Speaking of Victories

Reports this morning of 93 Palestinians killed in an Israeli attack on a school in Gaza. First, I hope the thought of 93 persons killed is a devastating, heartbreaking thought for anyone. After you finish asking questions and analyzing, I hope the pain of that thought remains the same, and whether 93 is an accurate number is irrelevant. I hope that the loss of any life is upsetting, disturbing, unsettling, heartbreaking for anyone. The questions: is the Palestinian source and count reliable and credible? If the school had become a Hamas command base, can you understand that Israel would destroy it? But the people there were evacuated from other parts of Gaza where they were endangered. Who can they believe?

Did Israel follow protocol and provide warning to civilians to leave the site? Did Hamas use those people as a human shield? Is Israel responsible if Hamas kept innocent civilians at the site? Should Israel therefore refrain from attacking a site from which attacks against it are perpetrated? The analyses have their biases. Clearly, the only way to put an end to the killing and loss of innocent lives is to put an end to the killing. That means perpetrators survive too? That means the road to peace must be found. There always is one.

Earlier this week, a headline reported that MK Simcha Rotman, Chair of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee from the same religious, right-wing party as Finance Minister Smotrich called it a disgrace that Israeli soldiers were detained under allegations violating Hamas Nukhba prisoners at the military base where they are held. Nausea overcomes me as I write the words and think that a Jewish member of the Knesset of Israel who claims to be a Zionist in 2024 could make such a statement. Maybe this enables others to understand why I have long taken exception to being labelled a Zionist. I want many things that Zionism ostensibly represented. In the internal conflicts of Zionist ideology over issues of questionable, yet perhaps understandable, justification in a certain historic perspective, values forfeited have been dismissed and the integrity of the ideology seems to be the loser.

When Minister of Justice Yariv Levin from the Likud party supported by Rotman led their proposed legislation for judicial reform, the streets were filled with protestors never imagining the war ahead, that would alter the focus of the spotlights. When Israel celebrated its 75^th Independence Day in May 2023, the divisiveness of society that PM Netanyahu cultivated for well over a decade was evident in the absence of public celebrations usually held, replaced by subdued, reflective, almost mournful events. In 2024, events were mournful, and the aura was pensive.

However, 15 months ago, missions of educated Jews visited, seeking to learn and understand, to meet politicians and analysts, and gain a firsthand understanding of the implications and nuances of the proposed judicial reform. At a major event open to Israelis, when American Jews came to celebrate 75 years of the State of Israel, I attended a session with MK Rotman on the panel, and joined other Israelis in the audience protesting, drowning out his voice. One angry American woman turned to me and a friend of mine telling us she had come to learn, and we were rudely interfering. I understood, rationally. Passionately, and rationally, I firmly responded that we cannot afford the luxury of allowing his voice to be heard without protest.

In the past 10 months, educational tourism missions ascribe a new purpose to their visits: bearing witness. This past week, Haim’s nephew and fiancé from the UK came to visit. I arranged a tour at a kibbutz among those that suffered the worst attacks on October 7. The day before the visit, a series of rockets were shot from Gaza into that area. Our guests asked to cancel the tour. Instead, we visited the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The guide explained that temporary exhibits are all works from the museum storage rooms, and local artists’ work. No foreign art loans since October 7. Afterwards, we went to Hostages’ Square in Tel Aviv.

The variations on the iconic Friday night dinner table in the Square now show the table under meager decorations and the flimsy wooden skeleton of a succah, symbolic of the Succot holiday. October 7, 2023, was the last day of Succot last year. Just two months now until Succot (later in October this year). Is it fathomable that 115 Israeli hostages will still be in Gaza? Behind each chair at the table is a name. The head of the table is assigned to 80-year-old Gadi Moses, my friend’s uncle. I pointed to his name and told our guests that he was kidnapped from his kibbutz, the one we were supposed to have visited.

We went to the poster of the hostages. I found Gadi’s picture and showed them. Then I pointed out Keith and Hirsh, as if I know them. I do not. Until October 7. Haim’s brother pointed to several other hostages who he does know, former neighbors and colleagues from when he had lived in that part of the country. Haim’s nephew took a picture of the ticking counter – the number of days, hours, minutes in captivity.

The next evening on the news, an item with a young man using a term which I understand applies to bearing witness: bereavement tourism. He stood on tiles on the ground at a kibbutz close to Gaza. No walls. He marked tiles: bedroom, kitchen, living room. He explained that this was his grandparents’ home. Accompanying a bereavement tourism group, he had been asked, “This was a house? People lived here?” He decided to illustrate the answer for the next visitors: people had lived in this house that had rooms.

A voice message from a friend and former colleague, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, activist for shared society, just arrived. A response to a text message I sent earlier, inquiring into his wellbeing. He is sad. He is in pain. His message asked the rhetorical question about the voice of Israeli society against the carnage today in Gaza.

I ask the rhetorical question. How has the voice of peace been silenced, or has it been defeated? How do our leaders speak of victories?

Hostages’ Square, Tel Aviv, Tuesday, August 6, 2024 (image courtesy of author)