Israeli Elections 101

     As many of you know, Israel will be having elections in a few months. In my Jewish History class yesterday I explained the differences between American and Israeli politics and outlined some of Israel's major parties. Israel, like many countries around the world, has a parliamentary system. Each voter chooses a party, rather than a candidate, and then the winner must form a coalition to govern. So, for example, if Netanyahu's Likud party wins and gets 40 out of the 120 seats in the Knesset (which would be a HUGE victory) he has to then find partners with at least 21 seats (totaling 61, more than half of the 120 seat Knesset) to form a coalition.
     In American politics there are two general sorts of issues: social issues (abortion, gay rights, etc.) and government/economic issues (how much taxes should the government collect and from whom and what sort of services should the government provide and to whom). In Israeli politics we rarely talk about issues like abortion, gay rights or the death penalty and it's only recently that we've begun talking seriously about economic issues, such as the high cost of living and the widening inequality. Instead, we talk about security/national issues (should there be a two state solution?) and religious issues (the education system, whether there should be buses on shabbat, etc.). In the US, with a two party system, both parties almost always address all of the major issues (e.g. most Democrats are pro-choice and think the government should provide or finance services like preschool and health care). In Israel, because of the political system, some parties focus on a narrow range of issues.
     There are two parties that have provided the vast majority of Prime Ministers (ie won elections): Avodah (Labor) and Likud. These two parties are the closest analogy to Republicans (Likud) and Democrats (Labor), though there are significant differences. As the two biggest parties they tend to have meaningful positions on all major issues, with Labor representing the Israeli left and Likud representing the Israeli right. It seems likely that they will be the two biggest parties after these elections as well.
     There are also a number of smaller parties that tend to have narrower focuses. הבית היהודי (HaBayit HaYehudi, the Jewish Home), led by Naftali Bennett, represents a group that is often referred to as National Religious. These are religious Jews (meaning they follow the mitzvot-the commandments) but live in the modern world (they have normal jobs, serve in the army, etc.). His party is very right wing on security/national issues (Bennett would like to annex 60% of the West Bank right now), right wing but somewhat reasonable on religious issues (they want Israel to be actively Jewish, but, as I mentioned, they also recognize the need to be a part of the modern world) and relatively centrist on economic issues.
     ישראל ביתינו (Yisrael Beiteinu, Israel Our Home) is led by Avigdor Lieberman, and is mostly supported by Russian immigrants, over a million of whom have made aliyah (moved to Israel and become citizens) in the last 20+ years. They are very right wing on security/national issues (suggesting, for example, a massive population transfer of Arab citizens of Israel), but very left wing on religious issues. The vast majority of the Russian immigrants are not religious Jews and many of them, like me, aren't officially Jewish because they don't have Jewish mothers (those of us who fit that definition get all of the normal rights of citizenship, but can't do certain things like get married). They have been a major party for the last several years (they formed an alliance with Likud prior to the previous elections), but are currently involved in a corruption scandal that could affect them in the upcoming elections.
