Greek Tragedy by Rabbi Arik Ascherman

Greek Tragedy

Rabbi Arik W. Ascherman

In the final days of Hanukah, the holiday on which we focus on the struggle between Jewish and Hellenistic culture, we wrote this year another chapter in our own Greek tragedy. As in so many stories, the way we understand it depends on the point at which we choose for our story to begin.

The justice of our position is clear when we begin the story on the day that Hamas cancelled the cease fire, or even a month previous to that, when the number of rockets and mortars being fired on Sderot increased dramatically. There is no country in the world that would allow rockets to rain down on its citizens, if it had the power to stop them. Both the Jewish tradition and international law recognize the right and responsibility of self defense. (Sanhedrin 72a). It is true that both traditions limit that right to the minimum necessary force and forbid harming of an innocent third party. (Ibid. 74a). However, while we can debate whether the amount of force we are using is necessary and proportionate, and where to draw the line between what is permitted and forbidden, from the point when rockets are falling on our citizens, we were in a lose-lose situation, choosing between bad and worse options. Personally, I have little patience for those who protest our actions in Gaza, but don't have a word to say about the firing of Kassams on Sderot. Those who are mentioning Sderot now in order to be "balanced," but didn't have anything to say about qassams until Israel reacted, also share some of the responsibility for our getting to the point where we had to respond.

However, we ought to begin our story in June when the cease fire began. Israel committed itself to easing the draconian limitations of food, fuel and other essential goods entering Gaza which it imposed when Hamas took over Gaza. This is also a forbidden attack on civilians. However, we never kept our side of the agreement.

Answering a High Court appeal by several Israeli human rights organizations a year ago, the State argued that it is acceptable to set a minimum humanitarian standard to which Israel is obligated in Gaza. According to this logic, it is permissible to intentionally lower the standard of living available to Gazans in a controlled way until this red line was reached. Incredibly, the discussion focused on how drastically Israel could limit food and other goods going into Gaza without creating a humanitarian crisis.

In addition to the obvious and terrible moral problems with this approach, it also harms us Israelis.

Israelis wonder why Gazans don't rise up against the Hamas regime that has caused them so much suffering. Gazans have been for a long time on the brink of starvation, without electricity on cold nights, and as a result also at times without running and/or clean water. They are not directing their anger towards Hamas, but towards the party that is denying them these goods and making their lives unbearable - Israel. Israelis ask, "Do Gazans care so little about human life, including their own?" When life is already a living hell, many feel, "We don't have anything to lose." Israel insists that there is no humanitarian crisis and cites the number of trucks entering Gaza without comparing the goods entering to the amount needed.

For the first week of Cast Lead we were told that our army was not harming civilians, although Israelis could certainly go to the internet and see things on a factual level that could not be dismissed as "anti-Israel bias." Today, the numbers of dead children and the reports of injured waiting for days before the IDF allows ambulances in make it harder to believe that we are not harming civilians. However, most Israelis maintain that we had no choice.

And here our story becomes a classic Greek tragedy. It is now moot that that we did not truly exhaust non military options before turning to war. However, not only are we unaware of how the terrible results of our siege should cause us to look in the mirror, but our lack of understanding that there never was a true cease fire for Gazans because we never kept our side of the agreement now reduces the chances that we will achieve the new agreement we desperately seek to bring much deserved quiet to the south of Israel.

There has been reticence in Israel to include opening of the borders in a new cease fire agreement. Because the borders were not open when Hamas cancelled the cease fire, it seems to us that this would be granting Hamas a victory. "They forced a war upon us and end up with a better agreement." There are plenty of other issues we can include in a cease fire to show that we came out on top in this war - the return of Gilad Shalit, international supervision of the border crossings and the tunnel areas, etc., without continuing to cause suffering to civilians through limiting food, electricity and fuel.

In the Jewish tradition we are commanded to leave one side open when laying siege to a city (Mishna Torah, Laws of Kings 6:7). We are also taught to offer peace before resorting to war (Ibid 6:1). This is for tactical as well as humanitarian reasons. People with their back to the wall will fight much more fiercely. Without absolving Hamas for a moment for the death and destruction they have caused, we must understand that we have put the back of Gazans to the wall and are thus denying ourselves the peace and calm which we so dearly desire and deserve.

Taking responsibility for our actions, using the minimum necessary force to protect ourselves only after exhausting every non military solution, not harming civilians and not putting their backs to the wall constitute a Jewish solution to our Greek tragedy.