Baseball’s Not the Only Place Nice Guys Finish Last
#1339 September 13, 2026
Ending decades of far vaster Arab attacks on Israeli civilians is what will end “settler violence,” and building homes for Jews in Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria isn’t “settlement expansion.” We U.S. Jews have to stand with Israel on this and demand respect for our Jewish people’s sovereign homeland from nations condescendingly threatening sanctions.
Baseball’s Not the Only Place Nice Guys Finish Last
Longtime subscriber to these weekly emails, Rainer, a Christian in Germany who has visited Israel over and over, responded to last week’s #1338 on “settler violence” by asking whether the Israelis who engage in this “are acting out of revenge or deterrence?” I put that question to my longtime friend Steve Kramer, ex-“settler” and now Kfar Saba resident. Steve answered:
“Although I don’t know any of the Israelis involved in attacking Palestinian Arabs or their homes, I support them. So much damage and violence has been done inside Israel by Palestinian Arabs that is never reported in the international press. For example, ‘settlers’ steal Palestinian flocks. In most cases, the Israelis are recovering their own flocks, which were stolen from them. Your reader should understand that the press is almost uniform in taking the anti-Israel side. Why? Prejudice against Israel and Israelis (not to mention just plain Jews). So, my answer is both revenge and deterrence.” [emphasis added]
As an example of what I just bolded above, last week I quoted Israeli newspaper Jewish Edition, 8/13/26 on the recent Qusra occurrence:
“Qusra is not simply an isolated Arab village suddenly victimized by marauding Jews. For years, Qusra has been the source of repeated violent incidents against Jewish hikers, shepherds and nearby communities, including lynching attempts, road spikes, attacks on Jewish drivers, stone-throwing, explosive devices and other attacks.” [emphasis added]
What I did in last week’s #1338, if you missed it, was give you two views, mine and my friend Stu Bykofsky’s, on “West Bank Israeli Settler Violence,” Stu’s blog on stubykofsky.com, titled “When Israel Acts Badly, I Can’t Condone It,” taking Netanyahu to task for not cracking down on such “settlers,” and my posted response citing Stu citing Bibi saying it’s just “a handful of rioters,” and that far vaster Palestinian Arab “Pay-for-Slay” etc. has created an entire enticement-and-reward environment for targeting Jewish civilians.
But that leaves open whether [a] you agree with Stu in his posting that
“… when Arabs attack Jews, the Jews have a police force, and an army.
“They are not entitled to respond with vigilantism.
“Israel is supposed to be the good guy. It has to act like that, now and forever.”
or [b] you agree with Steve Kramer, quoted above, that when “settlers” respond in kind
“I support them.”
Here’s my take. “Vigilantism” in the abstract is uncontrollably dangerous, undermining “law and order,” in which individual cases of false accusation lead to lynching. And how many times has fast spreading of a false rumor – e.g., that “Jews have just killed a European Christian child to make Passover matza” – led to a full-fledged pogrom?
But what’s going in Israel today is different. Long decades of local and border-crossing terror attacks, from individual and single-family murders to mass victim bombings, facilitated first by neighboring states and then by local authority-incentivizing “pay-for-slay,” have created an entire environment driving so far some few targeted Israelis to respond tit-for-tat, often in same-incident provocation, rather than rely on law enforcement.
But for sure casting blame and “acceptable” behavior rules can’t be one-way. So I agree with Steve Kramer. Stu’s
“Israel is supposed to be the good guy. It has to act like that, now and forever”
is by me a one-sided and counter-productive actually terror-encouraging standard.
Beyond that, we ourselves self-imposing one-sided behavior standards on Israel invites nations of the world to officiously treat our people’s sovereign homeland as if it were a misbehaving child. Here’s, e.g., Carolyn Glick this week mincing no words in responding to international threats of sanctions on Israel over building in E-1 connecting Jerusalem and suburb Maale Adumim and elsewhere over the long-defunct 1949 ceasefire lines:
“To the UK, France & Canada:
“Go Shove It You sanctimonious, hypocritical cowards. How dare you threaten the one Jewish state on earth—after everything your nations did to us. You dare speak of ‘humanitarian values’ while standing on piles of Jewish bones your ancestors buried beneath cobblestones, cathedrals, and charters of ‘civilized’ nations.
