There was scarcely time to grieve before the event itself receded and the eight young men who were killed in the horrid attack in the Mercaz Harav yeshiva (as also those who were wounded) were transformed into symbols, and then from symbols into launching pads for all manner of political argument. It is almost always so in Israel; there, things don’t merely “happen.” There, context is everything, and these days, there’s rarely agreement on context.
So: A friend observes that the killer at Virginia Tech last year murdered 32 people, not one less worthy or more deserving of the wound than the Mercaz Harav students. Why draw conclusions at all? People go berserk and begin firing, end of tragic story.
Call that an effort to decontextualize. It falls flat. We do not know the mental history of Alaa Abu Dheim, the 20 year old from Jabel Mukhaber, an East Jerusalem town just across from the neighborhood of Talpiot, a town literally divided by the security fence — here a 24-foot-high wall — that is meant to protect against terrorists. (Abu Dheim’s family lives on the Israeli side of the wall, hence in truth neither here nor there.)
We do not know the killer’s mental history, but we know too well his social and political history, and it is they that gave rise to his pathology. In the aftermath of the event, key elements of the social and political context were on despicable display: In Gaza, children distributed candy in celebration of the victory, people danced in the streets; in Jabel Mukhaber, the family erected a mourning tent and above it, until the police removed them, flew the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah. What lessons does a 14-year-old Palestinian boy, or even a 6 year old, draw from witnessing such a response to murder, to this murder?
Others observe that Mercaz Harav is the ideological ground zero of the settler movement, driven not only by fundamentalist theology but by a specific vision of Zionism’s destiny. It must be, they say, that the target of the attack was no random choice, was selected by Abu Dheim’s masters to insult the pre-frontal cortex of the settler movement, there where thoughts and actions are orchestrated in accordance with internal goals. But as I write, we do not know whether Abu Dheim was recruited or acted on his own, whether Mercaz Harav was chosen for its deeper significance or because of its handiness.
Cyberspace is aswarm with opposing lessons we are meant to learn from what has happened. Violence breeds violence; Palestinians cannot be trusted, they revel in what civilized people regard with outrage; the occupation has corrupted the souls of both the occupiers and the occupied; just as Baruch Goldstein, the savage murderer in the Cave of the Patriarchs, did not speak for the Jews of Israel, Abu Dheim did not speak for all Palestinians.
The reaction that I find most perplexing, even disturbing, comes from Daniel Gordis, senior vice president of the Shalem Center of Jerusalem. Gordis has developed over the last few years a niche market: He is a master at the manipulation of sentiment. In a longish essay, written in the immediate aftermath of the killings, he begins his seduction with a recap of Chaim Nachman Bialik’s magnum opus, “In the City of Slaughter,” a poem of more than 300 lines written after the Kishinev pogrom of 1903, a poem that indicts the Jews for their passivity.
Then he moves on to cite Natan Alterman’s “Silver Salver,” a poem once taught to Israeli schoolchildren lauding the brave young men and women who birthed the Jewish state. Both Bialik and Alterman perceived religion as the source of the shameful Jewish passivity, and it is that which distresses Gordis. Without religious conviction, without continuing religious discourse, he tells us, we will not know why there needs to be a Jewish state, what purposes it serves.
That’s a provocative view, worthy of serious discussion. But that is not where Gordis takes the reader. Absent a clear sense of purpose, he writes, you want desperately to be “normal,” and so you close your eyes to the continuing attacks, assaults, insults. “You get so used to [them] that you don’t see that Jews sitting like ducks, simply waiting to be hit by homemade missiles while the region’s most powerful army sits on the side and polishes its boots, is a bastardization of what Zionism was supposed to be.”
His indictment, as harsh in its own way as Bialik’s, goes on, step by critical step, until finally it finds its home base: “So we sit. And civilians keep getting targeted, and keep dying. And soldiers die. And Israeli towns become ghost towns…
“But George Bush most supports us, so we feel better. And the charade with Abu Mazen permits us to continue hallucinating about the possibility of peace, to pretend that the Palestinians aren’t simply an utterly failed people that will never make peace in our lifetimes or those of our children, so we feel even better.”
