Dvar Torah on Parshat

With the fighting still going on between Israel and Hamas, I want to share with you an interesting parallel between an argument taking place right now between left and right wing commentators and a verse from parshat Matot, as it is understood by an older commentator, Rashi. We'll work our way backwards, and start by looking at this video from Dennis Prager. I certainly don't agree with everything he usually says, and there are a few weak points in his argument (mostly that it does what it claims to do a little too well, and oversimplifies), but much of what he says here is, I think, true, and important. Here's the video: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EDW88CBo-8

Pretty compelling, no? I think he is basically right. The Arab/Muslim world has always been very oppressive and chauvinistic, unwilling to allow any non-Muslim presence in the territory it conquered, unless it was within the traditional framework of the Dhimmi (second class citizen status) that they granted to "infidels." A sovereign  Jewish state in what they consider Islamic, Arab land is, and has always been unacceptable to them, and they seem to often deal with that which is unacceptable to them with violence. The horrible brainwashing that Palestinian children are subjected to, in which Jews and Israelis are demonized and dehumanised, is an expression of this. There is a constant barrage of hatred coming from the Palestinians and their supporters,  a hatred that seems to render many of them unable to see the truth about the past - the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel - and the present- the horrible damage they are doing to themselves by continuing to violently deny us our basic rights here.

However, in a blog in Haaretz, Mira Sucharov takes exception to Prager's main point. Here it is:

What is really fueling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

'The Most Important Video About Israel Ever Made' got it all wrong: It's too easy to blame the Mideast's problems on blind hatred and genocidal tendencies

With the murder of the four teens, followed by Hamas rockets and Israeli missile strikes, regional players and interested parties outside Israel and Palestine are understandably looking to make sense of the tragic mess, both in its short-term and long-term variants. And in the age of social media, sound bites rule. One 5-minute video that has been circulating on Facebook purports to explain the overall Arab-Israeli conflict simply and concretely. Those who’ve posted it praise its concrete and “unemotional” tone. It is indeed simple and unsensational. The problem is, the explanation put forth is anything but supported by the evidence.

Called The Middle East Problem (and tagged by the Israel Video Network as “The Most Important Video About Israel Ever Made,”), the video has Dennis Prager asserting that the Middle East Conflict is the “easiest in the world to explain.” His explanation? “One side wants the other side dead.” Israel wants to live in peace, he continues, and even recognizes the right of the Palestinians to a state. (Ignore pesky detail revealing Bibi’s recent revelation that he has no intention of allowing this to happen.) But “most Palestinians, and many other Muslims and Arabs,” Prager stresses, “do not recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist.”

The assumption that “they want us dead” (also known as the “they hate us” theory) is a key cause of what Israeli psychologists have described as a siege mentality characterizing Israeli society. Suggesting that “they hate us” also serves to trivialize the actual concerns and claims of the other side. Claiming that “they” do not recognize the right of Israel to exist ignores the mutual letters of recognition exchanged between Israel and the PLO in 1993. Most importantly, such “they hate us” statements are important motivators for keeping powerful actors stuck to the status quo.

But let’s hypothesize for a moment that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is due to Palestinian hatred. How might we test this hypothesis? Right now the best data we have is polling, and the closest polling question I have seen in the last year or so is one that asked about mutual attitudes. What emerged is something quite different from mutual hatred and genocidal tendencies. Instead, what is really going on is a story of mutual fear, but especially on the part of Palestinians towards Israel.

Consider this: From a December 2013 survey conducted jointly by the Truman Institute at the Hebrew University and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, most Palestinians (60%) believe that Israel’s goals are to conquer all of the land between the river of the sea and expel the Arabs. An additional 24% believe Israel wants to annex the West Bank without granting the Palestinians political rights. A minority on each side (37% of Israelis, and only 15% of Palestinians) considers the other’s territorial aims to be limited in scope.

It is easy to say that the other’s acts of protest — sometimes violent, other times in the form of boycott and divestment or general civil disobedience — stem from hatred. It is much harder to sit and listen to the fears of the other and to examine one’s own actions to see how they shape those perceptions.

In sum, when watching videos that may be “unemotional” in tone, but are certainly inflammatory in content, we need to think more soberly about what is hatred, and what might actually, instead, be fear. And we all know from everyday life that the solution to fear is not heel-digging and head-in-the-sand burying, but rather confidence-building and reassurance — in the form of meaningful negotiation leading to a dignified solution for all.

Sucharov's last point is interesting: it is not hate, but fear, which motivates and drives the Palestinians in their resistance to, and actions against, Israel. I find her evidence, essentially just one recent poll, unconvincing. The Palestinians may well hate us, as Prager says, and yet also claim, when asked by a pollster, to fear us, if only to play the victim card, something they do consistently, and with great success. Even if the claim that they fear us is genuine, and not a propaganda ploy, that doesn't mean they don't hate us as well. The two emotions often go together, in ways that are hard to distinguish or pull apart. 

