Why the word pogrom is key to understanding Israel’s reaction

As Israel prepares for a ground invasion to stamp out the Hamas terrorists who killed over 1,300 of its people, overwhelmingly civilian, many elsewhere are not only denying what happened—calling it propaganda by the Israeli government—but also positing this retaliation almost as a unilateral attack. Behind statements like “this was Israel’s 9/11 or Pearl Harbour moment” it is important to understand why this murderous assault by Hamas was different from all others. Yuval Noah Hariri, known for his bestseller Sapiens, is perhaps the best person to put his finger on the nub of what happened on 7 October 2023 in the areas of Israel bordering Gaza. He wrote in The Washington Post, “…As more and more horrific stories and images emerge about the massacre of entire communities, it dawned on us that what has happened is nothing like the Yom Kippur War… people are making comparisons to the Jewish people’s darkest hours.” He compared the bloodthirsty rampage of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists to the “the mobile killing units of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen” which also went into villages to exterminate Jews during the Holocaust and the “pogroms…waged against Jews in the Russian Empire.” He repeated this opinion subsequently in TV interviews, throwing light on why Israel is in no mood to be magnanimous about the murderers of innocents, including children and the elderly. Ilan Troen, a professor at Israel’s Ben Gurion University, whose daughter and son-in-law died while saving their son (she took the bullet meant for the boy), wrote in an online article: “Never again! It was never supposed to have happened. But it has, and is. We are witnessing in real time a pogrom. We thought that the most extensive pogrom—the Holocaust—would mark the end of the terrible record of violence against Jews, just because they are Jews. Not so.” It is surprising that the word pogrom has been rarely used by all the experts and commentators as more gruesome evidence of the slaughter of entire families in Israeli settlements come out. A thoughtful use of the P-word would help understand why Israel remains implacable about retribution against Hamas despite international concern about its impact on Gaza’s residents. Memories of Russian and Nazi pogroms are seared into the Jewish consciousness. Pogrom is derived from the Russian word for “destruction” or wreaking havoc and has come to mean a large-scale murderous attack condoned and often carried out by those in power against people of a single religion or ethnicity. It was used to describe the attacks on Jews who resided in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and similar anti-Semitic actions in and by other countries. Pogrom has come to acquire a broader application, of course. Even the words used by the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Israel on Wednesday underlined the one-sided slaughter that characterise pogroms: “A baby, an infant riddled with bullets, soldiers beheaded, young people burned alive in their cars” he mentioned at a press conference. And earlier in the day he pointed out, “Women raped. Parents executed in front of their children, children in front of their parents. How are we even to understand this, to digest this?” Chilling videos of Hamas terrorists shooting drivers and passengers in their cars, dragging out men, women and children from their homes to execute them in ways accurately described at ISIS-like, reiterate the nature of the attack. It was indeed a pogrom—ironically, the first against Jews since the end of the Third Reich. No other war Israel has fought with its Arab neighbours since 1948 was preceded by or precipitated such a one-sided massacre of Jewish civilians. The communal killings due to the Partition in 1947 must be deemed pogroms as only Hindus and only Muslims were killed en masse inside the newly-divided Pakistan and India, respectively. The 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi, wherein the deaths were exclusively from one community is a tragic case of a non-Jewish pogrom in independent India though other riots have been labelled with the P-word. Killings of Christians and Hindus in Pakistan are also pogroms. What many Islamic terrorists perpetrate are also, undoubtedly, pogroms as their targets are one specific community. In Israel, their targets are Jews (of all ages) and in India they are Hindus. In almost all cases the casualties are civilians, except in the border areas where the military are their targets, at least initially. Hamas first homed in on army units too, but their intention was clearly to kill and kidnap Jewish civilians, no matter what their age, gender or nationality. Conversely, what the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) are planning is not a pogrom as its ire is not directed at Palestinians as a community or Muslims, but only those among them who are hardened Hamas or Islamic Jihad cadres. Unfortunately, the Israeli counter-attack seems like a pogrom as the dead so far are mostly non-combatant Palestinians. But that is because Hamas persists in staying among them, to deter deeper retaliation, which is a calculatedly callous tactic. Palestinians just want a normal life in their homeland while Hamas is focused on destroying Israel as a state. Hamas’s covenant states, “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavours. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with.” Thus using the word pogrom to describe the Hamas objective is apt. Similarly, the reason for the ferocity of the Israeli response—including an imminent invasion of Gaza—to Hamas’ intention is equally plain. Having been at the receiving end of an attempted mass extermination event orchestrated by Hamas, Israel cannot countenance a repeat. Ever. It will want to impress upon its enemies that there will be no second chance for those who carry out pogroms. After all, “Never Again” is an article of faith that they cannot forget. The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. 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