Rabbi Janet Marder

January 2, 2009

Eyeless in Gaza

            “Strongest of mortal men, /To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art falll’n.”

            The words were written by John Milton, great English poet of the 17^th century. He is describing Samson, the Israelite hero whose story is told in the biblical book of Judges. “Strongest of mortal men, / To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou art fall’n.”  Physically powerful, but rash and impulsive, Samson was brought low by his love for Delilah, a Philistine woman who betrayed him. Milton envisions Samson as a warrior, and calls his poem “Samson Agonistes”  --  from the Greek: “one who struggles, a man embattled.”

            The poem begins as disaster is about to strike. Taken captive by the Philistines, bound in chains, Samson’s eyes have been gouged out as a form of torture and he is set to labor as a slave in prison. There, lost in a darkness that is spiritual as well as physical, he remembers the dreams of his youth and how far he has fallen.

“Promise was that I

Should Israel from Philistine yoke deliver;

Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find him

Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves,

Himself in bonds under Philistine yoke…”

            That is the most famous phrase from Milton ’s poem: “eyeless in Gaza .” It was in Gaza , that Philistine city on the southern coastal plain of the Mediterranean , that embattled Samson met his doom. We imagine him trapped there, helpless in his blindness, tormented by his captors, who mock him in his misery. Samson is a man imprisoned in hell; he is, for Milton and for us, a symbol of violence, rage and despair.

            Long ago, this city of the Philistines, ancient Sea-People who gave their name to the land of Palestine , was the setting for Biblical tragedy. This week Gaza is bleeding again, overrun by violence, rage and despair.

            In the summer of 2005 Israel unilaterally withdrew its soldiers and settlers from Gaza . It received in exchange, not security or peace, but the rule of Hamas, a militant regime backed by Iran , dedicated to the destruction of Israel and its replacement by an Islamic state. Once the Israeli forces were gone from Gaza , Hamas fighters bombarded the southern part of Israel with more than 4000 rockets, missiles and mortar shells. Fired randomly, they were designed to terrorize the civilian population of Israel .

            Though hundreds were wounded and treated for shock and trauma, casualties on the Israeli side were low. Israeli citizens, protected by a network of shelters and an incoming air raid alert system, were instructed by the Home Front command to find shelter within 45 seconds of hearing the siren.

            For the past six months, an Egyptian-brokered tahadiya, or temporary lull in hostilities, maintained an uneasy status quo, though it was never a true cease-fire. During this time, Hamas smuggled some 80 tons of explosives, roadside bombs and rockets into Gaza , and launched some 200 rockets at Israel . On December 21, Hamas announced that its tahadiya with Israel had ended. Claiming that the six months of quiet had gained nothing, and that violence was needed to end the travel restrictions into and out of Gaza , Hamas forces fired some 300 missiles into Israel . Longer-range rockets, smuggled into Gaza through a network of Eygptian tunnels, now had the capacity to hit Israeli population centers such as Ashdod , Ashkelon, Kiryat Gat and even the outskirts of Beersheva, placing a half-million people in harm’s way.

            As the missiles rained down, Israel sought to resolve the situation through diplomatic means. Israeli leaders demanded an end to the attacks on its citizens. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni flew to Cairo to ask Egyptian leaders to intervene with Hamas, urging that they refrain from violence. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated on Al-Arabiyah television that Israel did not want a military confrontation in Gaza . The United Nations Security Council said nothing. Only after Israel decided to respond to the rocket fire did the Security Council convene.

            "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do everything to stop that, and would expect Israel to do the same thing." That’s what Barack Obama said last July, while he was visiting Israel as a Presidential candidate.    

            In the first days after Israel launched its Gaza offensive, responses from the international community were muted. Israel , they said, had the right to defend itself from terrorist attacks, though everyone urged restraint. Clearly, this was a well-planned Israeli initiative, based on sound intelligence, precisely targeting Hamas forces and areas where weapons were launched, stored and smuggled in. By locating its military installations in the midst of houses, schools, and shops – a move designed both to intimidate Israel from attacking and to maximize international condemnation when Israel did, at last, decide to respond – Hamas ensured that innocent Palestinians would die.

