Posted by: friendstellfriends on: January 15, 2009
On 1/12/09 Fr wrote:
Dear Barry,
I am torn to pieces by the suffering in Gaza and by any responsibility we have for it, historically and/or in current disproportionate response and/or even just as a result of the margin of error – I am waking up at 4:00 every morning with a sense of dread. I watch with despair the resort to the use of force, the destruction of normal life on both sides of the border and the heartbroken parents who will live the rest of their lives mourning the loss of children.
The international community which has watched the tension fomenting for the past 8 years, providing humanitarian aid to Gaza while ignoring the firing of rockets into the small towns and agricultural communities in the South of Israel, has woken up to the urgency of the need for a cease fire now that the tension has erupted in a violent Israeli response.
We also have to see that the myopia of the Israeli leadership and public, that sees only the small picture and rejects the need for a political environment conducive to non-violence. It is tearing the Palestinians and us apart. In this larger picture there is our failure to respond to the Saudi initiative, our failure to restrict the settlements and their impact on the Palestinians, and our insistence in regarding east Jerusalem as non-negotiable and the refugees as not being our business.
That said, I am somewhat silenced by the bigger picture on the Palestinian side. The involvement of Iran and its control of Hamas, the religious fanaticism of Hamas which will cause it to fight to the end against not only Israel but also against secular Palestine, the corruption which has frustrated Egyptian efforts to stop the smuggling of arms through Rafiah to Israel’s and its own arch enemies – all these bring me to ask whether there is a way out of the violence, even if Israel does move forward actively and generously on all the political and diplomatic fronts.
Fr
Dear Fr,
My perspective spans the range of human behavior. I am as aware of the heights of human moral achievements as I am of the depths of human depravity. The Nazis were only one example of how depraved humans can be. I can list many other examples starting with the various forms of fanatic Communism (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc) and heading down through the ages, including for example, the various brutal invasions of Europe by Muslims and other groups from the Steppes of Central Asia, etc. Although I thoroughly prefer peace, I believe there are occasions when war is unfortunately the only morally acceptable choice. I say “the only morally acceptable choice” because cowardice in the face of barbarism puts everyone else at risk. The coward tries to run away to save his own skin (and of course the enemy might catch up with him some day) but thereby puts his former compatriots at risk. For example, I blame the immense death and destruction of WWII and the Holocaust on the cowards of Europe who sacrificed Czechoslovakia in order to achieve peace for themselves in their times, and the cowards of the US who waited two crucial years, from 1939 to 1941, to enter the war, and then only because their Pacific fleet was almost totally eliminated (Japan made a big mistake by not completing the destruction of the US Pacific fleet, they could have but were afraid to – cowardice works both ways). Sometimes the moral thing to do is oppose the barbarians.
I have a motto. “Don’t tolerate what should be considered intolerable.” And I believe in it.
I can hear the objection forming already. “Every fanatic thinks he has the moral right to do what he does.” So we have an obligation to discuss the morality of just wars and when it is that a military response to aggression is justified. But that discussion must not preclude the possibility that there is such a thing as a just war and that there are occasions when the proper response to aggression is a military response.
The international community, because of its cowardice, is partially responsible for the death and destruction in Gaza. I say that for two reasons. First, the fact that the international community responds as they do to images of suffering Palestinians encourages the barbaric Hamas to dish up as much suffering as the international community is willing to consume, and then some. Hamas would not use that tactic if the international community responded to it with the disgust it deserves. Second, by immorally neglecting to come to the aid of the Israelis in response to Israel’s legitimate need for support, the international community has proven itself to be biased against Israel, lost its credibility as a source of moral guidance, and driven the Israeli voting populace more to the right side of the political spectrum than it would otherwise be. Given all that, I think it is remarkable that the Israelis have been as restrained as they have been. A lot of credit for that restraint goes to the Israeli human rights lawyers.
I think you are being much too critical of Israel.
• Israel has been sensitive to the need for promoting a non-violent response from the Palestinians.
• Israel is responding to the Saudi initiative. The willingness to recognize Israel is welcome, but there is a lot in it that’s not encouraging.
• Saudi Arabia says that Israel has to accept the whole package or nothing at all, it cannot use it as the opening gambit for negotiations.
• Saudi Arabia says that Israel has to give up every millimeter it conquered in the 1967 war, going back to the insane cease-fire line border of the 1948 war. Saudi Arabia is more interested in removing the shame of the ignominious defeat of the Arab armies in 1967 than it is in advancing a realistic peace plan.