     The ultra-orthodox have a number of parties, such as Shas (historically Sephardic or Mizrahi Jews) and United Torah Judaism (historically Ashkenazi). These parties are very right wing about religious matters (being allowed to have their own ultra-orthodox education system, allowing ultra-orthodox men to continue to study rather than join the army or get jobs, etc.) and don't really care much about anything else. Because of their narrow interests these parties have almost always been a part of the governing coalition, since a major party like Labor or Likud can get support for its wide variety of issues in exchange for allowing the ultra-orthodox a monopoly on religious matters. As you can imagine, this is very frustrating for a liberal Jew like me, who finds it problematic that these ultra-orthodox Jews don't serve in the army or get  jobs, use my tax money to support themselves and their institutions and tell me that I'm not Jewish and don't allow me to get married. Most non-religious Israelis (again, non-religious meaning that they don't follow the mitzvot), if asked to describe the ultra-orthodox, would be hard-pressed to do so without using a long string of curses.
     There is also a trend in Israeli politics that new parties arise every few years and try to capture the Israeli center. In today's political landscape there are two main parties that fit this description. The first, which came out of nowhere to win 19 seats (the second most) in the previous elections, is יש עתיד (Yesh Atid, there is a future), led by Yair Lapid. They tend to be relatively centrist (maybe a teeny bit to the right) about national/security issues (they're prepared to talk about a Palestinian state, but would emphasize security and maintaining the large Jewish settlement blocs), left wing about religious stuff (one of their main issues was encouraging the ultra-orthodox both legally and informally to join the army and the work force) and center/left about economic stuff. When I mentioned earlier that we've only recently begun to focus on economic issues in Israeli elections that is partially due to Yesh Atid, who made improving the economic situation of the middle class its principal issue, which is very unusual for Israeli politics (Here's their website). There's also a new party in these elections, כולנו (Kulanu, All of Us), led by Moshe Kahlon, who became famous for helping lower the outrageous cell phone costs in Israel, which has a similar platform. Their list of candidates includes Michael Oren, a well-known historian who recently was Israel's ambassador to the US.
     On the left wing of Israeli politics, which has been marginalized since the failure of the Oslo Accords and the violence that has been ongoing for the past 15 years, is Meretz. They support complete separation of church and state, "vehemently oppose the occupation" (according to their website) and support left-wing economic policies. There are also a number of Arab parties who may join together in the upcoming elections due to changes in the minimum number of votes required to be in the Knesset.
     It seems (at least right now) like the vote will be a close race between Likud and Labor. There are lots of Israelis who are sick of Netanyahu and are likely to vote for any party they think has a chance of beating him. On the other hand, Netanyahu has proven himself to be an extraordinary politician, so I wouldn't want to bet against him. Even if Labor gets the most votes, they're likely to have trouble forming a coalition, since it's unlikely (though not impossible) that they'd be able to form a coalition with the ultra-orthodox (Shas and UTJ), the National Religious (The Jewish Home) or the secular mostly Russian party (Yisrael Beiteinu). But, honestly, it's impossible to know.
     Which sort of issues do you think are the most important? How are Israeli and American politics different, and what does that say about Israel? Who would you vote for and why?

