Just so's everyone is clear, I am not advocating any position on this blog yet. But I wanted you to have the opportunity to read this recent press release.
CHICAGO BOARD OF RABBIS
July 20, 2006
To: Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago
Dear Colleagues and Friends:
Once again, the Israeli- Palestinian conflict has erupted into large-scale violence. All of us agonize over media images of the dead and wounded, too many of them civilians. Because the Palestinian and Lebanese casualty figures are inevitably greater than those suffered by Israel, there is a tendency among some observers to conceptualize the conflict as the Arab David vs. Jewish Goliath, placing an unfair burden of blame on Israel. This has caused inter-communal tensions between Christians and Jews in recent years.
It is the sacred responsibility of religious leaders to speak out in the face of violence. We are writing colleague-to-colleague in the hope that you will keep in mind some basic facts about how this round of hostilities began, who started it, who is sponsoring Hamas and Hezbollah, and for what purpose? No evaluation of the situation can be fair unless it is grounded in these realities.
We are especially sensitive to concerns regarding proportionality or collective punishment. After all, it was Abraham, the first Jew, who challenged God's justice in "sweeping the innocent away with the guilty." Does the search for three kidnapped soldiers justify Israel's aerial operations and its use of heavy armor and artillery? Why not negotiate a prisoner exchange? Because these questions [are] the focus of debate among Jews in Israel and throughout the world, we understand how non-Jews who support Israel's right to defend itself (jus ad bellem) might oppose the way in which the operation is being conducted (jus in bello). In this regard, we ask that you remember that proportionality is calculated not by the event, but by the threat. In the present instance, the menace facing Israel is larger than the specter of three captured soldiers. Israel is confronting a regional threat, which begins with Iran, Syria and their proxy, Hezbollah, and stretches to the radical Islamic Palestinian group Hamas. We endeavor to demonstrate this in the attached material.
The four of us writing this letter cannot be characterized as "hawks." One was primary drafter of the Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago's letter urging President Bush not to invade Iraq. We are unanimous in advocating mutual concessions through diplomatic negotiations as the pathway to peace. But we also appreciate that the exigencies of real-life situations must be considered when applying theoretical constructs. This letter, with its attachment, is intended to initiate a conversation, not end it. We are eager to receive your response, in any way you choose to send it. At day's end, all of us are committed to peace. Let us not allow our differing visions of how peace can be achieved impede our mutual efforts in pursuit of a goal mandated by the God of all humankind.
L'Shalom,
Rabbi Victor Mirelman Rabbi Vernon Kurtz
President, Chicago Board of RabbisPast President, Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago
Rabbi Herman SchaalmanRabbi Ira Youdovin
Past President, Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago
SAVING LIVES IS OUR HIGHEST DUTY(A statement from Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center)
Dear Friends,
We are taught: saving lives (in Hebrew, "pekuakh nefesh") is the highest duty. This war is killing people now. And the rage it creates will kill more people later. This war marks not only a crisis in the future of Israel, Lebanon, and Palestine, but also a crisis in the moral universe of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
There is a teaching in the Talmud: "If someone comes to kill you, kill him first." Then the Talmud continues: "But if you can prevent his killing you by wounding him rather than killing him, and nevertheless you kill him, you become a murderer."
Violence in self-defense, the rabbis are teaching, is legitimate—perhaps even required. But only self-defense that uses the smallest degree of force that would stop an attack.
This is wisdom for Jews and for the Jewish state, but not only for Jews. Something like it arises in all religious traditions that do not prohibit the use of violence altogether, even in self-defense. So we all face today the question whether the present government of Israel and the present leadership of Hezbollah are following this precept.
I think not. I think the attacks on Lebanese infrastructure far from the Israeli-Lebanese border, like those on the civilian infrastructure of Gaza just a few weeks ago, are going far over the line of legitimate self-defense.
