I Know Its A War--And It Needs To End ASAP

By Walter Ruby

Dear Sam,

Many thanks for agreeing to come aboard rubyjewsday.com to present your views on the most critical issue facing world Jewry today. We have had many wonderful opportunities to dialogue informally on many important Jewish issues over the past several years—at your office at the AJC and over a few shots of vodka at Gambrinus Restaurant and elsewhere, and I am gratified we will now be able to continue to discuss and debate online so as to share our views with a wider audience, as the first step to creating ongoing dialogue forums on rubyjewsday.com in which others—Russian-speaking and American-born Jews alike can be involved.

I want you to know up front that I believe your essay is a strong one and you make some powerful points. You are at an advantage in this discussion in that you are presenting a black and white, absolute good vs. evil perspective, whereas my position on the horror that has consumed Israel and Lebanon in recent weeks is far more nuanced, and I will admit up front, fraught with internal contradictions. Yes, I am desperate for a cease-fire to stop the horrendous bloodletting on both sides, to save countless Jewish and Lebanese lives alike, but, I also have concerns that a cease fire now might indeed strengthen Hezbollah’s hand. On the other hand, days or weeks more of slaughter of innocent Lebanese, many of whom began this war as supporters of the Cedar Revolution and opponents of Syria and Hezbollah, but are now shouting their solidarity with Hezbollah out of fury at Israel’s systematic destruction of their country, will likely strengthen Hezbollah even more.

After placing our respective essays on the blog, Sam, I will be headed for JFK Airport to board a plane for Israel, to take part in a long anticipated family reunion in Zichron Ya’acov, a pretty town on the Carmel ridge about 15 miles south of Haifa. A rocket fell in Zicron on Friday, although thankfully no one was hurt. I lived in Israel for four years of my life, Sam, two of them in Haifa, which has been turned upside down by the Hezbollah shelling. Like you, I am torn apart by every Israeli casualty and am frightened for Israel’s survival and, would not want to go on living in a world without Israel. Yet I mourn every Lebanese death as well. My whole life experience tells me this conflict—by which I mean the whole 100 year long Israeli-Arab conflict is not about absolute good versus absolute evil, not about right versus wrong, but is an existential tragedy concerning two peoples, each with a just claim to the same tiny piece of land, who, tragically, have not figured out a way to share it; have not figured out a way to include the Other in its national narrative.

Sam, let me express one strong point of disagreement, actually dismay, at your contemptuous dismissal of the “so-called innocent civilians” in Lebanon, hundreds of whom have had their lives extinguished by Israeli bombs. Sam, can you really mean that the 35 children, some as young as a year old, killed in the Israelis bombing of that residential building in Qana, were not, in fact, innocent civilians, were not innocent victims? Your implication seems to be that since many of these children may grow up to become haters of Israel, it is acceptable to slaughter them, perhaps it is better to kill them before they grow up.

Sam, I realize that war hardens hearts on both sides, but I know your heart is good and therefore can’t believe you really mean this. Where is the old fighter for human rights and justice, the refusenik of the 1980’s who loathed the unjust Soviet system and fought for a better life, not only for Jews but for all Soviet citizens? Can you now harden your heart to the extent of saying it is OK to kill civilians if they are Arabs and Muslims?

You appear to present all Arabs, all Lebanese as immutable enemies of Israel, as though our own actions have nothing to do with turning many of them into enemies. Sam, I visited southern Lebanon in the immediate aftermath of Israel’s invasion of that area in 1982, and vividly remember meeting Shiites in Tyre and various villages who hailed the IDF as liberators from years of oppression by the PLO, which ran southern Lebanon as its private lawless fiefdom, the way Hezbollah does today. There was no Hezbollah in those days, but it was created a few months later and quickly grew into a powerful force, thanks to the growing rage of Shiites at Israel for turning what was supposed to have a short in and out operation into an endless, grinding 18 year occupation of South Lebanon. That same Israeli invasion//occupation initiated by Arik Sharon, took thousands of Lebanese lives and turned a majority of Lebanese into haters of Israel to the point they were willing to tolerate Syrian occupation for more than two decades. As I predicted on the Topaler show at the beginning of this war (see my posting entitled 84-16 on the blog below) the present invasion is having exactly the same impact, strengthening the hands of Hezbollah, Syria and Iran and Muslim radicals everywhere and discrediting those Arabs and Muslims who have argued that an honorable peace with Israel is possible.

