Jerusalem Post op ed - The Hamas Victory

This article of mine based on our work at Reut was published in the Jerusalem Post (14/6). Hopefully my blog readers will think more of it than the Talkback writers did :) (its amazing how subtetly goes out the window when talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict)

Despite Israel’s natural inclination to view Hamas’ military victory over Fatah forces in Gaza with despair, the movement's complete control over Gaza may not be as bad as we fear. In fact, its consequences may offer the best opportunity in years to break the political stalemate by assisting in the creation of an effective address in the West Bank with which Israel can promote a political process.

The biggest obstacle to any progress between Israel and the Palestinians since 2000 has been the absence of either a partner or an ‘address’ on the Palestinian side. The reform of the Palestinian Basic Law in the context of the Roadmap was supposed to alleviate this by creating the role of Prime Minister to bypass Arafat. Yet the reform became an even greater constitutional millstone round the Palestinian political system’s neck after Arafat’s death and Hamas’ victory in the elections. This led to constitutional dysfunction due to the overlap of powers and authorities between the position of Chairman, controlled by Fatah, and the government, controlled by Hamas.

With no legal way out of this crisis until new Palestinian elections in 2010, Israel was forced to bide its time hoping that its boycott policy would somehow change Hamas’ spots. As international support slowly eroded, and a humanitarian disaster in the PA looked on the cards, Israel’s choices were beginning to grow thin.

Yet Hamas’ disregard for the PA’s constitution by carrying out a military coup can work in Israel's favor. With a clear Fatah majority in the PLO, Abu Mazen could theoretically use the fighting as an opportunity to break the constitutional Gordian knot tying Palestinian hands by annulling the Basic Law and centralizing power and authority in the West Bank under his leadership. This new scenario would in effect create two separate political-territorial units alongside Israel – a Gaza Hamastan and a West Bank Fatah-land.

Instead of Israel being faced with no Palestinian address, it would suddenly be able to deal with two.

While no one celebrates the official presence of a Hamastan a few miles from Sderot, the new situation provides opportunities. The de-facto division between Gaza and the West Bank would allow Israel to maintain its boycott of Hamas in Gaza while utilizing the situation in the West Bank under the leadership of a potential partner. In this context, Israel should consider strengthening Abu Mazen through transferring funds, renewing the free movement of trade and lifting all constraints on cooperation with Fatah members.

For its part, Hamas may find that its victory over Fatah is only the beginning, not the end of its problems. It will need to deal with a hostile international community, tension with Egypt, internal ideological divisions and provision of services to Gaza’s civilian population. Similar to King Pyrrhus of Epirus' men whose victory over the Romans was so costly that they were subsequently defeated the next time around, Hamas may find that though it won the battle, it will ultimately lose the war.

We shouldn’t think the way ahead is easy or we’re on the verge of a Switzerland style utopian peace. Hamas isn’t disappearing any time soon, Fatah hasn’t suddenly turned into card carrying Zionists and Israeli society’s ability for large scale territorial compromise is yet to be fully tested.

But if we want to maintain Israel as a Jewish democratic State and prevent the inevitable slide towards anarchy and increased international isolation continued occupation would lead to, we need to find a Palestinian address to coordinate the establishment of a two state solution.

Recent events in Gaza may provide our best opportunity for some time to come.

12 Spies and a Man from Laos

In the summer of 2001, Ilan and I were preparing for Shabbat in a beautiful town in northern Laos called Vang Vieng. Cooking frantically in our little pot late Friday afternoon, and trying to explain to the hotel manager how we don’t turn on lights, cook, use money etc because it’s a special religious day (anyone whose ever done this can imagine the scene) I was shocked when he responded; AHHH, YOM SHABBAT.

Astonished, I looked at him, and he repeated, YOM SHABBAT. As it turns out, he, along with many other people from the developing world came to Israel in the 60's and 70's on scholarships to the Weitzman Institute to study agricultural techniques. 30 years later, he still looked back fondly on his time in Rehovot.

