Dina Porat
October 7 and Shattered Illusions
The terrible events of October 7 served as an eye opener—even a blow to the face—for Israeli society and its authorities. The illusion, fostered during recent years, that Hamas would come to terms with Israel if given enough funds for its leaders and for the development of a better economy for the residents of the Gaza Strip, has now been shattered. More than enough funds were provided by Qatar via Egypt and Israel, the military situation was relatively stable since the summer of 2014, though the usual rocket attacks on the close-to-the-border kibbutzim and cities continued, and the IDF reacted with a series of limited scale operations. But, still, it seemed that a possibility for co-existence did exist.
To understand the roots of this illusion, it should be emphasized that the Israeli mindset is Western in nature, namely one that thinks along logical lines, calculates steps according to profit, and strives for the well-being of countries and their citizens. Western—especially Christian—mentality believes that human beings are fundamentally decent and that this decency flourishes under the proper conditions. When Israelis and Western leaders and opinion shapers think about Islam and Muslims, they are led by their own mentality and beliefs, and not by a deep and intimate knowledge of Muslim culture and belief systems. They believe in their own interpretation of reality.
Therefore, Israel was not prepared for the October 7 blow. We did not understand the depth and intensity of the hatred for Israelis harboured by Muslims, especially in Gaza and the West Bank, nor the burning wish to wipe out Israeli and Jewish existence in the region and elsewhere. Curiously enough, many Israelis have never read the Hamas Covenant of 1988, which states explicitly that their primary goal is to completely destroy “the Zionist Project,” that is the state of Israel and the Jews who support it, by force and Jihad, not by agreements and contracts. It is an openly antisemitic document, and its anti-Zionist sections are replete with antisemitic and dehumanizing terms and notions. The Jews are responsible for all the disasters in history, they control the world through their money, and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a truthful document.
In recent years, when Hamas launched their strategy to allay Israeli concerns, pretending that funding and a better economy were their new goals, an additional covenant was published in 2017. It stated that they have nothing against Jews per se, only against the state of Israel, and it mentions the pre-1967 borders as a possibility for a future state. But this was a camouflage—the original murderous covenant was never cancelled. Reading the Hamas Covenant honestly requires that we recognize the hatred surrounding us, and it is not easy to be optimistic in the face of this truth.
The religious dimension that underlines the politics of radical Islam is most often ignored by Israeli and Western thinkers. Notions of secularism and atheism, and the debates surrounding the separation of religion and state, so central to Western culture, are not only rejected by Islam but are not even present in Muslim doctrines. Thus, when reading the Hamas Covenant, one realizes that its deeper roots are not connected to the present conflict with Israel, or to the civilian situation in Gaza, but to religious commandments in the Quran and their interpretation, which is what gives the Covenant its strength and legitimacy in the Muslim world.
One more factor to be taken into consideration is the division of power in the contemporary world, and its relationship to the unleashing of October 7. Israel is a small but eminent part of the West, in alliance with the United States, as well as with Great Britain, Germany, France, and other Western countries, which share similar values and ways of thinking. By contrast, Iran has formed an alliance with Russia and China—the three of them being fervently anti-American and anti-Western. Hence, they are also anti-Israel and anti-Jewish. In the propaganda distributed by Iran, the United States is the big satan while Israel is the little satan. Iran funds, trains, and weaponizes Hezbollah to our north, Hamas in the south, and a new face in the area, the Houthies in Yemen, to attack Israel. A new political alliance, BRICS, encompasses Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. Thus, the Abraham Accords, established under President Trump and continued under President Biden, between Israel and the Emirates, with a warming of relations with Morrocco, constitute a danger to the Iran-Russia-China alliance because it shifts Muslim countries toward the West. It is no wonder then, that the October 7 events exploded when relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, a rich and powerful presence in the region, were about to be formalized. Taking all of this into consideration, concerns in the West are growing regarding the possibility of extremist Muslim violence perpetrated by Jihadist groups, groups or individuals who remain under the spell of ISIS, and by those wishing to imitate Hamas and continue October 7 in Europe, the UK, and North America. Systematic high-level study of Islam and radical forms of Islamism is an absolute must for Israel and for the West. We must cast our illusions aside and understand Muslim beliefs not as we wish they were but how they actually exist based on empirical evidence.
