The Current Crisis and a brief history of Israel

by Rabbi Elli Tikvah-Sarah, 22 July 2006

Do you remember the winter of 1978 to 1979 – known as the ‘Winter of Discontent’; a time of mass strikes against the pay policy of the Callaghan-led Labour government? I don’t. I was in Israel – on a tiny kibbutz in the Western Galilee region, just one and half kilometres from the border with Lebanon. 1978 to 1979 was also a memorable time for Israelis – memorable for k’tushah rocket attacks against Northern Israel. We were fortunate on Kibbutz Adamit, perched on a hill-top above Wadi Namir – the ‘Valley of the Tiger’: Although we spent some long hours in the kibbutz bomb-shelters, the rockets mostly went over our heads and exploded on the kibbutzim and moshavim in the valley below. I remember actually seeing a k’tushah do its deadly work: It must have been either a Shabbat or a festival, because we weren’t at work. Small group of volunteers that we were – just five on a kibbutz of fifty members – we were sitting under the trees next to our rooms, having coffee and relaxing, when we heard a strange noise. We stood up and looked up, and in another instant, we were looking down at a scene of fire and smoke, southwards, in the valley below.

There is much discussion in the media at the moment about the Israeli response to Hizbollah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers being ‘disproportionate’. Interestingly, there is very little mention of the eight Israeli soldiers killed by Hizbollah. Let’s call a spade a shovel – and cut to the chase: One might argue that Israel’s response to attack has always been disproportionate: After the Six Day War in June 1967, Israel should have negotiated the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the land captured, on the basis of Israel’s security needs, within a matter of months; the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, precipitated by the attacks against Northern Israel launched from Southern Lebanon, should not have led to a long-term occupation of the southern region of that country.

So, what might be the reasons for Israel’s consistently disproportionate actions? For some, the answer is obvious: Israel simply has the power, the military might, to occupy Palestinian lands, to maintain an invasion force, to send wave after wave of planes on bombing missions. But Israel is not, simply, a powerful nation, armed to the teeth. Israel is a tiny nation made up largely of survivors and refugees, and the children of survivors and refugees – and not just refugees from Europe; 60% of the Jewish inhabitants of Israel are refugees and the children of refugees from Arab countries, who came to Israel in flight from persecution in the 1950s.

During the past week I have felt terribly anguished – not only by the unfolding events; the terrible scenes of devastation in Lebanon and Israel; the images of broken bodies, frightened faces, blown-up buildings and roads and bridges – but also by the way in which some of the media has been reporting those events, and the almost total lack of understanding of where Israel is coming from. In fact, I was so upset by Yasmin Alibhai Brown’s column in Monday’s Independent (17.07.08), headed, ‘Nothing but anti-Arab racism can fully explain the behaviour of the Israelis’, that I spent two hours that day writing a long letter to the Editor – massively cut and published in yesterday’s edition of that paper.

It seems absurd to say that the media is very influential – that is the whole point of the media, after all! But in the face of the simplistic portrayal of Israel as a super-powerful aggressor, seemingly indifferent to humanitarian issues, a short history lesson seems in order: The day after the United Nations General Assembly voted, on November 29th 1947, to partition the land governed by the British Mandate into two states, Israel and Palestine, the surrounding Arab countries began to launch attacks against the Yishuv – the Jewish settlement. The day after the State of Israel was proclaimed by David Ben Gurion on 14th May 1948, it was attacked by the armies of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon and Iraq, augmented by volunteers from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Libya. Our own veteran officer, Aubrey Milstein, can tell you much more about the War of Independence than I can. On June 5th 1967, Israel was attacked by Egypt, Syria and Jordan. In 1973, Israel was caught unawares on Yom Kippur (6th October), when it was attacked by Egypt and Syria. The Yom Kippur War was a real turning point. After the Six Day War, Israel basked in its stunning victory over the forces reined against it. After the Yom Kippur War, Israel vowed never to be vulnerable to such an assault again.

And what about the Palestinians, languishing in refugee camps on the West Bank, in Gaza, in Lebanon and Jordan? Having missed their chance of a State of their own when they rejected the United Nations partition plan in November 1947, the Palestinian people were completely marginalised after Israel was established; but the Palestinians began to organise in the 1960s. Initiated at the Cairo Summit of the Arab League in 1964, the Palestinian National Council convened in Jerusalem on 29th May, and at the conclusion of that meeting the PLO was founded on 2nd June. Its Statement of Proclamation of the Organization declared “... the right of the Palestinian Arab people to its sacred homeland Palestine and affirming the inevitability of the battle to liberate the usurped part of it.”

The alliance between the Arab League and the PLO did not last long. After the defeat of Syria, Jordan and Egypt in the Six Day War, the way was opened for Yasser Arafat, who advocated armed struggle, and who transformed the PLO into a fully independent organisation. At the Palestinian National Congress meeting of 1969, Yasser Arafat’s party, Fatah, gained control of the executive bodies of the PLO, and at the Palestinian National Congress in Cairo on 3rd February 1969, Arafat was appointed PLO chairman.