• And Israel has to accept the repatriation of millions of Palestinians who have been taught vicious hatred of Jews
• and have learned to live on handouts because of high unemployment all these years. The best way for Palestinian refugees to earn money in the damned refugee camps is to work for the UN. These people have been taught to be non-productive.
• Because of the API (Arab Peace Initiative) the PA thinks they are stronger than they actually are because they think they have the whole Muslim Umma behind them so they can afford to hold out for a better deal from Israel.
• I agree the settlements are a mistake in many ways. For one thing, they confirm in the minds of the Palestinians their worst fears about the nature of the Zionist endeavor. However, even though I don’t support the settlements policy, I think I can understand why it happened. The right-wing nationalists, both religious and non-religious, clamor for it. Who is there to speak for the Palestinians? Israeli human rights lawyers perhaps, but how can they stand in the way of the anger, disgust, and distrust that the Palestinians have created in the minds of the Israeli populace? If there were peace, there would be a much better chance of protecting the rights of Palestinians. But when the Arabs openly support Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda, and Hamas, they become very hard to defend.
• It is my understanding that most realistic Israeli negotiators recognize that Jerusalem, or at least East Jerusalem, should be shared. But if the extremist Arabs of East Jerusalem continue to act the way they do, they will cause the Israeli populace to reject in disgust any association with the Arab community of East Jerusalem. And yet another opportunity will be missed.
• The repatriation of refugees is unfortunately not possible. The principle we must stand by is partition. If Arabs insist on the right to kill Jews, then the two populations have to be separated. I believe it is too late to turn the present generation of Palestinian refugees into peaceful, Jew-tolerant people. The Arab extremists have successfully turned the refugees into an unacceptable mess. Even so, that being said, I believe the Israelis have tried to extend some sort of token concession that would allow the Arab negotiators to save face.
There are essentially three categories of problems that have to be dealt with in Arab/Israeli negotiations.
• Security for Israelis’ life and property, and access to their holy places.
• Independence, dignity, and the preservation of land for the Palestinians, including access to their holy places.
• The Palestinian refugee crisis.
The first two are possible to negotiate between the Arabs and the Jews. The third one is now a poison pill. The Arabs and the international community are responsible for the refugee camps and the plight of the Palestinian refugees. It is too much to ask of Israel to take them in.
Sometimes you just have to let them fight it out. The Israelis will not massacre the Palestinians, so I think it is okay to allow the Israeli army to try to achieve a decisive victory over Hamas. If it were the other way around, if Hamas had the military might that Israel has, a humanitarian catastrophe would be certain. That is the most important asymmetry of this conflict.
These are difficult times. As was said about a different crisis, “these are times that try men’s souls”. Sometimes we have to do what we have to do, as distasteful as it is, because the alternative is worse.
But take heart. What we are doing is protecting the very morality that you want so very much to live by. If we lose to the Islamists, the gains of the Enlightenment will be lost as well. Morality calls for us to protect ourselves as well as to be sympathetic to the plight of others. We can’t have sympathy for barbarians if that sympathy will cost us the physical foundation of our morality.
Barry
Posted by: friendstellfriends on: January 15, 2009
Sent 1/10/09
Letter to the editor responding to several articles about Palestinian deaths in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City where, as one article puts it, “The Zeitoun neighborhood is strategically located and is known to have many supporters of Hamas.”
To the Editor,
This article reports that “The Zeitoun killings have ignited an international outcry” even though, as the article also reports, the Israeli Army spokeswoman said “We do our utmost to avoid hitting civilians, and many times we don’t fire because we see civilians nearby.” The indiscriminate shelling of innocent civilians in Israel, who are as innocent as the innocent civilians of Gaza, didn’t ignite an international outcry.
The anti-Israel outcry is that Israel’s attempt to defend itself against Hamas is too harsh. There is no debate about how Israel can defend itself in a less harsh way, or about how the world can intervene so that the Israelis won’t have to protect themselves harshly.
This double standard encourages Hamas to put their innocent civilians at risk as a strategic weapon to use against Israel in particular, and Western culture in general.
Barry Werner
Posted by: friendstellfriends on: January 11, 2009
On 1/4/09 K wrote:
Barry,
Have you been effected by the missile strikes? Hope not.
How are you?
K
K,
I’m fine.
