Defending the Jewish State

gaza-troopsIn December 2008, a day before Operation Cast Lead began, I walked through rocket-besieged Sderot, dispensing candies and cards courtesy of my sister’s class in New Jersey. A month later I returned to New York as an NYU undergrad. Then the long war began. In the coming months, my fellow pro-Israel students and I faced protests, one-sided panels, movie screenings and other events designed to ostracize Israel. As co-president of the Israel club at the NYU Hillel, I tried unsuccessfully to engage our critics. I attended meetings held by the Students for Justice in Palestine, joined Facebook groups, and attended anti-Israel events. My repeated overtures to pro-Palestinian groups on campus fell on deaf ears.

Six years later, Israel is again at war, as am I. By day I work in the Medical Corps, assisting in providing medical care to Israeli soldiers, Palestinian children, Syrian refugees, Bedouin mothers, and Ethiopian and Russian immigrants—the oath of the Medical Corps a militarized version of the Hippocratic Oath. At night I again fight the long war, an uphill battle to protect Israel’s name. I talk to the dwindling group of moderates invested in this conflict interested in hearing different perspectives and sharing their own.

My activities over the last month sharpened a long-forgotten observation from campus advocacy days, an insight into the failure of intergroup dialogue. Pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian advocates fail to communicate, because the two groups do not speak the same language.

Much like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself, dialogue between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian advocates often fails because the two groups seek to yell at, rather than talk to, each other. However, even when we do listen to one another, there is a gulf which is more conceptual than linguistic. Israel advocates speak of Peace; Palestinian advocates of Justice.

It’s no coincidence that the Palestinian student advocacy network is called “Students for Justice in Palestine”; their activities are steeped in this rhetoric. Israel advocates, on the other hand, speak in the language of peace. At rallies in Washington Square Park we chanted for “Peace in the Middle East,” a simple, yet elusive, goal. Our message was, is: “stop the rockets, stop the terror, let us all live in peace.” Their message was, remains: “There can be no peace until justice is established.”

There are many pro-Palestinian advocates who believe this message. Justice is a fundamental value in Judaism and Islam, as in many societies. However, the goal is an illusion, the rhetoric misleading, the agenda damaging to Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Every conflict has injustice. A conflict of over six decades offers infinite injustice. Land taken, war started, ceasefire broken, children murdered. There’s endless blame to go around, and it gets worse the farther back one goes. We needn’t give up on justice altogether. But as with any intractable conflict, a hyper-focus on something so eminently subjective and unachievable as “justice” merely highlights reasons to fight. It burns bridges rather than builds them; it tells us that we can never live together until we settle the fight that my grandfather fought with your great-aunt. There will always be many, if not infinite, narratives. Perhaps too, forgiveness and some semblance of justice may occur once we learn to live in peace. But surely we should address our children’s future before we settle our parents’ grievances? Surely peace trumps justice, for both sides?

As an Israeli, I don’t believe that we fight a war with the Palestinians, or that Hamas’s attacks are those of a nation. They are those of a fringe extremist group that has chosen violent resistance, despite the damage that it brings. I do worry though, about the growing number abroad who can’t condemn Hamas, who openly support it, or who tacitly do so, by speaking the language of injustice, rather than of peace. Israelis and Palestinians share an interest in an end, not merely a suspension, of armed hostilities. Our supporters abroad, if genuine, should also share this interest.

I believe the time is long overdue for pro-Palestinian advocacy to change their language, to forget “justice” and embrace peace. Peace, requiring work on both sides, may bring some semblance of justice. Seeking justice will bring neither justice, nor peace. For most of us living here, the answer is obvious. Too many children have lost parents, or parents their children. Most Israelis and Palestinians seek to live in peace, despite political differences. I hope that advocates abroad, rather than demanding vague notions of justice, can help us to build bridges and to promote peace.

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  • Vinegar Hill

    An honest and passionate plea for an end to the brutal conflict between Israel nad the Palestinian people. I think, however, I would reverse the proposal and argue for “justice” first and then you will have “peace”. Justice is a principle of moral rightness and, once the agrieved side sees justice being fulfilled, then you have eliminated the reason for their conflict.

    • Damaris Tighe

      I was about to write a separate post but having seen yours what I want to say seems to follow nicely from your comment.

