Torah Must Come from Zion
When you work for an organization that is grounded in bereavement, it might sound like a routine thing for it to be preparing a memorial program. But it’s preparing a memorial program for this Friday unlike its usual programs. Yet more usual than we acknowledge. The members of the organization became bereaved due to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and are committed to reconciliation and peace, to preventing more families from experiencing this pointless bereavement to which they have been subjected.
The organization has a program for young adults, training Israelis and Palestinians together as so-called peace ambassadors. Afterwards, most of them work with youth at a Palestinian-Israeli summer camp, furthering their advocacy and reflecting their commitment – to peace. In the summer of 2023, one such young Palestinian man stood out as an exceptional leader, described as a kind soul always anxious to help others. No surprise that he would be a nurse. Saturday, leaving the hospital in Jenin, an hour after asking for more medical supplies to help people wounded by an Israeli Air Force attack, he was killed by another Israeli air attack on his way home.
His Israeli mentors and friends hesitate to send sympathies publicly or publish any condolences lest a connection to Israelis be held against the family and endanger them among their community. The Israeli media says it destroyed Hamas arsenals, offices, and workshops in Jenin – not an innocent peace-advocating nurse. What if Israeli media acknowledged such stories? What if the public knew that innocent people are sacrificed at times when the IDF attacks Hamas operatives? Would that endanger a policy of continued war, of transferring the war from Gaza to the West Bank? Just wondering.
The ceasefire agreement allows people to return to northern Gaza. The news shows them leaving, again, when they discover their demolished homes. The ceasefire agreement or the agreement releasing Israeli hostages from Gaza and some will find only burned ruins of the homes from which they were taken hostage. Somehow, Trump’s ideas of relocating Gazans in Jordan, Egypt, and elsewhere until Gaza is rebuilt sounds like another Nakhba. I’m not proposing the better alternative, but there are alternatives, and the people should have their say in the choice.
Another channel, a documentary item about Sinwar who long envisioned the attack of October 7. Once released in a prisoner exchange, while in Israeli prison, he boasted of such a day and worse. With every Palestinian prisoner released from Israel to ensure the release of Israeli hostages from Gaza, we are reminded of Sinwar. Have we just released his successor? We cancel our fears to enable joy when our hostages return. Despite legitimate fear, if we submit to it and sacrifice our hostages rather than release terrorists, we lose again to terror.
On the fear scales, a recent Zoom meeting with a Palestinian colleague reassured me when after sharing fears of settler attacks and the IDF in the West Bank he acknowledged Israeli fears, mentioning recent terrorist attacks in Tel Aviv. We fear for ourselves and for each other.
Unforeseeable changes will emerge and must make things better. We must make things better.
Israelis must make things better. Last week, I heard a public official, a Palestinian citizen of the State of Israel, participating in a panel. A Jewish moderator asked him a question he refrained from answering, except to say, “There are cameras.” He will be subject to greater scrutiny than a Jewish panelist if he empathizes with Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza, or criticizes the police handling of crime in Israel’s Arab society, and he will be subject to threats in his own community if he says more about that crime.
Fears begging to be dispelled.
We must make a liberal, democratic Torah come forth from Zion.
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Harriet Gimpel, February 3, 2024