A few people in Israel have been killed or hurt by missiles, but they were within range of the missiles in the southern part of the country, at most about 20 miles from the Gaza border. I’m living approximately in the middle of the country, in Netanya, far from the Gaza border. But, if Hezbollah starts firing its missiles from Lebanon, those missiles could come down almost as far as where I’m living. I’m not worried, the probability of being killed or hurt by a missile is pretty small. These things are not accurate. They are mainly a terror weapon, they cause indiscriminate damage. I don’t think they’re nearly as lethal as the Israel traffic.
However, the missiles are very effective as terror weapons. Besides those who were killed or injured, there are a great many people who have been significantly terrorized. It is totally unacceptable for Hamas or Islamic Jihad in Gaza, or the Hezbollah in Lebanon, to shoot thousands of rockets at civilians in Israel.
The IDF invaded Gaza. I hope they will be successful in significantly reducing Hamas’ power to terrorize Israel in the future. It is not clear what the IDF can accomplish, we will have to see how this war turns out.
Thanks for asking. Be well,
Barry
Posted by: friendstellfriends on: January 11, 2009
On 1/7/09 E wrote:
Hi Barry -
Glad to hear you’re safe in Israel. Can’t imagine how stressful it is being there at this time!
E
On 1/7/09
Dear E,
I’d rather be in Israel during the war than in the US. It’s like being with a friend while the friend is having a crisis. I may not be able to do much, but it feels good to be able to do a little, even by being here.
Besides, the war is taking place far from here. The missiles from Gaza don’t reach this far north. If I had been in Israel during the first Iraq war, when Iraq was shooting scud missiles at Israel and people had to run to bomb shelters everywhere in Israel and people were worried that the next scud would be armed with poison gas, I might have been more stressed.
As it is, I personally know at least one person who was called up to serve in Gaza, and many of the people I know have brothers and other relatives serving in Gaza. Several Israeli soldiers have died already and, of course, many more wounded.
Be well,
Barry
Posted by: friendstellfriends on: January 11, 2009
On 1/3/09 F wrote:
Interesting. Thanks for the analysis; it cleared up a lot for me. I am assuming that the source of Hamas’ rockets is Iran. Is that what is generally believed?
Stay out of harms way. Cheers, F (Sunday we go to Costa Rica for one week. 82 and sunny)
Hi F,
Hamas was originally an offshoot of the Moslem Brotherhood, which is a militant religious group based in Egypt. The Moslem Brotherhood is banned in Egypt, although it is a potent force there (that’s why it is banned). When Hamas was formed it didn’t fit into the structure of the PLO because it was so religiously based (the PLO is an umbrella organization whose most important member is Fatah). At one time, before Hamas was a military organization, Israel actually supported Hamas as a moderating influence on the PLO.
The Iran connection is important. Hamas is Sunni, Iran is Shia, that’s a problem. But Iran is the biggest player in the region right now, it’s religiously based, and it shares Hamas’ goal of destroying Israel. So yes, for now Hamas is aligned with Iran and Iran supplies it with weapons and training. That is well understood. There is no question about the source of Hamas’ rockets.
Egypt is guarding the southern border of Gaza. Egypt has a very real interest in containing Gaza. They don’t want the Gazans (Palestinians) escaping to Egypt and causing trouble there. But Egypt’s ability to control the border is limited. Egypt doesn’t deploy enough troops on the border and I’m sure not everyone they do deploy there are all that enthusiastic about helping the Jews. The Bedouins in the Sinai smuggle all sorts of goods to Gaza, weapons and rocket parts included. The contraband enters Gaza through a large network of tunnels. The rockets come mainly in the form of rocket parts that have to be assembled. That’s why the media refers to the Qassam rockets as homemade. The Qassam rockets are relatively small and sometimes land inside Gaza. But most of them go in the general direction of where they are aimed, in buckshot short of way, to cause havoc randomly in southern Israel. Think of the V1 and V2 bombs from Germany into England during WWII, except the Qassams are much smaller.
Somehow, the Palestinians are also able to smuggle in the larger, much more powerful grad rockets, which are like the katyusha rockets Hezbollah has stockpiled in Lebanon. The grads have a much longer range and a much larger payload than the Qassams. A grad rocket in Beer Sheva killed an Arab Israeli this week (ironic, isn’t it?).
