Letter from Jerusalem: Lebanon War, July 2006

We have a beautiful view from the balcony of our apartment in Jerusalem. The majestic King David Hotel stands proudly on the horizon, and the walls of the Old City can be clearly seen in the distance. On warm sunny days, there is nothing like looking out over this awe-inspiring city, and taking in the wonder of it all.

Our television sits in front of the French windows leading out onto the balcony. Often a mere ornament, it has dominated my view for the past week or two. Desperate for news of events on the borders with Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, I haven’t really noticed the sun-drenched golden stone of Jerusalem. When I think about it, there’s complete dissonance between the two images at the moment: warm, peaceful Jerusalem, and the embattled, blood-soaked TV screen. It’s difficult to imagine sometimes that what I’m seeing on TV is going on just a couple of hundred kilometers up the road.

Of course, every-so-often it hits home. Like during a mundane phone conversation with one of the secretaries at work who, in the midst of the conversation started to cry because she’d just spoken to her family who were sitting huddled together in a bomb shelter in Haifa. Or when an Israeli friend suggested that it was probably reasonably safe for my sister to go back to her home to Zikhron Yaakov – a few kilometers south of Haifa – assuming she has a bomb shelter in her house. (She doesn’t by the way, but she went home anyway. Life has to carry on.) Or, when looking around synagogue this Shabbat, and noticing the eerie absence of twenty- and thirty-something men. In the Diaspora, Jewish organizations are involved in extended debates about where that demographic group is and why it can’t be found in the synagogue; in Israel this week, there was no such debate. We knew exactly where they all were.

And then there was Friday morning’s conversation with our neighbours, Greg and Nicole, just outside their front door. Greg, an Irishman in his mid-thirties who made aliyah several years ago, had just received orders to report for army reserve duty that afternoon, and they were on their way out with their three-year old daughter, Noa, for a final lunch together. Wearing his army uniform, he seemed to be taking it all in his stride. “I’ll probably just get sent to some outpost in the West Bank,” he said, smiling. “They’ll probably want me to replace a young soldier based there, and they’ll send him to Lebanon.” Then he paused for a moment, and continued: “Mind you, you just never know. I was in Lebanon for six months in ’98, so maybe they’ll want me for my experience.” Pointing to his young daughter, he said: “She knows exactly what the uniform means, you know. Daddy’s going to be away for a while.” Just then, Noa slipped on the stone floor and banged her head. Greg, a normally mild-mannered, relaxed man, lost it for a moment, screamed at his wife, ran to pick up his daughter, and slammed the door in my face. The tension they must have been feeling is unimaginable.

Israel is right to be pursuing its course of action right now. Hezb’allah launched an unprovoked attack against a sovereign state, and crossed over the border to abduct Israeli soldiers. Lobbing Katyushas randomly into another country, with utter disregard for where they land and who they maim and kill is unmistakable terrorism. Twenty percent of Israeli society is under siege right now, a larger proportion than was the case during the Six Day War. Israel cannot allow such blatant vindictiveness and hatred to fester on its northern border, and neither should the rest of the world tolerate it. It is wrong, full stop.

The fact that the abduction happened two weeks after a soldier was abducted from within Israel’s sovereign borders following an attack launched from Gaza is no coincidence. Hamas and Hezb’allah are in cahoots over this – both motivated by profound hatred for Israel, and both determined to draw Israel into a conflict in order to foment that hatred, build support for their cause, and distract the world from other more pressing issues.

The fact that the abduction coincided with the G8 summit in St Petersburg was no coincidence either. Top of the agenda for the meeting of the world’s most powerful leaders was meant to be Iran’s intransigence over the nuclear weapons issue. By enabling Hezb’allah to launch an unprovoked attack on Israel – which it did by funding the organization to the tune of an estimated $100 million per year – Iran successfully managed to divert discussion away from its nuclear programme, and onto that old, tried and tested topic, the Arab-Israel conflict. And, in doing so, it bought itself a few more weeks, perhaps months, towards achieving its ambitions.

It’s been a brilliant strategy. Hezb’allah has gained support in parts of the Arab world – in the short term at least – if only for giving arrogant Israel a damn good battering. Lebanon has been decimated by Israel’s military response, dramatically weakening the democratically-elected government that has been backed by Europe, the UN, and the United States, and that won its mandate on an anti-Syrian occupation and influence platform. Syria has strengthened its justification for being in Lebanon in the first place – surely, Israel would have thought twice before launching such an extensive and bitter attack on Lebanon if Syrian troops had still been stationed there. Iran has diverted attention away from its nuclear activities, and, best of all, hundreds of thousands of Arabs have had their lives disrupted in all kinds of traumatic ways by Israel’s military response, thereby sowing widespread seeds of anti-Israel sentiment for at least another generation, if not two. And all this simply by abducting a couple of soldiers, and hurling a few Katyushas across the border.

