A Bit Too Close for Comfort...

Iron Dome battery deployed near Ashdod

...when the Iron Dome intercepts two rockets over your home town, as just happened this afternoon, according to the Israeli Defense Forces.  I never heard the sirens - apparently they didn't sound - but I did hear the explosions.  The Iron Dome - Israel's defense system against short-range missiles and projectiles - is a wonderful, mysterious creature, largely hidden from view although I occasionally see the soldiers who operate it, who wear distinctive uniforms and ball caps, around town or the nearby train station.  The system was largely funded by US military assistance, and US contractors did some of the development work although most was done within Israel.  The US does, however, benefit greatly from their participation and the lessons learned in deploying, operating, and improving the system.

There have also been retaliatory air strikes on Gaza, with some of the fast-movers flying over my head, for the rocket and mortar firings. (Oops!  There went another aircraft, or perhaps a flight of two!)

As I've mentioned in recent posts, there is a surreal air to the ongoing conflict at the Gaza/Israeli border.  We have to tune in to the local news or news websites to find out what's going on, except when the black smoke from burning tires gets thick in the southern sky, as the Gaza Strip is just about 10 KM south of Ashqelon.  Otherwise, until the Islamic Jihad began firing over the border today, we don't hear much and certainly don't see any hints of the activity.

There has been a lot of hand-wringing lately in the Jewish world about how Israel keeps losing the Propaganda War over Gaza.  Everybody seems to believe that Israel occupies the Gaza Strip.  When one points out that Israel pulled out unilaterally from the Strip almost 13 years ago, they will often retort by saying that, while Israel perhaps has no troops inside the Gaza Strip, they've quarantined it to where its residents are dying in squalor and malnutrition.  For the sake of accuracy, I direct your attention to the below video clip, which is not the product of any organization friendly towards Israel:  it was published a few days ago by (official) Turkish TV - please remember, that Turkey under its President Erdogan is no friend of Israel and constantly calls it a 'terrorist' or 'nazi' state.

So, the conflict over the Gaza border is not because the Gazans are prisoners inside the world's largest concentration camp!  To be sure, with Hamas in charge there is a totalitarian element of life in Gaza; it is no Garden of Eden.  But you can see that the push to cross into Israel is not due to festering privation in Gaza, rather to the desire to destroy Israel and kill its citizens wholesale.

Earlier today, I drove my son, Eyal to his deployment base at Shekef in the Judaean Hills, next to the barrier wall; he had had to travel to his home base at Aleika in the Golan yesterday and got to come home last night.  He went out during the evening on a coffee date with a woman he met in a shop here last weekend.  He's finishing up his service soon and trying to bring some normalcy into his life, although at the same time he has volunteered for keva, an extension of his service in a semi-professional status.  I won't see him for a while as I'm about to go abroad for a few months.  Shekef is not close to Gaza, but of course the whole army is a bit on edge between the action down there, plus the rumblings of the Hizb'ullah and other Iranian-backed militias in Lebanon and Syria.

Never a dull moment in the Holy Land!  Oy!  

Saying Kaddish for Terrorists

Jewish Anti-Israel Protesters in Parliament Square in London, recited
the 'Mourners Kadddish' 

In the Jewish tradition, "saying Kaddish for..." means the uttering of the Mourners' Kaddish, a unique prayer that one says at a time of mourning, but by extension also means to mourn in general terms.  Who does one mourn by means of the Kaddish?  Statutorily, one's parent(s), spouse, sibling(s) and (G-d forbid), Child(ren).  And when does one mourn through the use of this prayer?  In the 30 days immediately after burying the dead (11 months for a parent), each year on the anniversary of their death (according to the Hebrew calendar), and four times a year on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles), Pesach (the Passover), and Shavuot (the Pentacost).  We also say it on communal occasions when we mourn numerous victims, such as Yom Hashoah (Day of Remembrance for victims of the Nazi Holocaust), and Yom Hazikron (Israel's Memorial Day for fighters and victims of terror).  Although it is not traditional to do so, Jews have also come to say it on additional occasions when the lives of others, even non-Jews, whose deeds in life affected the world positively, are commemorated.  For example, on the holiday commemorating the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.

...and in front of the Union for Reform Judaism, in New York City

The Mourners' Kaddish is a unique prayer.  It is said in the Aramaic language, not Hebrew, indicating a later origin than much Jewish liturgy.  The utterance of the prayer requires a minyan, or quorum of ten, to be recited as it is in the form of a dialogue.  As I wrote above, it is considered obligatory for the mourner(s).  For others, not on an occasion when they need to say it, it is meritorious for them to be present at services in order to help ensure a quorum.  It is considered to be not only obligatory to say it in season, it is also seen as providing an important catharsis in the internal mourning process.  I can attest to that, having seen it function in that way again and again.