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This week we read about the 12 spies, sent to check out the land, 10 of whom brought back a bad report causing a 40 year exile in the desert. The Torah reports they returned saying;

'We came to the land you sent us to, and it certainly is a land flowing with milk and honey...

But the people that dwell there are fierce, and the cities are fortified, and very great… And Calev stilled the people and said: 'We should go up at once, and possess it; for we can surely do it.' But the men that went up with him responded: 'We are not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than us…The land through which we passed is a land that eats up its inhabitants; and all the people that we saw there are men of great stature.’

To mark the Torah portion, Nefesh BeNefesh asked Olim to write 12 things they most love about being in Israel. The request has been going round the blogosphere and has led to some great answers here, here, here and my favorite one here.

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I was also tagged to comment, but realized that most of my answers had already been written. There are so many things I love about this place – Hatikva with 40,000 fans in Ramat Gan, Shabbat Shalom wishes in the supermarket, not being the geek with his harmolis meal when going out with work, a day off by the beach instead of at Brent Cross or Primark… the fact that THIS is where Jewish history is being played out.

But there's something that makes me prouder than all of those things – and that’s meeting a Lao hotel manager from a small village who loves Israel and the Jewish people due to an experience he had 30 years ago. That Israel gave the chance to others less fortunate to improve their life and education, and bring that expertise back to their own countries. There must be tens of thousands of people all over the world who have benefited from Israeli kindness, something Israel bashers don’t even have the faintest idea about.

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Yet that’s only one side to this country. Strange as it may seem, the 10 spies didn’t lie about the land. As they said, it is a land of milk and honey. Yet it’s also a land that 'Ochelet Yoshveha' that eats up its inhabitants. It’s a land of wonder, but also one that desensitizes us to suffering of others, of what David Grossman describes as shrinking the “surface area” of the soul. It’s a land where a stranger will drive out of their way to help you, yet another might drive out of their way to cut you up; a land that can invite Lao farmers to study but whose religious leaders can refuse asylum to Sudanese Refugees because 'we have enough problems of our own'.

As the 10 conclude, the people that dwell in this region are tough, and living won’t be easy.

But the other two spies were also right. Despite this we should go up, we should move here; it may be difficult, it may sometimes be painful; but with a little faith, and a little courage we will ultimately be able to overcome everything.

Shabbat Shalom

The 6 Day War - 40 years on...

Last week, I was asked by a journalist from Al Jazeera to write some thoughts on the 6 Day War and the future from an Israeli perspective....

For those who view Israel as a regional military superpower with a healthy economy, it's difficult to imagine a time in June 1967 in which the citizens of a country 9 miles wide heard the threats of destruction from their neighbours, the deafening silence from the international community, and dug mass graves in local parks in preparation for a second Holocaust.

The 6 day war is in many ways the catalyst for this remarkable change of Israel's image, yet it raises dialectical feelings. On the one hand, it commemorates a great military victory, the fulfilment of our 2000 year old dream to pray at the Western wall and access the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site. Yet at the same it also marks our control over a large Palestinian population, an issue that has slowly undermined our moral and international legitimacy.


The war marked a new stage in Israel’s short history – making us more confident of our future in this region yet also forcing us to recognize the legitimacy of another people’s rights to this land, forcing us to compromise on our dreams. It liberated us from annihilation yet simultaneously left us as occupiers of another people. It saved us from existential danger yet now threatens the future of a Jewish democratic state.

Israel may have won the war in 6 days but we have waited for 40 years to win the peace.

Most Israelis understand and accept the need for a negotiated two state solution (including East Jerusalem). But they have fears – that territory we withdraw from will not form the base of a peaceful Palestinian state but of rocket attacks against our civilian population. We hear statements from our neighbours and fear that deep down, they still haven’t come to terms with the legitimacy of Jewish sovereign presence.

On one level, peace to me simply means the absence of personal fear – that my bus won't blow up, that my child's school won't be hit by a rocket or that one day a mushroom cloud won't appear above Tel Aviv (it may seem counterintuitive, but Israelis do have a deep seated fear of being annihilated). It means Palestinians being able to travel freely and not being obstructed by checkpoints or Israeli soldiers –in short, a 'negative' type of peace (to paraphrase Isaiah Berlin).

