Recently in Israel and Palestine Category

I share with the Beliefnet community a message I sent to my congregation last night:

The escalating violence in Israel has not escaped anybody’s notice over the past week, beginning with the killing of a Sderot resident by a Hamas-launched rocket, and continuing with responses and counter-responses that have caused great suffering and loss of life on all sides. Earlier today, a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem opened fire in a famous yeshivah in Jerusalem, murdering eight and wounding nine more. As human beings, our heart breaks for the loss of innocent life on both sides of the conflict. As Jews, our heart breaks for the Land of Israel and the violence that threatens to overwhelm it. We mourn with the victims and add our prayers that peace will soon come to the land of Israel and all who live there.

May God spread out a shelter of peace over us, over all Israel, over all who dwell on earth, and over Jerusalem.

A Palestinian gunmen today walked into Merkaz Harav Yeshiva gunning down eight boys in the middle of prayers. This horrible act of terror is but another sad chapter in this 60-year war. Yet, it represents an emerging trend in the sorry state of relations between Palestinians and Israelis–one based in the house of study. As this war continues, it's bloodying and blurring the lines between what is politics and what is theology, what is sacred and what is profane, and what is holy and what is secular. A 60-year battle is being re-turned into an eternal war.

To understand the significance of this act one needs to understand who and what is Merkaz ha-Rav. Simply put, the act is nothing short of a Jew walking in to Al-Ahzar University or Notre Dame and wantonly killing Christians taking the Eucharist or Muslims prostrating themselves to Allah. Mercaz is the leading religious Zionist learning center. It is also a hotbed of settler ideology and the recent events will only further radicalize the student body.

Contrary to what one might think based on the presidential campaign drama unfolding on our TV sets and newspaper stands, there is still a sitting president and a functioning/disfunctioning Congress that is still drawing up and determining domestic and foreign policy. Just today we learned that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is headed back to Israel for one more last ditch effort to salvage some positive Mid East legacy for President Bush. As reported by Reuters:

Rice told U.S. lawmakers that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were trying to continue their discussions "without much public glare" and the United States was doing everything it could to help. "I will probably return to the region at the beginning of March, senator, to see if we can help them," Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Don’t get me wrong, I admire everyone’s optimism and engagement but don’t you all think this is just too little too late?

This past year has been a relatively quiet one for most of Israel. (Though not for the citizens of Sderot who continue to be bombarded regularly by rocket fire from Gaza.) The security barrier has been working, saving lives. If only a security barrier were unnecessary. If only suicide terrorists were stopped by PA security and given no quarter or support by the Palestinian populace from which they spring.

But barriers are only as good as the people who guard them. Sources have suggested that Hamas was behind the barrier between Gaza and Egypt failing two weeks ago. The break in that barrier was all it took to provide 22-year-old Luay Laghwani and his accomplice access to Egypt’s Sinai and then Israel’s Negev into the desert town of Dimona. Luay killed one woman and wounded 11 others, some of whom are in critical condition. The death toll could have been higher, if not for fast thinking Israeli rescue workers who shot a second suicide terrorist as he tried to detonate his explosive belt.

Rabbi Stern makes an important point in advocating that the moderate Orthodox stop relegating a monopoly to the haredi over religious policy in Israel. They certainly should help Yisrael Beiteinu’s efforts to fast track conversions in Israel for the 300,000 Russian immigrants whose fate is intertwined with the Jewish State, even if they have not been given a chance to undergo formal conversion to Judaism. I am reminded of the tragic story of Sgt. Nikolai Rappaport, a Russian immigrant and IDF soldier, who was killed a number of years ago by a blast of Hezbollah shrapnel. He was shipped home to Russia for burial. Ostensibly it was to allow his (non-Jewish) mother to be present at the funeral. However, if his family had wanted to bury him in Israel, they could not have done so in a Jewish cemetery.

That is why conversions in Israel are not just an Orthodox problem.