It is interesting, however,  that Sucharov thinks that this distinction is important. She basically admits that Prager is right: if they really just hated us, that would be very difficult to get around. But fear? That's different. If that's what's motivating them, if that's what they feel towards us, rather than hate, then there's hope for reconciliation, and we should work towards it. 

That brings us to this week's parsha. God instructs Moshe to "take revenge from the Midianites" as a final act before he dies. Moshe complies, and tells the Israelites to mount a campaign against them. 12,000 men are sent, they kill the Midianite leadership, and, encouraged by Moshe, they kill all the males and adult females. They also take spoils, and minor female captives. Pretty bloodcurdling, actually, and famously problematic. One could try to use this massacre as an argument for a more militant position in the ongoing right wing/left wing debate going on here about how far we should go in Gaza, but we won't go there right now.

Rashi is bothered about why this revenge is taken on only one of the two nations which have been attacking Israel in the last few Torah portions, the Midianites, and not on their partners in crime, the Moabites, who also tried to curse Israel, and sent their women to seduce them to worship idols. In fact, as the Torah tells it, back in Balak, it was the Moabite king who initiated the call to the prophet Bil'am to curse the Jews, and the Midianites who then jumped on the bandwagon. Why, then, are the Midianites punished so severely, and not the Moabites?

Rashi gives an interesting answer: the Moabites were really, legitimately, afraid of Israel. They feared that we would conquer them, and take their lands and posessions. That emotion, and acting on that emotion,  is understandable, and forgiveable. The Midianites, on the other hand, did, in fact, just jump on the bandwagon, and got into a fight which was none of their business. The Jews were not in any way threatening them or their land, and they therefore had no legitimate reason to want to attack or harm them. And so the Moabites, who acted against Israel out of a legitimate sense of self-defense, are spared, while the Midianites, motivated by an unjustified enmity, are punished.

This is a truly wonderful, foward-looking, liberal approach. Nations have the right to defend themselves, to fight back when threatened. This is what Moab did, and they are not to be punished for it. On the other hand, nations do not have a right to join in a fight, instigate a battle, for other motives, such as greed, the desire to conquer, or just plain dislike of and lack of respect for other nations. That is what Midian did, and that is why they are punished.  

Now, when applied to our situation here in Israel, this suggests a number of things. The fury with which the world responds to Israel's defending itself from the Hamas missiles is diametrically opposed to the lesson of the Moabites: we Israelis have a right to be afraid of real rockets aimed and fired at our cities, homes, schools, and synagogues, just as the Moabites had a right to fear the Israelites. The attempt to rob us of our right to self-defense with claims of disproportionality are immoral. Furthermore, it is hard to see how fear is motivating Hamas: as Prager points out, is there any doubt that a peaceful Gaza would be under no threat whatsoever from Israel? The only thing they have to fear is our response to their attacks! 

The same is true about the Israeli-Arab conflict in general. Back in the early 20th century, Jews did not forcibly take one inch of land from anyone; they purchased it. There was no Jewish army or militia for the local Arabs to fear, at least not until we put one together to defend ourselves against Arab attacks. It was hatred, hatred of the very presence of Jews in what the Arab population saw as their land, that drove them to attack us then, and it seems to be the same hatred that motivates them now.

However, I think that the fact that the Moabites are exempted from our revenge because they were acting in what they thought was self-defense, places upon us a burden to more deeply understand what motivates our enemies. Maybe the hatred, as real and despicable as it is,  has its roots in fear. Maybe the Arabs living in Israel have been acting out of a mixture of fear - about their future, their position, their lifestyle - as well as hatred for the Jewish "other". We need, as time goes on, to continually determine if the Palestinians and their supporters are simply acting out of hate - which, like Prager, I believe has, to a degree,  been the case - or fear (or perhaps something else, some other legitimate concern), which would demand of us a different, more nuanced response. So, although Prager is mostly right in his assessment of past and current Arab motivation for their ongoing war against Israel, Sucharov is also right: not every enemy is the same, and motivations may be complex. Some are motivated by legitimate self-preservation, or other real fears, and that must be paid attention to. Although I do not think that this is the case in the current  round of fighting, we need to remember, hopefully for the near future, that even our enemies have the right to self-defense, to their own very real and legitimate concerns, and may be motivated by them. We must take that into account in our dealings with them, try to dig deeper and more fully understand their motivation - as the parsha does with our enemies - and not mix up Moabites and Midianites.  

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix