War, What is it Good For? Football.

Over the course of my life, I’ve lived in Israel for a cumulative fifteen months. Before college, I participated in a gap year program and in the summer after college, I returned to film a documentary. The purpose of both the gap year program and documentary was to highlight ongoing Israeli-Arab coexistence projects and grassroots institutions doing their part to alleviate the Israel-Palestinian geopolitical deadlock.

While the experiences exposed me to well-intentioned organizations, they didn’t create a launching pad for me to jumpstart a passion for peace in the Middle East. Perhaps the conflict between Israeli and Palestinian governments felt too difficult to “solve” and the idyllic dream of Israelis and Palestinians living in kumbaya seemed a little trite. Driving towards a one state solution or a two state solution isn’t a passing hobby one dabbles in. It requires career dedication and I commend those professionals who devote their life to making the Middle East a more peaceful place.

Instead of being affected politically, my time in Israel had a profound effect on me religiously. My allegiance with Judaism was heavily influenced by the perspective not of the archaic ultra-orthodox, but of the modernized secular Israelis. Their vibrancy, love of pluralistic education, community service, welcoming strangers as family, living for the present - all the ruach (Hebrew for spirit) that working class Israelis brought to Friday night dinners and holidays, I wanted to channel.

That portrayal of Judaism stuck with me throughout post-college life. Throughout three years in my mid-20s, I lived in a non-profit housing organization, Moishe House, in which my two roommates and I hosted over 200 events for reform and conservative Jews in the North Brooklyn area. From intimate religious text studies to festive rooftop Shabbat dinners, we covered all the bases for young intentional Jews seeking an engaging community.

But it wasn’t always fun occasions that brought our community together. After the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018, my house hosted sixty friends and newcomers for a vigil to light candles, share fears for anti-Semitism, and pray. My friend who had previously worked at the Tree of Life shared remembrances of those congregants who were murdered.

Five years later, there’s been another attack on Jews, this time of national proportions. I already know friends who’ve lost loved ones and I fear there will be countless more.

This Hamas uprising is a massacre against the people of Israel and the collective psyche of Jews everywhere.

This is war.

Americans are fascinated with war.

The United States was established through the Revolutionary War which led to the nation’s identity of liberty and independence. Soldiers who fought World War I and World War II became the nation’s first heroes and prototypes for the all-American citizen. From wars that fought communism to those that fought terrorism, America’s defense of its freedom has made hundreds of millions of patriots proud.

But despite war being tragic, catastrophic, and consequential, Americans still have this intrinsic love for war. In order to feed our insatiable American appetite for war, we need something that simulates war. Something that provides us warlike rituals without fatal repercussions. I’m not talking about reenactments by hobbyists or former personnel. We need new wars, enticing wars, wars where attrition, valor, and strength determine which side will ultimately triumph.

We need football.

In comedian George Carlin’s famous “Baseball vs. Football” bit, he juxtaposes baseball’s ethos of mirth and optimism with football’s ethos of gloom and decay. Baseball is concerned with ups (who’s up to bat?) and football is concerned with downs (what down is it?). Baseball begins in the Spring, the season of new life. Football begins in the Fall, when everything is dying. 

But throughout his comparison of the two sports, the most poignant segment (4:00-4:27) is the description of football’s objective:

“In football, the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use the shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.”

Carlin’s point is obvious: Football is a great metaphor for war.

With this in mind, I began comparing the Israel-Hamas war with football.

• Israel’s Iron Dome intercepts a Hamas missile like a cornerback intercepts a quarterback’s pass.

• Hamas’ intrusion via land and air conjures a balanced offense using both a run and pass game.

• Hamas’ artillery and weaponry is used to kill people in efforts to encroach Israeli territory and ultimately capture Jerusalem. An offense’s tactical control of the football helps them penetrate the defense, dictating their advancement of field position with the ultimate goal of intruding the defense’s end zone.

As those analogies demonstrate, football is not war. It’s a disguise for war.

In a football game, there’s no death. All injurious behavior is confined within 1.3 acres of designated turf. Territory can be invaded only within the boundaries of both the physical field and a composition of laws enforced by an impartial council of zebra-striped men. All territory sieged becomes void once the clock strikes zero.

Football works as a war simulation, not just for the role of combatants, but for the role of civilians.

Football fans can passionately represent their squad…safely distanced from the action. They can cheer, sing fight songs, paint their faces, and even don the garb worn by their team. There are certainly parallels of watching football on TV with watching Israel-Hamas unfold on CNN. In both instances, we maintain this spectacle of war and, amidst the chaos, feel like somehow we’re involved.

But at least if your football team loses, your city or livelihood won’t be destroyed.

Since Hamas is a terrorist group, it's tough to comprehend how any human could justify their actions. Yet given limp interpretations that Hamas “helps” Palestinians, many misinformed pro-Palestinian groups support the attacks against Israel. I’m reminded that, no matter how much bullshit needs to be manufactured, people will naturally be compelled to pick a side.

In the real world, choosing the wrong side can lead to swift ostracization. Many who’ve expressed support for Hamas have been fired from jobs, alienated by friends, or become - to use contemporary slang - canceled. But in football, our fandom for our team gives us this acceptable platform to make outlandish claims which reverb unapolegetically through our echo chamber. The oft-boorish clamor of fans is supported by an acceptable domain through which to view our ecosystem as one would war - Us and Them.

After one week, the Israel-Hamas war has only just begun.

During the upcoming months or years needed to destroy Hamas, I hope that this pain we currently feel doesn’t recede into numbness. When it's all said and done, this war will be the most repercussive event against the safety of Jewish people since the Holocaust.

In some far away quixotic utopia, one in which war no longer exists, there remains a substitution for those exercising the worst devils of their nature. For those who interpret life as zero sum and an existential need to annihilate their opposition, that substitution is football.

Whether you agree America’s favorite sport quenches our own country’s innate thirst for war, I implore you to search for a better replica of an acceptable forum for aerial attacks, assaults, blitzes, bombs, bullets, cannons, coffin corners, flanks, gunners, missiles, rifles, rockets, sacks, shotguns, targets, trenches, units all in the name of leading one group to victory over another.

There’s no disputing that football is a relatively violent game; But it maintains innocence when compared to the atrocities of real life war.

When you watch football this weekend, whether College Saturday or NFL Sunday, remind yourself that this is the best version of war with which to live.

If only we could be so lucky.