Rabbi Jon 's Website and Blog

This is a very difficult time for Israel, Israelis, and Palestinians. I sense that this episode in the fighting is going to be different from what took place a couple of years ago. Israel's credibility as a nation able to defend its citizens is at stake, versus the credibility of Hamas and Iran as threats to Israel (and beyond).

It's important to have good sources of news and information. I rely on Haaretz, Israel's most thoughtful newspaper, and on the Jerusalem Post. Both are available at these links on-line in English.

There have been a couple of articles worth reading in recent days. Rabbi Daniel Gordis, who made aliyah from the U.S., writes personally about southern Israel, and what is at stake in the fighting. Yossi Klein Halevi, an Israeli journalist, analyzes the situation from the standpoint of Israel, its various leaders, Arabs, and in The New Republic.

We have responsibilities. First, to give what moral and financial support we can to Israelis we know, to people in our community who have family and friends living in harm's way or serving in the Israel Defense Forces.

Second, we will be called on to explain and comment on what is going on. We live in a community where most people know little about the backdrop of the Israel-Arab conflict. What people see most are gruesome images on war on CNN, or headlines and brief articles in the local press.

When we talk, the most important thing is to frame what is going on in terms of the biggest picture: Israel is a country that has been attacked since the day of its founding, that has defended itself, and that seeks peace with Palestinians and its neighbors. Anything else we say has to be grounded in that. That's the basic narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Every Israeli leader, even those of the hard right, has been engaged in negotiations about Palestinian self-rule. Israel offered to withdraw from over 90% of the Palestinian territories at the Camp David summit in 2000, but Yasser Arafat walked away from that deal. Israel removed its forces and its citizens from the Gaza Strip unilaterally in 2005, and left some of the infrastructure from its very successful agricultural industry there. The response has been Hamas and rockets.

There is no one left among the possible leaders of Israel who advocates incorporating most of the Palestinian territories on the West Bank into Israel along with its population. There are Israelis who oppose this approach, there have been unwise and immoral acts along the way. But the basic thrust is toward peace and coexistence.

There is a difference between targeting civilians for attack, and killing civilians in the pursuit of fighters who hide among them. This isn't easy to say, especially when I am not the one on the front line as an Israeli solider or a Palestinian casualty. But to say that Israel cannot fight because Hamas chooses to fight from populated areas — that is to say that Israel cannot defend herself at all.

Israel's opponents frame a different narrative: The Palestinians are a people subjugated by Israel and engaged in legitimate resistance against a massively powerful army of oppression. If this were true, what Israel has been doing this week would be nothing more than murder, the act of a morally bankrupt nation. But the truth is, the Palestinians have had opportunities to say yes to a state of their own living in peace — in 1947, in 2000 — and they have either chosen not to, or been betrayed by their leaders. Those who speak and act on their behalf have chosen war and terror.

Before being drawn into a debate about the day's news, we have to establish our version of the narrative. Israeli leaders do not live up to it every day, and Palestinian civilians are killed in this war, and horrible things will happen. It is not our responsibility to defend everything that happens. To hate the Palestinians, or Arabs, or Moslems, is also a desecration of God's name and of the Jewish people. But it only we who can explain what Israel's hopes are, even at a time of war.

As I said in shul last Shabbat, it is hard to have this responsibility, especially for those of us who dream like Shimon Peres of a peaceful, prosperous, integrated Middle East one day. But you can't do tikkun olam, can't reshape the world, without understanding it. And that means understanding the forces of violence and hate that push back, that push away from peace and from life. That's where we are this week.

I hope we are all able to answer questions when they come, to write the local paper when misconceptions creep in. If you know a high school or college student, they have it hardest of all — help them bear up and stand up too.

Hashem oz l'amo yiten, Hashem y'varech et amo vashalom. May God give strength to God's people, may God bless God's people — all of God's people — with shalom.