And I think the rocket attacks by Hezbollah against Haifa and many other Israeli towns, as well as the original attack across the international frontier, also go far over the line of any conceivable "self-defense."
These attacks are killing scores and hundreds of civilians, including children.
What can we do?
The warring governments and nations are too full of fear and rage to stop on their own. Only UN intervention with a strong peacekeeping force on the border can end these deadly attacks and prevent future ones. Can protect BOTH Israelis and Lebanese. Only US support can get the UN to act. So far, the US is holding back—while scores of Israelis and hundreds of Lebanese die.
I urge you to speak out in private and in public to urge the US government to act NOW, not weeks from now, to insert a UN force on the border and insist on a cease-fire by both sides. Many lives are at stake.
That should be followed by an Emergency International Conference for Peace in the Middle East, aimed at universal agreement by all warring parties in the Middle East on peace treaties that protect Israel and a viable new Palestinian state.
Lives are at stake. In God's Name and for God's sake, please act now!
With blessings of shalom, salaam, paix, peace
Arthur
THE CURRENT ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN-LEBANESE CONFLICT:
THE VIEWS OF FOUR CHICAGO RABBIS
1. Who Started It?
On June 25, Hamas operatives tunneled from Gaza into Israel, where they killed two Israeli soldiers and kidnapped a third, demanding that Israel free more than nine hundred Palestinian prisoners, many of them being held for violent crimes. Two weeks later, Hezbollah forces crossed the international border from southern Lebanon to support Hamas’ demand. They killed eight Israeli soldiers, and took two others hostage. Neither attack was provoked.
In the past, some Christian leaders have tempered their criticism of Palestinian violence by casting it as the understandable response of an otherwise helpless people living under occupation. The current situation reveals serious flaws in this analysis. Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, and from Gaza in 2005. There is no Israeli presence in either locale. Moreover, the Israeli government has announced plans to disengage from most of the West Bank, either through negotiations or unilaterally should the Hamas government persist in refusing to recognize Israel.
Rather than being a consequence of Israeli occupation, the present situation is a direct result of Israel having withdrawn from Arab lands, leaving Palestinian terrorist groups free to train operatives, manufacture weapons, and launch actions inside Israel.
2. Background
From the late 1970’s until 2000, Israel maintained a 3-5 mile wide security zone inside Lebanon, to prevent Palestinian terrorists from shelling Israeli towns and crossing the border to attack civilians, many of them women and children. Periodic attempts at replacing Israeli troops with an international force failed. A contingent of U.S. marines positioned there in 1982 was withdrawn after 241 of them were killed in their barracks by a Palestinian suicide bomber. The United Nations force (UNFIL) is chronically undermanned and ineffective. When Israel withdrew six years ago, Hezbollah moved swiftly to establish a state-within-a-state in southern Lebanon backed by Iran and Syria. The Lebanese government has done nothing to implement a 2004 U.N. Security Council resolution (#1559) calling upon it to disarm Hezbollah and take control of southern Lebanon.
Israel’s disengagement from Gaza last summer was intended to give the Palestinians an opportunity to prove their ability to build a self-governing Palestinian society prepared to live in peaceful co-existence with its Jewish neighbor. A Palestinian success would strengthen Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s case for placing most of the West Bank under Palestinian sovereignty, thus opening the door for full Palestinian statehood.
What actually ensued was catastrophic. Shortly after Israel departed, a virtual civil war erupted between Fatah (Yassir Arafat’s party which controlled the Palestinian Authority) and Hamas. Lawlessness prevailed in the streets. An already fragile economy crumbled. The PA was unwilling and/or unable to prevent terrorists from firing missiles at towns inside Israel. Then, the Palestinians overwhelmingly elected a Hamas government, which is committed to annihilating the Jewish state, and which openly praises suicide bombings.
