We do not yet know how history will judge Israel’s response to the Hamas and Hezbollah provocations that kicked off the current war. However, Israel’s mainstream dailies are publishing critiques of the devastation wreaked by the Israel Defense Forces on Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, critiques pointing to the Arab world’s upsurge of support for the very policies that Israel intended to stamp out.
These critiques echo the thoughts of my great-grandfather, philosopher Martin Buber, who saw how we deal with what was known as “the Arab question” as the decisive test for Judaism.
Buber joined the Zionist movement in 1898, but soon clashed with Theodore Herzl, believing that his vision of a Jewish European-style nation aimed much too low. The ultimate intent of Zionism, Buber thought, must embrace the prophet Isaiah’s spiritual vision of a Zion redeemed by justice.
In the wake of World War I, he warned repeatedly of the danger of currying favor with the decidedly unjust European imperialists who were intent on playing the Jews and the Arabs against each other as they carved up the Middle East. Preferential treatment from the colonial powers and the internalization of their sense of racial and cultural superiority to the Arabs would plant seeds of endless bitterness and hatred.
We are now reaping the fruits of those seeds. Historically, the Jewish minority has fared better in the Muslim world than the Christian. Buber sought to avert the process whereby, during the last century, this was turned around with the Jewish state becoming the Muslim world’s scapegoat.
Cautioning that we must learn to live in cooperation with the Arabs, making every effort to improve their circumstances and gain their respect and good will, Buber originally hoped that we could do so in a bi-national state. He believed very much in genuine self-defense. After 1948 he spoke as an Israeli, clarifying that he wanted nothing to do with those who would undo the state. Instead he advised that Israel immediately take the initiative in solving the Palestinian refugee problem, instead of leaving the job to the U.N.
We can’t turn back the clock and undo mistakes that have already been made. But we can note the wisdom of Buber’s warnings, understanding our own people’s contribution to the chronic mistrust between ourselves and the Arab world.
It is easy to point to Arab provocations that have contributed to the current horror. But how about our own part in its creation? What could we have done differently? And what can we still do differently? How does Israel, the Jewish state, live up to Buber’s vision of “prophetic politics” which, like our prophets, charges us “to remain ever cognizant of the effects of our community’s actions on others and, accordingly, to ‘sin’ no more than is absolutely necessary”?
Was the devastation to Palestinian and Lebanese civilians absolutely necessary? Is it absolutely necessary for those of us who care deeply about the defense of Israel to defend that kind of devastation too? Are there other ways to show support for Israel?
The violence we see today is immeasurably disturbing because quite likely it is just the beginning. Anyone reading j. is expressing a sense of connection to the Jewish collective. And that collective has a huge challenge on its hands. In this excruciatingly difficult and dangerous time it is easy to heap judgment from one angle or another. Yet we each have the opportunity to meet this moment with our own way of living up to the prophetic tradition.
It may seem small, but I think that were he alive today, my great-grandfather would advise us to start by healing the rifts in our local community, so often torn apart by conflict over Israel. In setting aside scorn and learning to listen to one another we can reach across our political divides, reclaiming the deep caring that we share. That caring is, as we say in Hebrew, the honey that we can pluck from the bee’s sting. It is also the strength of the Jewish people.
Tirzah Agassi is a Mill Valley resident, a former columnist for the Jerusalem Post and a member of the Israel Association of Family Therapists. She now has a clinical practice in Marin.