On The Latest Horrors In Israel

Several hours ago I accepted an invitation from far-right RTVI (Russian Television International) talk show host Victor Topaler to appear on his program this Sunday morning July 16 at 11 AM. Victor, a charming raconteur I like very much, who claims, at least for rhetorical purposes, to be a supporter of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane and his call to expel the Arabs from Eretz Israel, told me he wants to use the opportunity of my appearance on his show “to tear you and the other lefties apart” for supposedly leading Israel down the road to surrender. Look at the catastrophe that has taken place since last summer’s pullout from Gaza, says Victor, pointing to the katushya rocket fire at Sderot and later Ashkelon, the capture of one Israeli soldier by Hamas and two more by Hizbollah, the killing of a number of several others during Hizbollah raids into Israel, and now the rocket shelling of northern Israeli cities, including Nahariya, Safed and my old home town of Haifa. The left, Victor says, is to blame for all of this.

I agreed to go on Victor’s show, as I have done on several occasions in the past, despite the fact that my poor command of the Russian language will make it hard for me to argue effectively in Russian a point of view that has precious little support in the international Russian community. Nu, shto deliyat? Victor has a large international Russian-Jewish audience and I have a moral responsibility to do what I can to convince Russian Jews, whether in Beersheva, Berlin or Boston that the mailed fist, the silnaya ruka, is not the way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian and Muslim-Jewish conflict.

First of all, Victor is dead wrong to blame the left for the failure of the Gaza pullout to lead Israelis closer to peace and security. It was not Walter Ruby, Peace Now or the editorial board of Ha’aretz that convinced the majority of Israelis to support the pullout from Gaza. It was Ariel Sharon, Israel’s toughest and most implacable politician for the last 50 years, the man who spearheaded the building of settlements all over the West Bank and Gaza, who finally decided to change course and pull out of Gaza. Yet I did not agree with that policy decision. I and many others on the left have argued consistently that Sharon’s policy of ‘unilateral separation’; which says that Israel can unilaterally set its own borders, is a delusion. The only way to end the conflict is to reach a comprehensive settlement with the Palestinians.

Yet Sharon did not change his thinking at the end of his long military and political career because he became a soft-headed old man. Rather, he understood at long last that the permanent occupation of Gaza and the West Bank was rapidly transforming Israel from a Jewish state into a bi-national one. He was right about that, and nothing that has happened in the past year has changed that equation or ended that danger.

Yet how can Israel reach an agreement with the likes of Hamas, which now runs the Palestinian government, or with Hizbollah, both Islamic fundamentalist groups that advocate the destruction of Israel? I agree peace is impossible as long as the leadership on the other side vows to destroy the Jewish state, and, at present, Israel has little choice but to take military action to destroy as much as possible of the military infrastructure of Hamas and Hizbollah. At the same time, we should remember that many Palestinians do not support Hamas and many Lebanese Shiites do not support Hizbollah. Indeed, I believe these groups would fall from power tomorrow if Palestinians and South Lebanese were given reason to believe a decent peace settlement was possible. Yet if we continue to lash out militarily and kill a lot of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians through air strikes in densely populated areas of Gaza and Beirut, we will only succeed in strengthening Hamas and Hizbollah rather than weakening them. Just as Hamas missile attacks on Sderot and Ashkelon failed to intimidate Israelis but instead strengthened their determination to strike back forcefully, Israeli attacks on civilians in Gaza and Beirut only cause Palestinians and Lebanese to swallow their doubts about the Islamic extremists and line up behind them.

Victor Topaler advocates that Israel pursue the harshest of military solutions, regardless of the hatred and resentment of Israel that will evoke around the world, including here in the U.S. I maintain that ultimately there is no military solution available to Israel; a conclusion that was also reached by Sharon, Bibi Netanyahu, Menachem Begin and all the other Israeli leaders who talked tough before coming to power, but sought peace agreements once they took over. The same thing will happen tomorrow if Netanyahu comes back or even if Lieberman takes over. The most profound lesson of this 100 year conflict is that neither side is strong enough to destroy the other. If that were the case, one side would have won by now and the violence would be over. Silnaya Ruka is not the answer. When this present spasm of killing ends, after enormous pain and suffering on both sides, we will be right back where we started, eying each other across a barbed wire fence. Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs, are fated to live together.

What is the ultimate answer? I saw a piece of it three months ago when I was in Seville, Spain at the International Conference of Imams and Rabbis, where Muslim and Jewish leaders from around the world, including a large Israeli delegation headed by Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger and a delegation of Palestinian imams from Gaza, talked, ate, sang and danced together for four days. At the conference, Rabbi Zion Cohen from Sderot, a town where the katushyas were already falling on a daily basis, offered to work with Imam Mahmoud Muhabbash of Gaza to try to get food to the people of Gaza. He said, "Despite losing a close relative to a Kassam rocket fired at Sderot from Gaza, I feel deeply for the people of Gaza and want to help alleviate their plight.” Muhabbash, who said he frequently pleads with his own youth not to become suicide bombers, accepted Cohen´s proposal, stating, "Inshallah, let us try.”

That human impulse, that Jewish impulse, to open a dialogue and to build human ties with the ‘Other’ is the ultimate answer. At this bleakest of moments, let us not give way to despair. Despite everything that has happened, for the sake of the children of Israel, let us embrace the path of the Jewish and Muslim leaders in Seville, and redouble our resolve to find a way to peace.