10 | DECEMBER 14 • 2023 J
N

guest column

A Letter from the Front
I 

write this from Gaza, 
where I proudly protect 
my homeland as a medic 
while fully understanding the 
pain of my Palestinian col-
leagues. 
I lost a friend 
on the first day 
of the war, and 
my pain in this 
war is twofold: 
first, it’s about 
the thousands of 
Israeli families 
who have had their worlds 
shattered simply for being 
Jewish in acts of horror and 
deaths of Jews on a scale not 
seen since the Holocaust. 
Additionally, as someone who 
has been working for coex-
istence for two decades, my 
heart breaks for the human 
stories of those uninvolved in 
the fighting and those hurt 
by it. 
All my Palestinian friends 
have cut ties with me, except 
one from Gaza, who updates 
me that everything is OK with 
her family. This letter explains 
why I believe in protecting my 
country and for coexistence, 
and it is for those open to a 
potentially new perspective. 

FACTUAL GAPS 
From a deep understanding 
of the conflict, the first issue 
is the significant factual gaps. 
One of my Palestinian friends, 
who was still in touch at the 
beginning of the fighting, 
told me we were lying about 
Hamas murdering babies and 
raping women before killing 
them. There are photos, and 
I’ve heard firsthand testimo-
nies. Their bodies were found 
in positions that left no room 

for doubt. When I asked him 
what his claim was based on, 
he said that even President Joe 
Biden retracted his statement 
about the murder of babies.
When I asked for a source, 
he directed me to a Palestinian 
site I wasn’t familiar with. He 
said no when I asked if he 
had seen any corroboration 
from any Western objective 
source. Even the BBC, one 
of Israel’s most prominent 
critics, didn’t report this. He 
agreed that it might be a mis-
report, but what about the 
millions of Palestinians who 
haven’t spoken to an Israeli? 
They violently attacked the 
Israeli embassy in Jordan after 
another incorrect report of 
Israel bombing a hospital.
What American progres-
sives struggle to understand is 
that their narratives are based 
on at least disputable facts and 
on a culture that is unrelated 
to the Middle East. During a 
visit to Gaza, we passed by an 
elementary school where we 
found antisemitic textbooks 
that educate hatred against 
Jews from a young age, as seen 
in the pictures.
Palestinian history fits bet-
ter in the TikTok era. Hence, 
it wins. White versus black, 
strong versus weak, oppres-
sors versus the oppressed, 
even when it has nothing to 
do with reality. Israel is indeed 
strong; it’s not true that it’s 
white (a significant part was 
expelled from Arab countries 
in 1948; my wife would have 
been Iraqi if she had been 
born a few decades earlier) 
and surveys have shown that 
Israelis have no interest in 
ruling over anyone, as long 

as their security is guaran-
teed. In mighty America and 
peaceful Europe, it’s hard to 
understand that small Israel, 
surrounded by 22 Arab coun-
tries, would be annihilated if 
it were weak.
The factual gap creates the 
second issue, which is a lack 
of understanding of the dif-
ference between a war against 
Hamas and a war against the 
Palestinian people. Hamas 
hasn’t been elected for 17 
years, and my Palestinian 
friends in Gaza are more 
afraid of it than of the Israeli 
army, even if they won’t admit 
it. 
They can’t even admit they 
know me because they would 
be suspected of collaborating 
and normalizing relations 
with Israelis. In other words, 
the ruling culture, led by 
Hamas, isn’t even willing to 
acknowledge the existence 
of Jews in Israel. It has prov-
en execution capabilities in 
killing Jews, and its leaders 
have stated and said they will 
continue to do so. Can you 
imagine your sister or daugh-
ter being raped and murdered 
just because she’s Jewish? 
What would you do?
The main reason mentioned 
globally to stop the fighting 
is that innocent civilians are 
killed, and this is the third 
important point. I’ve seen 
firsthand the efforts to avoid 
that; what would you do if 
someone was shooting at you 
from a hospital? Second — 
we can assume the data is 
inaccurate. It’s reported by 
an organization whose moral 
compass is raping women 
before murdering them and 

by another organization 
whose umbrella organization 
appointed — no joke — Iran 
as the head of the UN Human 
Rights Council. 
But even if you believe 
the data, it’s impossible to 
fight an organization hid-
ing behind civilians without 
harming civilians. Every 
civilian harmed is terrible, 
but blaming Israel is based on 
either misunderstanding at 
best or supporting the armed 
Palestinian struggle under 
the guise of defending human 
rights.
And the last argument is 
that none of this would have 
happened “if you weren’t 
occupying.” First of all, in 
2005, and I was there as well, 
Israel completely left Gaza. 
The assumption that the 
Middle East would be peace-
ful without the Israeli occupa-
tion, as defined by Palestinian 
elements, is incorrect when 
looking at history. Even before 
Israel’s establishment, there 
were riots in which Jews were 
killed, and the Palestinians 
were offered a state numerous 
times and declined. But who 
cares about history in the 
TikTok age?
It’s hard to understand 
this complex conflict deeply 
just from TikTok videos. My 
father and my grandfather had 
to fight and lose friends, and 
so did I. I hope that my chil-
dren — and the children of 
my Palestinian friends — will 
have a different fate. 

 

Yair Nativ lives in Netanya, Israel, with 

his wife, Nava, and 2-year-old son. 

He was — as were 350,000 others — 

called up to serve in the reserves.

PURELY COMMENTARY

Yair Nativ

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