My favourite author on life in Israel, Daniel Gordis, says that although an Israeli victory in this war may some day be seen as one of the greatest victories in Jewish history, her conduct will be remembered as one of the most moral campaigns against the sickening phenomenon of terror: Israel's morality and the world's myopia
At this writing, Ariel Sharon is leading an attempt to have Israel withdraw from the Gaza Strip and a handful of settlements on the West Bank. And what has been the reaction from Gaza? A barrage of Kassam rocket fire that has killed Israeli children and consumed entire Israeli towns with fear, all designed to make the pullout impossible. Because pulling out of Gaza would show the world that Israel is not interested in holding on to these territories forever, something the Palestinians are desperate for the world not to see. Because pulling out of Gaza would give Israel a more manageable line of defense, which the Palestinians do not want. And because pulling out of Gaza would force the Gazans to recognize that their poverty and their suffering are not the products of Israeli policy, but predated Israel's conquest of the land in 1967 and will follow it as well.
How did Israel seek to counter the Kassam barrages? By Operation "Days of Penitance" in October 2004—again on the ground, again with casualties—and not from the air, which would have been safer, but which would have undoubtedly caused much more collateral damage. Despite the many complexities of the Israeli-Arab conflict in general, and of the current conflict with the Palestinians in particular, certain basic facts are clear: Israel tried to create a Palestinian state. When that offer was met with a war of terror, Israel tried to build a fence that would keep the terrorists on one side and its soldiers on the other. When the fence was treated as an "apartheid fence," Israel tried to pull out of Gaza, which the Palestinians are now seeking to make impossible. The world calls Israel racist, but the only population that Sharon is considering moving is the Jewish population in Gaza, not the villages that openly harbor the terrorists who seek to kill our children. And all this unfolds within the context of a democratic society that—in keeping with thousands of years of Jewish tradition—passionately argues whether our responses have been too draconian, or insufficiently considerate of the Palestinians (some complicit and some not), who have sadly been caught in the crossfire of a tragedy unleashed by their own leaders.
Daniel Gordis writes regular dispatches on life in Israel, all collected and published in a book called "If a Place Can Make You Cry". For an example of some of the most genuinely sincere, heartbreaking, and rational writing, read this dispatch.
Comments