Liberal Jews' Problem with the Tanakh

     Shalom all! Our second day of Jewish History in Kitat Ez was great. It seems like the students are starting to get over their jet lag a bit. Many of them have created and started updating their blogs. Check 'em out from the list on the right. For the first part of class we did a general overview of issues affecting Israel. I think an important part of spending a semester here is learning about issues that Israel, as a Jewish state is dealing with. I gave a "brief" overview of our what's going on in the Golan (you can read about it in my earlier post "What the Heck is Going on up North")
     After spending yesterday trying to deal with the "Jewish" part of "Jewish History", today we started to deal with the "History" part. We talked about the difficulty (and probably impossibility) of "unbiased history." The obvious problem is that everyone has an agenda, and often only the winner's account survives An account of America's westward expansion would sound quite different from the perspective of an Iroquois. But even if that weren't true we'd still have to deal with the fact that we never get to see all the evidence. The materials that have made it to our generation (be it art, architecture, texts, oral traditions, pottery shards or anything else you can think of) are all we have to go on. So even if a certain type of pottery was quite rare, if it's what we've seen the most in archaeological ruins (perhaps because it survived best for some reason) we might reasonably conclude it was a prominent form of pottery.
     Having finally dealt with the name of the course (you can see why covering 4000 years in four months is so tough!), we had to decide where to begin. Even a much simpler question, such as "When does American history begin?" turns out to be quite complicated. Suggestions in class included Columbus's arrival, the Declaration of Independence and the Vikings brief visit years before Columbus. Instead of trying to give ourselves a firm start date we switched gears and tried to talk about which sources we might use to talk about the beginning of Jewish history. While there are a few external sources we'll refer to as often as possible (such as the Merneptah Stele, generally considered the earliest mention of "Israel" in external sources), the Tanakh is far and away the most detailed source for early Jewish history (and many aspects of Middle Eastern history in general).
     It's convenient for our purpose that the Tanakh tells us so much, but is it history? Some students had no problem using the Tanakh as history, despite some of the supernatural events (or divinely caused events, depending on your point of view). Others felt like it's a religious text, and as such can't be used for any modern conception of "history". Most students fell somewhere in the middle, accepting that it's an important historical source, while taking much of what's written with a grain of salt.
     To delve a little further into this question I had the students read the story of Noah (starts in Genesis 6 for those of you following along at home) in the Tanakh. Several of the students noted that the story seems to repeat itself, and it also has differing details in different sections. For example, is Noah supposed to bring two pair of animals or seven? There are hundreds of traditional explanations for these seeming discrepancies; perhaps the Tanakh is emphasizing certain points, or perhaps there should be two of some animals and seven of others. We then read the story divided in two (each verse is put in one version or the other, none of them are used twice) and I think some of the students were quite surprised to see that both versions end up being a pretty complete version of the story, something that certainly wouldn't happen with other books. The two versions also have different tones and somewhat different vocabulary. Given these facts the conclusion of most modern Westerners is that there are likely different authors, from different time periods and/or regions with one or more editor. This idea is known as the Documentary Hypothesis.
      For traditional Jews this is unequivocally blasphemy. And, as you can imagine, considering the amount of time traditional Jewish scholars spent studying the Tanakh, they noticed many of the issues I've mentioned (along with numerous other seeming inconsistencies, such as the fact that Moses, who received the Torah from Hashem, dies before the end of the Tanakh) and found solutions that don't involve multiple authors. For Reform Jews, the documentary hypothesis is both wonderful and extraordinarily problematic. On the one hand, we can use our modern analytical skills on our holy text. We don't have to feel like we left our critical thinking skills outside. On the other hand, if the Tanakh has multiple authors, isn't it just some book?
     Even though there's plenty of evidence pointing toward multiple authorship the case is hardly clear cut. In both Christianity and Islam Hashem's will is made known to the people through a central prophet/leader. In Judaism, by contrast, Hashem appears before all of Am Yisrael at Mt. Sinai (Genesis 19). If the Tanakh is merely a human creation, this story is problematic. At what point can you start telling the people that their parents or grandparents or great grandparents saw Hashem at Mt. Sinai? Wouldn't they wonder why their parents hadn't told them about it? Does this mean there's at least something divine about the Tanakh? Also, I feel confident we can all think of examples in which science was wrong (the world isn't flat, the sun doesn't revolve around the earth, atoms are not the smallest particles, nutrition is more than balancing carbohydrates, proteins and fats). So while the modern, rational, scientific perspective is an important and useful one for thinking about the world, it may not be the final word.
     After trying to think a bit about the origin of the Tanakh, I asked the students whether that really matters. Perhaps the mere fact that the brightest Jewish minds have been studying the Tanakh for thousands of years is enough? If so, would another book have served just as well? Also, there's other famous literature whose authorship is unclear. Homer may well have been compiled from many different sources. To this day there are arguments about who the real Shakespeare is. Their books have survived because they say something beautiful and/or true about the human condition. Is that enough to make a book holy? Does a central book need to be holy? Is it enough if it's divinely inspired but corrupted by inevitable human error? Does it matter?

The First Jewish History Class Spring 2015

     On Tuesday we had our first day of Jewish History class, and despite some lingering jet lag I thought it went great. Check out what a delightful group of students I have this semester!