            Thus, after a few days, as happened during the Lebanon campaign, the death toll rose and calls for an immediate cease-fire intensified. Israel ’s response to Hamas attacks was widely denounced, though not by the United States , as disproportionate, a violation of international law, an act of needless violence that would not destroy Hamas but would only breed more hatred in the Gaza strip.

            Dore Gold, Israel ’s former ambassador to the United Nations, has argued in a carefully-reasoned article that Israel ’s attacks do not, in fact, violate international law or constitute war crimes. The doctrine of proportionality does not require a one-to-one ratio of casualties – one Israeli death for every Palestinian death. Nor does it require that Israel “calibrate its use of force precisely according to the size and range of the weaponry used against it.” Israel is not required to manufacture imprecise Kassam rockets in order to respond to Hamas attacks, just as the United States is not required to fight Al Quaeda by dispatching suicide bombers.

            Proportionality requires that, if a country is attacked, its response be designed specifically to bring an end to the attack. “Force becomes excessive if it is employed for another purpose, like causing unnecessary harm to civilians.”

            Even if a country’s actions result in significant civilian casualties, this does not violate international law, provided that efforts are made to minimize the danger to civilians and there is a significant military objective at stake. While there is no definitive count of Palestinian casualties yet – the figures I have seen suggest that one-sixth to one-fourth of those killed are civilians – the numbers make it clear that the vast majority of those killed were Hamas operatives. Israel did not deliberately target civilians in this campaign. On the contrary – Israel attempted to warn civilians in advance of the attacks with hundreds of thousands of phone calls and leaflets. While misery prevails in Gaza , Israel is trying to alleviate it by allowing truckloads of humanitarian aid to enter – though this effort is hampered by Hamas forces attacking the border crossings – and some of the injured are being treated now in Israeli hospitals.

            Will this Gaza initiative accomplish anything of value? If it did not, the loss of life would be intolerable and impossible to justify. Certainly, Israel ’s attacks are continuing to generate hatred of Israel and the West in Gaza and throughout the Arab world – though some Arab leaders, interestingly, have also made public statements critical of Hamas.

            It may be that there is no permanent military solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians – only negotiations will lead to peace. But negotiations depend on the creation of a unified Palestinian leadership with the authority and the will to sit down at the peace table. And here, perhaps, there may be reason to hope that something good may come out of the misery in Gaza .

            Michael Oren and Yossi Klein Halevi recently published an article with a provocative title: “Palestinians Need Israel to Win.” While the conventional wisdom says that Israel ’s attack on Gaza has set back the prospects for peace with the Palestinians, Oren and Halevi argue that the opposite is true. Only if Israel can inflict significant damage on Hamas, they say, will Israeli citizens be willing to contemplate a withdrawal from the West Bank . A better future for the Palestinians, that is, depends on an Israeli victory in this campaign.

            The majority of Israelis, they write, now believe in the necessity for a Palestinian state – a massive shift in public opinion that has taken place in the past two decades. However, while Israelis accept this idea in theory, experience has taught them to be wary. Previous withdrawals, from Lebanon and Gaza , led only to more terror directed against Israel . The West Bank, which lies within easy range of Israel ’s major cities, would constitute an intolerable threat if it, too, is dominated by a robust and hostile Hamas regime that could attack Israel with impunity. “Without Hamas's defeat, “ Oren and Halevi argue, “there can be no serious progress toward a treaty that both satisfies Palestinian aspirations and allays Israel 's fears. At stake in Gaza is nothing less than the future of the peace process” [Wall St. Journal, December 29, 2008].