      ‘Justice’ or ‘peace’ is not the whole story. I think you’ll find that by justice what Palestinians & their supporters really want is the end of the state of Israel. Very few of the hundreds of pro-Palestinian posts I saw & engaged with during the last Gaza war wanted a two-state solution. For them the very establishment of the State of Israel constituted the injustice.

      If the ‘justice’ camp can’t recognise the justice of the existence of Israel, then peace is going nowhere.

      • StanleyT

        I posted my response before reading yours. Yours is brilliant, thank you! Wish I could give you more than 1 thumbs up.

    • Michael Garfinkel

      Maybe in the La La land you inhabit, but here on Planet Earth, Islamists seek a brutal supremacy without the slightest regard for “justice.”

    • StanleyT

      You have completely misunderstood the article. He explains clearly why peace must come first. Those who seek “justice” are seeking THEIR version of justice, which is most decidedly not just to the other side. But make peace and then we can talk and achieve a compromise. But in seeking your version of justice first, there can be no compromise, which is exactly what we’ve seen since the early 1900s.

      • http://www.stubbornthings.org NAHALKIDES

        You can’t have peace while one side (the Arab Muslims) doesn’t want it. The only peace they’re interested in is that which follows the destruction of Israel. They will have to be beaten so thoroughly that all their hopes of conquest are destroyed for a generation or more. Then maybe they will accept peace.

  • SCREW SOCIALISM

    Why isn’t there a group calling itself “Muslim Voice for Peace”?

  • c0mm0ncenz

    Your statements are valid to a point. is there any concept of peace to Muslims, Arabs, jihadists or “Palestinians”? How many Arab or Muslim, or Muslim Arab, nations are peaceful? Sunnis fight with shiites, shiites fight with Salafists, Muslims fight with Kurds and everyone else. Within any Muslim nation there is rule by brute force. Is that peaceful? Islam is not a peaceful culture. Gazans don’t seem to want peace, if their polled choices for Hamas were honest. If they were totally honest they would realize they would have the most peace under Israeli rule.

  • 1Indioviejo1

    Aiello, you make too much sense. Don’t bend over backwards to achieve “peace”.

  • http://www.stubbornthings.org NAHALKIDES

    Aiello is unbelievably naive for someone who has actually been to the Middle East. He should have learned that the Arab Muslims desire neither peace nor justice, which is not as hard to define as Aiello thinks it is, but the total destruction of Israel. The anti-Semitic teachings of Islam are part of the motive, as is the conviction that any lands once in Muslim hands must remain that way forever, and of course the broad doctrine of Islamic supremacism. This is not some radical fringe movement, as Aiello states, but the mainstream of Islam – those who would rather wage war against Israel rather than make peace are in firm control of the Arab side, and are probably an absolute majority. He should look at some of the polls – they’re very revealing.

    • kasandra

      Support for Hamas in the PA is actually higher than it is in Gaza and in both cases the overwhelming majorities support Hamas. So I question whether Palestinians want peace unless that peace entails the disappearance of Israel as a Jewish state.

    • Raymond_in_DC

      I’d take it one step further. Aiello assumes his understanding of “justice” is the same one held by the Palestinians, only that each has (moral equivalence warning) their own claims against the other. But the Islamic sense of justice is very different from our own, and in this case is complicated by the honor-shame culture of the Arabs.

      But it’s not only justice that has a different meaning for them. So too do concepts like “freedom” and “peace”. As you suggest, someone like Aiello should be aware of this. My suggestion is that he set the “We want peace” mantras aside, as twenty years of experience show them worthless, and insist instead that “We Jews and Israelis have historic and legal claims too, and we’re prepared to defend them.”

  • Bert

    Expecting Arabs to change is futile and counter productive. Israel also pursues a policy that is naive, unrealistic and ultimately suicidal. Israel in 1948 tried the peace offering and keeps repeating it even while Arabs keep killing Israelis. Note that Israeli leaders are essentially secular and believe they know better than the bible how to survive. And while the casualties keep piling up they prove that they do NOT know better that the bible. There is a saying: “When all else fails, READ THE INSTRUCTIONS!!”

  • lumiss

    Here’s why you are wrong-

    Poll: 89 Percent of Palestinians Support Terror Attacks on Israel
    http://freebeacon.com/national-security/poll-89-percent-of-palestinians-support-terror-attacks-on-israel/