Questions 7/3/08

I can imagine that everyone has heard of the catastrophe that occurred at Merkaz Harav Kook Yeshiva in Jerusalem last night. 8 Yeshiva students, ranging in ages from 15 to 26 were killed in cold blood by a terrorist of unknown origin, though they now suspect that he was from East Jerusalem, and probably carried an Israeli ID card, identifying him as a citizen of Israel.

In the face of such ruthless and inhumane violence, what can really be said? The initial response is one of revenge: the desire for those who planned and carried out this attack to be murdered. Maybe even some signs of strength---ruthless violence of our own---to show the Arabs that we are much, much better at killing them then they are at killing us. After all---goes the much repeated mantra---these "animals only respond to violence." I put that in quotes because I am quoting an article in an interview in the New York Times with residents of Gaza---who said the same thing about Israelis.

Now, the next day, what will be the government's response? After all, this is the first major terrorist attack in Jerusalem in over two years: the Shin-Bet (the Israeli Agency in Charge of Policing the West Bank and Gaza) has managed to foil hundreds of attacks like these, that we fortunately do not hear about. Israeli jails are full of thousands of Palestinians and Israeli Arabs who have been arrested while in the planning states of carrying out an attack to kill innocent Jewish civilians. Why does it take the death of 8 fellow Jews to hear the calls for revenge? Do we need to wait until the rest of the world is sated by sight of spilled Jewish blood---(are 8 boys enough?) to get the green light to do what we've been waiting to do anyway? Maybe, when Israel has a particularly gruesome task at hand, it should stage a terrorist attack, complete with fake Jewish blood, ambulances, and those Haredim who wander the scene, looking for the body parts of those who have died, so that they can be buried with as much as their physical parts as possible? Who cares if the Palestinians in Gaza will celebrate the fake death of a hand full of non-existent Jews? It's them who will be awoken by the sounds of jets and bombs at night, and their cheers of joy at the death of Jewish children will be turned to the sounds of mourning at the death of their own innocent children.

And why do they make us do this? Why can't they leave us alone? Why do they make us relive the nightmares of our past---the pogroms of Russia, Poland, Germany, England? Wasn't the creation of the State of Israel supposed to end all of that? What has changed, besides our ability to turn around and kill them?

Have we, the Jewish people, done something terrible to deserve this? Or maybe we're looking at this the wrong way---that the ongoing death and destruction we have going on with our Arab neighbors is actually a gift, since it is the only thing that is able to bring all Jewish Israelis together, and that Israel would fall apart at the seams if it weren't for the glue made from the common hatred of those who seek the country's destruction. Does it make me a terrible person to consider the good that comes from Jewish death? Or---the opposite---does it make us a terrible people that the only thing that brings us together is the wholesale slaughter of our brethren? Why can't we be united around a desire to create a beautiful, just society here in Israel? Or creating beautiful, open, engaging Jewish communities in the Diaspora? Or maybe it's the human race that is terrible---that they only stop their insane, illogical anti-semetic rhetoric for brief periods when others actually carry out the violence that was planted in their heads by that very same rhetoric, and they only shut up about us running the world and all that other bullshit when it becomes undeniably clear that not only do we not run the world, but we are so pathetically dependent on their poor excuse for society that our lives are held in the balance at the whims of women strapped with suicide belts, children bearing guns, Cossacks with knives, Germans with gas chambers?

Why do we care what they think? We have our own set of morals---we know we can kill those who seek to kill us (does it matter that the reason they want to kill us is because they think we killed them first? Or because we took their grandpa's olive grove?) Why do we care when some UK Human Rights group says we are Nazis and we are creating a second holocaust in Gaza and all sorts of nonsense? Why do we put their insane reports on the front page of our newspapers?

Why won't they leave us alone? Why can't we get along? Why can't we get along with ourselves?