Mamdani’s Mistake: Oct. 7 and the Gaza War can neither be linked nor entirely separated. There is no winner in a contest of victimhood and no “proportionality” for endless pain.
One can’t be mentioned without a nod to the other, but each needs to be seen as a catastrophe unto itself. I’d like to share the first draft of an idea.
Earlier this year, Abdul El-Sayed made a monumental error in trying to “contextualize” the antisemitic attack on a Michigan synagogue, intimating that the terrorist was provoked by an Israeli action affecting his family in Lebanon, saying, “Hurt people hurt people.” He later apologized for the insensitivity of the remark, to his credit, though he seemed to qualify his regret, placing emphasis on the tone-deaf timing of the comment rather than the inappropriateness of its content to begin with.
Today, New York Mayor Mamdani made a similar mistake - similar but much worse. While appearing at first to extend his hand to those who suffered on October 7 - for one paragraph - he then proceeds to follow it up with a blistering attack on Israel, which completely drowns out any empathy he might have been trying to extend. Once again, whether or not his accusations are true (and many are) he decided to throw out the condolence letter in favor of “sticking it to the Jews.” and on our most emotionally raw day. This is a guy who wants to build bridges?
Naturally, AIPAC has jumped all over Mamdani’s remarks, and no doubt we’ll see another few rounds of recrimination drummed up by those who want to fan the flames. This kind of “to-the-victim-belongs-the-spoils” one-upsmanship serves as a nice distraction for extremists who want nothing more than to deflect from their own political problems - like those with record low approval ratings - and drive a wedge among their opponents. It will provide a lifeline for MAGA in Michigan and Bibi Netanyahu in Israel, who is getting absolutely slammed this week, heckled and ridiculed as Israel remembers and mourns1.
I've been watching Israel’s national Oct 7 memorial ceremony this afternoon. No politicians. But when one speaker cried out for an independent state commission of inquiry, not on political grounds but on moral and security grounds, there was a huge ovation. It is impossible to underestimate the anger the October 7 families - and the majority of Israelis - have toward their government.2 They vote in three weeks.
There would have been no gathering tonight in Tel Aviv had last week’s Flydubai hijacking succeeded, which by all accounts it should have. Israel would have been facing nearly 200 funerals on the third anniversary of October 7. Yet another catastrophe that apparently could have been avoided.3
And so today, just three weeks from an election that could change the course of Israeli and Palestinian history, the mayor of New York can’t get out of his own way to: 1) undo any good will he had been (apparently) trying to build with the Jewish community of his city, and 2) giftwrap a nice election distraction for Bibi and 3) MAGA over here. What is he thinking?
Now let me be clear. I do not mean to minimize the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza over the past three years. That is exactly my point. By comparing one event to another, even if they are chronologically and to some degree causally connected, diminishes and trivializes the uniqueness of the pain caused by each.
The Holocaust and World War Two are intertwined. But when we recall the Holocaust, we don’t then spend half the day discussing carpet bombing in Dresden or other atrocities. The Holocaust is unique. It’s sui generis.
The same can be said about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While they can’t be completely severed from the narrative of World War Two (they ended it, after all), their significance for world history goes far off in a different direction. Not only is their significance sui generis, but so is the pain of their victims. It is different - not better, not worse - and it is without limit - its impact goes far beyond the first generation.
So we need to find a way to do honor to the victims of October 7 and the innocent victims of the subsequent Gaza war without trivializing the pain of either.
But the way to do that is not to have competing memorial services on the same day. According to the Jerusalem Post, at least 75 pro-Palestinian demonstrations are planned for today worldwide. Why can’t people put this one-upsmanship to rest for a day and let their neighbors cry in peace? Sadly, there are 364 other days in the year when the Gaza War happened, days that are not October 7. Pick one. Any one. I’ll support it. But this day is sacred for all the reasons we never would have wanted. Let us mourn in peace.
An Idea
If’ you’re interested in seeing the first draft of an idea I’m tossing around in my head, read on. If you’re only going to get angry, save yourself and me the agita and let some billionaire’s algorithm take you back to your happy silo. Right now nothing else matters but making sure the values of truth, decency, democracy, justice and kindness make it to December. Nothing else matters but these two elections. So I don’t need to have to fend off any Twitter snark. I’m all-in for dialogue, but if you simply want to slam me on my own Substack, say goodbye first. And Mayor Mamdani, with respect, please give your snark a two-month sabbatical.