This past Wednesday, in two demonstrations related but probably not coordinated in the Jewish 'capitals' of the UK and the USA, more than a dozen Jews in each case gathered to say the Mourners' Kaddish for those Palestinians killed in clashes with the Israel Defense Forces last Monday.  London's demonstration took place in Parliament Square, while New York's took place in front of the headquarters of the Union for Reform Judaism.  In the latter case, the demonstration seems to have been a protest against a statement by the URJ President, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, who had earlier issued a statement congratulating the Trump Administration on the opening of the new US embassy in Jerusalem; expressing that while the deaths in Gaza were regrettable, Israel and its army bear no culpability for them as their defense of their border is entirely reasonable; and expressing only regret that the outbreak of violence at the border only makes an ultimate peace deal harder to achieve.

The is much outrage, in Israel and elsewhere, among Jews for the convening of the two demonstrations, and in parrticular for their use of the Kaddish, to cast aspersions upon Israel's actions.

Although virtually every Jew knows the Kaddish as the 'death prayer,' its words don't mention death at all; it is but an affirmation of life, and of praise and gratitude to the Giver of Life.  My good friend Paul Corias in Australia, offered a novel insight into the custom of saying the Kaddish while remembering the dead; we say the words to give voice to the deceased, as the praise expressed is certainly what they would want us to hear them say, could we hear their voices.  That's a lovely thought, and from my standpoint as good a reason to say Kaddish as any!

It's not so much the saying of Kaddish for non-Jews that makes the prayer's use by the two demonstrations problematic.  As I mentioned above, we sometimes say it for non-Jews as for people like Martin Luther King, Jr.  Additionally, those who are Jews by Choice, or conversion, will say it over a deceased relative who was not a Jew.  Since we recognize the Divine Spark in humanity as a whole, most Jewish authorities do not prohibit the saying of Kaddish in such situations.  I certainly did not, during the years of my active rabbinate.

That being the case, why the outrage that those killed last Monday in Gaza be given this voice?  Well, given the facts that we know about the dead, I think it's fairly self-evident.  Of the 62 dead, 53 have been claimed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad as their own fighters - I emphasize, that is the claim of these groups, not of the Israeli Army trying to lessen the impact of what it did!  That means that only nine of those killed, could even possibly be classified - if no other evidence is considered - to have been innocent bystanders.  If the IDF killed 62 persons in one day, in a series of attempts to breach its border fence, and 53 of the dead are acknowledged to be members of terror groups, then that shows fairly conclusively that the IDF is not using deadly force indiscriminately, but rather is using some means to - largely successfully - discriminate between enemy combatants and civilians.

The 53 dead terrorists did not praise G-d in life but rather some distorted vision of a god which desired for them to kill innocent civilians.  How can I make such a statement?  Because Hamas has been instructing both its fighters as well as civilians caught up in the riots, to come armed, hiding their weapons under their clothing, so that when they manage to break through the border fence into Israel proper, they will be ready to kill Jews.  They have broadcast this information openly, and repeatedly, using social media accounts verified as authentic.  Given this, some think it ridiculous, and I agree, to recite these terrorists names in conjunction with the Kaddish prayer.  If the two demonstrations had only read the names of those not claimed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad as their operatives, the remaining nine individuals, perhaps they might have had my 'vote.'  It has been widely reported that Hamas has been pressuring, and even coercing Gazans to participate in the riots on the border.  Given the totalitarian nature of the regime of Hamas, it is reasonable to believe that some head for the border out of fear that their non-participation will lead to a bad result for them and their families.  It is therefore, in my eyes, entirely fitting to memorialize those who were killed, who cannot be demonstrably tied to either Hamas or some other terror organization.  That is, as long as the demonstration makes it clear that the culpability for their deaths lies with Hamas, not Israel.  In the two demonstrations last week, that wasn't the case; the participants clearly, and explicitly, pointed fingers at Israel and its efforts to defend its border.

