Dr Anjuli Pandavar is a British writer and social critic who holds a PhD in political economy. She was born into a Muslim family in apartheid South Africa, where she left Islam in 1979. Anjuli is preparing to convert to Judaism. She is one of the staunchest defenders of Israel and a constructive critic of the Jewish state when she believes it is warranted. She owns and writes on Murtadd to Human, where she may be contacted.
Arab Muslims do not squander the most sacred days of their enemy. Yom Kippur, Simchat Torah, Yom Ha'atzmaut... Holidays such as these are not for isolated little knife attacks, a car ramming here, a traffic jam shooting there. Such auspicious days are for starting wars, launching massacres and burning Israel to the ground. And they get it right. Yom Kippur in 1973 fell and was observed on Shabbat; they attacked on Shabbat. Simchat Torah 2023 (also the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War) fell and was observed on Shabbat; they attacked on Shabbat. This year, Yom Ha'atzmaut falls on Shabbat, but was celebrated two days earlier; they attacked two days earlier.
Sacred days, like sacred monuments, like the honour of men, like the modesty of women, like the sanctity of dead bodies, and of course, like military installations and personnel, are all targets. While we are not suggesting that Israel does the same, it is not the Arabs' fault that their enemy insists on attacking only military installations and personnel; there are ways of denying them an advantage without becoming like them. As for significant dates, the point is to corrupt, damage, spoil, and pervert the association the Jews have to their most important days. Jalal Tagreeb warned about this in his excellent article Victory by the Moon: The symbolic game of dates.
In the attack on Yom Kippur 1973, the standing armies of two recognised Arab states plus expeditionary forces from eight other Arab states, aided by their ideological allies, Cuba and North Korea assailed Israel, while Arab "civilians" cheered from the sidelines and danced in the streets.
In the attack on Simchat Torah 2023, no standing armies of recognised Arab states were involved, only one jihad terrorist army of one unrecognised Arab state, marginally-assisted by four other jihad terrorist armies and two recognised Muslim states, one Arab, one not, breached the Gaza border to go on a killing spree in Israel, while "innocent Palestinian Arab civilians" followed right after them to plunder the property of the murdered and captured Jews, swore at, cursed, spat on and beat the captured Jews as they were brought in Gaza, held them captive in their houses and made sure the IDF never found them.
In the attack on Yom Ha'atzmaut 2025, no standing armies of recognised Arab states were involved. No jihad terrorist armies were involved. Only "innocent Palestinian Arabs civilians"—or should I say, "innocent Arab citizens of the State of Israel"—armed with no more than matches and cigarette lighters (a step down from 5-shekel knives), this time did it all.
When you say, as so many Israelis do, that you cannot fight the ideology, this is what you get: ideologically-driven attacks on your ideology. In an ideologically-driven war, your body is your weapon of last resort.
The fires that the Arab Muslims ignited all over Israel are simultaneously an attack on Jews, Judaism and Zionism. That it was carried out on Yom Ha'atzmaut has to be seen by Israelis as the most profound repudiation of David Ben Gurion's fantasy of sharing the land with the Arabs. What land? Who shares? The Arabs would burn it all down before they shared it with him.
Whether Palestinian Arabs starve captives in their attics, hobble into Be'eri on crutches to plunder, put matches to grass around Jerusalem, stab worshippers outside synagogues with a 5-shekel knives, spray Kalashnikov bullets into young revellers, fire RPGs at a Merkavas, set off barrages of rockets at Sderot or paraglide deep into Israel to bring death from above, the Qur'an is in each of their hearts. If you still want to keep "innocent civilians" out of all this, then the fires were started by magic that can read maps and identify armistice lines on the ground.
It is commonly asserted that Yahya Sinwar jumped the gun on October 7, to the surprise of Hezbollah, Iran, etc. Sinwar was a barbarian and a monster, but he was not stupid. More plausible is that Sinwar, who knew the psyche of Jews for better than any of his brothers, had calculated that a coincidence of Shabbat, Simchat Torah, the fiftieth anniversary of Yom Kippur was more valuable than waiting until everyone was ready. A later attack, albeit together with Hezbollah, the IRGC, the Houthis, etc., would be purely kinetic and forfeit the opportunity of a crippling psychological blow, as was indeed achieved, and hampers Israeli military efforts in Gaza to this day, more than eighteen months into the war.
How sensible is it to assume that the more than 100 fires started around Israel on 30 April, were not also designed to tie down the IDF while Syrian forces attack the Druze where Israel had undertaken to protect them? Would the point not be to demonstrate, on Israel's Independence Day, that the IDF is unable to protect the Druze, and hence anyone else? To think only of soldiers, battles and military hardware is to lose sight of most of the war.
Israelis who are relieved that Hamas had "jumped the gun" and thereby saved the IDF from having to fight on multiple fronts are mistaken. The planned multi-front kinetic war would not have occurred on a day of such extreme psychological vulnerability for Jews. A case can be made that the psychological damage done to Israelis by what is erroneously called the "intelligence failures" would have been mitigated within the context of a later, wider war, and in the context of the extreme emotional manipulation of the nation in the abuse of the captives to blackmail the government to capitulate to Hamas.