I just read
the story of Baruch Marzel's daughter's cell phone on Arutz Sheva, and I must say, I am heartened. I have long said that the notions will only respect us once we respect ourselves. Stockholm's Syndrome, as it afflicts Israel's political leadership, will not induce others to respect us.
Of course, in order to garner the world's respect, we must also respect our own culture and national literature; let everyone choose himself whether or not to be religious, but at least read the Tanakh and Mishnah and Talmud as Jewish national literature! If Israeli public schools avoid teaching authentic Judaism, even for the sake of academic history, then how can we expect the nations to respect us? I believe it is to Moshe Feiglin's enduring merit that he has made no secret of all this. But I digress.
I agree with others that respect is much to be preferred over fear. I would much rather that the Arabs respect us for being G-dly, humane, decent, loving people, than fear us for being vengeful. But sometimes, fear is all that other people understand. Imagine someone is abusing your relative; assuming there are no police, perhaps your only option is to terrorize the abuser and show him that it is in his own best material interests to stop. Is this ideal? No. Ideally, the abuser would realize on moral grounds that he should stop. But sometimes, the best you can do is show him that his own material safety depends on his ceasing his abuse. I would prefer that the Arabs realize on moral grounds that their attacks on innocent Jewish civilians are criminal, and that they would realize on moral grounds that Israel is a legitimate Jewish country. But if they cannot realize this morally, at least let them realize it viscerally. If they won't respect the Jews, at least let them fear the Jews. After the bulldozer attack in Jerusalem, Shmuel Sackett relates what he read in one newspaper: the reporter asked some Arabs in the shuk why they (meaning Arabs in general) weren't scared to perpetrate such an attack. The Arabs replied that a few years ago, they would have been afraid to perpetrate terrorist attacks, as they knew Israel's reprisal would be merciless. But today, they said, they realize that Israel won't do anything to stop terrorism, and that therefore, they can attack innocent Jewish civilians with impunity, knowing the Israeli government will do nothing to stop them. Is this to be considered to be in Israel's honor? Imagine a man said he could abuse his wife because he knew the community would do nothing to stop him. Obviously, I'd prefer that he stop abusing her of his own moral accord, but if not, shouldn't he know that to abuse his wife is to put himself in danger at the hands of an angry mob? I should wish that every man on earth were mortally afraid of abusing his own wife, for the sake of his own skin!
Now then, to be honest, I am highly reticent to either support or condemn some of Marzel's activities and the activities which he has supported. As I have said, while imposing fear and terror on the Arabs may even be necessary, it is something that fills my heart with sorrow and grief; it may even be necessary, but it gives me no joy. The most notable example of the activities supported by Marzel - the activities about whom my support and condemnation is extremely equivocal - would be the Baruch Goldstein incident; I don't think I have to explain why the concept of gunning down a throng of worshipers disturbs me. On the other hand, I cannot but concede that in all likelihood, everyone - or at least a very sizable portion - killed by Goldstein was either a terrorist or a terrorist sympathizer. In the end, I must resort to what my mother has taught me: she says she hates to hate any human being on earth, but that the Arabs make it awfully hard to live by this ideal. Similarly, I shouldn't have to wonder whether it is right or not to gun down worshipers in prayer; if someone asks me of the propriety of such an act, I should be able to unequivocally condemn the act. But the Arabs have taken this from me; they have taken from me the ability to unequivocally condemn what Goldstein did. Now, I would myself never do that which Goldstein did, nor would I advise anyone else to act as he did. But I am unable to clearly and definitively and unequivocally condemn what he did; for this, I cannot forgive the Arabs. I can perhaps forgive them for killing Jew, but I can never forgive them for making me uncertain whether or not I may kill an Arab. I cannot forgive them for stealing my innocence; I shouldn't have to wonder whether to kill a particular human being is anything but murder in cold blood.