Enjoy Costa Rica. Regards to D,
Barry
Posted by: friendstellfriends on: January 11, 2009
On 1/5/09 J wrote:
Hello Barry,
The ground invasion of Gaza is, of course, dominating the news, and it is clear that Israel is intent on crushing Hamas. I think that this campaign will achieve its intended goal of stopping the rocket attacks. I also think that Israel will have the burden of a long-term occupation to keep Hamas from rebuilding and to restore commerce and democratic government to Gaza. Perhaps the Gazans will eventually find the voice and political power that they need in order to prosper and to free themselves from the terrorists.
I hope that the conflict will end soon enough to allow you to pursue your research and travel more freely. Do you think that you find it hard to return to the States?
J
Hi J,
Israel is surely intent on hurting Hamas so badly it will learn its lesson and refrain from attacking Israel again, at least for a long while. Most analysts say that there are too many Hamas fighters for Israel to hope to kill them all. One achievable goal is to discredit Hamas in the eyes of the Arab and Moslem World. That may actually be the greatest achievement. It may defang Hamas and seriously hamper Iran’s attempt to take control over the conflict with Israel. As you say, “Perhaps the Gazans will eventually find the voice and political power that they need in order to prosper and to free themselves from the terrorists,” that may be the ultimate outcome of this conflict.
As for being here during the war, if there has to be a war, I would much rather be here during the war than be in the US.
Peace,
Barry
Posted by: friendstellfriends on: January 11, 2009
On 12/30/08 J wrote:
Hello Barry,
Thank you for the e-mails, and do not worry about inundating me with too much information. There is just nothing like this available in the American press. Your insights into the history of the Gaza conflict are enlightening, and the op-ed piece by Bradley Burston conveys the misfortune of the Gazans over decades of life endangered and diminished by the conflict.
It seems that your desire to be immersed in the politics of the region have been fulfilled beyond anything you could have imagined. I hope you are keeping a journal and saving these e-mails!
Best wishes. Stay safe.
J.
Hi J,
I’m glad you’re OK with the volume of email I sent.
Here’s an interesting media clip from Fatah TV that just arrived,
These wars that Israel fights seem futile. Military victory is fleeting; it doesn’t seem to solve much. There doesn’t seem to be strong leadership on the Palestinian side to make peace. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah are all radical Islamist organizations tied to Iran. They are religious fanatics who don’t care how much damage they do to their own people or to anyone else. God save us from religious fanatics.
I realize I might sound like a right-winger because I defend Israel so here’s a little more balance.
The argument from the left is that the Israeli occupation has been oppressing millions of Arabs unnecessarily. The history is this. After the Six Day War, Israel negotiated with Jordan to give the West Bank back in exchange for a peace treaty (and, if I remember correctly, Israel also wanted to give Gaza back to the Egyptians, but the Egyptians refused it right away; they didn’t want the Palestinians then and they still don’t). At that time the Israeli government understood that the newly conquered territories would be problematic to hold onto. The Arab League then called a meeting and issued the famous three “no”s: no recognition of Israel, no peace with Israel, and no negotiations with Israel. Their decision was incumbent on all Arab nations, and they recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people because the PLO promised to destroy Israel. So Jordan got out of the picture and left the West Bank in the hands of the Israelis. Right-wing Israelis forced the Israeli government to allow them to start settlements. The political pressure to allow settlements in the West Bank was great because there was no voice to speak up for the Palestinians who were viewed as enemies, and the settlements would insure Israeli military control of the area. The right-wing argued that it would be national suicide to allow an enemy Arab state along the border of Israel to gain independence. That point of view pretty much held sway against left-wing opposition. The middle didn’t know what to do. The Israeli government didn’t trust the Palestinians and held out the hope that someday Jordan would agree to take the West Bank in exchange for peace. But basically, they just waited for something to change. They decided that they didn’t have any good alternatives so they were going to just wait.
The occupation was benign at first, but because Israel didn’t want to allow an independent Palestinian state to form, the Palestinians were put in an awkward position. They became a labor pool for Israel but they had no independent future to hope for. They feared occupation would go on forever and Israeli settlers would continue to take land. The Palestinians rebelled in what was called the first intifada. Soon, PLO infiltrators (the PLO leadership was in exile in Tunis) arrived to take over the leadership of the intifada from the local leaders who actually started it. That brought the various peace processes, and with the Oslo peace process Arafat was allowed to return to Palestine. Arafat lied to the world by speaking about peace in English but promising warfare in vile language when he spoke in Arabic to the Palestinians. His administration was corrupt and misused vast sums of money, he funded terrorists, and Arafat torpedoed the peace process by turning down what the world thought was an extremely generous offer from Israel. But that interpretation is contentious. The left-wingers still say that Israel could have been more forthcoming. Personally, I think Israel was being dangerously over-generous. Arafat’s rejection of the generous peace offer eviscerated the peace camp in Israel. Rabin was assassinated and not long after that the Israeli right-wing party won the elections.