My Spring 2015 Jewish History class, called Kitat Ez

The main question we asked today is a seemingly obvious one; "What is Jewish History?" The "history" part, which we'll examine a bit more in depth tomorrow can be thought of as "the events that  happened in the past". While hardly an in depth explanation, it's at least a meaningful approximation. The other part of the phrase, "Jewish," is significantly more complicated. To try and get a better understanding, or at least a usable definition we did some word association, in which the students shouted out anything that came to mind when they hear the word "Jewish". Here's what they came up with (click on the image to enlarge):

The things that come to mind when students hear the word "Jewish"

     As you can see their responses really reflect the broadness of Judaism (my own personal favorite is "guilt"). After this brainstorming the students tried to organize this mess by putting these thoughts into categories. As you can imagine, they came up with many interesting ways to categorize the terms. At the end of class I explained that one common way to think of traditional Jewish identity is through a triangle of three ideas: Am Yisrael (literally the people of Israel, meaning the culture and customs such as Jewish foods, languages, humor, etc.), Torat Yisrael (literally the five books of Moses, but here more generally including all of the religious aspects such as prayer and study) and Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel).
     Clearly virtually no aspect of Judaism fits neatly into one category. Pesach (Passover), for example, definitely has religious meaning, and we're celebrating an event (the exodus from Egypt) that's mentioned in the Tanakh (Jewish Bible), but many non-religious Jews still sit down for Seder. And while my mother's matzoh ball soup is certainly delicious enough that it may well qualify as a religious experience, I think it probably makes more sense to think of it as cultural (or Am Yisrael) rather than religious (Toraht Yisrael). Similarly, the blessings we say over the candles, wine and bread are religious, but the reason we bless those specific items is because olives (from which olive oil lamps were made), grapes (wine) and wheat (bread) were the main agricultural products of ancient Israel, so the blessings are related to Eretz Yisrael as well. And how about the family that says the blessings for traditional or familial reasons? Should this act then be viewed culturally, rather than religiously? This view of Jewish identity raises many questions. Do you think in modern day America Judaism has cultural aspects? Are they more or less important than the religious aspects? Do you think Jews living in Israel would feel differently?

What the Heck is Going on up North?

