What a horrendous week and a half it has been in Israel, Gaza, and around the world.
We mourn deeply the loss of all innocent life—from the more than 1,400 Israelis that Hamas terrorists killed on that devastating day of October 7, to the six-year-old muslim boy fatally stabbed in suburban Chicago, reportedly in response to this war, on October 14, to the untold number of Palestinian civilians killed in the war in Gaza from weapons deployed by both sides. Much death and destruction is taking place, and our heart breaks for the loss of innocent life.
This war is not over and probably won’t be for a while. I want to share of some of my own reflections as Rabbi of Society Hill Synagogue, recognizing that we are a diverse community, with a diverse set of viewpoints, and part of the strength of this community — and many communities — is our ability to remain in relationship, and grow, through dialogue, learning, and openness. I thank you for reading and hope you’ll share if you have additional thoughts.
The reports of the nature of the murders by Hamas reflected a heinousness and a brutality that I can’t bring myself to type here. In fact, I can’t even bring myself to link to some of the disturbing reports. They seemed to suggest that bloodshed and even shock value was the goal. Commentators are still asking why Hamas chose now and on this scale to bring this sort of attack. Was it the progress Israel and Saudi Arabia had made towards establishing diplomatic relations? Was it a fear that the fate of the Palestinians was being relegated to irrelevancy on the global stage? We don’t know. We do know that Hamas, long ago, in its founding covenant in 1988, spelled out that, as one scholar puts it, it’s raison d’être was the slaughter of Jews, aiming for the complete destruction of Israel. While in 2017, Hamas issued a revised charter declaring replacing its antipathy to Jews with an antipathy to “Zionists,” the residue is clear. Israel has, on its border, a population governed by a body that seeks its total destruction. Hamas would broker no peaceful long-term resolution to this conflict other than the destruction of the State of Israel.
I wish this were hyperbole. I try concertedly not to use overheated rhetoric. But the bloodshed from October 7 makes clear that it is not.
Therefore, I understand completely Israel’s choice to go to war in Gaza and to seek the eradication of Hamas’ leadership.
I pray deeply that such a war minimizes civilian casualties. Israel knows that it is bound by international law to not engage in attacks in which the resulting loss or injury to civilians would be disproportionate relative to the military objective being sought.
It feels bizarre and inhumane to write in such terms. We never want to be cavalier about the loss of life. I am reminded again of the teaching from midrash when God chastised the angels for celebrating the deaths of the Egyptians — deaths, according to that same midrash, for which God had been the proximate cause. Just because God did it, according to tradition, didn’t mean the angels needed to celebrate the tragic result.
Still, I understand why Israel feels the need to engage in this war. If the only thing protecting your people from a terrorist group essentially sworn to your destruction is a security fence, and if that group has shown you that it means what it says — disregarding international law in its own right by targeting civilians —everyone from infants to the elderly — and by taking hostages — then I understand why Israel believes it needs to go to war to neutralize this threat.
How Israel carries out that war matters. I pray that Israel does indeed abide by international law, which I believe deeply that they strive to do. I pray, again, that civilian deaths are avoided. I take hope in President Biden’s visit to Israel, which has reportedly already secured Israel’s agreement to allow some humanitarian aid into the besieged strip.
But I do not question Israel’s right to carry out this war. I support it, devastating as war is. I needn’t list the examples in history where war was the only way, but I will say, when Jewish Americans look back at U.S. involvement in the European front in World War II, they do not ask, “why did we go to war?” They ask, “why didn’t we bomb the camps sooner?”
Nothing else is World War II; that was death on a scale that we pray never is matched. But this was the deadliest day for Jewish civilians since the Holocaust, and I understand the urgency and the scale of the response.
WHAT COMES AFTER THIS FOR GAZA
If Israel goes through with this and does indeed defeat and remove Hamas’ leadership, a question Israel needs to prepare for is: what comes next for Gaza? The United States has urged that Israel not be an occupying presence there, nor does Israel want to be. But the United States knows, from its forays into Afghanistan and Iraq, that the question of what comes after can often be more challenging than how to enter. In addition to seeking an unprecedented support package for Israel’s defense from Congress, President Biden also announced $100 million in aid to help civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. What comes after the war will be just as important as what happens now.
WE PRAY FOR THE HOSTAGES AND THEIR FAMILIES
I haven’t yet fully mentioned the hostages. It is so hard for me to. My heart breaks for them and for their families. We pray so fervently for their return home. I have no words.
