s events to the Holocaust distort the political realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or create permission for Israel to attack Gaza without constraint. My colleague, historian James Loeffler, cautions that constant analogies of present politics to history can become “willful weaponizations” to be used towards political ends. I’ve also written about these risks, which I worry about in particular when memory is marshaled for the sake of partisan politics. The greatest risk may be the temptation to weaponize our trauma by acting violently toward others. After all, after many of the tragedies of the Jewish past, the Jewish people had little of the power and military resources that Israel has today to respond in kind to our oppressors.
The vocabulary of the Jewish past is rich and evocative, and there is always risk that it will be misused, that it will be mapped inappropriately in light of the agency we now wield.
But sometimes, we need to take these risks. Sometimes, being a Jew in the world requires sustaining a relationship between our past, our present and our future. We are bidden to live in the present and feel burdened by the past. I want us right now to forgive our imperfect analogies, to lean into the instinct. I refuse to let anyone deprive us of the few interpretive tools we must make sense of what has befallen us. The fact that there was more talk on X about the prospect of Israel committing “genocide” in a military campaign that hadn’t started, than about the actual atrocities committed by Hamas which started this war, is an example of antisemitic gaslighting. The bodies lie before us, and we are bereft; will our memory be taken from us, too?
And I also feel that it is entirely possible to turn to these stories and to assert our own humanity without also dehumanizing the other. There are safeguards in place to help us. The State of Israel holds itself to the moral standards of modern warfare and its rule of law, and it knows it must — as in the stunted career of Gen. Ofer Winter, passed over for promotion because he cast the fight against Hamas as a “holy war” — constrain the application of theological paradigms to the practice of warcraft. The IDF knows the difference between error and intent in the killing of civilians in wartime, and it abides to the principles of proportionality. We can trust ourselves to do this, more than we think.
More importantly, however, our victimhood has also been and can be a catalyst for our own self-reflection and growth. A small number of Jews have and always will turn outwards and turn their rage into fantasies for revenge. These people need to be stopped. Most of us know, however, that the lachrymosity of our history has been material for the refinement of our moral sensibilities. The traumatic memories of our ancestors that we carry in our stories fuels our prayers and shapes our moral imagination.
As we mourn this week — a Jewish people missing their children and forced to send others into battle, a Jewish people whose clothes are rent and whose faces are wet with tears, a nation that cannot sleep — we must allow ourselves the right to comfort ourselves with the bitter salve that our people has seen pieces of this story before.
—
The post The Hamas attack wasn’t the Holocaust. But it must be understood in terms of Jewish trauma. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says
Atomic symbol and USA and Iranian flags are seen in this illustration taken, September 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Iran and the United States agreed on Saturday to task experts to start drawing up a framework for a potential nuclear deal, Iran’s foreign minister said, after a second round of talks following President Donald Trump’s threat of military action.
At their second indirect meeting in a week, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi negotiated for almost four hours in Rome with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, through an Omani official who shuttled messages between them.
Trump, who abandoned a 2015 nuclear pact between Tehran and world powers during his first term in 2018, has threatened to attack Iran unless it reaches a new deal swiftly that would prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, says it is willing to discuss limited curbs to its atomic work in return for lifting international sanctions.
Speaking on state TV after the talks, Araqchi described them as useful and conducted in a constructive atmosphere.
“We were able to make some progress on a number of principles and goals, and ultimately reached a better understanding,” he said.
“It was agreed that negotiations will continue and move into the next phase, in which expert-level meetings will begin on Wednesday in Oman. The experts will have the opportunity to start designing a framework for an agreement.”
The top negotiators would meet again in Oman next Saturday to “review the experts’ work and assess how closely it aligns with the principles of a potential agreement,” he added.
Echoing cautious comments last week from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he added: “We cannot say for certain that we are optimistic. We are acting very cautiously. There is no reason either to be overly pessimistic.”
There was no immediate comment from the US side following the talks. Trump told reporters on Friday: “I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”
Washington’s ally Israel, which opposed the 2015 agreement with Iran that Trump abandoned in 2018, has not ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, according to an Israeli official and two other people familiar with the matter.
Since 2019, Iran has breached and far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on its uranium enrichment, producing stocks far above what the West says is necessary for a civilian energy program.