     For those of you who haven't heard several members of the Iranian military and the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah were killed in an airstrike in the Syrian Golan Heights recently. While Israel never officially acknowledges or denies military actions like this, it seems likely that we were the ones who struck. Before I address my central question--why would Israel do something like this--I'll give a bit of background.
     Prior to December of 2010 the world was full of Arab dictators ruling their docile populations. In some cases the various dictators were able to maintain there power by using massive oil revenues to essentially bribe their populations. (Another way to think about it: Governments have traditionally given the people more rights because they need the people's money; some Arab oil states don't need their people's money and therefore don't give them many rights). In other cases these dictators simply used violence to cow their states' population into submission. Often they used a combination of the two. When a man in Tunisia set himself on fire to protest the Tunisian dictator he set off a wave of protests, rallies and, eventually, revolutions, that has come to be called the Arab Spring.
     The problem with talking to Americans (like me) about revolutions is that when we hear the word "revolution" we think of the American Revolution, a period of violence that lasted much less than a decade and led directly to the creation of a stable, representative government that ensures the rights of minorities. Since the American Revolution there have been only a couple of outbreaks of violence in the US, and an almost continuous rule of law. This is extraordinarily unusual. The vast majority of rebellions lead to protracted periods of violence and chaos. Even rebellions that start with noble goals attract the sort of people who are drawn to violence and end up failing to create a stable, law-abiding state. This has been the case with the Arab Spring. While there have been some small successes in creating new, representative states, a much larger percentage of the Arab world has failed to do this and remains in upheaval, most violently in Syria.
     Syria has been ruled for the last 15 years by a dictator named Bashar el-Assad, who inherited the position from his father. He is a member of the Alawite religious community, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, ruling over a predominantly Sunni population (the two major groups in Islam are Sunni and Shia). In 2011, as part of the Arab Spring, there were protests against his government. The government cracked down violently, which helped turn the protests into a revolt. For a while it seemed like Assad was going to be defeated, but now it seems likely that he will remain in power, at least in part of the country. This shift is due to in no small part to the help of his two Shi'ite allies: Iran and Hezbollah.
     From 1982 to 2000 Israel occupied a strip of land in southern Lebanon (it's waaaay more complicated than that). Hezbollah arose as an organization whose goal was to force Israel out of Lebanon, which made them very popular both in Lebanon and in the Arab world as a whole. After Israel pulled out Hezbollah (and other, smaller groups) continued to attack Israel, sparking the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Since then it has been very quiet between Israel and Hezbollah. As Assad began to seem like he was losing control Hezbollah, together with Iran, began to send troops and material to his aid (which also has dampened Hezbollah's popularity). Currently, Syria and much of Iraq are a checkerboard of various armies and militias, some of the largest of which are the Assad government (together with his Shiite allies Hezbollah and Iran), the original rebels (who are mostly secular), ISIS (Sunni extremists who aim to re-establish a Caliphate) and the al-Nusra front (a group associated with al-Qaeda, who are Sunni extremists that broke ties with ISIS primarily because ISIS was too violent toward Muslim civilians).
     As you can imagine Israel has been keeping a close eye on this huge balagan (chaos, big mess). On the one hand, any time the Arabs (this is not a 100% accurate term to use, especially when talking about Iran, whose population is Persian, but I'm doing it for convenience) are killing each other, it means they have less drive and resources to try and kill us (I feel bad thinking like that, but it doesn't make it less true). On the other hand, if one of the organizations emerges from this violence in a position of strength it could be trouble for us. Or, equally worrying, if one side feels like it is losing it could well try to start violence with us simply to "reshuffle the deck". It is under these circumstances that Israel has launched several airstrikes in the last year or so.
     Up until now, as far as I can tell, it seems like Israeli strikes have been aimed at certain types of weapons that were being transferred to Hezbollah. It is critically important to us that Hezbollah (or other anti-Israel terrorist groups) not receive the most advanced weaponry, with which Iran (sometimes with help from other international actors such as Russia) is eager to provide them. In order to prevent this we have launched a number of airstrikes in Syria over the last several months. Last week we seemingly upped the ante by targeting a convoy that (apparently) held six members of Hezbollah and six members of the Iranian military, including important members of each.
     It's unclear why Israel did this. One possibility is that Iran was helping Hezbollah set up rocket launching stations in the Syrian Golan Heights in order to open another front with Israel in any future conflict. Another possibility is that they were involved in training special units for attacks into Israel. It's also possible we were simply trying to demonstrate the Hezbollah and/or Iranian forces in the Golan is a red line for us. There are also suggestions that perhaps we didn't have full intelligence and didn't know the Iranians were there (though I, as someone who generally believes in the efficacy of Israeli intelligence, find that harder to believe) As an Israeli, and someone who may well be involved in any future conflict, I certainly hope there was an important reason for the strikes, because there will definitely be some sort of retaliation.
     Iran and Hezbollah have acknowledged that members of their organization/state were killed in the Golan, have blamed Israel, and have promised retaliation. This threat, particularly from Iran, is scary. Iran is a country with about 80 million people (Israel has around eight) with oil and gas revenues in the hundreds of billions and a pretty clearly declared dislike for the Jewish state. So why did we do something that might piss them off? Assuming Israeli intelligence agencies are competent, which I do, there's basically two options. Either the threat was severe and/or imminent enough that we felt like we had to act, even with the likelihood of an Iranian/Hezbollah response, or we're assuming they're busy enough in the Syrian Civil War that they won't be able/willing to launch a meaningful retaliation against us, fearful that it'll drag them into a larger conflict with us and divert their resources. Either way, it's a gamble. Let's hope that it's one that turns out to be correct.

Update: in recent days there have been several rockets launched from Syria into Israel, causing no injuries or casualties. Israel responded with artillery fire.

Update 2: There was an attack against Israeli soldiers along the Lebanese border in which two soldiers were killed and several more injured. It seems like this was an attempt to kidnap soldiers. 