3. Conduct of the Operation
Negotiating with terrorists is rarely productive. If Hamas and Hezbollah can win the release of hardened criminals by kidnapping three soldiers, why not kidnap three more and demand further concessions? Nevertheless, the Israeli government has sent semi-veiled signals of its willingness to consider concessions after the three soldiers are returned. This is diplomatic code for agreeing to release some of the prisoners at a time when it can be done away from the glare of publicity. Thus far, the terrorists have refused.
Moreover, it is critical to understand that rescuing three soldiers, while Israel’s primary objective, is not its only one. From the time Israel entered the Oslo negotiations more than a decade ago, its territorial policy has been rooted in the principle that peace with the Palestinians is impossible without a near-total Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza. Formal and informal proposals by four successive governments make it clear that Israel intends to keep less than 10 percent of the West Bank and none of Gaza. Additionally, Israel has offered to cede to the new Palestinian state an equal amount of land either in heavily Palestinian areas of the Galilee, or in the Negev. Success of this policy, or any policy that presumes a two-state solution, rests on Palestinian willingness to establish peaceful relations with Israel.
Hamas and Hezbollah make no secret of their disdain for a two-state solution. When they talk of “ending the occupation,” they mean the West Bank, Gaza and all of Israel, which they regard as Islamic land occupied by Jews. Opinion polls indicate that a substantial majority of the Palestinians are willing to accept a two-state solution. But this sentiment is irrelevant so long as actual policy is dictated by rejectionists for whom terror is their primary tool of “statecraft.”
So long as an intransigent Hamas rules in Gaza, and Hezbollah is free to operate in southern Lebanon, there can be no progress toward a negotiated peace. Without substantial changes in the Palestinian political landscape, could any responsible government withdraw from the West Bank---from which even primitive rockets can reach Jerusalem and Tel Aviv?
Israel has legitimate reasons for seeking to break, or at least seriously weaken, the terrorists’ stranglehold on what remains of the peace process. Unlike in the past, its strategy for pursuing this goal does not entail occupation in any form. As Israeli Council General Baruch Binah told a noontime rally in The Loop earlier this week: “They say they want us out of Gaza and Lebanon. We were out, but they sucked us back in. If they want us to leave again, return the captives, stop hurling rockets and they won’t see us anymore.”
Amal Saad Ghorayeb, a professor of political science at Lebanese American University, characterizes Hezbollah and its operatives as “being driven by a jihadi ideology and a sacrificial theology, and they don’t give a damn about the consequences.” The only approach to defeating this blood-thirsty fanaticism, other than another extended military presence, are short-term, but large-scale, military operations, some of them targeting infrastructure. Israel has been careful to drop leaflets warning civilians in southern Beirut and southern Lebanon where it knows that Hezbollah keeps stores of rockets and launchers in apartment houses, garages and homes. Nevertheless, innocents are killed and wounded, their peril intensified by the terrorists’ strategy of positioning themselves in densely populated areas, using women and children as shields, or as fodder for their public relations campaign. This cynical policy violates international law and the canons of human decency.
4. What’s at Stake for Humankind?
It is no longer accurate to describe the conflict as pitting Israelis against Palestinians. As columnist David Brooks wrote in the New York Times, “Iran has conducted a semi-hostile takeover of what used to be known as the Arab-Israeli dispute.” Hezbollah, which receives $200-$300 million annually from Teheran, is Iran’s proxy in its pursuit of regional hegemony, and Syria’s in its drive to remain a major player in Lebanon after its forced withdrawal last year in the wake of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri’s assassination. “It has become the essential instrument of Syrian maneuvers to prevent the Lebanese state from adapting to its newfound independence,” according to Waddah Sharara, a sociology professor at the Lebanese University. Nor is the conflict east vs. west, or Judeo/Christianity vs. Islam. Criticism of Israel from most of the Arab/Islamic world has been muted. Saudi Arabia went so far as to condemn Hezbollah’s actions as “uncalculated adventures.”
