Yoffie supports the Gaza operation
By Eric Yoffie, The Forward
Wars sicken me, even wars that I support. I support Israel’s offensive in Gaza, but watching it on TV — the images of bombed-out buildings, crying women and, inevitably, the bodies of innocent bystanders — is a painful experience.
I suspect that most American Jews feel the same discomfort that I feel. They support the military offensive too, but they are well aware of the risks that it entails, and they expect Israel to be both politically wise and morally sensitive in how it fights. It is especially important to us that Israel do everything humanly possible to avoid the death of innocents and to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. There is much evidence that Israel has worked hard to limit the carnage, and the credibility of Israel’s leaders in providing assurances on these points is an important factor in assuring the continued support of American Jews — and, indeed, of all Americans — for the Gaza campaign.
Of course, there are those in the Jewish community who champion the Gaza offensive with slogans of crude triumphalism. Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic, wrote on his blog that the message of this operation is “do not f–k with the Jews.” It is interesting to compare the somber statements of Israel’s leaders, who are fighting to protect their children, with the obscene, cowboy-like delight that Peretz seems to take in the damage Israel’s army is able to inflict.
At the same time, if some Jewish hawks are devoid of sympathy for Palestinian suffering, not a few Jewish doves have demonstrated an utter lack of empathy for Israel’s predicament. J Street, a new Washington lobbying group and a major voice of the dovish pro-Israel community, has spoken out sharply against Israel’s actions in Gaza. While it claims to represent the moderate American Jewish majority, in this case it has misread the issues and misjudged the views of American Jews.
It is not easy for me to write these words. I welcomed the founding of J Street and know many of those involved in its leadership. Furthermore, I am a dove myself. I support a two-state solution, believe that military action by Israel should be a last resort and welcome an active American role in promoting peace between Israel and her neighbors. But I know a mistake when I see one, and this time J Street got it very wrong.
J Street’s first statement expressed “understanding” for Israel’s motivations, and called — as I do — for a political rather than a military solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Nonetheless, its conclusion was that Israel made a mistake in attacking Hamas and that the United States and others must press for an immediate cease-fire.
A second J Street statement was worse by far. It could find no moral difference between the actions of Hamas and other Palestinian militants, who have launched more than 5,000 rockets and mortar shells at Israeli civilians in the past three years, and the long-delayed response of Israel, which finally lost patience and responded to the pleas of its battered citizens in the south. “Neither Israelis nor Palestinians have a monopoly on right or wrong,” it said, and it suggested that there was no reason and no way to judge between them: “While there is nothing ‘right’ in raining rockets on Israeli families or dispatching suicide bombers, there is nothing ‘right’ in punishing a million and a half already-suffering Gazans for the actions of the extremists among them.”
These words are deeply distressing because they are morally deficient, profoundly out of touch with Jewish sentiment and also appallingly naïve. A cease-fire instituted by Hamas would be welcome, and Israel would be quick to respond. A cease-fire imposed on Israel would allow Hamas to escape the consequences of its actions yet again and would lead in short order to the renewal of its campaign of terror. Hamas, it should be noted, is not a government; it is a terrorist gang. And as long as the thugs of Hamas can act with impunity, no Israeli government of the right or the left will agree to a two-state solution or any other kind of peace. Doves take note: To be a dove of influence, you must be a realist, firm in your principles but shorn of all illusions.
As a reality check for my views, I did what I normally do in these circumstances: I checked with my closest Israeli friends, who are all left of center, haters of war and ferocious opponents of the West Bank settlement movement. In virtually every case, they saw the action in Gaza as tragic but necessary and were astounded by the opposition of American doves. “What did they think,” one of them asked me in bewilderment, “that we would just sit there forever while Hamas fired rockets into our cities?” And they pointed out that most politicians on the left support the offensive, as do more than 80% of all Israelis, according to polling data.
I have not seen any polls on the reactions of American Jews, but my own sense, supported by anecdotal evidence from the Reform movement, is that there is strong backing for Israel’s government. American Jews have a commonsense approach to these matters.
We are aware that American forces have gone halfway around the globe to engage in a war in Afghanistan against terrorists who once carried out an attack on American soil. We know that civilians have frequently died in that war because terrorists make a point of operating in civilian areas. We know too that this war has the support of our liberal president-elect.
So why, we ask, should Israel’s center-left government, after long periods of restraint and desperate efforts to renew the cease-fire, be expected to refrain from fighting terrorists that are regularly attacking from right across the border? And we are certain that if rockets were being launched from Canada into our own homes in Michigan or Maine, we would demand immediate action, and our government would quickly oblige.
American Jews see Israel’s Gaza offensive as a tragic necessity, unwelcome but inevitable, carried out by a reluctant Israeli government doing what it must to end rocket attacks against its citizenry. In short, American Jews are, as usual, sensible and centrist, and supporting Israel in her hour of need.
Rabbi Eric Yoffie is president of the Union for Reform Judaism.