In the end, I have no choice to support the deportation of Arabs from Israel. I am aware that many of them desire peace, but I cannot tell the peaceful ones from the militant wars. Every time Israel offers peace, another cafe is detonated. Israel simply cannot afford to give the Arabs another chance. I hate to do this to any human being; it pains my heart every time I have to propose this policy, but we have no choice anymore. My mother tells me that when either Oslo Accords were made, my older brother asked her whether or not she thought peace would come. She answered him that honestly, yes, she believed Arafat and the Arabs had finally matured and were finally ready to have peace with Israel. (She had already read all the literature on the Israeli-Arab conflict, and knew that theretofore, everything had clearly been the fault of the Arabs, from the 1929 Hebron Massacre to the 1947 refusal by the Arabs of an international Jerusalem, from the Arabs starting war in 1948 to their starting war in 1967, all before the West Bank was ever in Israel's hands.) Then, after Oslo ("When peace broke out"), the terrorist acts continued unabated. That was it, she said; that was the last straw. Until then, she had been as gung-ho about the peace process as every other American, but when the terrorist acts continued, she said, she couldn't take it anymore. She, like me, hates to admit it, but deporting the Arabs is the only chance for peace.
Everything I hold in politics goes against everything I believe; it all goes so totally against my grain. That is the only consolation I have left; as long as I only grudgingly support Rabbi Kahane's policies out of sheer necessity, I can tell myself that I have not yet resorted to violence and hatred as a policy. As soon as I enjoy endorsing Rabbi Kahane's policies, I know that I am lost. If a man kills in self-defence, he knows that he is healthy as long as each killing in self-defence saddens him and fills him with anguish. But once he resigns himself to killing in self-defence, or worse, once he enjoys it, then he knows he is lost.
To put this into context: some of the rabbis whose weltanschauungs I most heartily endorse and follow are those of Rabbis S. R. Hirsch, Benzion Uziel, Hayim David Halevi, and Moshe Shmuel Glasner (Rabbi Yehuda Amital follows him). Given those are the rabbis I follow, one can imagine how difficult it is for me to endorse Rabbi Kahane's teachings. (Rabbi Hayim David Halevi said the Torah has no place whatsoever for Rabbi Kahane, and Rabbi Yehuda Amital's followers and Rabbi Kahane's followers are extremely antagonistic towards each other. Rabbi Amital founded the left-wing Meimad party.) But I have no choice; the Arabs have ensured that Rabbi Kahane's teachings in this area are correct. I wish that Rabbi Kahane were wrong in every way; I wish that Rabbi Amital were correct, I really do. But at least I still wish this; as long as I carry a wish in my heart that Rabbi Kahane were wrong and Rabbi Amital correct, I know that my soul still endures.
As an aside, however, I am rather proud of a recent accomplishment of mine: as I explain in
The Intractable Israeli Conflict, I recently convinced a Ghandist friend of mine that Rav Kahane's policies are not altogether evil. This friend of mine still believes that Ghandi's policies are the most preferable and that Judaism is a bloody religion, but he conceded that Rav Kahane's views had reason and intelligence to them, and are not altogether unwarranted. Even though he completely disagreed with me, nevertheless, when we parted, he wished me a good day. When a Ghandist wishes a Kahanist a good day upon parting, you know you've accomplished something!
It might bear mentioning that I still completely hold by that which I wrote in
Respect Americas Muslims, which was even published in the Washington Post. I also was then invited to reiterate those words on my high school's PA morning announcements, something which gave me great pride. I also was invited to join my high school's Muslim Student Association, to which I subsequently belonged until my high school graduation.
I much enjoy Rabbi Dr. Marc Angel's piece,
Voices of Peace, Voices of Understanding; it is a very nuanced piece, but one undercurrent is clearly visible: Rabbi Angel notes
In 1919, Rabbi Benzion Uziel, then a young rabbi, spoke to a conference of rabbis in Jerusalem. He stated: "Israel, the nation of peace, does not want and never will want to be built on the ruins of others....Let all the nations hear our blessing of peace, and let them return to us a hand for true peace, so that they may be blessed with the blessing of peace." In 1939, when Rabbi Uziel became Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, he delivered his inaugural address in Hebrew, and then added words in Arabic. He appealed to the Arab community: "We reach our hands out to you in peace, pure and trustworthy....Make peace with us and we will make peace with you. Together all of us will benefit from the blessing of God on His land; with quiet and peace, with love and fellowship, with goodwill and pure heart we will find the way of peace."
and then he notes further
In 1919, at the Paris peace conference following World War I, the Emir Feisal, one of the great Arab leaders of the time, made the following comments about the Jewish desire to return to their ancient homeland in Israel: "We Arabs...look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement....We will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home....I look forward, and my people with me look forward, to a future in which we will help you and you will help us, so that the countries in which we are mutually interested may once again take their places in the community of civilized peoples of the world."