Then there was the second intifada, which included guerilla war and terrorism (suicide bombers, etc). Israel clamped down drastically on the Palestinian Territories. That’s pretty much where it stands today. In order for Israel to let up on the oppressiveness of the occupation (the check-points, for example), Israel demands a significant improvement in security. The Palestinians, and their supporters around the world, demand that Israel ease up immediately, saying that improvements in security will follow. But Israel is afraid that if it eases up on its control of the West Band, Hamas will take over and the Palestinians will use the easing of restrictions to once again cause death and destruction in Israel.
Could, or should, Israel have eased up the onerous restrictions unilaterally? Personally, I don’t know how necessary it is for the restrictions to be as onerous as they are; that is an operational judgment.
On an encouraging note, there is a growing cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority run by the Fatah and there are definite signs of overall improvement in Fatah. But Fatah is still not nearly as good as we would like it to be and if Israel wasn’t there to protect it, Hamas would wipe out Fatah in the West Bank the way it did in Gaza. Israel needs a strong Palestinian leadership that is willing to make and enforce peace in exchange for Palestinian independence. Fatah is willing to make peace but is not able to guarantee that any agreement it signs will last.
Happy New Year and peace,
Barry
Posted by: friendstellfriends on: January 11, 2009
On 12/30/08 Fr wrote:
Dear Barry,
I thought you were saying something different and so, in response, I was trying to say what you have written in fascinating detail.
I, like you, though critical of some of Israel’s policies, am concerned about and opposed to demonization of Israel.
Since my own anecdotal experience in dar e Salaam, I have been aware of the process of demonization by the high-minded left.
Have to go into a lecture. This is to be pursued further and I would be glad to have the book references.
Bye for now,
Fr
Dear Fr,
I am about to go out also, but here’s a quick response.
I believe a lot of the blame lays with the high-minded left wing do-gooders. By prejudicially supporting the Arabs against the Jews they encourage the Arabs to continue offering up their bloodied citizens as suffering victims to the TV cameras, and the high-minded left wing do-gooders undermine Israeli’s confidence in the opinions of the rest of the world, thus blunting the ability of the rest of the world to have an impact on Israeli actions. The Arabs are fighting a total war. That means they will fight until the last civilian they hide behind has been killed.
Enjoy the lecture.
Barry
Posted by: friendstellfriends on: January 11, 2009
On 12/30/08 Fr wrote:
Dear Barry,
I do not see that your perspective is so different – you seem as uncertain as to what on earth the right policy is as mine.
Like you I have been consistently convinced that the settler policy was a huge and tragic error.
Does that error now permanently deprive Israel of the right to self-defense? No – but it does make advocacy on Israel’s behalf difficult indeed.
Perhaps my experience in 1967 in Tanzania of your “other good Christians and good Jews as well who support the Palestinians because the Palestinians suffer more” adopting that stance immediately after the 6 day war, before the settlement imbroglio, makes me a little more skeptical of their objectivity and good faith towards the Jews.
Goodnight,
Fr
Dear Fr,
We must advocate on Israel’s behalf because we are living an historical tragedy similar to that of the Dreyfus Affair. I believe Theodor Herzl was right to see the Dreyfus Affair as a defining moment, and we should see this repeat of the same phenomenon the same way. Dreyfus, a Jew, had the audacity to be a captain in the French army. Israel, a Jewish country, has the audacity to claim equal status as a nation in the UN and in the world. In both cases, for many people, these were and are intolerable changes in the way they see the world.
When I spoke of good Christians and good Jews, I meant exactly that. The pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionists I am referring to are as good as humanity gets, but they are terribly misguided by prejudices they don’t understand, that’s why they insist that they are not anti-Semites.
There are so many indications. Consider:
· Their obsessive interest in the errors that Jews, but only Jews make.
· Their use of biblical imagery like the David and Goliath story (funny, you don’t look like a Goliath).