Another time, we can argue about “what Zionism was supposed to be.” Just now, let us take note of what Zionism was not supposed to be: Two days after the yeshiva attack, Israel announced renewed construction of hundreds of homes in the West Bank town of Givat Ze’ev and authorized hundreds more in East Jerusalem. So much for the Road Map; so much for Israel’s explicit commitments at the Annapolis conference last fall.
Zionism, then, as an act of spite; Zionism to keep a fractious coalition together; Zionism to satisfy those in the religious camp who are as far from “shameful Jewish passivity” as can be. Take your pick: a Zionism that polishes its boots, or a Zionism that spits in the face of the Other and on its own moral tradition. Either way, you lose.
Leonard Fein's article is confusing. Is the last paragraph supposed to be his view or that of Daniel Gordis?
Israeli society is typified by a very strong tendency to self-criticism. Moreover, criticism from the outside is overwhelming, very often quite unreasonably so. I also read the Daniel Gordis essay, and it is not a "manipulation of sentiment" as Leonard Fein claims. The well-taken point was simply that Israel must carry out actions to protect her people as her highest mission - and not to be paralyzed by attempting to placate critics and observers. Criticism is legitimate, and indeed we are listening - but finding grace in the eyes of others cannot be a national policy. Mr Fein briefly states what Zionism was not supposed to be. Again, his criticism is well-thought and also noted. But can he take some criticism in return? Well, here it is: Zionism was not supposed to be that part of the Jewish people carries the burdens of collective Jewish existence, faces tough life-and-death decisions - while another part of the Jewish people gives applause or gives criticism from a distance.
A powerful statement of the dilemma of Israel's current situation -- but where is the leader who will find a third way to enable the Jews to find a moral path beyond fruitless passivity?
In fact, I think that Daniel Gordis is one of the most compelling Zionists of our day. He doesn't pontificate from his home in Boston or LA, but moved his family to Israel about a decade ago. He lives his Zionism and lives with the benefits, challenges, consequences, and has written compellingly about them. He often supports and shares the perspective of the same left wing peace organizations as Leonard Fine, yet he doesn't close his eyes to the reality. What kind of idiot would cite the Roadmap and Annapolis, both of which occurred at least one massacre, many broken commitments by the Palestinians, and tens of thousand of rockets ago. That said, I believe FIne has much to contribute to the Jewish community. Just not a reasoned critique of Israel or Zionism.
Look at the Forward's editorial on the subject: Self-righteous leftists using the muslim murder of yeshiva students to assault what the Forward outrageously refers to as their "wrong-headed belief system". The Forward then insults their memory by using the opportunity to argue for "peace" with their arab murderers.
How we have warped the word "liberal". This man, Fine, obviously has no children in Sderot, no sons in combat units in the army, etc. A Jerusalem Arab (who's family is accorded all the rights of being Jerusalemites) who was due to be married and is from a WEALTHY family murders mostly high school boys deep in study and Fine turns this into a tirade against religious and/or right wing Jews. AHH, what would people like him do without having a Baruch Goldstein to bring up every time, after EVERY murder of Jews? What universe does he inhabit? What would he expect of the US government if rockets were reigning down on University of Maryland at College Park and his children/grandchildren studied there? If he was afraid to take a shi_, make love with his wife, take a shower or do anything else that takes more than 12 seconds - not enough time to run for cover when the "Color Red" siren sounds. That is how an entire city in Israel is living. All this blah blah, or paca, paca, as we say in Israel. Just why do messianist (peace at any price) "liberals" expect us to live in ways you NEVER would, call for "peace talks" on the blood of OUR children? We should smash them and take a breather. We owe the world NO explanations. We are an immoral people who has some gene deficiency when it comes to taking care of our own. Everyone is entitled to do that except us, for some strange reason. Fine can write well, sometimes, but he should stay out of Israeli politics until he moves his entire family to Sderot. We have enough problems with clueless, conniving politicians like Olmert. Fine should apologize to the national religious community for besmirching them. Ask any Israeli officer where the army would be without them. Shame on Fine. I hope the mothers of these murdered boys don't see his hate-filled article. Perhaps, he should raise money for the Gush Katif refugees who were betrayed by the country 2 and a half years ago with no end in sight to their plight, instead of pushing for making thousands more homeless.