A senior Iranian official, who described Iran’s negotiating position on condition of anonymity on Friday, listed its red lines as never agreeing to dismantle its uranium enriching centrifuges, halt enrichment altogether or reduce its enriched uranium stockpile below levels agreed in the 2015 deal.
The post Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Hamas Says Fate of US-Israeli Hostage Unknown After Guard Killed in Israel Strike
Varda Ben Baruch, the grandmother of Edan Alexander, 19, an Israeli army volunteer kidnapped by Hamas, attends a special Kabbalat Shabbat ceremony with families of other hostages, in Herzliya, Israel October 27, 2023 REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki
Hamas said on Saturday the fate of an Israeli dual national soldier believed to be the last US citizen held alive in Gaza was unknown, after the body of one of the guards who had been holding him was found killed by an Israeli strike.
A month after Israel abandoned the ceasefire with the resumption of intensive strikes across the breadth of Gaza, Israel was intensifying its attacks.
President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said in March that freeing Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old New Jersey native who was serving in the Israeli army when he was captured during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks that precipitated the war, was a “top priority.” His release was at the center of talks held between Hamas leaders and US negotiator Adam Boehler last month.
Hamas had said on Tuesday that it had lost contact with the militants holding Alexander after their location was hit in an Israeli attack. On Saturday it said the body of one of the guards had been recovered.
“The fate of the prisoner and the rest of the captors remains unknown,” said Hamas armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades’ spokesperson Abu Ubaida.
“We are trying to protect all the hostages and preserve their lives … but their lives are in danger because of the criminal bombings by the enemy’s army,” Abu Ubaida said.
The Israeli military did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Hamas released 38 hostages under the ceasefire that began on January 19. Fifty-nine are still believed to be held in Gaza, fewer than half of them still alive.
Israel put Gaza under a total blockade in March and restarted its assault on March 18 after talks failed to extend the ceasefire. Hamas says it will free remaining hostages only under an agreement that permanently ends the war; Israel says it will agree only to a temporary pause.
On Friday, the Israeli military said it hit about 40 targets across the enclave over the past day. The military on Saturday announced that a 35-year-old soldier had died in combat in Gaza.
NETANYAHU STATEMENT
Late on Thursday Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’ Gaza chief, said the movement was willing to swap all remaining 59 hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel in return for an end to the war and reconstruction of Gaza.
He dismissed an Israeli offer, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms, as imposing “impossible conditions.”
Israel has not responded formally to Al-Hayya’s comments, but ministers have said repeatedly that Hamas must be disarmed completely and can play no role in the future governance of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to give a statement later on Saturday.
Hamas on Saturday also released an undated and edited video of Israeli hostage Elkana Bohbot. Hamas has released several videos over the course of the war of hostages begging to be released. Israeli officials have dismissed past videos as propaganda.
After the video was released, Bohbot’s family said in a statement that they were “deeply shocked and devastated,” and expressed concern for his mental and physical condition.
“How much longer will he be expected to wait and ‘stay strong’?” the family asked, urging for all of the 59 hostages who are still held in Gaza to be brought home.
The post Hamas Says Fate of US-Israeli Hostage Unknown After Guard Killed in Israel Strike first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks
FILE PHOTO: Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said gives a speech after being sworn in before the royal family council in Muscat, Oman January 11, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Sultan Al Hasani/File Photo
Oman’s Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said is set to visit Moscow on Monday, days after the start of a round of Muscat-mediated nuclear talks between the US and Iran.
The sultan will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, the Kremlin said.
Iran and the US started a new round of nuclear talks in Rome on Saturday to resolve their decades-long standoff over Tehran’s atomic aims, under the shadow of President Donald Trump’s threat to unleash military action if diplomacy fails.
Ahead of Saturday’s talks, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. Following the meeting, Lavrov said Russia was “ready to assist, mediate and play any role that will be beneficial to Iran and the USA.”
Moscow has played a role in Iran’s nuclear negotiations in the past as a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member and signatory to an earlier deal that Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
The sultan’s meetings in Moscow visit will focus on cooperation on regional and global issues, the Omani state news agency and the Kremlin said, without providing further detail.
The two leaders are also expected to discuss trade and economic ties, the Kremlin added.
The post Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.