From Inside and Outside the Iron Dome, Once Again
"If you continue looking up to the sky, you will not notice that the house is already burning from within." A reader in Jerusalem on the real threat to his country.
I have received lots of mail on the technical aspects of the "Iron Dome" system: its origin, performance, strengths, and potential weaknesses, plus comparisons with its Patriot predecessors. Watch this space for follow-ups as more information becomes known.
But I intend this to be the last installment on the string begun with the powerful note from an American rabbi in Jerusalem, about his gratitude for Iron Dome protection as Hamas rockets were falling. I have received enough mail since then to be reminded that there is an inexhaustible supply of passionate but irreconcilable, and familiar, statements of who is "more to blame" for the escalating violence and who originally wronged whom.
For a sobering example, consider this recent CNN exchange between Wolf Blitzer and Israeli Economics Minister Naftali Bennett. I have heard from people in Israel, America, and Europe who say that Bennett is speaking tough, plain, necessary truths. I have heard from others in those same places who think, as I do, that Bennett sounds appallingly callous about other people's loss of life—in this case, the deaths of the four little boys on the beach. Wolf Blitzer himself seems taken aback by what he is hearing. It's worth noting that Bennett features this clip on his own YouTube site.
I know that Bennett is not "representative," and that his fiercest critics are within Israel itself. I can name lots of American public figures I agree with even less. I know that there are plenty of people in the region and elsewhere who hatefully urge death to Israelis or Jews. But I mention this video because watching it reminded me, through its absence, of the quality of moral breadth, compassion, and bravery that distinguishes people willing to take risks for peace.
As a young staffer on the periphery, I saw this quality from both Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat at the Camp David negotiations in 1978 (not to mention Jimmy Carter's role, as recently portrayed by my friend Lawrence Wright in the play Camp David). The lasting tragedy of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination (like Sadat's) is that he also had great courage and breadth, and unassailable credentials as a patriot who was strong enough to compromise. I am no one's idea of a Middle East expert, but I see no such figures on any side now.
With that, two further messages about the political and social ramifications of Iron Dome, both from people in Jerusalem.
First, from a woman who agrees with the rabbi:
I have lived in Israel for 21 years and in Jerusalem for the past 14. I long for peace and would vote tomorrow to give up the West Bank and Gaza for a Palestinian state that would accept the existence of Israel and live in real peace with us.
I (literally) cry over the deaths of innocent Palestinian civilians. But your reference to "rocket exchanges" obscures the fact that the Hamas - an Islamic terrorist group whose stated goal is to drive out (or worse) the Jews living in the entire territory of Israel - including the area within the Green line - started firing rockets at Israeli civilians and Israel's response was defensive. You can argue about the intensity of the response, but not about the need for a response and a forceful one.
As for Iron Dome, I too am grateful to all who designed, funded, built and operated it and I know that the Hamas leaders are in luxury hotels in Doha and Cairo or in underground bunkers while they leave their people exposed to Israeli air strikes.When you write that many "vastly more Palestinian families have been killed..because of differences in offensive weaponry and defensive systems and other factors" you might mention that the "other factors" included the Hamas government's refusal to build shelters and defensive systems to protect their people, as well as their use of civilians as shields to hide behind when they shoot rockets at Israeli civilians.
Now, from Dr. Hillel Ben Sasson of Jerusalem, who has explicitly asked me to identify him. ("I indeed wish to be mentioned by name, as I believe in the veracity of my claims and am willing to defend them.") He is director of programs for Molad, an Israeli think tank.
His message is personally very critical of the rabbi, which I know will be wounding. But since I have kept his (the American rabbi's) identity confidential, and since Dr. Sasson is taking responsibility for his critical views by name, and mainly since his statement is so powerfully argued, it seems fair to give him his say.
Hillel Ben Sasson writes:
Reading the words of the anonymous rabbi in recounting his fear in face the warning sirens alerting Jerusalemites of Hamas rockets, I was both enraged and ashamed.
