Heritage
I am torn. Full disclosure: I am the son of an ex-communicated Roman Catholic mother, and a Jewish father. I grew up in Cincinnati, surrounded by my Jewish relatives. We had a Christmas tree in the living room, and, as designated by my uncle, a Hanukah bush in the recreation room. I was raised Episcopal (the joke was that’s as close as Mom could get us kids to Catholic). But I was also well aware of Jewish traditions. While I could say the Lord’s Prayer, I could easily recite the Seder supper prayer over the wine and bread, in Hebrew, even though I wasn’t sure what it meant.
And one of those traditions was an unwavering support of the State of Israel. Besides our amalgam of religions, both my parents were veterans of World War II. Mom had to search the liberated concentration camps, looking for other members of her Special Operations Executive unit. The Holocaust had real meaning to her, memories that she never shared. Dad was moved from intelligence to finance in the US Army, because it was much more dangerous for a Jewish man to be in Nazi occupied territory. We grew up with an awareness that being Jewish, even just half Jewish, even just an ethnic Jew not a religious one; changed things.
I didn’t realize that, until I got one of my first jobs, working in a Congressional office in Washington and then in Cincinnati. I overheard a conversation between the Office Manager and the Congressman, talking about the Irish legislative aide (another young college student) and the Jewish scheduler (that would be me). Only then I realized that part of the reason I had the job, was my “perceived” Jewishness. They didn’t know I was Episcopal (a non-practicing one) but at that point it didn’t matter. They had a young “Jew” on staff.
Zionism
So my parents, and my relatives, and literally everyone around was in favor of Israel. We read novels, like Exodus by Leon Uris. It told the story of Zionism, and how the Jews in Palestine managed to turn desert into cropland. And we marveled at the tenacity of tiny Israel holding off the combined might of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the rest; first in 1948, then ’56, then ’67, and once again in 1973.
As for the Palestinians, the Arabs living in the area before Zionism and the Holocaust, and the flood of Jewish immigrants? We were told that Israel wanted them to stay, but the Grand Mufti in Cairo and other religious and military leaders ordered them out of Palestine. That was to clear the way for the Arab invasion, driving the Israelis, the Jews, into the sea. And because the Arab goal was to remove Israel, there was no reason for the Palestinians to “settle” into the surrounding Arab countries. They were kept in camps, on the borders, ready to move back in when the “time came”. The problem for them was, that time never arrived.
Now we now know that story was only partially true. The Israelis also wanted the land the Palestinians were on. So there was pressure for the Palestinians to leave from the Jews as well. And, realistically, most of the Israelis regarded the Palestinians as a threat and danger to their new communities. So the Arabs were calling for the Palestinians to leave, and the Israelis were “greasing the rails” for them to get out of the way.
Palestinians
The refugee “camps” became permanent fixtures on the West Bank of the Jordan River, the Golan Heights in Lebanon and Syria, and the Gaza Strip along the Egyptian border. What were supposed to be temporary “camps” became permanent, seventy-five years from 1948 to today.
And those camps became incubators for extremism. Young Palestinians saw few ways forward. They couldn’t assimilate into the Arab countries nearby, because they weren’t wanted. They couldn’t go back to their ancestral lands, because those were now in possession of Israel. And they struggled in a “temporary” society that had little infrastructure, education, health care, or means to provide for themselves or their families.
Palestinians couldn’t find a “legitimate” political way. They weren’t allowed to participate in Egyptian, Syrian, or Lebanese politics. In Jordan, which actually did try to make them citizens, Palestinians led a revolt against the King, that was put down violently. So they couldn’t be citizens of that country either. They were expelled back to the West Bank area.
Terrorism
And Israel essentially washed it’s hands of the matter, a kind of out-of-sight, out-of-mind thing. Palestinians became the “essential” workers of Israel, farming the Israeli fields and doing manual labor. It shouldn’t be a surprise that extremism, and terrorism, grew out of the Palestinian camps. The airplane hijackings of the 1970’s, the attack on the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and countless smaller attacks and suicide bombings after are directly related to the camps. When there is no hope, why shouldn’t a young man or woman aspire to “sacrifice their lives for the cause”, to become a martyr. What else was there to do?
So here we are; a week after the worst terrorist assault in modern history. Hamas, the terrorist element controlling the Gaza Strip, launched a brutal surprise attack against Southern Israel. They killed civilians, the elderly, children, babies, kids at a “rave”. The massacred over a thousand, and took more than two hundred as hostage. They lost as many of their “fighters” in the process, according to Hamas, martyrs to the “cause”.
Israel legitimately has the right of “self-defense”. In their “righteous might”, they have bombed much of Northern Gaza to rubble. They are poised at the border, ready to launch hundreds of thousands of soldiers, tanks, and artillery against Hamas. And Hamas surrounds itself with the other Palestinians, again caught in the middle of this long-running, incredibly ugly Middle East conflict. To Hamas, sacrificing for their cause is “sacred”, even if there isn’t a choice. To Israel killing Hamas, root and branch, is an absolute necessity.
Morality
Israel demands that Palestinians leave the Northern half of Gaza, populated by more than a million, so that the battlefield is cleared. And Hamas is demanding that they stay, as a “cloak of protection” against Israeli force of arms. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians left their homes with what little they could carry, and headed south, compacting into what already was a highly populated area. Israel has cut off access to Gaza, not just food and supplies, but electricity and water. And Egypt refuses to open their border, and allow at least some Palestinians an escape from the coming Israeli onslaught.
It is a moral no-man’s-land. Sure Israel has the right to destroy Hamas, to defend its citizens, and to seek retribution for its loss. But this isn’t some fight on an empty battlefield, on the “hill of Meggido” (the Biblical site for the battle of Armageddon, actually in Northern Israel). This is a battle in one of the most densely populated areas in the world. And there is little way out for the “non-combatants”, the Palestinians who would choose not to sacrifice for Hamas.
The Truth
So I am torn. Israel must defend itself from Hamas. But a nation founded as a response to attempted genocide, cannot morally commit the same against the Palestinian people. There is no moral “high ground” that allows for the destruction of the people of Gaza. That ground is reserved only for the destruction of Hamas.
I heard a Palestinian American the other day make a significant point. He said that Americans believe that all people are equal – in theory. But somehow, we act as if a Palestinian life is less valuable than an Israeli life. It’s hard to argue that point. We: the Israelis, and their biggest supporter, the United States; need to maintain the “high moral ground”. To do that we must find a way to save Palestinians, even as we “branch and root” out Hamas from Gaza.
That is the truth of this matter. It won’t be easy, but it is necessary.