Here I’ll direct you to powerful resources and messages developed by two Jewish institutions I care about:
Much Jewish thought and wisdom is being developed and curated in these trying moments. We try to do so here at Society Hill Synagogue, and we lean on our partners as well. I implore you to seek strength and support from your community in these trying times.
ANTI-ISRAEL SENTIMENT ROILS COLLEGE CAMPUSES AND ACTIVIST CIRCLES
Finally, I want to say a few words about the climate here in the United States as this war proceeds. Jewish students on campuses even here in Philadelphia are fearful as protests against Israel rage. Graffiti of a swastika was found on Drexel’s campus tagged with the phrase “F–k the Jews!” Marches on Penn’s campus included chants of “Israel, Israel, you can’t hide/we charge you with genocide,” and “There is only one solution/intifada revolution,” referring to violent efforts by Palestinians to overthrow the Israelis, and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which suggests that a future Palestinian state should replace the existence of the State of Israel. My heart is with Jewish students on campus who have to encounter this level of hate towards Jews and towards Israel. We reject it, and we have to counter the underlying messaging at play here.
The Palestinian cause on college campuses and in progressive circles has become a celebrated one, to the point that many Jewish students, who often find themselves aligned with activists around other causes—LGBT rights, being pro-choice, immigrants’ rights—find themselves ostracized and even afraid when the issue of Israel comes up.
It is possible to be pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli. Many Jews are, and indeed, in many ways that is the stance of the U.S. government and the major powers of the world: recognizing the legitimacy and the rights of both peoples, and seeking to find a negotiated solution that gives both peoples a state.
Activists in marches such as these, which sometimes bleed into outright antisemitism, as indicated in these examples, are not and would not be satisfied with a solution in which the State of Israel remains a viable state. They believe that Israeli injustice towards Palestinans did not begin recently, or even in 1967 when Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza as a result of the Six-Day War; they believe that the very foundation of the State of Israel, when the United Nations voted to partition what had been British-occupied Palestine into two states, one Jewish, and one Arab, was an injustice perpetrated against the Palestinians that can only be remedied through the effective unwinding of the creation of the State of Israel.
Some progressive activists do not realize that when they are, for example, sharing social media posts from an organization like Jewish Voice for Peace (a name which sounds benign) that holds these views, they are not merely sharing posts from an organization that is critical of the current Israeli government—they are sharing posts from an organization that believes Israel should not exist.
Two possible critiques of Israel often get conflated: one critique is that the current Israeli government should take a more conciliatory stance towards the Palestinians generally that recognizes and paves the way for Palestinian statehood alongside Israeli statehood. This is, generally speaking, a mainstream position—it’s the position of the United States, though the United States and many who hold this position recognize that the latest attacks by Hamas warrant a strong military response from Israel.
An entirely different position, which is held by an increasing number of young activists, is that Israel—even though it was the product of refugees fleeing the horrors of the Holocaust and previous waves of antisemitism, returning to their ancestral homeland from which they had been exiled and to which they had been cultivating a memory and a relationship through liturgy (“L’shanah ha’ba’ah b’yerushalayim” — “next year in Jerusalem,” we chant, at the end of Passover Seders and Yom Kippur fasts) and yearning for a return—is a settler colonialist enterprise from its inception, encroaching in its totality on Palestinian land, and that no Israeli government, no matter how benevolent, if it is a Jewish state, would be a just result. The land, according to this view, is Palestinian land. Perhaps it could be shared among the two peoples in some form of binational state, these activists suggest, but no Jewish state is a just result.
Often, people who are in this first camp—criticizing certain actions of the Israeli government, but not the very concept of a Jewish state—do not realize they are amplifying the voices of those who are also criticizing the Israeli government’s actions, but doing so from the premise that the state should not exist.
These conversations will not be resolved in a day or a week or a year, but it is important that we understand and be precise about some of the dynamics unfolding in our communities in response to this war.
I pray for an ultimately peaceful and just resolution to this conflict, where both people’s national aspirations are secure alongside one another.
Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom—a Shabbat of peace to us all,
Rabbi K.
P.S. If you want to read further, I shared additional remarks about this war in the context of our celebrating Marty Rosenberg and Terry Graboyes as our Chatan Torah and Kallat Bereshit, lifetime achievement awards for contributions to this community.
P.P.S. If you’re still looking to contribute, the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia has created emergency response campaign to provide immediate relief to the people of Israel; they say that 100% of the donations are going to the urgent needs on the ground.
