Taking Responsibility or 3 Fronts and Losing Track

Snatching information from different media sites about three fronts and escaping into a workshop leading to another window – that’s what I did this past week.

One news item takes me from Damascus to Homs. Another follows the Israeli army on the Syrian side of Mt. Hermon and cynical speculations about expanding Israel’s only ski slope. Druze on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights ask to be annexed by Israel. Analyses of the evolution of the rebel movement in Syria. The IAF destroying aircraft and capabilities of the defunct Syrian Air Force, unprecedentedly eliminates immediate threats from that front. Taking other precautions acknowledges that your enemy’s enemy is not your ally and the most certain aspect of the foreseeable future is the magnitude of uncertainty. A glance towards Russia and Iran as we try to assemble a puzzle when other puzzles fail to interlock.

Wondering about the return of Syrian refugees. Waiting to see which world leaders will first engage with Abu Mohammed al-Golani or whatever he calls himself today. Thoughts wandering to other fronts.

My early, Thursday morning newsfeed dominated by reports of a Palestinian terrorist attack on an Israeli bus. A 12-year-old boy returning from a wedding with his family among several injured. Headlines foreshadow his death, announced later in the day. My heart breaks for this Israeli family. How many more such incidents will both sides sustain? This reinforcing Israeli trends and thirst for vengeance. Maybe the terrorist sought vengeance for the loss of a loved one to an extremist Israeli settler’s attack, maybe a military skirmish killing an innocent Palestinian child during an IDF raid of a terror cell.

Media announce the suspected terrorist is from Bethlehem. Understood that the circumstances mean closure for Bethlehem.  Another front. Heightened security at check points surrounding Bethlehem will render it impossible for my colleagues to reach our Palestinian office in Beit Jala. I think of the implications for my Palestinian colleague from Bethlehem. Will she feel safe sending her kids to school today? Will Palestinian children witness wrath of Israeli soldiers exceeding what must be done to protect Israelis? What is it that really must be done? What not? Asking in a different frame than empathy – in that frame where each side breeds that toxic thing called hate.

More Israeli soldiers died this week. Gaza. Lebanon. More talk of a deal to release 100 Israeli hostages. A third front and losing count. A press conference. The Prime Minister, prime time. Lame reference to our losses, demonstrating his main concern is political survival, the evening before the opening of court hearings of corruption charges against him. Just a few nights before another season of a prime-time investigative journalism program opens showing warnings from the heads of the three national security and defense institutions unheeded by Netanyahu prior to October 7, 2023, as he sought to expedite judicial reform. Judicial reform, depleted military readiness intertwined with public protest, and diminishing democratic underpinnings of the state.

Israel can’t reconcile defining itself as a democracy with continuing occupation of the West Bank since 1967 and promoting judicial reform that defies checks and balances – but this Prime Minister has another agenda. His base will claim this investigative journalism validates his efforts to close the public broadcasting station – because he is entitled and if democracy gets in the way, it’s clear how it should be handled. If any of the heads of the three national security and defense institutions by some chance envision a civil revolt as part of an alternative scenario to the continued enablement of this PM, we can imagine what he will do with that analysis and what they will not. Guessing I’m with those in check, I write a blog.

My schedule provides distraction with a professional workshop in Jerusalem meeting counterparts from several other organizations. Despite my cynicism, I make convincing arguments for the value of my organization. Listening to others do the same, framed in impact, monitoring, and qualitative data, I appreciate this reprieve from the destiny of a cynic.

Concluding the workshop, we walked from our venue, a Swedish church facility located between the municipality and the Ministry of Education, to New Gate, an entrance to the Christian Quarter of the Old City. Two weeks before Christmas, barely a sign of celebration with random tinsel dimmed behind the glare proof glass façade of a café where we ordered espressos and macchiatos and sat outside just beyond the two policepersons at the gate. A sign of the times, certain Bethlehem is less festive, reminded that I ordered Chanukah candles supporting the struggle of the families of Israeli hostages. Lights for another dark winter, for Christians, Jews, Muslims, Druze, in Israel, Palestine, and other fronts.

The best of friends are the best of highlights, so I met with two before returning home. Intermittent with updates on each other’s families, apologetically, or accusingly, one friend interjects she knows I empathize more with the Palestinians. Not more than with Israelis, just more than she empathizes with Palestinians. I react with a close-lipped smile. Empathizing more in one moment, less in the next, knowing she is on a parallel pendulum.

I share an anecdote about a young American woman at the workshop who described her journey from her Jewish day school Zionist education to her recent college experience discovering other narratives, and the latter resonates for her now.  My other friend inquired rhetorically if such pro-Palestinians forget there was a side, not Israel, that rejected the UN Partition Plan in 1947. We know we over-simplify, but repeatedly make points emanating from our internal conflicts.

Then she utters my trigger word, “responsibility.”

A river, a sea. Victims. Perpetrators. Interchanging roles and mutations. Squinting, focusing, failing to see victims on one side taking any share of responsibility. Empathy for the innocent, regardless. Observing perpetrators perceived as victims in their society, and questioning. Responsibility? Feeling unforgiving.

Harriet Gimpel, December 14, 2024