This is not a baseball article. This is also not an article I wanted to have to write, but here we are. As I write this, over 650 Israelis and foreign citizens in Israel are dead, with hundreds more wounded and at least a hundred hostages inside of the Gaza Strip. Over 3500 rockets have also been fired indiscriminately at civilians by Hamas terrorists whose fighters have also launched deadly infiltrations into Israeli territory in one last desperate attempt to prevent Israeli rapprochement with the wider Arab world and exploit perceived weakness over Israel’s internal political issues.
Last March, I had the privilege to follow Team Israel at the World Baseball Classic and sit side by side with their fans, along with those of the other teams in the group. At no point, was there an atmosphere of hate or tension. There was a universal sense of brotherhood where one did not have to fear wearing a shirt with the word ‘Israel’ on it or fear being Jewish. It was a glimpse of the world that can be. Sadly, yesterday we saw a cruel glimpse of the world that is. Seventy five years after the Holocaust, we’re reminded yet again that ‘never again’ is not ‘all over again’ only because there exists a Jewish state with a sophisticated security apparatus to defend Jewish life. Yesterday, we saw what happens when said security apparatus fails and we got a glimpse of what would happen if Hamas and its sponsors ever win, even once. The civilized world has an obligation to stand with Israel at this difficult time. You either stand with Israel or you stand with the depravity of Hamas terrorists. There is no middle ground, no room for compromise.
Over the coming days and weeks, you will see pressure on Israel to de-escalate, to return to the status quo antebellum. But the Rubicon has been crossed now. The Bucha style atrocity we just saw is what Hamas and their supporters, both in the west and elsewhere, truly are. Concessions will not change them, nor will diplomacy. The only solution now is for Israeli forces to incapacitate Hamas and the other Gaza factions as a fighting force, permanently. It is the only way that we avoid a new round of bloodshed in the future for both Israelis and ordinary Gazans uninvolved in these terror groups. Just like the Greatest Generation had to prosecute the war until the total defeat of the Axis powers, the war against today’s genocidal entities and their sponsors must be prosecuted to completion.
As a baseball community, as people who believe in peaceful competition and the shared humanity of all, we must stand fully, unequivocally, unapologetically, unreservedly with Israel at this time. Israelis will once again fight on the frontlines of the battle between civilization and barbarism, good and evil. They will now fight the same evil supremacist, imperialist ideology that Ted Williams fought in Korea, Yogi Berra on D-Day and Gil Hodges on Okinawa. They will also fight the same axis of evil Ukrainian soldiers are fighting today, and they too deserve full, unreserved support in ensuring the defeat of Russian forces in their country. If the Chinese attack or attempt to blockade Taiwan, or if the Kim regime attacks South Korea, we must also stand shoulder to shoulder with these nations as well.
Hamas will become a bad memory but there will still be an Israel when this all ends, just like there was and still is an Israel after 1948, 1967, 1973 and so on. It will welcome the nations at the 2025 European Baseball Championships, and compete with the best in the world again at the 2026 WBC, in a spirit of peace and friendship.
One final thought. In happier times, I had the privilege of joining a celebration of Team Israel fans in the concourse of Loan Dept Park. The words ‘Am Israel Chai’ (The Nation Of Israel Lives) rang out as they danced and celebrated. Nicaragua fans and neutrals also joined in. We were all brothers. There was no hate to be found among the 30,000 plus there that day. These three words are powerful in happy times but they are still more powerful in these dark times. These three words survived Babylon, the Romans, the medieval Arab empires, the Turks, the German concentration camps, the Soviet gulags and they carry on like an echo into our day. And so, in this dark hour I have these three words on my lips as an affirmation that the Jewish nation will again survive and see happier times. Am Israel Chai!
Comments