If we could divorce the blatant Israel-hatred from these demonstrations, and limit the memorializing to those not overtly motivated specifically to spill the blood of Jewish civilians whose only crime is to live in agricultural settlements on the 'right' side of the Green Line, then it might be valid to appropriate the Kaddish Prayer in the expressions of regret for the loss of life.  But since these demonstrations in London and New York did not fit that description, while displaying clear anti-Israel overtones, they should have left the Jewish practice of reciting Kaddish out of it.  Save saying Kaddish for appropriate occasions.  Don't say it for terrorists. 

In the Wilderness

Toxic Fire from Gazans Burning Tires Along Israel's Border

This week’s Torah portion is Bamidbar, which translates as ‘in the wilderness.’ It’s also the name of the fourth of the five books of the Torah:  in Jewish circles it’s called ‘Bamidbar’ because that’s the first distinctive word in the book, while in wider circles it’s called ‘Numbers,” because its opening theme is a census taken of the Israelite men for the purpose of organizing them into an army.

There have been moments during the past week when I’ve found it easy to feel as if I’m wandering ‘in the wilderness,’ even though I live in Ashqelon, a relatively modern city of a quarter-million or so inhabitants, with all the conveniences and entertainments of such.

Ashqelon is situated just a few kilometers north of the Gaza Strip, that brooding presence down the coast that we don’t feel very often except when their dumping of raw sewage into the Mediterranean Sea at times of a northward drift, results in the closing of the beaches here.

There was a time, some 25 years ago, when the presence of Gaza was much more constantly felt here in Ashqelon.  After the First Gulf War, known as Operation Desert Storm, and the end of the (first) Intifada, one would see Gaza-registered trucks out on the north-south highway just outside Ashqelon, bringing Gaza agricultural products to Israeli markets or carrying consumer goods from the port of Ashdod to Gaza’s markets.  One would also see busses and minibuses full of workers heading to jobs in Israel’s center.  On Clara’s moshav, just outside Ashqelon, there were a number of day-workers from Gaza, hired to tend to the agricultural crops in the village as most of the Jewish inhabitants were working outside the village.  Clara’s father had Gazan workers tending to his lands, while he and Clara’s brothers occupied themselves in trucking.  At Barzilai, the hospital in Ashqelon, there were always patients who had been brought in from Gaza, whose hospitals did not offer the same level of care.  I remember once visiting Clara in the intensive care unit where she worked; she was in the middle of processing three Gazans who had been brought there after being hurt in a car accident.  While Clara worked on one patient, he muttered: “We’re terrorists.” Clara’s response was a humorous “Oh, shut up and roll over.” (So that she could stick a needle in his butt to deliver antibiotics to prevent infection.)

After the Oslo Agreements, when the Gazans and West Bankers joined to form the Palestinian National Council, the nascent Palestinian legislature, we used to see many cars with the distinctive ‘PNC’ registrations, moving freely on the Israeli highways between the two PNC-ruled enclaves.  It was a heady time, full of promise for a future of live-and-let-live.

After the outbreak of the ‘Al Aqsa Intifada’ in 2000, and several terror attacks in Israel by documented Gazan workers, there were far fewer allowed to enter Israel.  After Ariel Sharon’s unilateral pull-out from Gaza, and the Hamas takeover of the Strip, one stopped seeing PNC traffic passing by.  In the years since, there is almost no day-to-day evidence of the presence of Gaza so close, apart from the aforementioned sewage alerts, the occasional siren warning of an incoming missile from the Strip, or the sound of military aircraft flying south along the coast to attack some Hamas military installation in response to missile attacks against Israel.

These past few weeks, with the recurring riots on the Gaza border fence and the army’s responses to keep the Gazans on the Gaza side, so close to where I live, but with the only real hint of it the storm of reports in the news, life has continued normally here in Ashqelon in a manner that could almost be called surreal.  On Fridays, when the riots regularly reach a crescendo of violence, we keep our ears glued to the radio for hourly updates, or repeatedly open news websites on our mobiles, to check into what’s happening.  We’re not directly threatened by the mobs trying to cross the border, as are the inhabitants of the handful of kibbutzim and moshavim adjacent to the border fence.  We imagine that life, for those Israelis, is far more angst-filled these days.  Yet, most would hardly think of picking up and moving farther from the border; why let a terrorist-controlled mob dictate to them where they should live?

So, it’s been easy to imagine oneself as living in a surreal wilderness, maintaining as normal a life as possible while, just out of sight and hearing, thousands of IDF soldiers steel themselves for the regular onslaught of rioters trying to breach the fence and enter Israeli territory by any means possible, to slaughter any Israelis they can reach – as is their oft-stated aim.

