Avrum Burg has a colloquium in Haaretz about the spiritual work necessary after the assault on Gaza. Much as I love Burg, and his brilliant, questioning spirit, this colloquium feels to me to be too Talmudic, too Israeli. Too Burgian, in its detachment. In this case, detached from the fact that Israel just slaughtered 400 children and dropped white phosphorus on them. I don't know that you can have highminded dialogue at this time. You must have shame and grief and rage. It's why in the end a solution will have to be imposed on both sides. They're too self-regarding, think they can arrive at answers without the Other involved. They can't.
Still, the sense that the Israeli soul is dislocated is here:
Burg: "So for you, the Gaza war is a crude example of
unilateral action and excessive force. What would you like to see when
you look in the mirror?"
Yehouda Shenhav [sociologist]: "We have to free ourselves from this Crusader fantasy. You
can't come to the Middle East, ignore everything that exists here and
wipe out everyone who happens your way so you can establish a Jewish
state."
from fear and partly from defining the enemy as evil incarnate, someone
you can't talk to. But my perspective is theological, rather than
socio-political, like that of Shenhav. The Israelites in Egypt were
bonded slaves, and God told Moses: Go to Pharaoh. Speak to him, again
and again. Why? After all, Pharaoh really was the symbol of human evil
at its worst. Because that is the Jewish way of dealing with evil…
another language we haven't tried yet. What we are missing is the
cultured, profoundly religious language we share with the Muslims in
whose midst we live. Our whole identity here is based on Western
identity. We are a local branch of European Christianity. But in terms
of religious values, we are really much closer to Islam than to
Christianity. We need to adopt a Jewish-Muslim language and take
advantage of these understandings in order to develop a language for
talking to Hamas. Not for talking about technocratic issues like
tunnels or passageways – our fight is not about tunnels – but for
talking about identity and missions in life that spring from serious
questions of faith, which is something I respect them for. As a person
who believes in divine providence to some degree, I think we have been
led to our current reality in order to probe fundamental truths – and
not just ours."
Burg: "Salvation through the sewers?"
Elboim: "I see it happening every day – how all our options are
collapsing. Western political language, the language of force: They are
over. Gaza is not conquerable, and we have Hamas, an enemy with a clear
mission and religious agenda, as our mirror. There is something very
important we have to learn from Hamas, and that is how to speak this
language."
–Phil Weiss, with thanks to Sky Redoubt.
