A confusing world of ignorance, double standards, falsehoods and hypocrisy has arrived.

By Neville Berman

Perhaps I am getting old and my understanding of things is becoming confused.    

Why can’t I understand that the words, “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” are not statements of intent or a threat?     

Why can’t I understand that the Palestinians have been living in the land between the river and the sea since time immemorial and that the Jews have no history in this land before 1948?   

Why can’t I understand that the right of return for Palestinian refugees and all their descendants is an inalienable right that no other refugees in the world have?

Why can’t I understand that the United Nations and the European Union knows what’s good for Israel and the Jews?

Why can’t I understand that UNWRA is a worthy candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize? 

Why can’t I understand that UNIFIL fully implemented UN Security Council Resolution 1701, and stopped Hezbollah from bringing any armaments into the area south of the Litani river?

Why can’t I understand that indefensible borders are the best way to secure the future of Israel?

Why can’t I understand that creating a Palestinian State with East Jerusalem as its capital, and a Jew free Judea and Samaria is actually good for Israel?

Why can’t I understand that beheading, raping, mass murder, and taking hostages of babies and grandparents can be celebrated when the victims are Israelis?  

Why can’t I understand that the Palestinians are interested in promoting democracy, the rule of law, women’s rights, freedom of religion, gay rights and human rights wherever they live?

Why can’t I understand that Palestinian intellectual property and inventions are the driving force that is bringing progress and prosperity to mankind?

Why can’t I understand that without Palestinian oil production, irreparable damage will be caused to the world’s economy?  

Why can’t I understand that the Iranians are building a peaceful nuclear program? After all, Iran signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and Iran would never lie.

Why can’t I understand that if a Palestinian rocket falls near a hospital parking lot in Gaza and kills 50 people, it is actually an Israeli massacre of 500 innocent civilians in the hospital?   

Why can’t I understand that Israel is committing genocide against hundreds of thousands of   Palestinians who live in Israel, and tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been crossing into Israel on a daily basis to work?

Why can’t I understand that all over Gaza, babies are dying of starvation because Israel only allows a few hundred tons of food to be delivered daily?

Why can’t I understand that the Lebanese delegate to the UN who voted hundreds of times against Israel, is now the head of the International Court of Justice, and that he has no conflict of interest and is not at all biased against Israel?  

Why can’t I understand that the BBC considers the murderous terrorists of Hamas to be militants?

Why can’t I understand that when Hamas and Hezbollah fire thousands of rockets at Israel, it is not considered a war crime?

Why can’t I understand that when Israel defends itself it is committing a war crime?

Why can’t I understand that the more politicians lie, the more likely they are to be elected?  

Why can’t I understand that there is no double standard in the world?

About the writer:

Accountant Neville Berman had an illustrious sporting career in South Africa, being twice awarded the South African State Presidents Award for Sport and was a three times winner of the South African Maccabi Sportsman of the Year Award.  In 1978 he immigrated to the USA  to coach the United States men’s field hockey team, whereafter, in 1981 he immigrated to Israel where he practiced as an accountant and then for 20 years was the Admin Manager at the American International School in Even Yehuda, Israel.  He is married with two children and one granddaughter.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

They didn’t understand what October 7 meant and why Israel had to respond the way it did.

By Andrew Fox

Oct 09, 2024

Dear all,

The title of this piece might be misleading, but I’m going with it. This letter isn’t just to the new friends I’ve made this past year, both Jews in the UK and people in Israel. It’s also to my non-Jewish readers who may wonder why I have been quite as vociferous as I have over the last year, on a topic where I don’t really have a dog in the fight.

It starts, as do all acts of remembrance this week, on 7th October last year. I’m a former Army officer; my academic areas of interest were (and are) strategy in the Middle East, and the psychology of disinformation. So, when a war began in the Middle East that raised many strategic questions, whilst soaked in the patterns of disinformation I know intimately from my studies… well, I had something to say.

Of course, I knew of the events of 7th October: I’m a Middle East researcher. On the day itself, the Telegram channels I follow were writhing like a bag of snakes with snuff movie after snuff movie. All so abhorrent; all so shocking; even for a reasonably experienced soldier.

My early strategic analysis was about right. I guessed Israel’s strategic goals and I looked at their tactics, and felt they all looked logical. They fought a contested urban battle against a dug-in defence in pretty much the same way British Army doctrine advises. Isolation; break-in; seize objectives; clearance.

Obviously, the isolation and break-in phases to Gaza City drew the world’s ire. The global public was unprepared for the live-streaming of the effects of modern weaponry in an urban setting. The closest most people have come to it is Call of Duty. They were primed on decades of Palestinian information operations about Israel, and swam in a rising sea of antisemitism. They didn’t understand what 7th October meant and why Israel had to respond the way it did. When Hamas’ ringmasters presented them with a narrative of genocide that fit their prejudices and biases, they clung to it with both hands.