There was a time when I had hoped for much more - Israelis visiting Damascus for the weekend to shop or Saudis thronging to Tel Aviv to party. Yet 40 years on from those historic days in June, from the war that in many ways still hasn’t ended, Israelis and Palestinians may not only have to accept something less than we all wanted, but even something less than we thought we could live with.

Yom Yerushalayim - A Heart of Many Rooms

(to hear a radio recording of IDF troops entering the Old City in 1967 click here )


Last year during Ulpan, we were taken on a guided tour of the Western Wall tunnels. Now I’m not the sort of person that gets excited by seeing the closest point to the Holy of Holies but I was still amazed; after all what we believed was the Temple’s Western wall was actually only 10% of it…and now we've discovered the rest! But at the same time I felt uneasy, after all, the opening of the tunnels in 1996 had resulted in bloodshed and riots. We may have been enjoying a spiritual journey in ancient Jerusalem, but there was a political and security price to pay for it.


It is that mixture of simultaneous amazement and uneasiness that pervades me on Yom Yerushalayim. On the one hand is the joy at the liberation of the Old City, the shiver when I hear the words Har Habayit BeYadeinu, the Temple Mount is in our hands, the emotion of seeing paratroopers dancing by the wall, the memory of unadulterated joy by Israelis of all stripes over the miracle that took place 40 years ago, when our people went from digging mass graves to celebrating the liberation of our historical biblical homeland. In short, the amazement of 'seeing' God's hand in history.

But at the same time, its difficult to divorce all that from the political consequences of the war; The fact that for all the rhetoric to the contrary, no viable regional deal can be reached here without compromising on Jerusalem. Or how we talk about our eternal indivisible capital yet most Jerusalemites would never want to even set foot in the Shuafat Refugee Camp (many are too scared to even walk through the Muslim quarter of the Old City).

It’s a day that through no fault of its own somehow turned from being national to nationalist, from being about our ability to pray at the Western wall to banging on Arabs’ doors in the old city.

I haven’t resolved this yet, but it reminds me of my favourite Tosefta text (it didn’t have much competition) that Rabbi David Hartman mentions in the introduction to one of his books.

The Tosefta explains that a person might ask, ‘Since the House of Shammai declare unclean and the House of Hillel clean, this one prohibits and that one permits, how then can I learn Torah?’ The Rabbis answer by advising someone to create ‘a heart of many rooms' into which they should bring the words of the House of Shammai and the words of the House of Hillel, the words of those who declare unclean and the words of those who declare clean.

Similarly today one may ask 'Since Yom Yerushalayim moved from thanking God for saving His people to convincing the police to allow Rabbis onto the Temple Mount how can I celebrate? Since the war marks our liberation yet another people’s occupation how can I take part?'

It’s not easy to hold the idea that our eternal indivisible capital jars with the political and demographic reality that many of our leaders refuse to see. But maybe we all need to build ourselves a heart of many rooms where we can hold all of these things, even if they contradict one another.

Chag Sameach (and don’t forget to say Hallel with a bracha).


and thanks to everyone who spent time voting for this blog in the JIB Blog Awards

Yom Hazikaron - Of Three or Four in a Room

3 months into my Hachshara, I told my parents I wanted to stay in Israel for another year and do the army. It wasn’t some sort of opening tactical gambit that would ultimately allow me to continue learning in yeshiva. It was a well thought out position from an ideological eighteen year old who felt that his shared commitment and obligation to Israel shouldn’t allow him to return to a life of parties and socializing in Leeds while his friends were hunkering down in the mud of South Lebanon, to be downing Tequilas as they were downing Hezbollah…

Partly due to my parents wishes (how can an only child give his mother a year of sleepless nights?) and partly to do with my own fears (If even my Israeli friends are telling me I am crazy, do I really need to be chasing danger?) I returned to England 9 months later. Most of the time I try not to think that August ’99 to Aug 2000 was the safest year to be in the IDF or how an extra year in Israel at that age would have changed me. I like to feel like I did some sort of service – that I was active on campus, taught youth about Zionism, worked for the Israeli Embassy, that I made my own sacrifices for things I believe are right.