And then there was ‘Black September’. The PLO suffered a major reversal with the Jordanian assault on its armed groups, and their expulsion from Jordan in September 1970. During the 1970s, the PLO was effectively an umbrella group of eight organisations, with their headquarters in Damascus and Beirut, all devoted to what they called armed resistance against ‘Zionism’ and the Israeli occupation, which translated, as we all know, for the most part, into terrorist attacks on civilians – including, most famously, the attack against the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

So, what’s the point of this brief foree into the history of Israel’s conflict with its Arab neighbours and the rise of the PLO? In order to have some idea of why Israel is respomding to Hizbollah’s murder of eight Israeli soldiers, and capture of a further two, with such overwhelming force, targeting, both, Hizbollah positions and the infrastructure of that fragile country, it is important to be aware of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict – and more, specifically, the contribution of Lebanon: A year before King Hussein ousted the PLO from Jordan, a secret agreement was signed in Cairo on 3rd November 1969, between Yasser Arafat and the Lebanese army, granting the PLO the right to operate on Lebanese soil. Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, who helped to broker the deal, was meant to be the guarantor of the Agreement because of his positive relations with both the Lebanese and the Palestinians. But Nasser died in September 1970, and his successor, Anwar Sadat, did not take up Nasser's role. As it turned out, Lebanon's army was, ultimately, unable to keep a check on the PLO's operations – which had come to include cross-border attacks against Israel – because of weak governmental structures and the on-going Lebanese civil war. This led to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and subsequent occupation in 1982.

During the occupation of Lebanon, Israel encountered a new enemy – Hizbollah. It was a chaotic time and virtually every religious and ethnic group in the country formed its own cabal. Hizbollah was one of those cabals. Backed by Iran and Syria, Hizbollah's original goals were to end the Israeli occupation of Lebanon and to institute a Shi'ite Islamic theocracy. Hizbollah later expanded these goals to include liberating the Palestinian territories. When Israel eventually withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, Hizbollah was undefeated.

The terrible tragedy of the hundreds of civilians killed and wounded so far in Lebanon during the current conflict between Israel and Hizbollah, and the devastating destruction of the country, is deepened by the knowledge that Hizbollah is still undefeated – and judging by the continuing rocket bombardment of Northern Israel, still able to launch its deadly attacks, with missiles supplied by Iran that far exceed the 25 mile range of k’tushah rockets.

Ah, Iran. That’s the final piece of the puzzle. Just a few months ago, Iran’s President, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, declared that Israel should be destroyed, proclaiming at the same time that the Holocaust did not take place. Meanwhile, Iran wants to develop a nuclear capability. There have been some hopeful developments during the decades of Arab-Israeli conflict: On 26th March 1979, Egypt and Israel entered into a Peace Treaty, which involved the return of the Sinai to Egypt; on 26th October 1994, at the height of the efforts for an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, Israel and Jordan entered into a Peace Treaty; with Saddam Hussein gone, the direct threat to Israel from Iraq is much less. But Iraq is descending into civil war: Who knows what the future holds? For now, at least, the main threat to Israel is from Hizbollah, Syria and, most significantly, Iran.

But we all know that the issue of external threat is only half the story. Before the current crisis erupted between Israel and Hizbollah, the media’s gaze was fixed on Gaza, where Israel had responded to rocket attacks, and the kidnap of an Israeli soldier, by fierce bombing raids. That conflict is still raging. Israel made a unilateral withdrawl last summer, but the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections in Gaza has only succeeded in reinforcing the current Israeli government’s reluctance to negotiate with the Palestinians. So what is the solution – all-out war with Hamas? Meanwhile, will the massive security fence, erected by Israel to fix the borders unilaterally between Israel and the Palestinian territories, bring peace? There may be fewer suicide attacks since it was put up, but the attempts continue – and some of them succeed in getting through.

What is to be done? The question of Vladimir Lenin over a century ago (1902), in another context, seems fitting here. Not quite a question now – more a cry of despair: What is to be done! Of course, we want the violence on all sides to cease, but as onlookers, we can do very little. And yet, there is something we can do: We can refuse to buy into media portrayals. We can respond with humanity to all the peoples involved – not to the organisations – to the peoples: The Israelis; the Lebanese; the Palestinans. We can keep faith with hope – tikvah – with the hope that, despite the obstacles and set-backs, despite the current impasse, there will be a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians; a just peace in which both peoples will live side by side as sovereign nations, enjoying mutual ties of co-operation for their mutual benefit. Bimheirah b’yameinu. Speedily in our own day.

And let us say: Amen.

Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah
Brighton & Hove Progressive Synagogue – Adat Shalom Verei’ut
22nd July 2006 – 26th Tammuz 5766