The deadly pager operation in Lebanon is no laughing matter. Or is it?
Memes celebrating the deaths of Hezbollah operatives spark a Jewish debate on social media
In the hours after the deadly pager attacks on Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon, social media was flooded with memes about the operation. (JTA collage by Joseph Strauss)
By Andrew Silow-Carroll September 19, 2024
(JTA) — First came the explosions. Then came the jokes.
Within minutes of news that several members of Hezbollah were killed and hundreds wounded by pagers that had been doctored to explode en masse, allegedly by Israel, Jews on social media shared memes celebrating the operation and mocking its targets. Examples:
A man dressed as an Orthodox Jew sits behind a table reading “Honest Shlomo’s discount pagers.”
A pager’s message reads “72 Virgins,” a reference to the concept that Muslim martyrs will be rewarded with 72 maidens in heaven. Some attributed the message to “Moti Rola,” a spurious Hebrew name riffing on the Motorola brand.
Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, takes a call from a follower boasting that he found a good deal on the electronic devices.
And because the pagers were presumably in the pockets of Hezbollah operatives, castration was a popular theme. One cartoon shows a dead Hezbollah man arriving in heaven to greet his virgins, who gasp at his missing genitals.
The jokes continued on Wednesday, with news that walkie-talkies wired to explode had killed at least 25 in Lebanon.
“No more walkie. No more talkie,” wrote David Hazony, director and fellow at the Z3 Institute for Jewish Priorities, on X.
The taunting memes and jokes came as a war on another front, in Gaza, grinds on; as negotiations over a ceasefire and efforts to free the Israeli hostages are at a standstill; and as Israel is still reeling from the murder of six hostages earlier last month who were seemingly on the verge of their rescue. For some, the humor is a release valve, celebrating what feels like a rare, clear Israeli “win” in its second-front battle against an enemy that has fired rockets into the country’s evacuated north on a near-daily basis.
For others, however, the mockery crosses a line, and violates a traditional Jewish ethic that discourages undue rejoicing over the deaths of one’s enemy. Laughing also became harder for some as it became clear that while the attacks were a long-planned operation designed to target Hezbollah operatives, others had been harmed, including children who were killed.
Sometimes, both sentiments are being felt simultaneously. For Rabbi Ariel Rackovsky, of Congregation Shaare Tefilla, an Orthodox synagogue in Dallas, the memes were both humorous and troubling.
“Candidly, I thought they were hilarious,” he said in an interview. “From the perspective of Jewish tradition, certainly for Israelis to be engaging in dark humor is absolutely a legitimate way to deal with stress.”
He quoted rabbis, including the 19th-century Modern Orthodox pioneer Raphael Samson Hirsch and Daniel Z. Feldman, a leading rabbi at Yeshiva University’s rabbinic seminary, who said humor is an appropriate response to stress.
“But at the same time, after that perhaps initial reaction, I think that is worth being a little more circumspect,” continued Rackovsky, who posted on Facebook about his ambivalence. “After all, our tradition does teach us that we should not celebrate excessively over the downfall of our enemies.”
The emotion he endorsed in his Facebook post was “gratitude” to God for the success of the operation. “We should absolutely be thankful to God, but maybe not hand out candies, and not just because the optics of that are not great,” he said.
Rackovsky may have been referring to another widely shared video, of Israelis handing out candy in Jerusalem following the operation in Lebanon — a gesture often reported in Arab communities after terror attacks in Israel. In response to that video, Ori Riddleman, an X user with 8,500 followers, asked in Hebrew, “When did the phenomenon begin that we began to imitate the behavior of terrorist organizations?”
On this and other issues, Judaism has multiple perspectives, as was pointed out on X by Rabbi Josh Yuter, an Orthodox rabbi based in Israel. He weighed in on the debate over the memes by re-upping a four-year-old Twitter thread referring to a number of contradictory sources, from an admonition in Proverbs (“If your enemy falls, do not exult…”) to a seeming endorsement in Psalms (”The righteous man will rejoice when he sees revenge…”).
“I remind everyone that conflicting perspectives regarding rejoicing over the downfall of one’s enemies are attested in rabbinic literature, with some sources being deliberately misinterpreted,” Yuter added on Wednesday.
Sara Yael Hirschhorn, a historian who writes widely about Israel, put the operation and the reactions in the context of pro-Palestinian activists and human rights bodies that justify the attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah on Israeli civilians as “resistance.”
“I don’t take glee in death, but if Western ‘morality’ has now decided that terrorists can kill Jews/Israelis as ‘resistance’ but not BE killed by state actors as internationally recognized terror organizations,” she tweeted, “where are we as both an ethical universe and international system?!”
The debate over rejoicing seemed to have cost at least one X user his job. Howard Feldman, who wrote about local politics for News24, a news service in South Africa, posted on the social media site Tuesday calling the attacks “genius” and “very cool” for their precision. He also joked, “From the liver to the knee …” — a reference to the Palestinian nationalist slogan “From the river to the sea.”
A few hours later he posted a letter from News24’s editor in chief terminating his column and explaining, “News 24 can in no way be associated with writers who glorify violence, which you did in my opinion.”
Feldman responded: “And just like that @News24 have shown me who they are…”
Gallows humor is a core aspect of Israeli society and “sick” jokes cropped up on Israeli social media even in the weeks after Oct. 7. On television, YouTube and social media, Israelis shared sjokes about their own fears, what they saw as a propaganda war against Israel and Jews and the failures of their own government.
And yet little of this humor was directly about the war in Gaza or the grim conditions on the ground there, noted Benji Lovitt, a Tel Aviv-based comedian who has co-written a book about Zionism and Israeli culture.
“I didn’t see much humor about Gaza because it’s war, many people in Gaza have died and many, many are suffering,” he said. “It doesn’t matter who you want to blame, but you don’t want to punch down and make fun of people in Gaza.”
By contrast, he said, Hezbollah has been launching missile strikes on Israel for 11 months, and the electronics attacks are seen as surgically targeting its operatives and rebuking criticism that Israel’s bombing in Gaza has been indiscriminate.
“We are laughing because we believe it’s a clear example of punching up,” said Lovitt. “And it’s an amazing story. I think people are laughing because they’re celebrating Israeli innovation.
“And it’s been a crappy year. People need to laugh.”
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