· Their practical indifference to the errors that other people make. Here are some examples of that:
o Practical indifference to the Arabs in this conflict. It’s as if Arabs are sub-human, not subject to the same moral constraints as Jews.
o Practical indifference to the inhumane way my own country, the US, treats “illegal aliens” (whose plight is, in some ways, similar to that of the Arabs).
o Practical indifference to all the other, much more terrible events in this world, like the Arab crimes against humanity in Darfur, as only one example.
I can suggest two books by philosophers on the left side of the political spectrum that analyze the irrationality and counter-intuitiveness of the left-wing anti-Zionist hysteria: “Left in the Dark” by Bernard-Henri Lévy and “The Resurgence of Anti-Semitism” by Bernard Harrison.
The problem essentially is that of self-deception. We are not, as we self-congratulatingly refer to ourselves, rational creatures. We are emotional creatures capable of reason, but not nearly as reasonable in most situations as we think we are. It is hard to be completely rational. Reason, unencumbered by passion, is what we try to achieve in academic disciplines (note with emphasis the word “discipline”) but even there, as you and I have found (I have and I’m sure you have too), even academics are capable of deluding themselves through prejudice in the practice of their academic discipline.
That’s what brought me, a physicist, to think so much about psychology. I can show you hard scientific evidence that demonstrates how prejudice seriously affects judgment. In fact, let me describe the classic case. You’ll like this one. I can get you a copy of the paper if you want to read it.
A few years ago (the paper reporting this scientific study was published in 1989), researchers conducted an experiment with a group of 22 municipal court judges (15 male and 7 female) “from a large southwestern city” in the US. The researchers wrote up a fictional case of a woman who was guilty of the crime of prostitution, and the judges were instructed to determine the financial penalty (the “bond”).
Half the group was given what we call in this field of psychology, a mortality salient (MS). That means they were reminded of their mortality. The MS was put into their subconscious, and their conscious awareness was cleared. (I can explain what that means and why it is important.) The others were given a control treatment that was not a mortality salient. They found that “Judges in the mortality-salient condition assigned the defendant a [statistically significant,] much higher bond than did judges in the control condition (Ms = $455 and $50, respectively)”. This experiment has been repeated scores of times, with many different variations, mainly on psychology students who have to participate in such experiments as part of their academic training.
Why does this happen? The theory says that humans create cultures in part (or mainly?) as an existential defense mechanism. We defend ourselves against the terror of the knowledge of our impending death by creating and adhering to cultures. So, if we are existentially challenged by having a reminder of our impending death (an MS) put into our unconscious, we react by adhering all the more closely to our culture. The women who were convicted of being prostitutes were clearly outlaws, they were criminals (and as women, despicable?), so the judges judged them more harshly when the judges were unconsciously reminded of their mortality.
The cultural worldview of many Muslims, Christians, and even Jews holds that Jews are weak and subject to special scrutiny. The mortality salient (MS) is the crisis in the Middle East, which is portrayed as a tinderbox that can ignite a world-conflagration of war. That’s very scary stuff. The result is anti-Zionist prejudice.
The good news is that humans are not hopelessly irrational. It is possible to get through to people. (Except for the professional, academic anti-Zionists who staked their careers on this position.) And we must.
Like you, I opposed settlements in the Palestinian Territories from the start. But, even if I was right, that error does not permanently deprive Israel of the right to self-defense or the right to exist.
Be well and shalom,
Barry
Posted by: friendstellfriends on: January 11, 2009
On 12/29/ Fr wrote:
Hi Barry,
I wonder whether to add the following account to my new year’s message to friends, family and colleagues abroad – what do you think?
We are ending the Hannuka holiday and celebrating the new year, while worrying about friends whose children or grandchildren are being called up to reserve service and about colleagues in the Sapir college in Sderot who are spending the holidays with their families in air raid shelters.
As I send this, I am listening to radio 4 broadcasting from Gaza giving a picture of death and destruction (but also admitting that two thirds of the injuries are “militants”) and it is agonizing to be an observer of the suffering of civilians caused by Israeli bombing.
I do not know whether or not this Israeli action is inevitable, misled, wise or futile – the future will tell. However, it is certainly a decision taken in a difficult position – the constant rain of rockets from Gaza has turned the western Negev small towns and villages into a nightmare for the last four years.
The Arab world is divided between those who regard Israel as an unjustified aggressor and those who regard Hamas as a puppet of Iran, which is interested in subverting the Egyptian regime and introducing an Islamicist regime.