I was enraged by the lack of comprehension he showed to the situation in which we - Israelis and Palestinians - have been living for as long as we remember. I was born in Jerusalem in 1979 and lived here for most of my life. An officer in the IDF still fulfilling my reserve duty, I have lived through three wars (Lebanon I - 1982; Gulf I - 1991; Lebanon II - 2006), two Intifada uprisings of the occupied Palestinians (1987; 2000) and three military operations in Gaza (Cast Lead - 2008; Pillar of Defense - 2012; Protective Edge - 2014). Some of these I experienced in uniform. I am also raising two young children in Jerusalem.
For us living here, the current military operation and the ongoing drizzle of rockets are neither unbearable nor threatening in an existential way. Iron Dome has enabled Israelis to continue with their normal lives neither terrified nor terrorized. While the Gazans are rained with high-precision ton-heavy bombs falling with no sirens or alert system, we in Jerusalem have heard three sirens in the past nine days, and witnessed no rocket falling.
When the siren went off in that Saturday afternoon mentioned by the rabbi, I was sitting with my family in a park right across to the Shalom Hartman Institute, compared in his narrative to an U-Boat under attack. From the park where we were picnicking, as it happened, I could see the rocket being intercepted several miles south to Jerusalem, above Hebron, and in contrast to the rabbi's Dresdenian depiction.
In a cross check with a senior Haaretz correspondent, it turns out that none of the rockets even got close to central Jerusalem - hits were located only around Hebron and Ramat Raziel (a village miles to the west of the city) probably a result of shrapnel from Iron Dome's interceptions. This gets nowhere near WWII (the very comparison is preposterous if not offensive to survivors of that terrible war).
I am enraged because the rabbi is presumably a tourist in my city and country, yet in the name of his spiritual and cultural connection to the holy land he feels free to act as its spokesman. By generalizing his personal sense of fear and acting as a spokesman for those who actually carry the burden of living in Israel, the rabbi grossly exaggerated the impact of Hamas terror on Jerusalem and portrayed it with unduly epic dimensions. In so doing, he distorts the actual power imbalance in this tragic situation, in addition to victimizing me and my fellow Israeli citizens.
As a society, we are a (powerful) side in this conflict, not a helpless victim. To avoid any misunderstanding, I would like to clarify that I am far from disregarding the fear and anxiety felt by many Israelis who are in the line of fire day after day. Writing about Jerusalem however - a city that witnessed three sirens and not even one hit of a rocket - in the way that the rabbi adopted is simply absurd. This absurdity might indicate that his experience is influenced less by concrete reality and more by his already existing perception of victimhood. And this brings me to shame.
The blinding victimhood embodied in the rabbi's comments is shameful because it points at an abject moral, spiritual and leadership failure. In the very same Jerusalem and on the very same days, young religious Jews have burnt alive an innocent Palestinian teenager, in the name of national revenge. In this very city, racist Jewish hooligans are marching every night, seeking Arab scapegoats, cracking down on other Jews who dare answer back to them, shouting slogans such as "death to the Arabs" and "A Jew has a Soul, and Arab is a son of a whore".
Where is the cry of this anonymous rabbi against these far more worrisome threats to our existence and future? How dare American rabbis who keep silent these days continue and call themselves religious shepherds? As an observant Jew, I am ashamed at how few were the courageous voices who took into heart the words of Rabbi A. J. Heschel who marched at Selma with Martin Luther King Jr.: "Few might be guilty - but all are responsible".
The rabbi's anonymity, it turns out, is but a metaphor for his inacceptable silence on the real enemies of the Jewish society in Israel - the extremist hateful enemies from within.
No, rabbi, you got it wrong. The rockets are not really scary nor are they a true existential threat. Racism, radicalism, and religious intoxication from brute power has become an imminent danger to our old and beloved peoplehood. When people are accustomed to hearing that they are perpetual innocent victims of Palestinian aggression, they eventually translate they frustration into rage and start seeking justice in revenge. If you continue looking up to the sky, you will not notice that the house is already burning from within.