Masada shall not fall again
Antisemitic horror unfolding in real time
The story of Masada is well known. Two thousand years ago, before the exile that would fling them to every corner of the world, Jews still lived in their indigenous homeland of Judea. But they didn’t control their own destinies and hadn’t for a long time. They lived under Roman rule.
And then some of them did something crazy. They revolted against the greatest imperial power the world had ever known. They wanted to control their own destiny.
In that dusty corner of empire that the Jews called home, that small band of rebels put up a good fight. It took Rome years to put down the revolt, but put it down they did. They sacked and looted Jerusalem, the Jews’ ancient holy city, and destroyed the Temple.
The Jewish rebels, known as zealots, made their last stand at Masada, a mountaintop fortress on a desert plateau overlooking the Dead Sea. After years of fighting, at last mighty Rome decided to crush those stubborn Jews once and for all.
After a siege, the Jewish defenders knew the end was near. They chose to commit suicide rather than submit to Rome, knowing that the alternative was slaughter and slavery. They would serve no one but their own God. They would die free Jews in their own land rather than let their enemies kill them and lead their women and children off in chains to a life of humiliation and brutality.
After centuries of exile—pogroms, blood libels, expulsions, massacres, and the ultimate horror of the Shoah (the Holocaust)—the Jewish people at great cost won their freedom in their own land, and Israel was reborn.
Masada became a potent symbol for the reborn state. Generations of soldiers were inducted into the Israel Defense Forces there. “Masada shall not fall again” became a slogan. No more would the Jews entrust their lives and their children’s lives to the goodwill of others. No more would they have to. They finally had the means to defend themselves in their own land and there would be no going back.
It’s been 75 years since the birth of the modern state of Israel, and many—far too many—are still not over it. That became all too clear in the past few days.
I’ve watched with horror as these nightmarish events have unfolded in Israel. Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls Gaza, and its allies committed a brutal act of war and terrorism. Palestinian terrorists massacred entire families—the death toll is still rising and is as of this writing over 700. They raped women who had gone to attend a dance party in the desert. They kidnapped over a hundred Israeli civilians, including mothers and babies, who are being held in Gaza.
And across the world, their supporters have cheered them on, painting this evil as justified “resistance.”
I know antisemitism is alive and well. I’ve spent my adult life studying and fighting it. But somehow I thought I would never in my lifetime see scenes like we’re seeing right now. For those of us abroad, it’s difficult to comprehend the scale and scope of the tragedy. Israel is a tiny and close-knit country. Among my Israeli friends, most of them know someone who has been killed or is missing. And that of course is on top of the long history of terror attacks and wars that the Jewish state has suffered in its relatively short modern life.
Israel is at war. It didn’t start this war, but I have no doubt it will finish it. It’s up to the rest of us to stand in solidarity with Israel, to call out antisemitism wherever we see it, and not to look away from evil.