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And There Lie the Bodies (by Gideon Levy)

By: Paul Raushenbush

Sunday January 4, 2009

Categories: War

Gideon Levy offers this powerful parable in Haaretz.  He laments that there are no voices speaking up within Israel now about the war in Gaza but he proves himself wrong though this impassioned essay:

"The legend, lest it be a true story, tells of how the late mathematician, Professor Haim Hanani, asked his students at the Technion to draw up a plan for constructing a pipe to transport blood from Haifa to Eilat. The obedient students did as they were told. Using logarithmic rulers, they sketched the design for a sophisticated pipeline. They meticulously planned its route, taking into account the landscape's topography, the possibility of corrosion, the pipe's diameter and the flow calibration. When they presented their final product, the professor rendered his judgment: You failed. None of you asked why we need such a pipe, whose blood will fill it, and why it is flowing in the first place.

Regardless of whether this story is legend or true, Israel is now failing its own blood pipeline test. As Israel has been preoccupied with Gaza throughout the entire week, nobody has asked whose blood is being spilled and why. Everything is permitted, legitimate and just. The moral voice of restraint, if it ever existed, has been left behind. Even if Israel wiped Gaza off the face of the earth, killing tens of thousands in the process, as a Chechnyan laborer working in Sderot proposed to me, one can assume that there would be no protest."

Levy continues here


Comments (4)
posted by Paul Raushenbush @10:14pm Permalink email icon Email This arrow Add to »
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Evin Daly
January 5, 2009 12:02 AM
http://www.butlerreport.com

The horrors of war are terrible. Innocents die, that's a fact. War as a method of problem solving is barbaric. It is unfortunately that last resort when we are threatened as a people. It is the only recourse left to Israel when Israel's people have been bombarded daily and indiscriminately by Hamas. Hamas was warned, cajoled, bargained with to no avail. They do not want discussion; they want martyrdom in their maniacal pursuit of the destruction of the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel has attempted to avoid civilian bloodshed - see the story "Israel trying to save as many lives as possible"http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/0105/1230936655606.html. Sometimes we have to slay the beast to stop the attack and this is one of those times. In the eyes of the world, Israel is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't - no matter what the action, the world will criticize - not Hamas and its arbitrary and deadly daily attacks but Israel's just attempt to make things right. I believe in Israel and in what it must do to survive. Shema Y’israel, Adonai Elohenyu, Adonai Ehad.

Asinus Gravis
January 5, 2009 1:41 PM

Levy is to be thanked for an excellent analysis. It is tempting to think that when he wrote, "After all, they brought this on themselves. They are a terrorist organization and we are not," he was talking about Israel bringing this on themselves.

E.D.'s rationalization is so transparent that no one should be fooled by it.

Susanna's Daughter
January 5, 2009 5:41 PM

I concur with AG that Levy's analysis is excellent. I ask ED, who quotes the sacred Shema prayer, to remember that the Torah, blessed be its wisdom, is full of stories about how Israel, puffed up with pride in its self-righteousness, has been brought to judgement by YHWH. In this instance, the mirror that Torah holds up to the contemporary State of Israel reflects dimly, for it is covered in innocent blood.

Your Name
January 5, 2009 8:55 PM

My heart aches as I watch Israel's brutal invasion of Gaza. "Never again" has been horribly distorted into "identification with the aggressor." The willingness to murder women, children and seniors, to wage war in the most densely populated urban area on earth, and then to justify it by claiming Hamas brought it on the people of Gaza, smacks of the worst kind of hypocrisy.

More than anything our great prophets called for righteousness, justice and compassion- to hear and respond to the cry of the widow and the orphan- not to make more widows and orphans, or worse yet, to kill them.

Our prophets also spoke truth to power; often alone. Since 9/11, Israel has developed the largest "security-industrial complex" in the world, and has become the largest exporter of security products and services in the world. It has ghettoized Gaza and the West Bank with the "security fence." Where is the incentive to seek peace? It looks bad if you cannot stop rocket attack's from Gaza when your largest export is security systems and services. And an election is coming soon. I thank God for the Israelis who are in the streets protesting. Sometimes supporting Israel means caring enough to say "This is wrong."

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Diana Butler Bass and Paul Raushenbush both stand firmly within the Mainline Protestant tradition and, along with guest bloggers of all religious backgrounds are dedicated to the revival of religious progressivism and its influence in American politics.

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Diana Butler Bass
Diana Butler Bass is a commentator and scholar in American religion. She is the author of seven books including A People's History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story (HarperOne, 2009).
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Moderator of the Progressive Revival blog and the Associate Dean of Religious Life at Princeton University.
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