October 7 and Comparisons to the Holocaust
Two weeks before October 7, a joint manifesto was published by Israeli organizations dedicated to the commemoration of the Holocaust, including Yad Vashem, titled: “Do Not Compare to the Holocaust.” The text expressed an outright objection to the comparison made by both sides of the political spectrum, Left and Right, between individual Jews, the Jewish people, or the state of Israel, and the Nazis and the Holocaust. One can add that such a comparison could in fact be heard during the months prior to October 7 within Israeli public discourse.
The manifesto emphasized that Nazism was a unique phenomenon, at the center of which stood a clear-cut goal: the destruction of the Jewish people, its culture, and values. Therefore, whoever calls members of the group he or she rejects “Nazis,” whoever does not distinguish between racism, abominable as it might be, or between a harsh political debate on the status of state organs, and Nazism, not only hurts the feelings of survivors and the memory of the Holocaust, but he or she simply does not understand the nature of Nazism and the Holocaust.
Two weeks later, Hamas burst through the fence between the Gaza Strip and Israeli territory, and the murder, rape, looting, and kidnapping they perpetrated generated comparisons to the Nazis and to the Holocaust and to the pogroms that preceded it. The most often heard statement was that we are undergoing the most difficult time since the Holocaust. Is there a need for an additional manifesto given this comparison to the Holocaust and to the Nazi period? No, it seems that widespread associations to what happened during the Holocaust came to the surface. This is not a one-to-one comparison to the time when Jewish communities stood helpless in front of a mighty nation enlisting its power to extinguish them to the last person, without a state or an army to defend them, forsaken among populations who most often—though not always—helped persecute and murder them.
These associations find their expression in repeated references to the Holocaust, which is part of Israeli public discourse in recent months. Events related to the Holocaust and other correlating events form an ever-present
part of the Jewish and Israeli psyche, both on a personal and a collective level, and they are mentioned time and again in coverage on every media channel. Poet Dalia Rabikovitch defined the Holocaust as a hand grenade, which exploded and each of us carries a splinter: a young mother who had to hide in her Kibbutz with her baby for 27 hours with no food or water, praying the child would not cry; entire families set on fire and murdered; the feeling of helplessness when outnumbered during an attack; facing cruelty that is not only the
result of the desire to conquer and destroy, but of long years of indoctrination and brainwashing; being the target of burning hatred directed toward an alleged satan created by Hamas’s imagination much like the one created by the Nazis; homes burnt down, along with borders that were considered a guarantee. The term Holocaust, “Shoah” in Hebrew, is a biblical one that means a powerful catastrophe that befalls human beings who had no way to prepare ahead of time. “Auschwitz borders,” a term coined by Abba Eban, Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, before the Six Day War, has returned to our minds.
The associations made between October 7 and the Holocaust pinpoint a generally felt concern that the Jewish people are endangered again and that this war is an existential one, no less. Therefore, these associations are publicly accepted and understood—they are totally different than the politicalized comparisons made before October 7, against which the manifesto was written. Statements such as “we have undergone another Holocaust,” or “what is happening today is a Holocaust,” express rage following the Black Shabbat, and do not really reflect an opinion that the Holocaust has in fact returned. We live in a life-seeking sovereign state, that constantly defends itself, and this is the primary difference between then and now, here and there. The main radio channel in Israel is “Anachnu Kan,” which means “we are here,” and it reminds us daily of the WWII Jewish partisans’ hymn “mir zeinen do”—"we are here.”
