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Shayna Abramson

Is Sinwar’s Death the Complete Victory?

We were promised a war of complete victory over Hamas. But the goal-posts keep changing. Is victory when we control Rafiah? Is it when the IDF assesses that Hamas is no longer an actual army, because so much of its weapons and personnel has been destroyed? Is it when we get Yahya Sinwar?

Of course, all of these things have already come to pass, but nobody is declaring victory. Certainly, nobody is saying that the war is over enough that we can think about elections.

This is what it looks like when the government relies on war to stay in power. Bibi knows that a) polls show a majority of Israeli voters want him out b) but only after the war is over. The logic is simple: Prolong the war, thereby delaying elections, to prevent giving the Israeli people the opportunity to vote him out.

The problem is that we, the Israeli public, go along with this scheme. We have to, because we have to show up to work, or send our kids to school, even if the war is ongoing. So we learn to function in a new routine, where the war becomes part of our normal. We forget about the existence of an alternate reality, the reality of no war. It is at best, a fleeting dream, a prayer for the safe return of our loved ones muttered on a teary morning.

In this, we have had years of practice. For years, we have learned to ignore the occupation of the West Bank. The effects of our military’s actions and of the actions of the extremists within the settler movement on the daily life of Palestinians in the West Bank barely makes the Israeli news. We go on with our lives, ignoring the alternate reality a checkpoint away.

It turns out learning to live with the Occupation was psychological preparation for learning to live with ongoing war. The war planes overhead, the air raid sirens, these all become background noise. Because of our years of tuning out the Occupation, we are experts at tuning out the background noise of alternate realities a few miles away, something that we now must do, day by day, to not be emotionally subsumed by what is happening in Gaza.

I am worried about what all this tuning out does to us as a society. What does it mean when you forget that it is possible to live in a world of peace? What does it mean when your routine is predicated on ignoring the realities of other people’s lives? What does it mean when you learn to constantly suppress worry for loved ones who are fighting -what other emotions become suppressed in the process? How can we ever get out of this quagmire, if we are so busy living in it, we forget to imagine what living outside it might look like?

I don’t have answers. But my questions strengthen my belief that we need an election, now, not when the war is over -because “when the war is over” is a moving target, always waiting around the corner. We need leaders whose political future is not dependent on the war’s continuation, who have the courage to imagine the alternate realities of hope that we do not dare to imagine, because we are too busy trying not to cry while taking our kids to school or prepping for an important meeting at the office. We need leaders who help us to imagine a different reality, and help us understand how they plan to get there.

For the sake of our souls, we must not forget that war is not normal. Occupation is not normal. Maybe both are necessary for the moment; maybe not, but either way, if we fail to even imagine an Israel where we can live both peacefully and securely, where we can live both free of oppression and free from oppressing others, we have granted our enemies the final victory.

About the Author
Rabbi Shayna Abramson is a graduate of Beit Midrash Har'el in Jerusalem. She holds M.A.s in Jewish Education and Political Science from Hebrew University, and is currently pursuing a PHD in Gender Studies at Bar Ilan University, with a focus on gender and halacha. A native Manhattanite, she currently resides in Jerusalem with her family.
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