This said, I myself am not reassured that this Israeli action will solve the problems.
Fr
Hi Fr,
This is indeed an agonizing time. I am amazed at how much agony and uncertainty the Israelis have had to endure over the years.
What you’ve written is fine. I think you should send it. You can wait a bit and feel if you want to add or change something here or there. But it is heartfelt and I’m sure the people you will be sending it to really want to know what’s in your heart.
In some ways I feel like an outsider to this conflict. Not just because I’m not an Israeli citizen, so that I don’t vote here or serve in the army, but mainly because I have not had to agonize about these sorts of things again and again, war after war, the way Israelis have. There is a sadness in my heart about that.
I have a different perspective.
In my world I get to meet good Christians who want to do good. Some of them support Israel because the bible says so. But other good Christians I know, and by the way, good Jews as well, support the Palestinians because the Palestinians suffer more. He who suffers most gets their sympathy, or at least that’s what they say. They say, quite literally, that to them it’s like David versus Goliath, where Israel is the Goliath. I am not sure whether they would have supported Israel in 1948, when Israel was the David, that’s not at all clear to me. In their shortsighted estimation, the suffering of the Jews in Sderot is minor and overshadowed by the suffering of the Palestinians. They say the suffering of Jews is not so great because the Jews are more powerful than the Palestinians (okay, so it’s illogical, but it is what they say). They say the Jews are stuck on their historical suffering, the holocaust is over, and this is not the existential struggle the Jews cry that it is. Besides, they say, the Jews committed the sin of allowing settlers into the Palestinian Territories and the Jews should have been more gracious in making peace with the Palestinians (“turning the other cheek” is something the Jews should do). So, “the constant rain of rockets from Gaza [that] has turned the western Negev small towns and villages into a nightmare for the last four years” is not such a big deal to them. Their compassion has a different logic than ours. Unless, of course, some day a constant rain of rockets falls on their cities. For example, there wasn’t much criticism from them when the US invaded Afghanistan after the terror attacks on the US on 11 September 2001. It didn’t seem to matter then that the US was much stronger than Afghanistan, the Taliban, or Al-Qaeda or that disproportionately many more innocent civilians died as a consequence of the US invasion than died on 9/11. It seems that the concept of the unacceptability of the use of disproportionate force was invented only after the invasion of Afghanistan and the “shock and awe” tactics of the US in Iraq.
Perhaps Israel made a mistake after the Six Day War by trying to keep the Palestinians from forming an independent state instead of helping them establish the kind of Arab country Israel would have loved to have as a neighbor. Perhaps if Israel had more foresight then, maybe we would have peace now. But then again, maybe not. Who is to know how history would have turned out if a different choice had been made in the past? In those days right-wing Israelis argued that it would be national suicide to allow the Palestinians to form an enemy state right up against Israel’s border. Were they saying that only because it was an excuse to settle in the Palestinian Territories or was it an honest appraisal of the state of the world at that time? Was the taking of Palestinian land the driver in Israel’s policy toward the Arabs or was it an unfortunate consequence of an unrelenting state of war with an enemy that wouldn’t give up? Surely some people felt one way, others felt the other way, and others combined the two motivations into a seamless whole. I’m not a right-winger. I spoke out against the settlement policy in my small voice, right here in Israel to the political leaders I had the opportunity to speak with. I said, in my small voice when I had the opportunity to do so, that Israel should have tried to help the Palestinians establish the kind of Arab country Israel would have loved to have as a neighbor. But am I sure now that I was right then? I was also in favor of unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. I still think that was the right thing to do, but I didn’t foresee that Hamas would take over and shoot rockets at Israel. If Israel had helped the Palestinians set up an independent state after the Six Day War while the PLO was still in exile, would the people Israel helped put into power have been able to keep the PLO out and keep them from taking over in the kind of democratic country I wanted to see there? In those days, the PLO had not yet accepted Israel’s existence and the “two state solution,” it was then much more like Hamas is today. Can we be so sure that what happened in Gaza recently would not have happened in the West Bank back then. Were the right-wingers right when they said it would have been national suicide to allow the Palestinians to form an enemy state right up against Israel’s border? I don’t know. But I lived in the US where my opinion didn’t matter and such thoughts could be replaced with other, simpler concerns.
Maybe I’m beginning to feel more like an Israeli.
Be well and shalom,
Barry