My (Very Late) Thoughts on Gaza this Summer

*Most of this blog was written several months ago*

     Perhaps it's a little bit late, but a number of people have asked my thoughts on the Gaza situation, and I'm finally ready to share. In case you don't know me, I've lived in Israel for six years and am a reserve soldier in the Israeli army (though I wasn't called up this time). I'm not unbiased (who is?). I also definitely do not have any inside information. Like many Israelis I've followed the news closely, but that's it. Before I share my own thoughts here's a bit of background on the conflict.
     In 2005 Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza strip, which we had controlled since 1967, uprooting thousands of Jews who had moved there. In 2007 there was an election in the Gaza Strip. The ruling Fatah party (currently led by Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinians living in the West bank) was defeated by Hamas in what, as far as I know, was a fair and free election. At the time, Israel was against allowing Hamas, who is still designated a terrorist organization by most of the international community, to participate in the elections. The rest of the world, the US included, disagreed and allowed them to participate. I, as an American, couldn't imagine not allowing free elections. I remember thinking to myself that if Hamas won either they would moderate their position, or, if they didn't, it would mean that Gaza's elected government was attacking us, giving us all the legitimacy in the world to shoot back. No need to say that I now feel like an idiot.
     My impression is that Hamas was voted in primarily due to the corruption and inept governance of Fatah, but, regardless, their charter clearly states their desire to kill all Jews (let alone their complete denial of Israel's right to exist under any circumstances). Shortly after winning the election they violently expelled or killed all remaining Fatah officials. As a result, Israel and Egypt, citing the fact that Fatah was no longer there to provide security, enacted a blockade. Regardless, Hamas was still able to acquire weapons to attack Israel, both through local production and shipments from Iran. They have used these weapons to more or less continuously attack the residents of southern Israel, resulting in Israeli military operations in 2008-2009 and 2012.
     When, a few years ago, the Muslim Brotherhood (of whom Hamas is an offshoot) won the Egyptian elections and Morsi became the leader of Egypt Hamas was in great shape. There were hundreds of tunnels running between Gaza and Egypt through which a wide assortment of goods were passed. These tunneling operations were also taxed by Hamas, which generated significant revenue for them. The strong relationship with their important, populous neighbor to the south emboldened them to take a stand against the Assad regime in Syria, which has so far killed nearly 200,000 Sunni Muslims (Hamas is also Sunni), which, by the way, is more than twice the number of people killed in the hundred years of Arab-Israeli conflict. This stance, however, cost them the support of Assad's staunch ally, Iran, one of Hamas's biggest supporters for years. Unfortunately for Hamas, Morsi (the Egyptian leader) was quickly deposed and imprisoned and replaced by Sisi, a military strongman who clearly hates the brotherhood. Since he took power he has done a great deal to weaken the brotherhood and its offshoot, Hamas. In particular he closed the tunnels between Egypt and Hamas which were bringing all sorts of goods into Gaza and whose taxes were financing much of Hamas's activities.
     This series of events left Hamas with few friends and no revenue, meaning all of their employees (many of them involved in building terrorist infrastructure such as tunnels into Israel) weren't getting paid. In response, Hamas agreed to join a unity government with Fatah, a move vehemently opposed by the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. However, due to Hamas's status as a terrorist organization Fatah, as a member of the international banking community, couldn't transfer them money even if they wanted to (and why would they want to?).
     This brings us to the situation this past summer when three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and killed. Here it gets a little tricky. It's clear that the kidnappers were affiliated with Hamas, and that Hamas helped finance them. It's unclear whether there was a specific order from the Hamas leadership.(My own editorializing: it seems logical to me, given their desperate and rapidly deteriorating situation, that they would do something to try and "reshuffle the deck"). The search for the teenagers (or, as it turned out, their bodies) went on for nearly three weeks. There have since been accusations that Netanyahu intentionally withheld a recording of the phone call one of the teenagers made that gave evidence that the teenagers had been shot in order to inflame Israeli public opinion and to re-arrest a number of Hamas (and other) operatives that had recently been released as part of a prisoner exchange (for the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit). While this may or may not be true, my understanding is that it's proper protocol to withhold that sort of evidence while even the smallest shred of doubt exists that those who were abducted are still alive (and if someone out there knows better than I do, please let me know).