But even more surreal, is the reaction of so much of the world’s news media, and many of the world’s governments, in particular to the events of this past Monday.  On the same day that the United States held a ceremony, officially opening its new embassy in Jerusalem, 62 Gazans were killed in clashes with the IDF.  The New York Daily News, on its front page, juxtaposed images of Ivanka Trump, participating in the ceremony, with the image of a cloud of tear gas wafting over violent rioters on the Gaza border, with the headline ‘Daddy’s Little Ghoul’ (a pun on ‘girl,’ just in case you didn’t get it), and reported that the two images were taken simultaneously ‘a few miles apart.’  The ridiculous implication was that the celebrants in Jerusalem could be aware of what was happening at the same time in Gaza, some 60 kilometers as the crow flies from Jerusalem, when we in Ashqelon – only about 10 kilometers away – could not!

Perhaps even worse was the (UK) Daily Mirror’s spread about the death of an eight-month-old baby girl, Lila, drawing readers to pictures of her ‘angelic face’ while lower on the page, it reported that she’d been killed by inhaling tear gas when it wafted into a ‘protest tent’ only meters from the border.  The question of why parents would bring an eight-month-old toddler to a violent riot aside, the press knocks the IDF for not making better use of ‘non-lethal’ means; but when they do use ‘non-lethal’ means, as tear gas, for adults, is nothing more than a mild irritant – I know this first hand, from training in the military – they still get painted as the devil incarnate because someone negligently brought a toddler to what amounts to a war zone.

Additionally, I would question whether it truly was Israeli tear gas, or the toxic and carcinogenic smoke from Gazans burning tires to mask their approaches to the border, that killed the girl.  This question seems to have completely escaped the Daily Mirror's report.

While European leaders are busy condemning Israel for protecting its border from violent infiltrations, they are completely ignoring the open pronouncements of Hamas, who claim that 50 of the 60 killed on Monday were their own fighters, and who have very openly proclaimed that the rioters are a cover for getting their operatives inside Israel.

It is, to me, a continual reminder that despite the urban infrastructure surrounding me, I live bamidbar – in a wilderness where rationality gets completely buried in the service of an anti-Israel orthodoxy that defies all reason.  So, it is a good thing that I also live in Numbers – in a time when the proud State of Israel regularly musters its young men and women into a strong army, standing ready to protect my neighbors and me from this menace which would kill me and obliterate my adopted land.

Worshiping Death

Pile of Corpses of Victims of Nazi Death Camp

Many philosophers and others throughout history have glorified the notion of giving one's life for a higher cause.  Life itself is a very worthy cause, but when one is willing to sacrifice it for something even greater, that is seen as a beautiful thing.  Such as, giving one's life that someone else may live.  Or many someone else's, as in giving one's life in the defense of one's country.  There are many ways to die, but if one's life is cut down before its time - before one can reach one's ultimate potential - in service to others or one's country, then that is seen by many as a worthy sacrifice.  Not that that makes enduring the loss easier for those left behind.  But it matters for one to have died in a higher service.

But to be willing to lay down one's life for a higher cause, and worshiping death - that is, seeing death as a worthy cause in and of itself - are two different things, with miles of empty space between them.

Results of Radical Islamic Suicide Bombing in Africa, 2015

In the course of human history, civilizations have occasionally arisen, which worshiped death as a good thing.  The Nazi regime in 20th century Germany comes to mind, and for this reason - not because it killed more than other regimes - it is singled out again and again as the epitome of evil.  Some would say that Radical Islam, which sends hapless individuals off to sacrifice themselves, for the sole reason of inflicting death on its perceived opponents, also fits the description.  But when we see the worshiping of death, infect a society similar to ours - or even our society - we find the idea so monstrous that we deny it, and label it as something else.

I think that the impulse that make some of us support abortion-on-demand, and euthanasia for those who cannot achieve a requisite "quality of life," brings us close to a society that worships death.

Let me explain, but before I do I wish to make it clear that this is not a tirade against those who, as individuals, would choose either option.  It is not to judge those parents who, despairing to bring into this world a child who has not arrived at a good time, or who would come into the world afflicted by some severe condition, choose abortion.  Not is it to judge those who, faced with the maintenance of the life of an ageing parent or other relative, a life which will offer that person no sense of independence and dignity, choose to remove life support.  One can only identify with the pain of those who must make such decisions, and this is not to second-guess them.  Rather, my complaint is against society itself, and the tendency in society to not value life as an end in itself, but rather as a way of fulfilling some purpose.  I believe that, when we adopt such a utilitarian view of life, we at the very least come extremely close to worshiping death.