“Britain Oh, Britain. The empire that carved up the Middle East with a pencil and a gin and tonic. You issued the Balfour Declaration and then slammed the door on Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis. You handed chunks of Jewish land to Arab monarchs and let Jews die in the Holocaust rather than let them enter your precious Mandate. You interned with Holocaust survivors in Cyprus like they were criminals. And now you’re wagging your colonial finger at Jews for building homes on our ancestral hills?
“Go shove your royal hypocrisy back into Buckingham Palace and deal with your own collapsing society—where knife crime, antisemitism, and Islamic extremism [not to mention immigrants’ ‘grooming’ of British girls] are more common than fish and chips….”
Bottom Line
It’s unfair for the world to one-sidedly demand Israel end “settler violence” in an environment of decades of Arab assault on Israeli civilians, from families in their beds to mass murder bombings. And living over the 1949 ceasefire lines isn’t “settlement expansion.” We U.S. Jews must stand with Israel on this and demand nations of the world treat Israel respectfully.
DAN VAUGHEN [62 years ago, Dan, a devout Quaker, was my roommate at the University of Pennsylvania Law School dorm. We’ve remained true friends (lower case “f”) ever since.]
Dear Jerry: I hear each side blaming the other for violence, claiming that the violence from the other side justifies their own violence in return. I understand and accept the power of that argument. But that argument begs for an end to violence on both sides, not to an unending escalation of the violence on each side.
Can we turn the discussion to that objective? How can we achieve an end to violence on both sides? It is not an answer to point at the other side and say “Make them stop first.”
Each side must commit to whatever is necessary to bring the violence to an end. If it takes a third party, who? If it takes force, how do we keep the force nonviolent or keep it from provoking violence?
The conversation must focus on how to end the violence, not on justifying it.
ME (Jerry): Hi, Dan. From the 1920’s Arabs have relentlessly attacked Jewish civilians in the land of Israel, justifying it on grounds Jews don’t belong there (never mind we’ve been there continuously for three thousand years). These attacks have ranged from murdering families in their beds to mass murder “intifadas,” bombing buses, restaurants, disco, pizza parlor and religious gatherings, bat mitzvah and Passover Seder. Yes, some Israelis today are responding in kind, though mostly in Arab-started incidents. My journalist friend Stu, whom I quote in this week’s #1339 above, says Israelis must be “the good guys” and not do this. I disagree. What might end the violence is Arab perpetrators recognizing that their attacks go beyond being at a “law enforcement” level but make life there equally fearful for them.
Deeper than that, Dan: Europeans Never accepted Jews as Europeans, devising over centuries every device of ethnic cleaning – Pale of Settlement, Ghetto, Holocaust, Inquisition, exile from country to country, Pogrom – expressly for us, and we (and you) were apartheid “dhimmis” in Muslim lands. The land of Israel is historically (continuous presence), legally (Palestine Mandate), equitably (eastern Palestine, judenrein Jordan, is majority Palestinian Arab) and indivisibly (Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria as its heart) indispensably Ours, pogrom-free national embodiment of Never Again. So as for these few Israelis reacting in kind to vastly vaster officially incentivized and rewarded “Pay-for-Slay,” I agree with my Israeli friend Steve Kramer (quoted above): I support them. If anything, two-sidedness may bring what the world hypocritically one-sidedly calls “settler” violence to an end.
DAN:
Dear Jerry: My suggestion was that we shift our focus from past justification to a peaceful future. How can we get there? What will it take?
“Make life equally fearful for them” has demonstrably and miserably failed as a path forward. If we want a different result, Isn’t it time to try something different?
I know it will be hard. I know we have failed many times. I understand that the path is obscure and unknown. I understand that there are grave risks. I suggest, however, that there is no other choice.
I’m reminded of a scene in the recent movie “Harriet”. In that scene Harriet sensed danger in the “safe” path forward. Instead, she opted to walk across an unknown river. Risking death by drowning, she walked forward one step at a time. She made it to the other side. The rest of her group of escaping slaves quickly followed. (Good movie. Netflix and Prime.)
