Reflections on Gaza
‘We viewed ourselves as grasshoppers and they viewed us as grasshoppers’
Many Israelis seem bewildered at one of the unfortunate outcomes of the last conflagration from Gaza: a decreased understanding of Israel’s situation and an increase in anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment. They should not be so bewildered as this outcome is an entirely predictable result of Israel’s own behavior.
Several Americans I spoke with during the last Gaza conflict (and during the three almost identical conflicts preceding it) asked the same simple question: What do you think would happen if control of Sonora, Mexico was taken over by al-Qaeda or some other terrorist group bent on the destruction of the United States, and they then indiscriminately launched thousands of rockets at Dallas, Austin, El Paso and Houston with the aim of killing the maximum number of civilians, and with the hope of generating maximum terror by at least some of them hitting kindergartens, schools, and hospitals?
Every American knows what would happen. The US military would immediately invade Sonora, destroy al-Qaeda, and either permanently occupy the territory or at a minimum control it until a government that could be assured to not be hostile to the US would do so. The US military would do this regardless of the casualties or consequences, because the highest obligation of any government is to protect the lives of its citizens and because ensuring that protection is what the US military exists for.
This is not just the case for the US. Every citizen of virtually every country in the world knows what would happen if a similar scenario to Gaza occurred on its own borders, if a hostile force launched missiles into its territory with the aim of wantonly killing its civilians. They would immediately invade that hostile territory and wage a war to control it. No country would even consider asking other foreign leaders if it had a right to defend itself. The question itself would be absurd.
THE FACT that Israel has not done what every citizen of every other country in the world instinctively knows their own government would do understandably results in the increasingly widespread assumption that Israel is not a normal country with normal rights. The instinctive and not unreasonable conclusion of many people is that those nasty Israelis must have really wronged those Palestinian people in some major way if they continue to tolerate missiles launched by those Palestinians hitting their villages, towns and cities. Anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment is the inevitable result.
The upcoming fast day of Tisha Be’av commemorates the destruction of the two temples, the resultant exiles, and the numerous other disasters in our history that originated in a lack of self-respect. The spies who returned on Tisha Be’av and who were intimidated by the size of the forces they would need to fight tellingly reported to Moses and the people, “We looked upon ourselves as grasshoppers and they looked at us as grasshoppers.” (Numbers 13:33) Cause and effect. No one respects an individual, a society or a country that does not respect itself.
After Oslo led to thousands of civilian deaths and three Gaza wars, Israel needs to revert to the proactive defense philosophy on which it was founded. The public and international relations will take care of themselves. Because the world respects those who respect themselves, Israel’s international standing was never higher than it was in July 1967, and the subsequent international anti-Israel campaign that began in the 1980s was the direct result of demonstrating that it did not believe its own story. There was no Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement before Oslo.
The people running Israel’s hasbara (public diplomacy) campaign now have a new strategy to counter increasing anti-Israel sentiment: “Why I love Israel” posters with pictures of lovely beaches and gay-rights parades designed to appeal to the international Left that increasingly disdains this country.
While it is indeed important that citizens love their country, the appropriate goal of foreign relations is not to be loved but to be respected. It is high time that we learn the underlying lesson of Tisha Be’av: The inevitable consequence of viewing ourselves as grasshoppers is that others will do the same.
The writer leads an Israeli research team developing technology to prevent mortality from pancreatic cancer.