Tragedy on the Seas

This is not the blog I wanted to write this week. That one would have been about the celebration last Shabbat at the biennial convention of the Israel Movement for Progressive (Reform) Judaism. It was 800 people enjoying perfect weather, a lovely setting at a kibbutz hotel, rich learning, joyful worship, and a few too many self-congratulatory speeches and awards (it was a convention after all). It was great to see so many Israeli reform rabbis and educators who I have taught and worked with on various projects large and small over the past several years. It was even greater to see the active lay people and the exuberant youth – high school kids and the 50+ contingent from the Mechina, the IMPJ’s post-high school gap year program where kids live communally in Jaffa, volunteer and study for a year prior to going into the army.

That was going to be my blog, but then came yesterday and it’s hard to think about much of anything aside from the tragic outcome of the Israeli commandos’ boarding of one of the ships in a flotilla attempting to bring humanitarian aid to a blockaded Gaza. The facts are still not entirely clear but the outcome is: 10 dead civilians, scores wounded, and a whole lot of spin from the right and the left. I don’t doubt that Israeli soldiers were attacked when they boarded the ship, and I don’t question their right to fight back. In the heat of the moment, they have every right to defend themselves.

All this happened on one of the six ships of the flotilla. On the other five, the commandos met no resistance. Only on the sixth did disaster ensue. Surely, most everyone agrees that Israeli Intelligence failed to adequately anticipate the potential for such a horrific outcome. But, beyond that, the consensus dissolves. Some of the press coverage focuses on the political (mis)decisions and actions leading up to and in response to the crisis. Others focus on the root cause – Israel's blockade of Gaza and the collective punishment of an entire population of Palestinians. In the several articles and columns I’ve read in various newspapers and blogs, the event has been described in multiple ways: as a case of well-intentioned peace activists being duped into covering for terrorists; as a justifiable response to a provocation by radical Islamic activists; as another case of the anti-Semitic world just not understanding that Israel’s so-called partner for peace is actually a “malicious and cynical terror organization” as Daniel Gordis recently described Hamas; and as further evidence of an erosion of democratic values in Israeli government and society, and the growing trend to suppress any kind of civil disobedience or protest in the name of “security”. Perhaps, it is some combination of all of the above?

In a few days, this mess will fade from the headlines and people will turn their attention to the next big story. In fact, while just about every Israeli Jew I met yesterday was focused on this disaster, aside from the pundits and activists, most American Jews barely noted the event. I understand that response. It’s difficult when something happens so far away and when you have so little context in which to place a troubling and confusing situation. And it’s difficult too when there’s no clear right and wrong. Both sides contributed to this tragedy – maybe not in equal measure, but both are implicated in creating the situation that led to the flotilla to begin with and to its all too painful climax.

For most American Jews, what happens in Israel is a side-show that may have psychological and spiritual repercussions but not existential ones. And we aren’t on the main-stage in terms of the decisions and actions taken. But our silence doesn’t help. We can and must support, condemn, or question. We can and must be in the conversation because the moral and political implications are like the “diameter of the bomb” as described in one of Yehuda Amichai’s poems. The consequences affect us all.

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won't even mention the howl of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making
a circle with no end and no God.