Musings on the Disengagment

Yesterday, I couldn't stop looking at the footage of the evacuation from Gaza. Everyone I talked to yesterday expressed intensely mixed feelings, a combination of disgust at the settlers behavior with deep discomfort of images of Jews being removed from synagogues. As I read the accounts of the settler's well planned psychological warfare applied to the soldiers and the policemen I grasped how they were resorting to Jewish guilt to undermine their evacuators. Most striking was the staged photo of settler children with their hands up wearing orange stars, harking back to the haunting photo of Nazi era Jewish children doing the same, unposed. These manipulative allusions to the holocaust aroused disgust in me as I am sure it provoked anger amongst most Israelis. Yet the images work since a part of us remains very uncomrtable with the image of Jews confronting other Jews.

During the day I thought about bizarre halachic dilemmas that must have arose in the confrontations at the synagogues. In one account I read that a group of protesters invited the soldiers to daven shahrit (the morning service) with them before they began the evacuation. Can an Jewish evacuator be counted in a minyan? It was Thursday so the Torah was read. Do you offer him an aliyah (being called to the Torah)? As I davened yesterday I thought about all the points in the morning service that must have emotionally tugged at the worshippers in those synagogues: Shomer Yisrael-Guardian of Israel-a prayer in the supplication section. Or the passage before the Shema, "Lo Nevosh Lolam Va'ed"-Let us never be humiliated for all time." When you pray in distress, every word seems to speak to you, even if it can distort reality. Loving the prayers as I do, I could relate to how these people were feeling even if I have no sympathy for their cause.

I mused also about how young the protesters were. As an educator I now wonder how to get teenagers into shul. Well now I know. Educate them into messianism and get into a big spat with the state. One of the very significant cultural crises that emerge from the disengagement is the greenhouse education system in Israel. There is a religious tract and a secular tract in Israel for educating the young. These systems seem to exacerbate, if not create the deep cultural divisions in Israel over religion and citizenship. This is one of the challenges that Israel will have to face in the coming years if it is to foster a common sense of citizenship and a respect for democracy, law, and compromise.

As ugly as the scenes were yesterday in one sense I thought this was Israel's finest hour. The guilt inducing use of the expression "A Jew does not expell a Jew." was intended to provoke and shame the soldiers. Yes, Jews have been expelled many time in our long history. But not by fellow Jews serving as agents of a democratic Jewish state. The restraint of the evacuators was admirable. Their calm in the face of derision and manipulation was impressive. The empathy of many soldiers for the authentic grief of the settlers was touching. The behavior of the soldiers and the policemen reveal a greater maturity about the use of state power in Israel, of being firm while not descending into cruelty. As Jews we know about cruel expulsions, about heartless dispossesions. But what we witnessed yesterday was not just the government, but the democratic majority enforcing a new boundary with dignity a national self restraint.

Sharon's speech to the nation included words of empathy for the Palestinians and their plight. It was little noticed but very significant coming from this old warrior. There is so much hatred in this land. The settlers so passionate about their loss, show no empathy for the Palestinians, no recognition of any legitimate claims they might have. Immersed in a messianic vision and a seething hatred many of the settlers became blind to the reality they presented to the Palestinian population that surrounded them. Sharon's political tzimtzum (a kabbalistic term meaning contraction) opens up a space for them to make something good. I have no illusions about Palestinian hatred of Jews, yet for there to be progress, the Jewish state and its people have to be prepared to contract with strength. Peace will not be won with love, it will be won with self-restraint. It will be achieved with an awareness that the land must be apportioned to let the other side begin to recover its dignity.

8/19/05