            Is Israel blameless in its conflict with the Palestinians? Certainly not. It has failed to live up to its stated commitment to dismantle illegal settlements on the West Bank , and could do more to strengthen the hand of Mahmoud Abbas and other more moderate Palestinian leaders. In its efforts to protect its citizens from suicide bombers it has at times engaged in collective punishment of the Palestinians and brought additional suffering to an impoverished people repeatedly betrayed and abandoned by their own leaders and Arab brethren. But there remains a clear and compelling distinction between Hamas, the aggressor in this conflict, and Israel , which is trying to defeat the aggression.

            As always when Israel is at war, the mood there is solemn and apprehensive, as its citizens wonder what will come next. But most Israelis support the Gaza campaign, known as “Operation Cast Lead,” and they know who is responsible for the shedding of so much innocent blood.

            The words of Ari Shavit, writing in the left-leaning Ha’aretz newspaper, are especially eloquent: “Operation Cast Lead is a just campaign. Just, because in the summer of 2005 Israel destroyed all the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and withdrew unilaterally to the international border. Just, because from 2006 to 2008 the Palestinian entity in the [ Gaza ] Strip did not take advantage of the occupation's end to build itself and its future and instead repeatedly attacked Israel within the Green Line.

            “Just, because for three solid years the State of Israel bit its lips and acted with restraint. Just, because no country in the world can accept for an extended period of time a situation in which its citizens are forsaken and its sovereignty violated. Just, because there is no chance for peace in the Middle East if the Jewish state is viewed as easy prey bleeding in the water and attracting sharks.

            “Operation Cast Lead is a tragic campaign. Tragic, because it is causing the deaths of hundreds and injuring thousands. Tragic, because it is causing physical and emotional injury to innocent Palestinians, including women and children. Tragic, because like every war it creates intolerable human hardship and heartbreaking suffering.

            “But the tragedy of Operation Cast Lead is unavoidable. It derives directly from the fact that the Palestinians did not take proper advantage of the historic opportunity given to them in 2005. It derives from the fact that when the Palestinians achieved self-government for the first time in their history they misused it. It derives from the fact that the Palestinian need to destroy Israel is still stronger than their need to build Palestine ” [Ha’aretz, January 1, 2009].        

            As a rabbi, I would like to be able to speak about peace – this Shabbat and every Shabbat. It is, after all, a Jewish ideal – one we pray about and sing about and dream about – and one I continue to cherish. But when I think of Gaza tonight I think of Samson – chained there in darkness, humiliated before his enemies, seething with rage and resentment and despair, locked in a prison that has become a living hell. At the end of his great poem, Milton tells us what becomes of Samson. Brought to the pagan temple, standing between two giant pillars in the presence of thousands of mocking Philistines, he cries out to God for one last gift of strength and then resorts to desperate measures.

“Let me die with the Philistines!” he calls. Then, writes Milton ,

“As with the force of winds and waters pent

When mountains tremble, those two massy pillars

With horrible convulsion to and fro

He tugged, he shook, till down they came, and drew

The whole roof after them with burst of thunder

Upon the heads of all who sat beneath,

Lords, ladies, captains, counselors, or priests,

Their choice nobility and flower, not only

Of this, but each Philistine city round,

Met from all parts to solemnize this feast.

Samson, with these inmixed, inevitably

Pulled down the same destruction on himself…”

            Eyeless in Gaza , Samson is forever a symbol of blind and self-destructive passions, of strength consumed in violence. In his lust for revenge he pulls down the great temple, which collapses on top of him, causing the death of thousands and taking his own life in the process.

            I am haunted by that vision of collapse, brought on by a hatred so intense that it works against one’s own self-interest. I pray for peace – and I pray, as well, that blind and self-destructive passions will not forever prevail in Gaza .

            May the leaders of the Palestinian people act now, with courage and honor, on behalf of all the victims of war – and especially the innocents in Gaza , who are suffering most of all. May they see clearly where their interest, and their future, lies. May they renounce, once and for all, their armed resistance to a Jewish state in the land of Israel , and turn to the challenge of building their own state.

            May both sides open their eyes to the pain of the other; may they use their strength for the difficult work of making peace.