LOOKING AROUND:FEELING SORRY
By Barbara Sofer
August 1, 2002
Rarely has a military action so occupied us, even though Prime Minister Sharon and the IDF publicly regretted the civilian casualties. While we braced ourselves for the predictable condemnations from outside of the country, we plain Israelis were wrestling with the thorniest question of all: would we personally have opted to drop the bomb to get the mass murderer, knowing that civilian lives might be lost? How far would we go to protect our own people?
Because nearly everyone agrees that Shehada himself deserved to be killed, he's rarely mentioned in the discussion. His life's goal was bringing death to Israelis and the destruction of Israel. In particular, he had a special desire to kill and maim teenagers. Here was a man whose success was measured in the number of funerals he caused. Nor was the Sheikh overly concerned about the health of Palestinian children. The more violence he wrought, the more unemployment there was, the more malnutrition, the more despair, and the more fertile ground for Hamas recruitment. He excelled at brainwashing Gaza youth in the philosophy of hate and murder. His life wish was to ensure that his hate and that hate which he engendered in others would damn future generations.
Nor should we forget that Shehada was a hard enemy to defeat. We'd like to think that we have an omnipotent army with the ability to pick off all our enemies with a marksman's neat precision or with booby-trapped cellphones, that our intelligence and commando units are so clever and powerful that no terrorist provides a serious challenge. This isn't a computer game, where you can reboot when stuck. To complicate matters, our terrorists live among us. They know the floor plans of our restaurants, they speak our language, and they read our bus schedules. They've had military training. They shoot straight enough to murder a Rabbi coming back from a late night Torah lesson, and a mom and dad driving along a highway. They have their own commando units.
We're not, of course, the only nation to be stymied. The most powerful nation in the world couldn't stop an attack on the World Trade Center, or on the Pentagon, considered the most highly protected structure in the world. All the military might of the West cannot catch one Osama bin Laden. .
Shehada understood Israel better than many of our critics. Hiding among families was reasonable protection because Israelis are so reluctance to kill children. In an opinion piece in the New York Times this week, military historian Caleb Carr insists that from the attack on Shehada "the world received its clearest demonstration yet that the Israel government is prepared to knowingly inflict substantial civilian casualties in its response to Palestinian suicide attacks." He wrongly assumes we're involved in an obscene tit for tat, they kill our kids and we kill theirs. Shehada knew what every Palestinian who comes to seek work or medical care understands: civilian deaths may be an unhappy side effect of warfare, but they are never the goal of Israeli military action. Just the opposite.
Carr's criticism focuses more on efficacy than morality: killing civilians usually doesn't work well, he argues. His own nation would never have overcome the anger of the Japanese for dropping atomic bombs (!) on them if it hadn't come up with a "generous reconstruction program."
We've long been disgusted with this wasteful war forced on us by Yassir Arafat, with its dead and injured on both sides. As angry as we are at the Palestinians, we don't enjoy the surveys that say their kids are hungry. We cringe at the accidental deaths and injury of children, even when they're used as human shields. We're not afraid to feel sorry.
In this week's Torah portion R'aih, we are commanded to be merciful; kindness is one of the idealized traits of the Jewish people. Yes, I'm familiar with the Talmudic warning " whoever is merciful to the cruel will end by being indifferent to the innocent." But the last two times I've heard it quoted were in the context of people who lived outside of Israel reprimanding Israelis-army officers-- for being too soft-hearted.
Having pity, feeling sorry, worrying about the ethical implications of even a necessary action, going back to re-evaluate the decision-making procedures are all healthy reactions for a people who believe in a just society. The day we become numb to the suffering of children, any children, will be a black day indeed. Likewise, the day we stop debating the morality of our behavior we'll be in trouble, too. Instead of seeing our plethora of strong and diverse opinions as a national weakness, we need to remember that they have always been a national strength. The realization that our moral sensibilities are in tact after so many years of living without a single real day of peace should be a source of satisfaction to us all.