I do not know if any Arab leaders today can say these words with sincerity. Yet, if Arab leaders-especially Palestinian leaders-could find the strength to say these words, the dream of peace might be brought closer to reality. Israel wants most what the Arab world has for the most part not given: a sign of acceptance, a sign of welcome, a sign that Jews have a right to live in peace and tranquility in the land of Israel. The people of Israel need to hear what Emir Feisal said: welcome home; we will help you and you will help us. Together we will raise our peoples to great cultural and economic heights.
It is clear where Rabbi Angel is putting the onus. (However,
do not mistake this quotation of Rabbi Angel to mean that Rabbi Angel supports my words in this present essay. I
do not know Rabbi Angel's views on the issues I am discussing, as I have no discussed them with him.
Do not mistake my quotation of Rabbi Angel for indication that he agrees with me.)
What I hope is that the Jewish community will succeed in doing that which will please G-d, in accomplishing whatever must be accomplished in Israel. I wish that we have strength to do exactly what is required, neither unnecessarily violent (which would constitute sinful theft and murder), nor unnecessarily peaceful (which would be to turn the other cheek). It is a difficult dialectic, and I wish us every success, with G-d's help. May we be filled with and dominated by the dialectic that Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik believed in, as discussed by Rabbi Emanuel Rackman (
Orthodox Judaism Moves With the Times):
[T]he highest form of religious experience comes from constant turmoil and from the experiencing of life's irreconcilable antitheses-from the simultaneous affirmation and abnegation of the self, the simultaneous awareness of the temporal and the eternal, the simultaneous clash of freedom and necessity, the simultaneous love and fear of God, his simultaneous transcendence and immanence. True, with the departure of Sabbath's peace, Jews may sing, 'The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures." But the road to the green pastures is a narrow and winding one, along a steep cliff, with a bottomless pit below. It is the other words of the Psalmist - "From the deep I called unto Thee, O Lord"-that describe the most authentic religious experience, and the deep is a deep of antinomies, doubts, and spiritual travail.
May we make the correct choice every time we are faced with that dialectic. Every time we must (with no possible alternative) engage in unsavory or violent interactions with the Arabs, may we successfully so engage, and may we regret that we have to, but may we realize that we have no choice.
But of course, I'd much prefer that all this violence becomes unnecessary. As we read in Ezekiel 18:20-24 (1917 JPS translation,
courtesy of Mechon Mamre):
The soul that sinneth, it shall die; the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father with him, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son with him; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. But if the wicked turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all My statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. None of his transgressions that he hath committed shall be remembered against him; for his righteousness that he hath done he shall live. Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD; and not rather that he should return from his ways, and live? But when the righteous turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, and doeth according to all the abominations that the wicked man doeth, shall he live? None of his righteous deeds that he hath done shall be remembered; for his trespass that he trespassed, and for his sin that he hath sinned, for them shall he die.
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Postscript:
Someone wrote to me privately, pointing out that according to some reports, the Arabs whom Goldstein killed had weapons caches and were actively preparing to commit a terrorist act.
Moreover, he noted that Rambam's Hilkhot Avodah Zara chapter 10, there are two different ways we treat idolaters and other immoral gentiles in Israel:
1) In a time of peace, we cannot actively kill them, but we also don't actively save them from danger;
2) In a time of war with them, we kill them indiscriminately.
He wanted to say that we are at war with the Arabs (who reject the Noahide law against murder, and are thus halakhically idolaters), and that therefore, we can kill all of them indiscrimately.
My response to him:
I don't know exactly what happened with Baruch Goldstein, and I don't think it is possible to know. Therefore, the best I can do is formulate multiple responses. For example, I could say, "If the Arabs he killed were peaceful, he is a murderer; if not, then not." This is a simplistic example, but I think you get my point - I have not made an unequivocal statement about him, largely because so many of the facts are in dispute. In any case, I am less concerned with Goldstein himself - I'll let G-d judge him - and rather, I am more concerned with what his example teaches us for the future; I am more concerned with learning a lesson about what we should do in the future, and what we should do to future Goldsteins, than with Goldstein himself.