But as all roads in life not taken, the shadow of the decision sometimes weighs on me.

As Yom Hazikaron approaches, I always feel a tinge of regret.

Its not that I mourn the fact that I don’t have someone close to mourn– in fact I’m thankful for it.

It’s not that I don’t find meaning in the ceremonies; I do.

Its not that I don’t have those to remember; Unfortunately I do.

It’s more that I feel that there’s something missing from my experience of living here – like most people are part of a club whose entrance may be prohibitive, but if you’re not in you don’t really belong.

Yehuda Amichai wrote that

‘Of three or four in a room,
there is always one who stands beside the window.
He must see the evil among thorns…
And how people who went out of their houses whole
are given back in the evening like small change.’

I don’t want to be the person who always stands beside the window and sees evil among thorns. Yet for one day a year, when Israelis unite to remember the fallen – like the kid from high school caught up in the café bombing or the inspirational madrich heroically killed saving others or the friend’s older brother killed from friendly fire or the neighbor’s first husband shot in the early hours of the Yom Kippur War – people who went out of their houses whole yet never returned, or saw the horrors of war and came back like small change…I remember too – but my memory is not that of someone in the inner circle.

And what does one do when the country you have tied your destiny in with turns into one big room, and you find yourself looking in from the outside?

Yom Hashoah

Last Sunday evening, Israel marked Yom Hashoah, with a ceremony at Yad Vashem including poems, stories, songs and speeches. Yet outshining the Prime Minister, Acting President and Chief Rabbis was Holocaust survivor and former Shinui head Tommy Lapid, who questioned the mantra of 'never again' by chastising Iran, calling on the world to prevent genocide in Darfur and personally asking the PM to do more to help the thousands of survivors living in poverty in Israel.


One abiding memory I have of Yom Hashoah is that of walking to the coastal road between Netanya and Tel Aviv and watching the scenes as dozens of cars stopped for the siren. Despite Israeli drivers being one of the more negative (and dangerous) parts of our society, it was amazing to see how they left their vehicles and sombrely stood with heads bowed to show their respect for those 6 million who were murdered just for being Jews.

That recognition is a far cry from when survivors first arrived after the war. Seen as representing weak Diaspora Jews who walked like sheep to the slaughter, they were insulted, ignored and even called 'soap'. Until the Eichman trial in the 1961, survivors were viewed as remnants of a bygone age when Jews were powerless and held up as proof of the Zionist axiom that only in Israel could Jews find a safe haven.

However, to our disgrace, the mistreatment of survivors continues today. While Germany provides Shoah victims with free rent, medicine and a generous monthly stipend, Israel presides over 80,000 survivors who live under the poverty line. What has become of our Zionist dream when those that endured the worst crime of the 20th century fill out their days starving and forgotten in a country supposed to care for them? What has the State come to when elderly survivors live better and more comfortably in Berlin than Jerusalem?

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Yom Hashoah is always sandwiched between two festivals – Pesach, the time of our Freedom from Slavery and Yom Ha’atzmaut, the time of our Freedom from Exile. On Pesach we celebrate what Jewish philosopher Isaiah Berlin termed negative liberty - the absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints. Yom Ha’atzmaut meanwhile reflects our capacity for positive liberty – a platform that gives us the ability to take control of our lives, the idea that after two millennia Jews finally re-entered history to take responsibility for their future.

Yom Hashoah should remind us what happens when we don’t have freedom to determine our own affairs. Yet 60 years on, it would seem that neither the world nor the State of Israel has kept its promise to the survivors. As Africans are slaughtered in Sudan, messianic leaders plot in Teheran and thousands of survivors go to bed hungry in dilapidated Israeli flats, we should collectively be ashamed when we mark one of mankind's darkest hours.

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The Haftarah for 7th day Pesach describes a valley filled with lifeless bones as seen by the prophet Ezekiel. God explains that these bones are the whole house of Israel " who cry out that ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off." Yet hope is not lost, explains the Lord; "Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel."

