Rabbi Mari Chernow – Reflections on Israel
June 7, 2010

What a difficult time it has been for all of us who are both lovers of Israel and proponents of peace.

Daniel Gordis, Michael Oren, Amos Oz, Alan Dershowitz, Donniel Hartman, J Street, ARZA, the New Israel Fund and so many others have weighed in on the events that took place in the waters outside of Gaza last week.  The blogosphere is buzzing, the commentaries abound.   

We all want clarity:  What exactly happened?  What will be Israel’s next move?  What does this mean for relations with the U.S.?  Is there anywhere left we can look for a shred of hope?

In my mind, there are indeed some areas of clarity.

First – While we don’t yet know the entire story, it is certainly a distortion to describe the events simply by saying that Israel aggressively attacked a ship full of peaceful activists.  We have all seen that the Israeli naval officers were met with not just resistance but with brutal and life-threatening force.  When they fired their weapons, they were fighting for their lives.  A person who swings a chain or wields a metal rod cannot be called a peace activist.  A person who defends his or her life, even with gunfire, is acting reasonably.

Second – The flotilla came to Gaza carrying humanitarian aid but with the clear mission to protest and break the blockade.  Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh said last Saturday (before the violence erupted), “If the ships reach Gaza, it’s a victory for Gaza…if they are intercepted and ‘terrorized’ by the Zionists, it will be a victory for Gaza too…”  The organizers of the flotilla rejected numerous opportunities to have aid transferred to the people of Gaza.  This is what protestors do – they choose drama over peaceful resolution.  In this case, they opted for confrontation and conflict.

And Third – It is once again open season on the state of Israel.  Those who reject the very concept of a Jewish state are running to be the first and loudest to condemn and criticize.  It is a difficult time indeed.

But there are also areas where clarity is much harder to come by.  Stepping back and taking a broader view, I have more questions than answers. 

One question I can’t answer yet is this:  What do you when you see yourself as David, when you know yourself to be David and the world insists on seeing you as Goliath?  (Could it be an accident that the first images from the Mavi Marmara were pictures of slingshots?)  Israel is a strong country.  This does not in and of itself comprise a moral indictment.  In fact, I would argue that Israel’s strength is a force for good in the world.  However, military strength brings with it nearly impossible responsibility.  What Israel does with her power matters.  The public relations war that follows every physical battle matters.  And, I don’t mean that Israel is responsible for everything that is said from all corners of the globe.  Of course not.  But in addition to those who hate Israel, there are reasonable people asking difficult questions about what happened last week and what led to this moment in time.  These questions should be asked and should be taken very seriously.

One common response is, “We did what we had to do because the world is against us.”  There may be some truth to this statement, but it is usually used as a discussion-ender.  I don’t think that doing so serves us well any more.  It diminishes the tremendous complexity of this issue and makes a very deep problem somewhat superficial.

To probe just a bit into one aspect of the complexity, I would ask:  What do you when you possess the might of a giant and you are provoked and provoked and provoked again?  I am not sure that the answer is found on either extreme - to sit back and quietly tolerate the provocations or to simply crush the one responsible.  I don’t know what the answer is, but this does seem to be Israel’s new reality.  Thousands upon thousands of rockets have been fired from Gaza since Israel’s withdrawal.  One way the rockets “work” is when they finally push Israel to fight back strong, hard and fast.

So too, if we will argue that the flotilla was a public relations trap designed to make Israel look bad, then we must also say that Israel walked right into it.  The right response is not at all clear to me, but it has been said many times that this is a new kind of war where conventional wisdom does not apply.  And that must be at the forefront of our minds from both a moral and a practical strategic perspective.

We cannot sit back and let the world call us Goliath.  Those who do are at best misinformed and at worst deeply prejudiced.  But make no mistake:  it is no easy thing to be the spiritual descendents of Israel’s greatest king.  In his highest moments, David was all at once powerful, strategic, reflective, cautious, honest, humble and breathtakingly wise.  Israel cannot rest for one moment from striving to be the same.

In less than a week, I will be getting on a plane bound for Israel along with 32 members of our Temple Chai community.  We go there not simply for a vacation but to express our solidarity and support.  We go there with pride in the Jewish state and appreciation for its profound effect on world Jewry.  We go there as both lovers of Israel and proponents of peace.