Oh Israel!

Oh Israel!

I was writing an essay the other day about the United States moving its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  Throughout my life, I have considered myself a strong supporter of Israel, who believed that the foundation of a Jewish homeland was right and historically based. Israel was founded on the moral “high ground” of the Holocaust; a repayment from the nations of the world for the atrocities of the Nazis.

But now, I question my own views on Israel.

When Israel was founded in 1948, the surrounding Arab nations ordered the Palestinians (the Muslim people living in the area that would eventually become Israel) to refuse to cooperate with the Jewish government.  When the Israelis asked them to cooperate or leave, the Arab nations around Israel encouraged the Palestinian diaspora, built temporary refugee camps on the border, and assured the Palestinians that they would soon defeat Israel and move them back to their homes.

Wars were fought in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973; all with the Arab goal of destroying Israel.  Caught in the middle of these wars, often literally, were the exiled people of Palestine, used as pawns (by both sides) in the geopolitical game.  In 1967, Israel captured much of the land where the refugee camps, then almost twenty years old, were located, and by holding that land (Gaza and the West Bank of the Jordan) internalized the Palestinian problem.

It has been seventy years since the Palestinians were placed in refugee camps.  Three generations have grown up, with little hope for a life outside. Terrorism has found a breeding ground. And while terrorist acts are abhorrent, terrorism itself grows from a reality that has no hope for change.  To change terrorism, change the environment that produces it.  Without making those changes, right or wrong, terrorism will thrive.

And so it has been in the Palestinian areas.

So Israel is faced with an intractable situation.  Within its control are huge numbers of Palestinians, raised in the West Bank or stuffed into the Gaza strip.  Israel has blocked their ability to gain employment outside of the controlled areas, citing legitimate security concerns.  They have built a “wall” to separate Israeli from Palestinian.  And Israel has responded to terrorism with tough and sometimes inhumane actions.  Each of those actions becomes fuel for more terrorism, and the cycle goes unbroken.

I always believed that Israel, with encouragement from its greatest ally the United States, would act in a moral way to try to resolve the Palestinian question.  The actions of the current Israeli government now lead me to question that belief.

There were shootings at the Gaza border last week:  over sixty Palestinians were killed, thousands wounded.  Women and children were among the casualties.  There is no question that the young were placed in the front of the line, intentionally made targets by the leaders of Hamas, the terrorist organization that also governs Palestinian Gaza.  They are terrorists, I don’t expect them to act in a “moral” manner; clearly the videos of the dead and wounded helped their cause. Their placement of children at the front of the line isn’t that different from the actions of the US Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s – the difference is that the Civil Rights movement was coming from a moral position of non-violence, unlike Hamas.

 But I do question why the Israeli government chose this response, when there were less lethal and just as effective alternate options.  By firing their guns and creating a whole new set of martyrs, the Israelis chose their own form of “terrorism” to answer the Hamas challenge. They gave up morality, and allowed Jewish soldiers to kill children; and gave Hamas what they needed to convince the next generation.  The United States not only acceded to these actions, but participated in a “celebration” a mere sixty miles away in Jerusalem.  The vision:  as Palestinian children died in the sand, the President’s daughter and son-in-law, the Secretary of the Treasury, and other notable Americans smiled and applauded.  We lost the moral high ground as well.

Israel cannot “absorb” the Palestinians into their nation without losing their national identity. I understand that, and respect that their nation was founded as a Jewish homeland and they fought for the right to maintain it.  This is different than the United States, founded as a refuge for those who left their homelands, where we should be respecting OUR identity by showing compassion and respect for immigrants.

If Israel cannot absorb the Palestinians, and they will literally “lose their soul” trying to control them as they did in Gaza, then it is incumbent on them to find a different solution.  A two-state solution has been on the table since the 1970’s; but Israelis rightly fear a terrorist nation on their border.  But instead of recognizing that terror begats more terror, the Israelis, with the affirmative support of the United States, continue on a course leading to no solution other than death and violence.  That course, we, the United States, should not condone or support.