Dina Porat is the founding head of the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University. She also served as head of the Department of Jewish History, the Rosenberg School for Jewish Studies, and as the first incumbent of the Alfred P. Slaner Chair in Antisemitism and Racism. From 2010 to 2021, Dr. Porat served as the Chief Historian of Yad Vashem and is now its academic advisor.
To understand the roots of this illusion, it should be emphasized that the Israeli mindset is Western in nature, namely one that thinks along logical lines, calculates steps according to profit, and strives for the well-being of countries and their citizens. Western—especially Christian—mentality believes that human beings are fundamentally decent and that this decency flourishes under the proper conditions. When Israelis and Western leaders and opinion shapers think about Islam and Muslims, they are led by their own mentality and beliefs, and not by a deep and intimate knowledge of Muslim culture and belief systems. They believe in their own interpretation of reality.
Therefore, Israel was not prepared for the October 7 blow. We did not understand the depth and intensity of the hatred for Israelis harboured by Muslims, especially in Gaza and the West Bank, nor the burning wish to wipe out Israeli and Jewish existence in the region and elsewhere. Curiously enough, many Israelis have never read the Hamas Covenant of 1988, which states explicitly that their primary goal is to completely destroy “the Zionist Project,” that is the state of Israel and the Jews who support it, by force and Jihad, not by agreements and contracts. It is an openly antisemitic document, and its anti-Zionist sections are replete with antisemitic and dehumanizing terms and notions. The Jews are responsible for all the disasters in history, they control the world through their money, and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a truthful document.
In recent years, when Hamas launched their strategy to allay Israeli concerns, pretending that funding and a better economy were their new goals, an additional covenant was published in 2017. It stated that they have nothing against Jews per se, only against the state of Israel, and it mentions the pre-1967 borders as a possibility for a future state. But this was a camouflage—the original murderous covenant was never cancelled. Reading the Hamas Covenant honestly requires that we recognize the hatred surrounding us, and it is not easy to be optimistic in the face of this truth.
The religious dimension that underlines the politics of radical Islam is most often ignored by Israeli and Western thinkers. Notions of secularism and atheism, and the debates surrounding the separation of religion and state, so central to Western culture, are not only rejected by Islam but are not even present in Muslim doctrines. Thus, when reading the Hamas Covenant, one realizes that its deeper roots are not connected to the present conflict with Israel, or to the civilian situation in Gaza, but to religious commandments in the Quran and their interpretation, which is what gives the Covenant its strength and legitimacy in the Muslim world.
One more factor to be taken into consideration is the division of power in the contemporary world, and its relationship to the unleashing of October 7. Israel is a small but eminent part of the West, in alliance with the United States, as well as with Great Britain, Germany, France, and other Western countries, which share similar values and ways of thinking. By contrast, Iran has formed an alliance with Russia and China—the three of them being fervently anti-American and anti-Western. Hence, they are also anti-Israel and anti-Jewish. In the propaganda distributed by Iran, the United States is the big satan while Israel is the little satan. Iran funds, trains, and weaponizes Hezbollah to our north, Hamas in the south, and a new face in the area, the Houthies in Yemen, to attack Israel. A new political alliance, BRICS, encompasses Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. Thus, the Abraham Accords, established under President Trump and continued under President Biden, between Israel and the Emirates, with a warming of relations with Morrocco, constitute a danger to the Iran-Russia-China alliance because it shifts Muslim countries toward the West. It is no wonder then, that the October 7 events exploded when relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, a rich and powerful presence in the region, were about to be formalized. Taking all of this into consideration, concerns in the West are growing regarding the possibility of extremist Muslim violence perpetrated by Jihadist groups, groups or individuals who remain under the spell of ISIS, and by those wishing to imitate Hamas and continue October 7 in Europe, the UK, and North America. Systematic high-level study of Islam and radical forms of Islamism is an absolute must for Israel and for the West. We must cast our illusions aside and understand Muslim beliefs not as we wish they were but how they actually exist based on empirical evidence.
