Israeli tanks and military bulldozers kick up dirt as they move, at times in lines that snake across the landscape, out of parts of the Gaza Strip after the White House brokered a deal between the Jewish state and the Hamas terror organization.
Jacob Wisse, associate professor of art history at Yeshiva University and former director of the university’s museum, told JNS that as an art historian, he finds it “striking, though not altogether surprising, that photographs like these coming out of Gaza, where Israel has defeated its enemy—an enemy of humanity and civilization—do not demonstrate conquest or triumph but rather compromise and mercy.”
“Such imagery could not have been fathomed by patrons from the past in the Near or Middle East,” Wisse said. “A long line of conquerors from ancient Egypt to Mesopotamia marked military victories with works of art displaying their preternatural strength, juxtaposing it with the weakness of their adversaries.”
The images coming out of Gaza convey “the civilized nature of Israel and its value system, but they also remind us that the world, or at least almost all of its mainstream media, is simply not comfortable with the idea of Israeli victory, even though the results of such victory are cause for celebration by everyone who values democratic freedom, lawfulness, world order and genuine peace,” Wisse told JNS.
David May, research manager and senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JNS that the war in Gaza “has been devastating for Israel” and that the Jewish state’s “international image will be tarnished for decades.”
“More than 900 Israeli soldiers paid the ultimate price for defending Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel, and thousands more will be left with visible and invisible scars,” May said. “But their sacrifice was not in vain.”
The Israeli hostages, whom Hamas has held prisoner for more than two years, are “supposed to come home, Iran’s circle of fire around Israel has been extinguished, and Hamas has been shattered,” May told JNS.
“Israelis will no longer experience the near-daily agony of holding their breaths at announcements of killed IDF soldiers to see if it was a loved one or a family friend,” he said. “The future is uncertain, but it will surely be better than the ongoing war.”
After the war in Gaza ends, Israelis will have “a chance to catch their breaths and pick up the pieces that were shattered on Oct. 7, 2023,” he said.