Zionism has not been permitted, by the Israeli and U.S. Jewish Left, or "world public opinion",(read: U.S. need for Middle East oil) to do to the Arabs what the Arabs have tried for centuries to do to the Jews,ie, destroy them. Read your Herodotus and Thucydides. Read your history of warfare throughout the ages. One side, to have peace, must crush and humiliate the other. It has invariably been true. There is no satisfactory "Peace Process". There is no peace to be had. There is no "Two-State Solution". Isreael, and the Zionists, have not yet begun to do whats required for peace. The morality is a chimera and an abstraction, irrelevant. The Left should shut up and let the IDF do what it has to do.
Leonard Fein cannot hold a candle to Daniel Gordis when it comes to the written word. Gordis is entirely correct when he laments the passivity of Israeli leadership. If rockets were falling daily on North Tel Aviv you can bet the Israeli government would have acted forcefully by now. Even a desperate Liberal like Fein should be able to see that Sderot is abandoned because it is made up of mostly poor Russian, Ethiopian and Sephardic Jews.
Leonard Fein in FORWARD-- long my favorite newspaper for facts and opinions-- makes some interesting observations wondering why American Jews, as Zionists, so dawn over Rev. John Hagee, whose Zionism is so politically compromised by his wild autocratic Evangelism. http://www.forward.com/articles/12824/ As one who was "Americanized" in the NYC Jewish Community, I would greatly appreciate the views of other scholars on this list to Fein's comment. Since the late 50s I had never seen this kind of neocon Stalinist "united front" manifested by philosophically liberal Jews who rightly denounced a muddle of Church and State. But from the commend appended to the text, it seems that now-- a la Churchill-- one would sleep with the Devil if only it led to political clout for Israel in the US Legislature. Bellow is my comment as to why this "fawning" over Hagee so disturbs me: ************************************************** Rev. Hagee's Jewish admirers remind of Hitler's Jewish admirers in Batar, Jabotinsky's "revisionist" mob that sought conquest by means of a bloody "iron wall," long before any Arab war befell the Zionists. Batar wore uniforms weaved, sewn, washed, pressed and distributed free by their Nazi tailors. Said Batar: so what if Hitler didn't like Jews, he's wonderful for the German people-- then came Kristallnacht! For three generations American Jews have wailed over the Holocaust. But it is not the wail for lost beloved brethren, but the wail of heavy guilt passed on through three generations for the deliberate silence of the 1930s, motivated by fear that their "good deal" in America might be endangered if they speak too loudly against German-US relations. After all, Germans were then the biggest immigrant group and the Bun was mighty tough, even in America. East Euro Jews who survived TWO Holocausts (Hitler's and Stalin's) raised me through our westward refuge from Stalin's grasp. And they taught me that people who think it's cool to make a deal with them "dumb goyim" loonies end up at the front of the line of horror... as so many in Russia found out in the 1950 Soviet "Doctors' Plot" of Stalin. In 1946 Zionist leaders pledged Stalin full support against the West if only he armed the Palmach against the Arabs. He armed them generously; and then he butchered Russian Jews in a spasm of anti-Semitism brought to an end only by his death in 1953. So as a Christian raised by Jews I offer you an historical lesson passed on to me by my wise mentors: Don't play with the Devil, thinking that he is dumb; for you will surely be burned! Daniel E. Teodoru
well, as a non-white gentile, doesn't it make sense for rome/the vatican to be the 'mecca' of christians, jerusalem the 'mecca' of jews, and 'mecca' well, you know what i mean... i don't get it. if palestinians don't want to live with israel, why not just live in egypt or saudi arabia or the uae? plenty of land and fellow islamicists there...
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