Ultimately, we are going to have to untangle these tragedies, just as we’ll need to untangle the entire conflict. There’s so much baggage and it’s so easy to be offended and so hard to put ideas like this to paper. I fully expect to be skewered by both sides.
HurbaNakba
And so, my idea. We need to get our arms around a new word: HurbaNakba.
October 7 and the Gaza War were distinct and the pain of each was - and remains - incalculable. There is no “proportionality” to a pain that is infinite and overwhelming. There is no way to reconcile one with the other. There is no comparison. Both events stand as uniquely horrific.
“Hurban” in Hebrew is a word that refers to the destruction of the ancient temples in Jerusalem by the Babylonians and Romans. These events, on the scale of Jewish suffering, were worse than the Czarist pogroms but not rising to the horrors of the Holocaust. October 7 was in its own way a Hurban, both for the human damage caused by the bloodshed and the psychological damage and long-term trauma caused for the Jewish people. While it is unthinkable to quantify such things but for the sake of comparison, it is comparable to the Roman and Babylonian catastrophes.
The Gaza War, for Palestinians, is every bit as devastating as the 1948 “Nakba,” what Israel calls its War of Independence. This is not an exercise in passing judgment on who is most responsible for 1948 or the subsequent refugee crisis, just the degree of trauma. Given the degree of destruction to innocent lives and property, there’s no better word to use for 2023-2026 than “Nakba.”
Although I would personally put the lion’s share of the blame on Hamas for both October 7 and the catastrophic aftermath in Gaza, and though Israel is hardly exempt from responsibility, no one can argue that the destruction has been immeasurable and the pain infinite. Let’s begin there. Mamdani’s posting was in fact an understatement. It goes way beyond the numbers. So many innocent lives have been ruined, or ended.
While the “cycle of violence” is undeniable in the Middle East, trying to determine causal relationships and “context” only flattens the facts and cheapens the horror.
Healing may never happen. It’s hard to imagine it under current circumstances and leadership. But if it is to happen, we need to be able to agree on a mutually assured acceptance of catastrophes. We can begin doing that by agreeing on language. Each of these terms, Hurban and Nakba, comes from the native tongue of the victims and yet is not offensive to the other party. Israelis might bristle at the term Nakba when referring to 1948, but Palestinians have a right to define their own historical terms, and - this is the main point - Nakba sure sounds a lot less triggering than “genocide.”
In fact, both catastrophes contain elements of genocide, but if we actually want to begin a healing process, that’s not a word I would use.
Hence the new word: HurbaNakba.
Everyone needs to watch episodes 7 and 8 of the new season of Fauda, on Netflix, which, although fiction, shows what happened on October 7 with unprecedented clarity. And then I would make it a double feature, adding to Fauda any of a number of films that show the extent of the Gaza devastation from the Gazan perspective, including possibly the controversial documentary NAZA - haven’t seen it yet so I can’t assess. There are lots of conflicting narratives and contested facts to sift through in this foggiest of fogs of war - foggy, yes, but this was also the war that was most clearly documented in gruesome video after gruesome video. As time passes, the settled dust will clear to reveal the horrors on both sides of the border.
We need to force ourselves to hear the cries of the other. Otherwise, the haters win, the extremists exult and hope is extinguished. Don’t dilute the horror. Don’t contextualize. Don’t crawl back into the silos. Just hear the cries.
Just hear the cries of October 7, Mayor Mamdani, and let it be.
We need to acknowledge the pain of both Israelis and Gazans without downplaying the suffering of either. That’s where understanding and true healing must begin.
And it can begin right now, on the third anniversary of October 7.
For there is no way to hermetically seal one catastrophe off from another. No buffer zone will keep us safe. The ring of destruction is endless. The diameter of the bomb is a circle without end. As Yehuda Amichai wrote:
Notes
More evidence came out on Israel\s Channel 12 that Bibi knew about the Hamas attack and has been trying to alter the records. An interview with the guy who woke him up on October 7.
This parody on the traditional Jewish memorial prayer (Yizkor) from two years ago rings just as true to today, both regarding the facts and how more than half the country thinks about Bibi. It has him standing up at an Oct. 7 memorial ceremony ans calling on people to stop remembering. Instead of saying “Yizkor” (remember), he says “Yishkach” (forget).
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