October 7 and Comparisons to the Holocaust
Two weeks before October 7, a joint manifesto was published by Israeli organizations dedicated to the commemoration of the Holocaust, including Yad Vashem, titled: “Do Not Compare to the Holocaust.” The text expressed an outright objection to the comparison made by both sides of the political spectrum, Left and Right, between individual Jews, the Jewish people, or the state of Israel, and the Nazis and the Holocaust. One can add that such a comparison could in fact be heard during the months prior to October 7 within Israeli public discourse.
The manifesto emphasized that Nazism was a unique phenomenon, at the center of which stood a clear-cut goal: the destruction of the Jewish people, its culture, and values. Therefore, whoever calls members of the group he or she rejects “Nazis,” whoever does not distinguish between racism, abominable as it might be, or between a harsh political debate on the status of state organs, and Nazism, not only hurts the feelings of survivors and the memory of the Holocaust, but he or she simply does not understand the nature of Nazism and the Holocaust.
Two weeks later, Hamas burst through the fence between the Gaza Strip and Israeli territory, and the murder, rape, looting, and kidnapping they perpetrated generated comparisons to the Nazis and to the Holocaust and to the pogroms that preceded it. The most often heard statement was that we are undergoing the most difficult time since the Holocaust. Is there a need for an additional manifesto given this comparison to the Holocaust and to the Nazi period? No, it seems that widespread associations to what happened during the Holocaust came to the surface. This is not a one-to-one comparison to the time when Jewish communities stood helpless in front of a mighty nation enlisting its power to extinguish them to the last person, without a state or an army to defend them, forsaken among populations who most often—though not always—helped persecute and murder them.
These associations find their expression in repeated references to the Holocaust, which is part of Israeli public discourse in recent months. Events related to the Holocaust and other correlating events form an ever-present
part of the Jewish and Israeli psyche, both on a personal and a collective level, and they are mentioned time and again in coverage on every media channel. Poet Dalia Rabikovitch defined the Holocaust as a hand grenade, which exploded and each of us carries a splinter: a young mother who had to hide in her Kibbutz with her baby for 27 hours with no food or water, praying the child would not cry; entire families set on fire and murdered; the feeling of helplessness when outnumbered during an attack; facing cruelty that is not only the
result of the desire to conquer and destroy, but of long years of indoctrination and brainwashing; being the target of burning hatred directed toward an alleged satan created by Hamas’s imagination much like the one created by the Nazis; homes burnt down, along with borders that were considered a guarantee. The term Holocaust, “Shoah” in Hebrew, is a biblical one that means a powerful catastrophe that befalls human beings who had no way to prepare ahead of time. “Auschwitz borders,” a term coined by Abba Eban, Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, before the Six Day War, has returned to our minds.
The associations made between October 7 and the Holocaust pinpoint a generally felt concern that the Jewish people are endangered again and that this war is an existential one, no less. Therefore, these associations are publicly accepted and understood—they are totally different than the politicalized comparisons made before October 7, against which the manifesto was written. Statements such as “we have undergone another Holocaust,” or “what is happening today is a Holocaust,” express rage following the Black Shabbat, and do not really reflect an opinion that the Holocaust has in fact returned. We live in a life-seeking sovereign state, that constantly defends itself, and this is the primary difference between then and now, here and there. The main radio channel in Israel is “Anachnu Kan,” which means “we are here,” and it reminds us daily of the WWII Jewish partisans’ hymn “mir zeinen do”—"we are here.”
Dina Porat is the founding head of the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University. She also served as head of the Department of Jewish History, the Rosenberg School for Jewish Studies, and as the first incumbent of the Alfred P. Slaner Chair in Antisemitism and Racism. From 2010 to 2021, Dr. Porat served as the Chief Historian of Yad Vashem and is now its academic advisor.