There can be no excuses for the treatment of survivors. Yet one can't but be inspired by the journey of the Jewish people over the last 60 years, how the valley of bones became a country of freedom, hope and pride. How survivors sang Hatikva at Bergen Belsen. How they left the valley of death to rebuild an ancient homeland, ingathering refugees from over 70 countries, creating a legal system rivaling Western Europe and providing the freest Arab press in the Middle East.

So as Israeli motorists temporarily leave behind their desire to break the ‘how many cars can I overtake in a minute’ record, let’s hope that we can harness the strength of those who lost everything yet had the fortitude to rebuild from scratch. And let’s hope we can utilize both the negative and positive freedoms that history has presented us with, so that the phrase ‘never again’ will no longer ring hollow in the ears of so many people who deserve better.

Pesach Thoughts 5767: Slavery, Freedom and 21st Century Israel

I remember learning about how the Haggadah actually edits out any mention of the land of Israel in the Exodus story. Whereas the Torah explains that the specific reason for bringing the people out of slavery was to bring them into the land of milk and honey, the Haggadah makes no mention of this at all.

The editor probably did this to maintain 'Zman Cherutenu' as a meaningful festival – because if Pesach is about coming into Israel, then how can a 16th Century Polish Jew reading the story in the shadow of a potential pogrom truly celebrate our journey from slavery to liberation without being miserable? Marking our victory of the few against totalitarianism, inspiring; celebrating political independence, depressing.

Yet if the aim of the Exodus was coming to Israel, then why do we sing Dayenu, it would have been enough? If the sole reason was to come to the land, how can we say it would have been enough if we would have stayed in the desert? If we were brought out of Egypt to become an am Chofshi Beartzenu, how can it be enough if the sea wouldn’t have parted?

The answer, in my opinion, goes to the heart of what Zionism is. Because even if the ideal isn’t achieved we should still be prepared to give thanks for the steps along the way. We should still be grateful even if our life, our dreams, the State we want to build are incomplete. Just as the Rabbis of the Talmud were prepared to say Grace after Meals when they weren’t fully satiated, so the Yishuv were prepared to embrace a State even when its borders weren’t fully viable. At its core, Zionism is the ability to be grateful over incompleteness, the ability to give thanks, even when our dreams aren't fully fulfilled.

The Exodus story has always been reinterpreted to be meaningful and as individuals and as a nation, we need to think about things that enslave us (in my case, Avadim Hayinu Le’internet …) and how we can achieve our own personal liberation. In the 20th Century, Jewish Communists celebrated being liberated from Capitalism, Jewish feminists celebrated liberation from patriarchy and early Zionists marked being free from exile and anti Semitism. Even Martin Luther King used Yetziat Mitzrayim as a paradigm for the African American struggle for equal rights.

21st century Israelis meanwhile need to take a minute to think of those in our own society who remain 'enslaved', whether they be eastern European women sold as sex slaves in the Negev, Ghanaian or Chinese workers oppressed by unscrupulous bosses in Tel Aviv or homeless Gush Katif farmers seemingly forgotten by the government. The festival of freedom demands us not to close our eyes to our neighbour, even when they are a different colour, gender, religion or political persuasion to us. And as long as these injustices exist, our Israeli journey isn’t complete.

Yet this morning as I went to burn my pittot in our local park, saw the excitement on the faces of the children in my secular neighbourhood as they threw crumbs into the flames, saw the Chag Kasher VeSameach sign instead of ‘full’ and ‘spaces’ in the North Tel Aviv car park, it reminded me of how far we have come since the days of the fear of pogroms. Where else in the world can Jewish children experience Pesach in true freedom? And in what other generation would retelling a journey that begins in slavery and ends in independence in our own land not make the Haggadah depressing but liberating?

We haven’t reached the end of our own story of creating a truly egalitarian and equal society living in our Bibilical homeland in peace with our neighbours. But we’re on a journey, and I’m grateful enough to say Dayenu.

Chag Kasher VeSameach