Non-Fiction
Let’s Celebrate
As a kid, I was crazy about baseball. When a game was on, I stayed glued to the TV set, watching every pitch as if my life depended on the outcome, and rooted for the Yankees to win, as they usually did back then. I’m stunned at how invested I was in the game, and see it as an instance of being duped into caring about inconsequential things, which I wrote about in an earlier post. That, however, is not what I’m writing about here. These days, I don’t follow sports much, although if I happen to start watching a game, I get absorbed in it, marvel at the players’ skills and athleticism, and inevitably pick a side to root for, even if I know nothing about the teams. I’m most likely to be drawn into sports at season’s end, when playoff fever is raging, and might watch the Superbowl, an NBA final, or a World Series game, or, at least, view highlights on YouTube.
Every championship game ends in a massive celebration. The excitement of a win is understandable and contagious. I still remember the pure joy and exuberance of the spontaneous celebration that began with Yogi Berra jumping into the arms of Don Larsen after he pitched a perfect game in the 1956 World Series. I used to be delirious with joy when the Yankees clinched the World Series, although it didn’t occur to me back then to wonder what I was so elated about. Nowadays, when the game ends and the celebrations begin, I’m more interested in the losing team, whose dejected players look dignified and noble in defeat, than in the winners, who are jumping around and behaving like a pack of crazed jackals. I know, of course, that had the game turned out differently, I’d be watching precisely the same scene with different people celebrating. Victory celebrations don’t affect me the same way they used to.
There has been much talk of celebration this past week as a result of the Gaza ceasefire and release of hostages and prisoners (funny how different words are used for Israeli and Palestinian detainees). People being reunited with loved ones after a long and perilous period apart have much to be joyful about, and everyone welcomes an end to the bombing and siege of Gaza, even if the duration and ultimate outcome of the agreement is uncertain. Although there is relief and thankfulness that things are better than they were before the agreement, I don’t see much cause for celebration. For Palestinians returning to the rubble that was once their homes, grieving for those they lost, and anticipating that their circumstances, intolerable before October 7th two years ago, will be even worse, there is little cause for jubilation. Israel may rejoice in its military victory, but it comes at the cost of alienating the rest of the world and putting its own existence more at risk than ever. Talk of Pyrrhic victories!
In a recent video, embedded below, Peter Beinart discusses the issue of celebration in the wake of the ceasefire. Beinart is someone I’ve come to respect and admire a great deal for his courage, decency, eloquence, scholarship, and his steadfast loyalty to his Jewish heritage while speaking out for Palestinian rights. I admit I was put off by the first part of the video. Where he is touched by the solidarity shown by the Jewish community over the past two years for its concern about the hostages taken by Hamas, I see it as the most divisive period among Jews in my lifetime, and the one-sided concern of some Jews for Jews, but not for other people, seems the worst kind of tribalism. In the second part, however, he effectively uses his Jewish identity to make a compelling plea for understanding the plight of Palestinians, specifically rejecting the notion that the ceasefire “should be a cause of celebration for Palestinians.”
It’s important that Beinart can make this case as a religious Jew, a scholar of Jewish lore and history, and a supporter of Israel, because as such he has the best chance of winning hearts and minds in the Jewish community. It’s a shame, however, that he needs to defend Palestinians and their supporters for not being sufficiently celebratory about the ceasefire. While he doesn’t specify who these critics are that he’s seeking to mollify, I think we have a pretty good idea. They are the people who shout “October 7th! October 7th!” at the mention of ethnic cleansing, genocide, or apartheid. Their shouting pays off, too. No one dares talk about Palestine without first mentioning “the horrific atrocities committed by Hamas.” Of course, Hamas did commit horrific atrocities, as did Israel, but without constantly condemning Hamas, one is likely to be accused of being a card-carrying member of that organization. There is something Orwellian in how we are made to adjust our language to conform to a biased framing of the situation.
The very people who used to rage about political correctness have created their own guidelines about what is acceptable to say and think, and are so adept at controlling the narrative that we self-censor speech not to their liking. The first half of Beinart’s commentary, it seems, is an obligatory preface to make the second half palatable. Another instance of this kind of thought and speech control is demonstrated by how risky it is to say anything that could be deemed negative about a recently assassinated right-wing demagogue, (even quoting his own words can land you in trouble), without first declaring his murder a national tragedy. The treasury secretary just equated it with 9-11. It’s not enough to declare your opposition to all violence—we must condemn this particular act of violence as uniquely horrific, and not in any way comparable, say, to the death of George Floyd.
The extravagant praise given to the president for his peace plan, which is not really a peace plan, to end a war, which was not really a war, is extraordinary. Liberal commentators are overjoyed with the opportunity to praise someone who hasn’t done anything praiseworthy since entering office. Listening to the “liberal” voices of Brooks and Capehart on the radical left PBS network, I can only shake my head as they compete in glorifying the president’s accomplishment. I see the situation a bit differently. Consider a pedestrian, walking on the sidewalk, when a car veers off the road and hits him. The driver, to his credit, calls an ambulance, which rushes the injured man to the hospital. His life is saved, but he loses his legs. Later, the driver’s friends praise him for saving the man’s life, and are scandalized that the victim, ingrate that he is, has failed to thank him. “He should be celebrating that he’s still alive,” they say, but he’s not in the mood for celebrating, and besides, without legs it’s hard to for him to jump for joy .
Yes, the cessation of bombing and release of hostages is a good thing, although it wasn’t accomplished in a fair or moral way, and rather than solving the underlying issues, it will likely make them worse. If we believe that this is a solution worth celebrating or are bullied into pretending to celebrate, mark it up as a victory for Big Brother.
October, 2025