5. Conclusion
Like you, the authors of this communication abhor the carnage, and pray that it ends as quickly as possible. Talk of establishing a new multi-national force is encouraging, but only if its mandate has teeth. Otherwise, the terrorists will regroup, re-arm and prepare to ignite another round of violence. Arab and Muslim pressure on Iran and Syria could be exceedingly helpful, as they are the patrons of terrorism.
For the moment, however, as unsettling as the thought may be to all of us, short-term violence may be the most effective way of pursuing peace. Israel is not attempting to beat the Palestinians and Lebanese into submission. The violence is aimed at defeating the terrorist organizations in order to create a window of opportunity for other Palestinian, Arab and Muslim voices to be heard.
Posted by tripp at July 27, 2006 06:11 AM
What a burden it is to feel so threatened by one's enemies that one must always be offensive in defending the State. I agree with the second writer, but I see the point of the first. It simply seems to me that one of the consequences of defending Israel with an offensive to eradicate the threat is that the threat actually grows because the disproportionate response rallies the tribes to come together in their hatred for Israel. When Jews feel that they can't win peace either way, it is easy to choose the harsher path to at least see an immediate, tangible reduction in the visible enemy.
I am not optimistic that the Middle East will ever be peaceful in our time.
Posted by: Rich at July 27, 2006 08:13 AMafter following the middle east much too closely for much too long i've concluded that the "who started it?" question is simply the wrong one to ask. in a place where for 65 years each side has engaged in tit-for-tat retaliatory attacks, the "who did it first" question is rendered almost completely meaningless.
in the second letter, they conclude that both the hamas attack and hezbollah attack was unprovoked. i understand that's how the israeli side sees it, but it's simple intellectual dishonesty to pretend that is the only perspective.
to hamas (and much of the arab world) the current israeli offensive in gaza started when israeli artillary slaughtered a family on a beach in gaza. the kidnapping operation was in express retaliation for that. and, indeed, it was the reason that hamas explained it could no longer abide by the cease fire it had followed for more than a year.
to hezbollah, it claims to have captured the two soldiers in retaliation for israel's capture of three hezbollah militia members. the idea was to kidnap the israelis and then bargain for the release of their person.
of course, israel can point to shelling from gaza into israel that happened prior to the beach attack that hamas points to. and israel can bring up rocket attacks that hezbollah has lobbed over the border that prompted the arrest of the hezbollah members. and, of course, hamas and hezbollah can reach further into the past and find a provocation for each of those incidents as well
and so it goes, endlessly into the past. everyone claims the other one has started it. the fact is that both are perpetuating it and neither are unprovoked.
there's another problem with terminology when you talk about this conflict. one that is an even longer rant. the short version is that when israel snatches someone it is called an "arrest" or "detention" whereas when hamas or hezbollah does it, it is called a "kidnapping." that is the rhetorical disadvantage that palestinian groups always have. they have no state and so israel's actions are always seen as more legitimate--even when they do essentially the same thing.
personally, i think this whole mess is a complete tragedy. i was in beirut just last september and it is heartbreaking to see israel dismember the country (and that's really what they are doing by attacking civilian areas, and targeting sites across the country, even in places where hezbollah used to be quite unpopular).
meanwhile, as a jewish guy who has relatives who are israelis, i see the country embarking upon a military conflict that they are sure to lose.
the only hope for ending the threat of hezbollah was for hezbollah to be disarmed. and the only way that could reasonably be expected to happen is if the lebanese central government were permitted to finish it's negotiations with hezbollah about disarmament. the lebanese government only got free from the syrian occupation last year. it was too weak to do it immediately. but it was putting hezbollah under tremendous pressure to disarm and to take part in the economic miracle of the new lebanon.
that economic miracle is now over. it might never come back. skittish investors that were assured that lebanon had put its civil war behind it and was a safe place to invest will not come back even if there is peace tomorrow. the central lebanese government is weakened even further, and has proven defenseless as israel freely bombs its citizens. the big winner is hezbollah. they are getting to do what they wanted all along--to fight toe-to-toe with the israelis. the domestic pressure to disarm is over--as the only force that is fighting back against israel, most lebanese now see hezbollah's arms to be vital for the security of lebanon. and hezbollah has also managed, for the first time, to extend its popularity into the non-shia population of lebanon.
and the end of the day hezbollah will be stronger than ever and israel will be more in danger because of israel's foolhardly response to hezbollah's attack 2 weeks ago.
that's how i feel about it. so i think the first letter is basically right. the second is way off base, and is frankly asking some of the wrong questions.
