Deborah sits under her tree summoning the courage to speak out         

It occurred to me in my long-ago youth that, although my parents named me Deborah after an aunt of my father’s, nothing to do with Jewish history, maybe I was actually a reincarnation in my generation of the biblical prophet Deborah. Who knows, right? The biblical Deborah as you probably know is said to have sat under a tree and prophesied. Today, maybe she’d be a journalist with a YouTube channel. The Deborah in me has always liked to think about all kinds of phenomena and express an opinion. Such people often become columnists (or bloggers) so they can inflict their opinions on others.

Consider a laboratory experiment with red ants and black ants that I read about more than half a century ago. It still haunts me. The ant colonies were housed in separate glass enclosures side by side in the lab. The experimental procedure was to create a narrow bridge between the two ant villages, giving the colonies access to one another, and observe the results. Quicker than we could say Love they neighbor as thyself, the two forces went to war. It was instinctual. The chemical incompatibility sealed their fate. Territoriality and the disinclination to cooperate are built into the organism.

Still wondering

So all these years, I’ve continued to wonder whether or not the same is true of human beings. Meanwhile, I’ve read boatloads of scientific research on the subject, and the question remains open. One school insists that even as infants, humans already show a strong preference for the close company of people who look, smell, and sound like the folks at home. The other school is equally sure that You’ve got to be carefully taught to hate “the others.”

Here in Israel/Palestine, ground zero of intractable conflicts in our region, the progress toward a resolution of our differences is excruciatingly slow. Jewish tradition famously aspires to provide a light unto the nations yet the world’s only majority-Jewish country is doing its best to brutally disappear the neighbors who love the same land – to ensure that we can have it all to ourselves (because “God gave it to us”). Meanwhile, Israelis continue to insist that “there is no partner” on the Palestinian side and that “there are no innocents in Gaza” – even though much of Palestinian society including the PLO has long since accepted the principle of shared sovereignty alongside Israel. We are human beings, on both sides – with the potential to choose a different path, as warring peoples in other countries have done from time to time. Yet red ants versus black ants remains the dominant paradigm here. So many people would rather kill and die, and send their children to do likewise, than figure out how to live side by side in a cooperative way with them.

In the shadow of The Hague

Certainly Israel is holding most of the cards but, as things stand, the gruesome end game might very well see Israeli leaders in the dock at the ICC in The Hague. No peace worthy of the name, no guilt-free stability, can be achieved by one side acting alone, and certainly not by means of an army fighting a forever-war (as many Israeli generals have repeatedly pointed out). The balance of power is a fickle thing; diplomacy seems the likeliest path to a resolution. Yet the only Israeli leader who ever fully committed himself to a path of mutual cooperation was Rabin, for which he was assassinated. Those who incited against him at the time are running the government of Israel today. Smotrich-Ben-Gvir and the other Kahanist disciples are doing their utmost to promote a criminal campaign of annihilation, with the aim of engineering the biggest Israel with the fewest Palestinians living in it. Their methods reek of the pornography of state violence: forced starvation, endless shooting and bombing, involuntary displacement and deportation, home demolitions and the terrorizing of civilians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. (If you have not seen reliable reports on this subject in Israeli mainstream media, try National Public Radio from the US here. AI will translate it for you.)

To be, or not to be, an ant

I conclude as follows. Speaking as a woman, a mother, a human being: At a time when the ultra-fanatic Daniella Weiss is a leading avatar of Israel’s current government, I want to be like Amira Hass. I want to stand up and speak out. Even if it makes me unpopular with people I love and with many whom I have long admired. Later, when my grandchildren ask me what I did when the babies of Gaza were starving to death in droves, at least I can say that I did not remain silent.

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An edited ChatGPT translation of this essay in Hebrew is available from Deb on request.