One recent news article, and one recent event, have drawn me to think about this subject.

Couple, Both Down Syndrome Individuals, Finds Marital
Happiness

The news article in question, reported that Down Syndrome (DS) had been "all but eradicated" in Iceland, because almost 100 percent of mothers of babies diagnosed in utero as having DS, choose to abort those babies.  Actually, I believe the article used the term "not carry to term" which somehow sounds softer and less draconian than "abort."  But it's the same thing.

Of course, the article's premise was misleading.  If DS had been all but eradicated, then the numbers of unborn babies afflicted by it would lessen over time and ultimately shrink to nothing.  But the article does not assert that that's what's happening, because it isn't.  DS is not a disease that can be eradicated.  Rather, the children who carry DS are being eradicated.  Parents are absorbing the zeitgeist concerning the diminished value of life itself, and looking at the potential life of a "low-functioning" person with DS - and what will be the parents' burden over the coming years - and deciding that that life is not worth living.  By the utilitarian view of the value of life, which has permeated Western Civilization and in particular its inteligentsia - government and even medical elites - a DS child is not worthy to bring into this world.

Alfie Evans, the Toddler Who Died 28 April After the UK
High Court Ordered Him Kept in Hospital Which Removed
His Life Support Despite Offers from Two Countries to
Treat Him

The recent event that also draws me to the conclusion that we are at least dangerously close to worshiping death, is the death last week of Alfie Evans, a UK toddler with an un-diagnosed brain condition.  When the child's parents would not give the hospital permission to remove him from life support, the doctors at the hospital that were treating him, petitioned Britain's High Court to allow them to do so despite the parents' wishes, and the court ordered the child, in effect, killed.  And we're not talking simply about the triage factor in a socialized medical system which claims that to dedicate the needed resources to this child would absorb funds that could help many more people with conditions that we know how to treat.  In this case, doctors in hospitals in both Germany and Italy, offered to take over the care of Alfie, in the latter case granting the child on request of Pope Francis, Italian citizenship and offering to provide medical transport to Rome.  This would have removed the financial burden of keeping Alfie alive, from the National Health Service (NHS), the UK's socialized health service which, by the way, is such a bloated bureaucracy as to be the second largest employer in the entire world, behind the Chinese Peoples' Liberation Army.  But as we see, the inability of a huge enterprise to support this one child, was not the issue.  Rather, it was the state's power to dictate which lives are worthy of living...and which are not.  This follows a similar sensational case just last year, also in the UK, involving the young child Charlie Gard.  In his case, the offer of care came from doctors in the USA, who believed they could help Charlie with experimental treatment that they'd already been developing.  Likewise the doctors of the NHS hospital (not the same one as in the recent Alfie Evans case) petitioned the High Court to prevent the parents from moving the child to New York for treatment - they had already raised the money for the transport - and the court agreed with the doctors.  So the medical community in the UK - at least in these two well-known instances - believe that it isn't a matter of scarcity of resources, but of their essential authority to decide who lives and who dies.  And they will take the most extreme of measure - arguing the case before the country's highest court - rather than be overruled by the parents of the children in question since they, the medical professionals, believe they know best.

We can look at these high-profile cases against the refrain, very often-heard nowadays, of ageing individuals wishing to die should they cease functioning at the level, to which they're accustomed, or should they constitute a financial burden to their families.  Again, it shows at the very least, that we as a society have ceased to value life in and of itself, but have adopted a utilitarian view of life, that it is worthwhile only if it produces something tangible or does not remove resources from other endeavors.  I believe that this is dangerously close to the phenomenon that I label as 'worshiping death' as opposed to valuing, and protecting, life.

Although as a Jew, I am most reluctant to compare any impulse we can observe in our own society as equating to the evil of the Nazi regime which destroyed an entire Jewish civilization and wreaked immeasurable suffering upon the world, I am yet forced to make the comparison in this case to the Nazi regime that could so easily, and callously declare which lives were worthy of being lived, and which were not.  I believe that the Nazis worshiped death, as do the Radical Islamists today.  I wish I could summarily deny that the worship of death does not characterize today's Western Civilization, but when I read of the abortion of almost 100 percent of Down Syndrome children in one country, and see the medical community of another country so intent on denying life to children, for whom a cure might be found...then I despair of the direction, in which we're heading.  The examples I gave, were from Iceland and the UK.  But if those country's trends are in the vanguard of this trend, I believe the rest of us are no very far behind.