You recently published a number of so-called “Jewish Voices” regarding Israel’s actions in Gaza. They hardly covered the spectrum of Jewish voices at NEIU and elsewhere and really should have been characterized as Zionist voices.
Since my mother was a Jew, since I was raised a Jew and teach at NEIU, I qualify as a Jewish voice at NEIU and would add this to the very limited viewpoints previously expressed:
Joshua and Abraham claim that Israeli Defense Forces “are given rigorous training in protecting the lives of civilians during combat.” If that’s the case, such training clearly isn’t working, given the number of civilians who have been killed over the decades by Israeli forces. The number of civilian non-combatants killed by Israel and its enemies has always favored Israel by ratios of as much as 10 to 1. Damage to property is beyond compare, given the fact that Israel regularly avoids combat with the enemy and instead sends its warplanes to bomb civilian targets like schools and apartment buildings.
Even if it is the case that organizations like Hamas launch “rockets from a school compound,” such actions do not, as Abraham claims, “leave the government with[out] much choice.” A government can always choose not to bomb a school or decide to send in troops to ferret out enemy combatants. Admittedly the latter would place Israeli soldiers in harms way, but it is a choice that superior military powers like Israel choose not to make; and when these bombings occur with the kind of regularity and consistency that we have witnessed in recent decades, we cannot speak of mistakes and collateral damage, but of deliberate military decisions to hit civilian targets in the hope that enemy combatants might be somewhere among them. So-called terrorist organizations can hardly compare with military powers like Israel or the United States in the number of civilian, non-combatant deaths they have produced.
Nor is it the case that Israel’s “primary focus is to protect [it’s] citizens.” If that were true then Israel would not have moved its citizens into enemy territory in the first place by establishing settlements there. Israel’s primary focus has been, in violation of the Geneva accords to which it is a signatory, to colonize neighboring territory. To speak of “Jewish settlers” on the “West Bank” as occupying sovereign “Israeli territory” misrepresents as Israeli territory land that is clearly outside the state’s legitimate borders. Zionist propaganda insisting that Arab peoples want and will push Israel into the sea, overlooks the fact that the Zionists from Europe and elsewhere first occupied Arab lands and then established the state of Israel, which for over 50 years, has managed to expand its borders into Arab territory.
To speak, as Joshua does, of the “holiest sites” of the “Jewish people,” of their having “deep spiritual ties to the land, which includes those sacred sites in the West Bank,” or as Abraham does, of Jerusalem being “the spiritual capitol of the Israeli people” is to overlook the fact that, throughout Judaism, land has never been holy. People may be righteous and scripture is holy, but not land. Jews for thousands of years were known as “the people of the book” because holiness for them was to be found in adherence to Hebrew scripture, not in land grabbing. And what the holy book tells us is that it would be legitimate to take an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth, but not to cut someone’s head off when he pokes out your eye. To destroy the lives of hundreds upon hundreds of people and do millions upon millions of dollars in damage in Gaza in retaliation for the death of six Israelis violates what the holy book commands; so don’t talk about spiritual and holy when defending Israel’s numerous rampages against its neighbors.
Such overwhelming retaliation has never proved effective in bringing either peace or security to Israel; so one can seriously question whether Israel does want peace. It clearly does want more land regardless of the cost to the peace and wellbeing of its citizens and the occupants of the land it seeks to take over and colonize.
There were two major mistakes in the middle of the last century. One was letting the Soviets into Eastern Europe. The other was the creation of the State of Israel. The Russians have withdrawn to their legitimate borders. Israel must to do the same: withdraw to its legitimate borders. Peace throughout the world depends very much on what Israel does and does not do, and whether the United States will continue to give its unqualified support to a rogue state, which continues to be a major liability in this country’s efforts to win respect and friendship throughout the world.
Harry White
Jewish Professor of English
P.S. Remember this also: for Chicago Jews, the holiest site is not Jerusalem, but Manny’s Delicatessen. Potato latkes you could die for and don’t have to kill anyone else to get them.