As for George Bush, Israel’s supposed great champion and defender that you and other so ardently Russian Jews embrace, has it occurred to you that perhaps Bush is doing Israelis no favor by allowing, indeed encouraging, this horrible dance of death to go forward? Bush is apparently content to use Israelis as proxies, as cannon fodder in his self-delusional worldwide war against terrorist evil. There is a report in this week’s Forward (English version) that Israel recently tried to reach out to Syria to activate diplomatic contacts and the extreme ideologues in the Bush Administration sought to prevent that from taking place. What kind of craziness is that? The role of the U.S. has always been, and should continue to be, to encourage Israeli-Arab conciliation, not to discourage it.

Yes, Sam, Osama and the fanatics of Hezbollah and Hamas may be irreconcilable in their approach to Israel, but there are still hundreds of millions of Muslims who are not yet there, who are not necessarily ready to sacrifice themselves and their loved ones to kill Zionists. The impact of Bush’s policies since 9-11, especially the absolutely disastrous invasion of Iraq, has been to push untold numbers of moderate Muslims right into the eager hands of the fanatics. Will Israeli’s security really be enhanced if we so infuriate the people of Egypt and Jordan that they overthrow their present regimes and join an Islamic front against Israel? Maybe that will give someone like John Bolton to say, ‘You see, I told you they were all the same’’ But what will be the impact on the people of Israel who will have to go on fighting war after war, seeing their young ones die, year after year, decade after sorry decade?

No, Sam, this crisis, and Israel’s lifelong crisis of being a Jewish island in an Arab/Muslim sea, does not have a military solution, because six million Jews cannot fully vanquish 1.2 billion Muslims. We can push Hezbollah back a few kilometers but how does that constitute success if we drive the bulk of Lebanese (and Palestinians, Egyptians and Jordanians) into Hezbolllah’s camp and see them load up on even longer term missiles that can in fact reach Tel Aviv and beyond? The military experts, including those in Israel, have already concluded that Israel will not be able to destroy Hezbollah in this war; that in fact the silnaya ruka (iron fist) approach, that, despite what you say, has made little distinction between Hezbollah and civilians, has given that loathsome organization a huge shot in the arm.

Sam, I think we actually agree that the central problem facing Israel and the Jewish nation that loves Israel is the deep reservoir, the festering swamp of Arab/Muslim hatred for Israel; a witches’ brew of bile and fury that is 100 years in the making. Where we differ is that you are convinced the only solution is an intensified Israeli silnaya ruka to beat the Muslims into fear and submission. I believe the only long term hope for Israel to have a future besides endless killing and suffering is to drain that swamp of hatred to the point where Arabs and Muslims accept Israel’s existence, even if they are not in love with it.

To accomplish that means evincing a spirit of reconciliation and willingness to cooperate with moderate Palestinians and Arabs; it means showing respect for Arab culture and the Islamic faith, and it means negotiating with the Palestinians for a solution however difficult that may be, rather than trying to impose our own conditions and borders unilaterally. My approach does not mean surrender or endangering our security or surrendering our belief in the justice of the return of the Jewish people to live in their land. But it posits that there is another, much larger, people surrounding Israel and the Jewish state cannot survive in perpetuity in permanent antipathy for the Arab-Muslim world within which Israel is fated to live.

Israel had to respond to the unprovoked Hezbollah aggression, and it has done so and showed it will strike back hard when provoked. We have made that point in spades and now is the time to wind this thing down. As Yitzhak Rabin, a tough old warrior who helped to build the Jewish state, growled plaintively in the Rose Garden 14 years ago as he grimaced and forced himself to shake the outstretched hand of Arafat, “Enough killing! Enough!.”