If it is indeed correct that the Arabs had weapons caches and such, then obviously, Goldstein was not a murderer. I've even read conflicting reports on whether the weapons caches existed, so I just don't know. But I think it is pretty obvious that if the Arabs had weapons caches and were actively preparing to kill Jews, then obviously Goldstein was not a murderer. To make a reductio ad absurdum: if Goldstein killed a Muslim with a bomb on his body en route to detonate, obviously Goldstein would not be a murderer. This is so obvious, I don't think I need to say it. Therefore, I focused on the more grey and hazy and morally ambiguous case of Goldstein having mere suspicions that the Arabs would soon have another attack, based not on concrete evidence but rather on general suspicion and mathematical probability. Imagine if a Jew burst into Ramallah and shot whoever he saw: is he a murderer or not? We don't have evidence that anyone in particular he killed is a terrorist, but let's face it: probabilistically, most of the slain Arabs probably did support terrorism. This is the case I wanted to focus on, because it is where the real question and doubt lies. If Goldstein had any concrete and certain evidence that the Arabs were or were not planning an attack, then it is obvious that he was or was not a murderer, without a doubt. The only question and doubt we have here is when the Arabs in question were probably but not certainly supportive of terrorism.
As for the Rambam's ruling, I think it is difficult to say that we are at war with each and every individual Arab. If an individual Arab in Ramallah opposes terrorism, then we are not at war with him, and I don't think the Rambam applies to him. This brings us right back to where we started. Now, perhaps we can go by the rov (majority) - perhaps Goldstein can kill every Arab he sees, since 95% of them (to make up a number) are at war with us. This is essentially the very question I dealt with in my blog entry - can one act in such a manner?
From my blog post above, it is clear that I am very much in doubt as to whether one may act in such a manner. On the one hand, I concede that in all probability, most of the Arabs killed were guilty of terrorist sympathy. On the other, it pains me to admit that one might be permitted to indiscriminately gun down a throng of civilians. I just don't know. Thus, all I am left with is the feeling that I cannot forgive the Arabs for putting me into this doubt, and that we must end this conflict once and for all via population transfer.
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Post-Postscript: In the comments below,
Rejewvenator asks,
I don't want to get into name-calling, so let me start by saying I utterly repudiate your logic and your proposed solution on moral grounds.
But let's talk practical grounds. Where exactly do you plan to deport all these Palestinians to? How do you plan to execute the procedure? And what do you intend to do with their territory and personal property?
This is an excellent question. I respond:
I'll ask you: what's your proposed alternative solution? Given that the Arabs even today explicitly equate the West Bank and Tel Aviv, and given that both Hamas and Fatah still explicitly condone if not advocate terrorism (Hamas has not changed its charter, while Fatah and Abbas have recently reiterated their support of terrorism), what would you suggest instead?
I basically see three possibilities:
1) All the Jews leave Israel;
2) All the Arabs leave Israel;
3) War continues for the envisionable future, with no foreseeable end in sight.
[Cf. what I write in The Intractable Israeli Conflict.]
Anyway...
Practically, I don't know exactly how to implement it, but I never claimed I did. I can advocate blacks and whites receiving equal educations even if I don't know how this will work out financially, how to use the police forces to protect the blacks during the first steps of integration, etc. Just because I know nothing about finances and police logistics doesn't mean I cannot advocate a moral position. So too here; I'll advocate what I think is necessary, and I'll let others more competent than myself work out the details.
Where? I say Jordan, given that the British, when they created Jordan, designated it as the Arab state as part of a "two-state solution", as the British called it. As far as I'm concerned, if Jordan does not accept the Israeli Arabs, then Jordan has no right to exist, for the very existence of that nation was with the understanding that it was part of a "two-state solution."
But if Jordan won't accept the Israeli Arabs, that isn't my problem. If the Arabs want to detonate cafes and stage a shooting at a yeshiva in Jerusalem, then they've relinquished any right to stay. And if they have nowhere else to go, then maybe they shouldn't have put themselves in this whole position in the first place.
Their territory? It will be part of Israel.
Their personal property? They'll take with them what they can, and whatever they cannot, they'll receive full unabridged monetary compensation for. This of course applies to both movables and real estate.
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