Given these strategic aims, Israel’s response has indeed been disproportionate. The human being in me cries out for the innocent Lebanese civilians who have experienced such unbearable levels of fear and pain, and the father in me is torn apart just trying to imagine what it must like be to see one’s child killed or maimed by an Israeli bomb attack. And yet, I understand so well why Israel has responded as it has, and why, tragically, it has had no alternative but to respond in this way. The reason is clear. Everything else has been tried. And nothing else works.

The dominant feeling I sense here at the moment is that we simply cannot win. We tried holding onto territory – both as a bargaining chip for some future peace agreement, and in order to defend our citizens from attack. It didn’t work. We were maligned by the world for being an occupying power, and our presence only served to fan the flames of anti-Israel hatred. So we tried withdrawal under the terms of an international agreement – pulling out of Lebanon six years ago on the clear understanding that the Lebanese government would take responsibility for removing the Shi’ite militant threat against Israel. That clearly didn’t work – Hezb’allah has used the last six years to build an intricate network of tunnels, bunkers, stations and minefields in southern Lebanon, and to stockpile an estimated 13,500 rockets all pointed in our direction. We tried negotiating a direct settlement – to give up territory in return for a peace agreement. It didn’t work either. We went as far as we possibly could, offering the Palestinians all of the Gaza Strip, the vast majority of the West Bank plus compensatory land from within pre-1967 Israel, and the sharing of Jerusalem. In response, we ended up with an intifada. Hundreds of Israelis murdered in suicide bombings on buses, in restaurants, on university campuses and in hotels. So, last year, we tried unilateral disengagement. Forget agreements, forget our needs or interests, just get the hell out. The pain that permeated Israeli society in the months leading up to the disengagement of August 2005 persists to this day, but it won the support of the Israeli majority because it was worth a try. Perhaps, just perhaps, if the Palestinians actually have a piece of unoccupied land, they’ll start to build the infrastructure of a democratic, or at least peaceful, state. But that didn’t work either. Hundreds of Qassam rockets launched from Gaza into the sleepy Israeli town of Sderot, terrorizing the residents, and, despite the primitive nature of the weaponry, murdering several innocent civilians. And then, the underground incursion across the border into undisputed Israeli territory, the killing of Israeli soldiers, and the abduction of Corporal Gilad Shalit.

Nothing works. We can’t hold onto territory. We can’t negotiate its return. And we can’t just give it away. Whatever we do, we get violence, followed by more violence, followed by more violence. And sadly, tragically even, that was the state of the Israeli mind the moment Hezb’allah began its latest little game. Given that, given our profound frustration and deep deep anger, there could be only one response to an unprovoked attack: war.

What makes it all so much worse is that we know that this approach won’t work either. We know it fuels hatred. We know that Israel will be condemned – in some quarters at the very least – for its actions. We know Hezb’allah will be back – even if it is utterly obliterated – whether under the same guise or another. But that’s life here. Every-so-often, every few years or so, we’ll have to fight, kill and be killed, because even though that doesn’t work, nothing else works either. And if we don’t fight and kill, we’ll be killed ourselves.

My sister (the one without the bomb shelter) reminded me this week that breakthroughs are made from time to time. For example, no one would have predicted the peace accords of the 1990s while scud missiles were raining down on Tel Aviv during the first Gulf War. The following day, my wife reminded me of her belief that Judaism is, at its very core, about redemption – the bizarre, irrational but profoundly important idea that reality can be overcome, that the future can be better, that we can indeed change the world. Perhaps they are right. For the sake of the Israeli soldiers who are being held hostage by terrorists in Lebanon and Gaza, for the sake of Greg who is stationed somewhere in the West Bank or Lebanon as I write, for the sake of the Israeli Moslem father from Nazareth who lost two of his children in a Hezb’allah attack last week (and who blamed Israel for their deaths), and for the sake of all those innocent Lebanese civilians who have been caught up in this mess, I really hope they are. And for the sake of the simple hope that perhaps one day soon, just perhaps, I’ll be able to avert my gaze away from the TV screen, and admire the view over Jerusalem again.



Also published on www.peoplehood.org