Posted by: upyernoz at July 27, 2006 09:14 AM"What a burden it is to feel so threatened by one's enemies that one must always be offensive in defending the State."
Gosh, Rich, you must be a male. As a female, living in the city, I feel [some version/degree of] this threatened all the time. My most basic goal is to die at a ripe old age without ever having been raped. And I remain willing to do whatever I must to accomplish that goal.
Hair trigger temper? Oh, you bet your ass.
A different issue, I realize - but that's what came to mind, so I thought I'd post it.
Posted by: kate at July 27, 2006 04:28 PMPerhaps this is why there is no hope of the conflict being resolved. Macro or micro, turning the other cheek doesn't come naturally to humans on the defensive. And the other side never stops taking the offensive. For the middle-aged white male, the offender is Corporate America and the drive to replace us after we've given so much. My defense is mistrust of the motives of everyone in business. It affects us all to one degree or another.
It would be nice to see God a little more active as we struggle to live up to the selflessness a life in Christ demands.
Thanks for pointing this out Kate.
Teresa of Avila has this prayer.
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
This is a little Deist to be orthodox, but it gets to the point. The church is the Body of Christ. Thus we have a hoy obligation if you will to live into the vision of Peace from the Sermon on the Mount. And, as you suggest, we have to look for God's work.
Where is God working in this? Well, The fact that the Pope, the World Council of Churches and other ecclesial gourps that often stand in opposition are lining up may be a godly act. It may be miraculous. That is what I believe.
Also, since we have a certain "soul freedom" and responsibility, I don't think we should be looking for unilateral action from the Most High.
As Benedict in Rome has recently said (http://zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=93115), "This is God's new way of conquering: He does not oppose violence with a stronger violence. He opposes violence precisely with the contrary: with love to the end, his cross. This is God's humble way of overcoming: With his love -- and only thus is it possible -- he puts a limit to violence. This is a way of conquering that seems very slow to us, but it is the true way of overcoming evil, of overcoming violence, and we must trust this divine way of overcoming. "
I think that he is totally right in this.
Rich, when you look for signs of God, what do you look for?
Posted by: Tripp at July 28, 2006 01:40 PMSigns of God? I don't have any markers. I simply feel the absence of a Godlike presence. The times when I have observed God in the world are when I actively see people acting out of selflessness and actually succeeding in making a difference. I guess that I need to see results as well as words and actions. So when a simple gesture moves another person to feel a reduction in their pain, I perceive God. I do not see what you see in the words of the Pope. His words are what I expect from a church leader. Christ wants peace, we need to make it happen. It's the church equivalent to Mom and apple pie. The reality is that violence is being met with more violence. The hate in the Middle East is palpable as is the mix of power and fear associated with the West's desire to stabilize access and control of oil.
I am not even suggesting that God would step into the fray and interact with mankind. But, we could do with a miracle or two that are indisputable or at least mysterious enough to create awe. We could all benefit from witnessing some major evidence that someone in a position of power was willing to risk that power to be generous of spirit without some political motive. I think that Bush, Blair, Hezbollah and Israel are all perpetrating evil in the name of the Lord. Right and wrong all depend on which side of the conflict one stands. But no one can convince me that God's true wish involves anything but peace between people. The last time anyone took this kind of risk in US politics was Reagan with Gorbachev and Carter through the Camp David accords.
