In the year since Oct. 7, 2023 and the horrific massacre by Hamas that set off a spiral of violence and death, regional warfare, terror attacks, civilian casualties, global antisemitism, Muslim hate, political infighting and a crisis for the ideology of liberalism, there are a few things that stand out.
One is the fear in our own Hollywood community, a microcosm of the pain and confusion that has convulsed in waves across the globe.
Stand with Israel? Or stand with Palestinians?
It seems impossible to stand with both.
Stand with a free Iran? Stand with a free Lebanon?
Now it’s become so complicated.
Believe what you see on TikTok? Believe what you read in the New York Times’ headline #1, revised headline #2 and revised headline #3 with a long editor’s note?
I’m totally confused.
Believe Israeli women? Believe the U.N.?
Listen to Bill Maher? Or Mehdi Hasan? Bari Weiss? Or Ta-Nehisi Coates?
Who can tell us how to make sense of it all?
Better, we think, to say nothing. To take no side. To voice no opinion. For fear of offending someone, Jew or Israeli or Arab.
I get it.
Because I am Jewish, and because I am an independent journalist and because I spent years in my early career covering the Middle East, all year long I have heard from people desperate to understand where is the moral line, why are Jews are under attack, whose fault is all of this and why does no one seem to care about the destitute souls held hostage in Gaza.
I have been frustrated and dismayed to find people with big platforms and no knowledge claiming center stage. And to see people who know the complexities shouted down, or worse still — avoiding the conversation because it’s too hot out there.
The reductive slogans and performative screaming not only don’t help, but serve a more sinister agenda that is at work. That agenda does not want peace or reconciliation, or a two-state solution, or a functioning Western alliance.
A sign of this is that we have gone from a near-zero on the scale of antisemitism in this country and Europe to a raging Code Red. Why, we ask?
From the day after Oct. 7, a crisis has reigned among Jews on the left who stand for social justice and equity but feel abandoned by Black Lives Matter and Queers for Palestine, not to mention AOC and the now-ousted Cori Bush. They note the pro-Palestinian rallies that sprung up in many places the day after Oct. 7, including universities like Columbia, even as the blood was fresh on the ground of the Nova Festival, where 360 were murdered, and Kibbutz Be’eri, where 100 were lost.
Others who acutely feel the pain of Palestinian civilians fear they will be punished for speaking out. And some have been, by losing social media followers, or agency representation, or jobs.
As I wrote on Oct. 8 of last year, we were about to confront a period of sad outcomes:
“I worry for the death of hope. I mourn for the dead and wounded, for the kidnapped, the tortured. And I mourn for the suffering that will be visited on so many Palestinians who have no control over their own destiny. I mourn for the despair in the hearts of so many who would dream of peaceful coexistence.”
It is a rare few who understand both the nihilistic intent of Hamas and Iran’s other proxies, dismay over Israel’s prosecution of the Gaza war and also the agony of Palestinian families and Israeli ones. (And Iranian ones, because now it’s about Iran as well.)
In the past year, I have sought those people out, seeking to learn and understand. Seeking to hang on to a thread of common humanity as so much has unraveled. (If you care to follow them: dissident Gazan Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib; Israeli historian Fania Oz-Salzberger; ex-Hamas Ahmad4 Israel, who does not reveal his last name; Saudi peace activist Loay Alshareef; British didact Douglas Murray.)
And I traveled to Israel, looking to report on the ground — even if entering Gaza is still not possible — to listen, and learn, and share.
But clear information, in context, is scarce. Our elite universities have been revealed to be hornets’ nests of political naivete, slinging the slogans of collective liberation and identity politics onto a burning bonfire set by radical Islam. Honestly, if I hear the string “colonial, oppression, apartheid, ethno-state, genocide” litany one more time while the latest headline is about a Yazidi girl taken as a sex slave in Gaza, released to her family in Iraq… I just can’t. Read a book, I want to say. Or read the article.
It’s no wonder that the average person is confused, and would rather avoid this ugly subject completely. I have many prominent friends in media who for a solid year have studiously avoided the topics of Gaza, antisemitism, radical Islam and Israel, firm in the knowledge that this is a No-Win situation.
But certain things require moral clarity. A death cult is a death cult. Terror is terror. Tolerating intolerance is not multiculturalism — it’s an invitation to self-destruction. The choices we permit as a democracy may determine the survival of our precious (if flawed) system of government.
A Palestinian child is an innocent. An Israeli child is an innocent. A civilian is not fair game. Identifying an evil ideology does not make you prejudiced. Islam has a problem of extremism and radicalism, and Muslims or secular Arabs who speak out about that problem risk their lives, which is exactly the heart of the problem.
Hollywood once stood confident in its values, however “liberal” and “woke.” The entertainment and media community as a whole championed social justice and equity, promoted diversity and inclusion, celebrated democracy. This industry created and told the stories that showed the humanity inherent in those ideas — “Will and Grace,” or “Mary Tyler Moore,” or “The West Wing.”
But I will remind you that the Writers Guild of America for weeks could not manage to condemn the Hamas massacre. On this issue Hollywood is visibly… lost.
We are not yet through the fog of fear or confusion. But that moment will come. So at this one-year mark since the Hamas massacre unleashed the worst impulses of humanity — as it was meant to do — let us hold tight to the knowledge that the best of humanity remains. In the shadows, perhaps, but waiting for us to coax it into the light.