     A day after the three Israeli teens were buried three Israeli young men kidnapped and killed a Palestinian teenager (I'd like to include a really impressive string of profanities before "three Israeli young men" but I'll refrain), sparking riots by Palestinians and Israeli-Arabs throughout Israel. In response to the kidnapping and killing of the Palestinian teenager and the wave of arrests of Hamas members (among others) in the West Bank Hamas began firing more and more rockets from Gaza (there's never NO fire from Gaza, but there are periods of significant quiet, and it's possible that prior to this conflict much of it was from smaller terrorist groups rather than Hamas). Israel responded with air strikes, and, after several attempts to offer Hamas "quiet for quiet" or actual cease fires, most of which were violated, Israel eventually launched a ground operation.
     After about a week and a half of air and artillery strikes the IDF (Israeli army) launched a ground invasion. At the time there were debates about whether this was to stop the rocket fire, topple Hamas or deal with the tunnels (dozens or perhaps hundreds of which now run throughout Gaza, many of which cross the border and were explicitly designed to commit terrorist attacks against the Israeli population living near Gaza). It seems clear in retrospect that the goal was to destroy the tunnels, which the IDF did (at least most of the ones that were coming into Israel), at the cost of more than 60 soldiers' lives. After fulfilling that objective the ground troops pulled out. Another couple of weeks of shooting back and forth, several attempts at negotiations and a few more broken cease fires brought us to the current situation. Egypt brokered a deal between Israel and Hamas which basically promised a very limited lifting of the blockade and extended fishing rights in exchange for a cease fire with an agreement to continue talks on the core issues. This is more or less what Egypt offered from the very beginning. So that's more or less a summary of the 2-3 months of conflict this summer. Here are some of my thoughts.
     First of all, it should come as no surprise that Israel lost the public relations war. The Hamas strategy, often called the "dead baby" strategy, works. They have lots of pictures of dead kids, therefore they win. I can tell you all about how Israel invests its resources in protecting its civilians while Hamas invests its resources in protecting its rockets while leaving civilians to die, or how Israel virtually begs civilians to leave areas that will be attacked (which, in case it was unclear, sort of ruins the whole element of surprise) while Hamas orders them to stay, or how Hamas intentionally hides in civilian infrastructure such as schools and hospitals. I can talk about context until I'm blue in the face. There are many more dead Palestinians than Israelis. They have pictures of dead children. They win the PR war.
     The dead baby strategy means that even a neutral, uninformed observer may well side with Hamas (or, at the very least, the Palestinian people). On top of that I believe that much of the world, and certainly organizations like the UN, are deeply antisemitic. For at least the last thousand years antisemitism has been a major issue. Pick any period you'd like in the last thousand years and it's easy to find an instance of Jews being persecuted. The Holocaust is merely the most recent and most heinous expression of it. In my opinion the Holocaust was so extraordinarily terrible that the world felt badly enough that the years since have seen relatively less antisemitism, but it never disappeared. This was keenly felt this summer throughout the world, especially in large European cities. There were violent riots throughout Europe in which Jews and Jewish property were attacked and slogans such as "send the Jews back to the gas chambers" were chanted. My father felt compelled to remove his yarmulke (Jewish skullcap) when he was in London. There have even been antisemitic events in Manhattan (though obviously much less severe).
     International organizations also tend to be at the very least absurdly anti-Israel, and, in my opinion are often anti-semitic. One prominent example is the UN Human Rights Council, which has issued nearly as many condemnations of Israel as the rest of the world combined. Even the most ferocious opponent of Israel surely must recognize this is absurd. In this particular conflict the UN's antipathy to Israel was on clear display. In numerous instances Hamas rockets were found in UN schools, but perhaps we should blame Hamas for this, rather than UN. Unfortunately,when the UN "found" these rockets they handed them over to the "authorities" i.e. Hamas. The UN found Hamas rockets stored in its schools and then gave them back to Hamas!