Were I to see this kind of sacrifice for peace, I would feel God in the effort. One can argue that the existence of a Pope to speak words of peace is taken for granted, but if this is the extent of God's influence, it is weak indeed. I trust that love is the only way to "victory", but I also perceive that, like the forces of Saruman in the Lord of the Rings saga, the power of evil is building in the world. There is no Frodo and our Gandalfs are impotent. We have an army of Samwise's, powerful indeed, but will it be enough? And who will lead them?
Posted by: Rich at July 28, 2006 02:24 PM"Were I to see this kind of sacrifice for peace, I would feel God in the effort. "
There is someting in this that I want to point out to you as problematic. One does not always feel God. This is an emotive Christianity that can prove limited. In fact, the frustration you express is a great example of that limitation. If we cannot feel God at work then God must not be at work. This may not be quite where you go with it, but it is often the case.
I think that this thinking is what gets us Baptists in trouble. We all ways want the experience. We always want to "feel the presense of the Lord." I am with you. But it is a slippery slope akin to "hocus pocus" sacramentalism. The Spirit does not move because we the Spirit to do so. We cannot control the Spirit. Nor can we expect ourselves to be so made as to always recognise God as God when God is at work. This is the wisdom in what the Pope is saying.
We cannot always perceive God at work. Like Paul we see but through a glass dimly. Paul understood the difference between the Kingdom Come and the Kingdom Arrived. We exist in a Kingdom Come world. This is what the eschaton (Second Coming/End Times) is all about. Why does it look like nothing is going right in the Middle East. Well, because little is.
But then I read stories of strangers helping strangers or Baptist seminaries taking in Moslem refugees. God is at work. And God gives us freedom to destroy ourselves. This is the case. It has always been so. People could follow Christ or crucify him. We still have that choice today. God cannot force either.
I would push you to widen your definition of God's work. I would encourage you to find ways to slowly redeem the horrific where possible. And I would suggest that you not expect yourself to be always capable of perceiving God at work.
In the end it is not God who is limited, but we who are limited. And that is the simple truth of it.
Posted by: Tripp at July 28, 2006 04:03 PMSo many directions to take this - so little time.
I am not saying that I need to feel all of God's work to know that He is active. Being human, I know I am limited in my ability to experience the Divine. But it troubles me that the same spots in the world are always wrapped up in hate. I do think that if one never sees God at work on the large stage, it makes it tougher to visualize the forces of good ever coalescing. The small stuff isn't enough in the face of the world. When we couldn't see the rest of the world, the acts of the individuals were weighed against a smaller opposing factor. One could see headway. Now, 6 billion people are nearly visible, and most of them are in some kind of trouble. Hope is relative.
I'm not familiar with the word "eschaton", but if that is tied to the action in the Apocalypse, you've lost me. In my more flippant moods, I think of that book as a bad trip. On a more serious note, it seems to be no better or worse than the prophecies of Nostradamus.
God extends His presence everyday by the teachings that He gave us through Christ and others. Because we believe, we act on those teachings. Is every action in God's name an act of God? This is where we come to the poem you quoted. We are called to be Christ in the world, but even Christ looked to God for something more. So, I don't think it is inappropriate to look for more than humans interpreting (and misinterpreting) the old stories. A little positive reinforcement from the Creator wouldn't hurt.
Maybe we ought to book a room for our lunch next week. It could take a while.
Posted by: Rich at July 28, 2006 04:53 PMBook a room?! Hey now. LOL
Tim Lahey is not what I am talking about. I am speaking of the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God and, as Christ himself suggests, a returning Lord...But we can get to that stuff another time.
I would just like to remind you that the crusifixion of Jesus did not make much of an historical splash at the time...it was only afterward as the community that was the church slowly grew over generations that the public perception began to change...Jesus was not a king, or a politician or a rebel leader worth much Roman attention.
But what he started was. Be careful when you ask for something on the global stage that you don't miss the beginnings of it in your own back yard.
Thus endeth the blogging for the day.