Rabbi Michael M. Cohen: Letter from the Holy Land, May 2024
Rabbi Michael M Cohen
Many of you know I have dedicated my work trying to create conditions so a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can emerge. The main anchor has been the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, with which I have been involved since its doors opened. The Institute is an environmental academic and research institution, dedicated to preparing future leaders from Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and around the world to cooperatively solve the regional and global challenges of our time.
SInce 1996, Alison and I have divided our time between our home in Manchester Center and the Institute's Kibbutz Ketura campus. We arrived back at the Institute on September 7th. A month later the brutal, violent, and horrific attacks took place in the Israeli border communities with Gaza (women were mutilated and raped to death, individuals were burned alive). Since then we have lived in the reality of a horrible war for the peoples of Gaza and Israel.
Of the many casualties of this war, the perception that Palestinians and Israelis are destined to remain caught in an intractable conflict is one of the most tragic. There are others, like myself, who say we need to make this the last Israeli-Palestinian War. What goes missing in the headlines are initiatives that bring Palestinains and Israelis together, such as the 150-plus organizations of the Alliance for Middle East Peace.
Even during these difficult months, the Arava Institute continues to engage in research with Palestinian and Jordanian partners, and we continue to receive inquiries for new projects. This week our students are holding an event of solidarity to benefit the families of Orjwan and Hersh. Orjwan, a 29-year-old Palestinian, is a journalist and the founder of "the Palestinian Children's Fund." Since the beginning of the war, she has been trying to navigate the nightmare of fleeing Gaza to Egypt with her entire family. Hersh has been held hostage in Gaza since October 7th, kidnapped from the Nova festival. His family has been tirelessly working to bring him, and the rest of the hostages, home. I have also worked repeatedly toward getting our Palestinian alumni and families out of Gaza. (Why does Egypt charge Gazans between $5,000 and $10,000 to leave Gaza? Most Gazans before the war made less than $7,000 a year.) I would like to write only about examples of cooperation, and I will return to them, but first I want to address other realities.
Since October 7th, we have looked up in the sky to see missiles from the south sent by the Houthis, missiles from the west sent by Hamas, and missiles from the east sent by Iran. My family and I are targets – not military targets, but targets solely because we exist. Often we have been protected by U.S. military aid to Israel. Our first grandson spent the first two days of his life being moved into the hallways of the hospital in Beersheva where he was born for protection from missiles sent from Gaza. My heart goes out to the people of Gaza who have endured the receiving end of Israel’s military might. Could Israel do better when it comes to reducing civilian deaths and casualties? Yes; that is a truism in all wars.
Another casualty of this war is the watering down of words. Genocide is about intent: the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group. There is room to criticize Israel over what is happening in Gaza, but it is not genocide; a nation whose goal is genocide does not, as Israel often does, warn the citizens of Gaza to move out of harm’s way. By the same token, and a direct reason also for Palestinian deaths in Gaza: the stark reality that Hamas turned civilian locations, apartment buildings, hospitals, mosques, schools, and U.N. buildings into military operational bases — a crime against its own population! Where is the world outcry against that? Or all the materials they have smuggled for years into Gaza have been used to build their hundreds of miles of tunnels for their soldiers to hide in and from which to attack Israelis; nothing of that was designed to protect their own citizens. Criticism of Israel is called for, but that criticism is extremely one-sided against the Jewish state when compared to other injustices of the world — the Chinese oppression of its Muslim population, for example, or its brutal occupation of Tibet since 1950. As some will say, our tax dollars fund Israel so we speak up; that is fine, yet much of what we buy is from China, and so we fund that dictatorship directly from our wallets including its oppression of Muslims.
Echoes of Russia occupying and invading Ukraine: Hezbollah has basically "occupied" northern Israel for months, with 60,000 Israelis evacuated from their homes and nothing in the immediate future to give them hope for a safe return. Hezbollah (read: Iran again), has achieved this not by sending a soldier across the border but by sending missiles, drones. This is the latest and most acute violation by Hezbollah of UN Security Council Resolution 1559, passed in 2004. This would be the equivalent of 2,000,000 U.S. citizens being displaced by hostile forces. How long would the United States hold back?
Through the microscope of Me Too, Black Lives Matter, and other important movements to address long overdue changes, it is very easy to reduce how things are perceived by oppressor and oppressed, exploited and exploiter, etc. Such an oversimplification when it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict does not move us closer to resolution. In the asymmetry of this conflict, both sides have agency that they both — Israelis and Palestinians — need to be called out on; the weaker party — in this case, the Palestinians — too often get a free pass. The court of public opinion minimizes the impact of the conditions Hamas was allowed to create in Gaza, and the ongoing corruption of the P.A. in the West Bank; that silence does not serve either the Palestinians or the Israelis well. I am not at all inferring that Israel has less to answer for — they do. But when this conflict becomes a political sporting match, where people choose sides, both sides lose.
One of the stumbling blocks preventing an agreement between Palestinians and Israelis is in the pro-Palestinian and the pro-Israeli orientations of too many Israelis and Palestinians and their supporters overseas, including in the United States. That bearing creates a closed-minded tendency about self-reflection and self-criticism. We need to do better.
One way to do better is to strengthen and embolden those individuals and organizations that model not the hopeless status quo but a different and better reality and future for Israelis and Palestinans. Such voices need all the help we can give them to overcome the hate, mistrust, and violence perpetrated by the asymmetry of the sensational. For example: Out of the pain of these past months, Israeli and Palestinian alumni of the Arava Institute founded Voices of Solidarity - a Whatsapp group "Voices of Solidarity" to share messages promoting peace and solidarity during the ongoing war. The goal of the group is to "work together to change the current violent and segregated discourse around us, to one of protection of innocent civilians, dialogue, and amplify the voices of those who want to live together, know how to live together, and are learning to live together". Within such initiatives lies a future Palestinians and Israelis deserve.
Rabbi Michael M. Cohen is the Rabbi Emeritus of the Israel Congregation.