And THAT story reminds me of another story about escaping slaves. It, too, was accompanied by unforeseeable “miracles.” Those slaves, too, feared a return to slavery if captured. With “miraculous” provision, however, they made it to the “Promised Land.”
I believe that the mysterious force those people called YHWH, is equally at work in the world today. In that “force” we can find unity. In that “force” we can find a path forward.
It is not a path to peace that we seek. Peace is the path. We will find the “Promised Land” when we can think about something other than self defense and survival; when we have time and space to connect with that mysterious “force” that is within each one of us.
That is when “miracles” will start happening again. May that be soon.
Peace,
ME: Dan, It takes two sides to achieve future peace. Here’s the difference between Palestinian Arabs’ and Israelis’ peace plan focus:
“From the River to the Sea,” i.e., wiping Israel out, incessantly chanted now, isn’t new. In his book “A Durable Peace” (p. 241) Netanyahu quotes Arafat in 1990: “The Palestinian people’s struggle ought to be assisted until the complete liberation of Palestine from the River to the Sea.”
But Israel’s focus has proposed peace plans over and over in the past (eg suicidally by Olmert and Barak, rejected by Palestinian Arabs) and lastly by Netanyahu. Trump’s first term peace plan, sidelined by the Abraham Accords, called for Palestinian Arab autonomy in part of Judea-Samaria under Israeli security control. Netanyahu agreed to this. This is in addition to Palestinian Arabs being the majority in Jew-free Jordan, sitting on three-quarters of Mandated Palestine. Amb. Friedman, Trump’s first term ambassador to Israel who helped create that peace plan, still supports it with Israeli sovereignty over all of J-S. See his book, “One Jewish State.”
JEFFREY LEVIN:
Jerry: Interesting. Shanah Tovah. Jeff
STU BYKOFSKY:
In response to:
“’Israel is supposed to be the good guy. It has to act like that, now and forever’ is by me a one-sided and counter-productive actually terror-encouraging standard.”
And that is how you regard the rule of law. Basically, an eye for an eye. “If THEY are evil, by God, WE will be evil too.”
I suppose you cheer Luigi Mangione.
And so it goes…
ME (Jerry): When not isolated individuals but an entire population segment engages in relentless wanton attacks on another, in this case since the 1920’s, not just in murdering random individuals but in mass murder “intifadas,” bus, restaurant, disco, pizza parlor, bat mitzvah, Passover seder etc bombings, officially incentivized and rewarded “pay-for-slay,” it’s no longer at a law enforcement level. If anything will stop it, it’s Arab perpetrator recognition that their attacks make life as fearful for them.
ALAN MOLOD:
How sad. I believe that a very large, perhaps a majority, of young non-orthodox Jews have little or no interest in having a Jewish identity, and therefore little or no interest in the State of Israel. Once that becomes a fact, they understandably feel sympathetic for a large group of Arabs who are stateless. The fact that these stateless Arabs are ardent terrorists or supporters of terrorism, and the people that they want to see murdered are Jews who live over 5,700 miles from NYC and over 8,000 miles from LA, doesn’t seem relevant to these young American Jews. What they do believe is relevant to them is the fact of increasing antisemitism here in the USA (and in the UK and other countries) directed at them, particularly on college campuses. They believe that if the stateless Arabs had a state the antisemitism in the USA would cease. Bottom line: If being Jewish is not of interest to them, then for many of them the State of Israel is not of interest to them
ME (Jerry): Alas, Alan, this is so. But are we, their parents’ and grandparents’ generations, not responsible for not instilling in them that “Jewish identity and therefore interest in the State of Israel”? Alas, by me, we are. And, alas, it’s not just our young. These days more than ever, we have to keep trying.
JASON SKLARZ:
Hi Jerry, Shana Tova. I noticed in the media they described it as settler terrorism . They never called Arab terrorism that and even called Hamas militants .
ME (Jerry): Right, Jason, and Israel and we have to stop calling Judea-Samaria Jewish residents “settlers.”