     Does all of this mean that Israel doesn't care about international opinion? Absolutely not! We devote a lot of resources to explaining and justifying our actions to the world. This is part of the reason why, in my opinion, we agree to cease fire after cease fire, even though we know perfectly well Hamas likely won't honor it. And, perhaps it's a bit naive, but I (as a member of the IDF and Israeli society) believe that we behave as morally as possible because that's simply the right thing to do. But international opinion is not at the top of the priority list (especially given the fact that we're probably fighting a losing battle on that front anyways). At the top of the priority list is keeping our citizens safe. Thankfully, Iron Dome mostly protects us from Hamas's indiscriminate rocket fire (though it's certainly scary hearing the alarm, running to the bomb shelter, the silence after the alarm has finished and, finally, after what seems like an eternity, the boom. my sister, Evelyn Gertz, wrote an excellent facebook post explaining what that's like if you're interested), though residents near Gaza still have to deal with mortars, etc. But the new threat is tunnels.
     Since Hamas took over in 2007 they have devoted tremendous amounts of time, energy and resources into building tunnels, both within Gaza and from Gaza into Israel (often using child labor in extraordinarily unsafe conditions, by the way). The Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, for example, was kidnapped through the use of one of these tunnels. These are really really scary. Imagine knowing that terrorists were digging a tunnel under your child's preschool. I heard numerous times that these tunnels were being dug to launch a huge attack on Rosh Hashannah (the Jewish new year) on many settlements simultaneously. I have no idea if that's true; but the tunnels were certainly dug with the intention of launching attacks on Israeli civilians.
     In my opinion the government and/or intelligence services must have known about these tunnels, if not their extent, and were waiting for a reason to deal with them. Again, these are tunnels from Hamas-controlled Gaza into Israel, often popping up right under kibbutz dining halls or preschools. They are VERY scary. (by the way one of the big new concerns in Israel is the threat of similar tunnels on our northern border, where Hezbollah is much better trained and financed, though currently busy in Syria) Given the existence of these tunnels I believe the government was just waiting for a good reason to go and deal with them, a reason Hamas gave by kidnapping the Israeli teens and increasing the number of rockets they were firing (obviously, as I explain above, it's more complicated than that). I also think the Israeli government acted correctly.
     By waiting for Hamas to provide a smoking gun (or smoking rocket launcher as the case may be) and then agreeing to cease fire after cease fire, we were playing a dangerous game. If Hamas hadn't started shooting, or had accepted one of the cease fires, we wouldn't have had the pretext to go deal with the tunnels, something we urgently needed to do. Consider how severe the international reaction was to Israel's limited invasion; then consider that this reaction came after Israel was shot at and accepted numerous cease fires. In an attempt to prove the justness of our actions we endangered Israeli civilians (by giving Hamas a chance to save their terror tunnels). Perhaps we would have dealt with the tunnels regardless. Perhaps the international reaction would have been even more severe if we hadn't made such an effort. But, as it stands, we made every effort to avoid a conflict, Hamas continued to shoot, and then Israel was excoriated internationally for taking action.
     So what's going on in Gaza today? As usual, rebuilding funds are being diverted to rebuild the tunnel infrastructure. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority continue to fight with each other. Many of the people of Gaza continue to live in wretched, squalid conditions. And everyone gears up for the next round of violence. From my Israeli perspective, this is all very frustrating. We pulled every last Jew out of Gaza, and yet they continue to shoot at us (which, by the way, is what happened when we pulled out of Lebanon). As someone who believes deeply that the current occupation of the West Bank is morally problematic and would love to come to a negotiated solution, nothing has done more to convince me this is impossible. The fact that every time we remove our security forces we are forced to return to stop the attacks on Israel deeply harm the prospects for a peaceful resolution. The first reason is obvious: if we leave they shoot at us. The second is perhaps less clear. Any peaceful resolution will be based, on the Israeli side, on a belief that the Palestinians are willing to share the land with us. But how are we to believe that when every time we concede a piece of land the result is more attacks?