Israel’s challenges: resistance and redemption

The mounting threat to Israel’s survival has become an overriding concern of Jews everywhere. Hamas, Hezbollah and their cohorts avow with unwavering intensity that they will crush Israel one way or another. They have emboldened leading figures throughout the world to defend their cause.

As I have long maintained, their three fold strategy is menacing: (1) dismantle Israel demographically (2) use unrelenting terrorism to frustrate the will of Israeli Jews to struggle on, and (3) develop a nuclear bomb. Add to these strategies the spread of virulent anti-Israel PR throughout the world and clearly we confront a formula for disaster.

First, as for demographics, the Jewish birth rate lags behind, the potential for aliyah is shrinking and the number of Jews who are leaving Israel for safer grounds is growing.

Further, a new ploy to settle Arab “refugees” in Jordan and the West Bank, which is in Arab sections of Palestine, is likewise fraught with danger. An influx of Arabs into the West Bank, an area captured by Israel as a buffer after it was attacked in the Six Day War in 1967, would expose the Jews of Israel to further peril.

Secondly, terrorism aims to attack Israeli Jews not only physically, but in their very will to survive. Fear and terror are physiological opposites. In fear, organisms experience a rapid flow of adrenalin; all natural systems are mobilized for maximum response. On the other hand, when they are terrorized as a mouse is when stalked by a cat, adrenalin shuts down and they “freeze” and become an easy prey. Entirely overlooked by most people is a fact that when Israel responds forcefully to terrorism, it does so not out of hatred but out of an existential need to keep from “freezing.” In this regard, perpetrators of terrorism have to bear responsibility for unfortunate and unintended causalities.

Thirdly, it won’t be long before Iran has the bomb.

All the while, we have been led to believe that a peace plan and negotiations can save Israel. Commentary Magazine explodes this notion when it observes that Israel’s standing among the nations has declined “not despite Oslo but because of Oslo.” Who can forget that Israel’s concessions have been met with shocking rejections? When Israel under Barak offered the Palestinian Authority 95 percent of what it demanded, Yassar Arafat’s response was to unleash a deadly intifada. And when Israel unilaterally granted Gaza home rule, the result was an intensification of rocket attacks. Clearly, concessions without reciprocity and goodwill are doomed to failure.

Moreover, Israel continues to be excoriated throughout the world— even by some very intelligent people. For example, Helen Thomas, for many years a leading White House correspondent abandoned all restraint and when she fumed that Israeli Jews should go home to Poland and Germany. Asked how she could say such a thing, she merely replied: “I’m from Arab descent”. Please, dear Helen, I have known more than a few Arabs for whom hatred does not flow logically from their heritage.

Even more alarming is the large number of Jews who have been joining the “Bash the Israelis Chorus.”

For example, reacting to what he describes as the “botched raid” on the Mavi Marmara the noted writer Michael Chabon reportedly accuses the Israelis of being “stupid…blockheads.” That Israel was willing to get the humanitarian aid to Gazans after it had inspected the cargo for materials that could be used militarily against Israel apparently did not matter to him. Now it has been revealed that terrorists were involved in planning for the flotilla.

Judge Richard Goldstone a prominent South African Jew recently led a special commission of the UN Human Rights Council in condemning Israel for what its 575-page report charges were serious human rights violations, even war crimes. Now much of this report has been discredited.

Even more self-effacing is Roger Cohen, foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, who sees a moral equivalency between Israel and its enemies. “If it is possible”, he self-righteously proclaimed, “that Hamas is sincere in its desire for Israel’s extinction”, so is Israel sincere in its desire to crush the Palestinians. However, dear Roger, the heart of Judaism is not the destruction of enemies but rather the redemption of humanity, enemies included. As it says in Leviticus 19:17, “You shall not hate your brother in your heart; you shall surely rebuke (try to correct) your fellow human being and not bear sin because of him.”

A stumbling block is that such correction may be possible only if generated from within the Pan- Arabian world. Can you imagine, though, how great this world could be if only large numbers of Arabs were as passionate about achieving goodwill throughout the world as Hamas is about destroying enemies? Can Jews grease the wheel? Can we serve as a catalyst?

Jewish response to this whole issue thus far has been (1) to beef up our efforts to counter vicious anti Israel PR and (2) to persuade our president to be steadfast in supporting Israel. These are important, but ultimately not enough.

Israel faces an awesome challenge (1) In the short term, to resist— by force if necessary—those bent on destroying it and (2) in the long term, to work with kindred spirits of all faiths to bring redemption to all, even to those who now hate us. May this soon become an all-consuming quest for the Household of Israel.

Rabbinically Speaking is published as a public service by the Jewish Press in cooperation with the Tampa Rabbinical Association which assigns the column on a rotating basis.