Its a welcome surprise in view of J Street’s, Peace Now’s and the American branch of Meretz’s calls for a ceasefire. The truth is all decent people hate wars. But those who are evil must be defeated and overcome with force. All true lovers of peace and those who genuinely cherish human rights acknowledge it. Those who side with every tyranny and despotism on the planet are not really against all wars; just against those waged by free societies to protect the lives and freedom of their people.
Comment by NormanF — January 3, 2009 @ 12:57 pm
Yoffie still does not see or admit that it is exactly his liberal mindset and world view who like those here and there have brought us to this day and in this situation. I see only slight mea-culpa here but only in superficial consequences of those who like him have never been till now able to admit that their world views have been flawed. The first step towards redemption is to face one’s fallacies and repent seriously.
Comment by yamit82 — January 3, 2009 @ 1:18 pm
Good point, Yamit. Eric Yoffie’s belated admission there’s no real moral equivalence to what’s taking place now in Gaza isn’t one that’s been absorbed by Shalom Achshav and its American counterpart, which mindlessly parrot the claim the Middle East conflict is a political conflict. Its not and never has been - which is why no ceasefire of the sort they champion can ever work. Its an existential conflict since its not about what are really side disputes - territory and settlements. Its about the refusal of the Arab/Muslim World to be reconciled to the presence of the Jewish State in any size or form in the Middle East. And that’s an issue on which there can be no compromise. The Israeli/American Jewish Left’s calls for a return to a political solution is simply an evasion of reality. I’d love to see them and Yoffie finally face their fallacies and repent. But I’m sure that will never happen. The belief the Middle East can be resolved through goodwill and compromise (only by Israel) is too strong to ditch even though it flies in the face of a century’s worth of Arab and Muslim hostility to all of Israel’s entreaties for peace.
Comment by NormanF — January 3, 2009 @ 1:29 pm
NormanF….WELL STATED!!
Comment by yamit82 — January 3, 2009 @ 2:11 pm
There’s a subtle message hidden in that statement, that simply has to be said.
A few years ago, my mother-in-law (who survived Auschwitz) was in a branch of the German embassy to discuss something with a member of staff. At one point another member of staff, gave her “an order” in a very shrill way. My mother-in-law, who speaks fluent German, reminded this person very sharply, that “We’re not in the camp any more!!!” The German lady got the message. Sometimes we have to remind people that times have most certainly changed, and if it takes a few expletives to shake people up to this fact, so be it, despite Rabbi Yoffie’s sensibilities.
Comment by keelie — January 3, 2009 @ 2:19 pm
There’s an unspoken truth here which the liberal elite do not like to admit (if they are even aware of it) but it exists and they are subject to it just as all human beings are subject to it:
People respect power.
When Israel is perceived as weak — unable or unwilling to defend herself — not only do her military enemies smell blood and circle for the kill, but so too, do leftist politicians, the liberal media establishment, even Jew-hating Jews like Glen Greenwald and hyman peskin.
When the Jews stand up for themselves, the agents of Jewish destruction scurry away like the vermin that they are.
Comment by Charles Martel — January 3, 2009 @ 4:43 pm
Martel
What do you surmise is Israel’s exit strategy?
If they have one?
Israeli spokesmen maintain there is no desire to dismantle the Hamas regime or reoccupy Gaza:
If not, what does Israel do post invasion?
What are the long term consequences of this development with respect to the Islamic Jihadi movement?
At what point does the America step in and command Israel to cease and desist, as it has on numerous occasions?
We are told that the ground incursion will not be a short term affair. While Israel is diverted with Hamas, what about Iran’s nuclear program? Perhaps, just perhaps that may have been the main purpose of the rocket attack provocation.
1000
Comment by h peskin — January 3, 2009 @ 11:11 pm
Peskin: at every stage you state opinions largely unsupported by reality on the ground but mostly based on an ideology time after time proven to be false, which if followed to conclusions always result in more suffering and deaths and destruction mosty of those who you claim to care about.
At every stage when your predictions go south you retreat to secondary predictions which when shown also to be false you continue retreating to other negative positions etc. Your assessment of Israel and our national will to survive and persevere even at great cost and even when not acting linearly which is almost always the case, seems to drive you and your fellow antisemitic, pieces of shit, (yes, you are one by any definition) NUTS. We just don’t fit your need to see us dead or gone. I can deal with Gentile antisemitism and can and have done so but those like you I truly hate and find more insidiously dangerous than any GOY Jew Hater. You ( THOSE LIKE YOU) are absolutely evil wrapped in the cloak of civility.
Peskin F… civility and F… You.
Comment by yamit82 — January 4, 2009 @ 2:05 am
Peskin,
Congratulations, you have reached the pinacle of success. You are acknowledged as being the most un-Jewish Jew in America and you have to live with this disgrace. I don’t know where you come from and I really don’t care, but you and your kind, I beleive, come from the sewer.
Comment by Ed D — January 4, 2009 @ 1:21 pm
It looks like Yoffie finally grew a pair; he just went up a couple of notches in my estimation.
Comment by Bill Levinson — January 4, 2009 @ 5:51 pm