Israel’s great mistake was in assuming that the horrors of 7th October would buy them some credit. They wildly overestimated their bank balances of sympathy, and as victims of disinformation fraud, they rapidly became overdrawn.

So, there was I, in my Twitter/X stovepipe, merrily analysing away in broad support of Israel’s strategy. Until April 2024.

I was invited on a trip to Israel by the Military Expert Panel. We were granted decent access by the IDF and they briefed us their plans, which I noted smugly were just about what I’d predicted. Situation: no change.

What changed everything for me was visiting the massacre sites and seeing those hurt by it: victims and hostage family members. I wasn’t prepared for it conceptually or emotionally. It turned those snuff films of months earlier into 3-D.

Before, it was just another set of horrors in a world full of horrors, of which I had seen my fair share firsthand.

After, it was a lurid kaleidoscope of pain, misery, inhuman rape and torture; sadism, dehumanisation, and bloody, mutilating murder of the utmost savagery, carried out with Satanic glee. I walked in human ashes mixed with the remnants of the fires in kibbutzim where innocents were burned alive. I have seen the evidence of rape. I have seen the sites of these obscenities against humanity.

Before, I knew. After, I understood.

I realised that Israel is not fighting a war of self defence; it is fighting a war of survival. There is no question that those who Israel are now fighting, led by Iran, wish to destroy Israel and annihilate the Jewish race. To me, with a grandfather and grand-uncles who fought in Europe in 1944-45, one sustaining appalling facial injuries, “never again is now” was not just words. Never again was now. And I had a voice. And I was not going to stay silent.

Israel’s war is just, and their conduct is, for the most part, just. And when the latter is not just, they take action against those soldiers who transgress. So, I’m satisfied not only with the cause for the war, but also with the conduct of the war. I’ve seen compelling evidence with my own eyes. I’m happy to let my professional reputation die on that hill, if need be.

There is a major element to my vociferousness this year that I have bypassed, however. Even before April, and my two subsequent visits, I had been consistent with one thing:

I stand with British Jews.

Whilst the events of 7th October appalled me at the time, the events of that evening in the UK, and subsequently, sickened me to my stomach. Including my visit to Israel in April this year, these events in the UK were the most politically radicalising events of my life. The UK has problems with radical Islam, and susceptibility to disinformation, and we need to wake up.

I had no prior connection to Israel, but the celebrations of 7th October in London turned my stomach. I had Jewish friends before 7th October and I saw the pain caused to them by the massacre in Israel and did my best to be supportive. I did not, however, foresee the agony that would come from those, ostensibly their countrymen too, who would nakedly celebrate the worst murder of Jews since the Holocaust on the day it happened. Whilst blindly aware of the general concept of antisemitism, wrongly thinking it mostly a thing of the past, I had my eyes glued open to its modern-day incarnation.

And that modern day incarnation recycles the same old tropes that are centuries old. Jews lie. Jews murder. Jews pay with hoarded shekels. Jews run the media. Jews run the world.

Disgusting.

And so, almost every weekend since, we have seen a turd-berg of antisemitism, shat out by extremists and supported on the backs of useful idiots, floating disgustingly down London’s streets on a sewage river of disinformation.

Our country’s great shame.

I have made it my mission since last October to let Britain’s Jews know that they are loved, wanted, and appreciated in this country: by me, and by countless silent millions who share my view. You are not alone in this fight.

I spoke this week at a synagogue in north London. It was a kind and gracious gesture by the Jewish community to allow me to share their private grief. The applause was humbling. But it was all also deeply, deeply saddening. When I go to church, I don’t need security outside. That’s not right and shouldn’t be normal.

And how appalling that our vibrant British Jewish community feels the need to thank someone just for raising a voice to support their right to exist. What a horrifying age we have created for our once great nation.

I fear for the future.

But I am grateful for my present.

Britain’s Jews and my Israeli friends, just ordinary civilians, have stood by me in turn, on the occasions that the firehose of online antisemitic abuse and disinformation has swung my way. You’ve also given me platforms from which to scream that message of support to anyone that will listen. You have empowered my own voice in the way that I hope my, and many others’ words of support empower you. This letter is as much a thank you to you, as anything else. You know who you are.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Yours in brotherhood,

Andrew

About the writer:

A veteran of three grueling tours of Afghanistan, Major Andrew Fox holds a Batchelor’s degree in Law & Politics, a Master’s in Military History & War Studies, and is currently studying for a PhD in History.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).