By Ithamar Perath
JERUSALEM — Shalom friends.
“Shalom” means peace, and we still can reasonably wish for it. Flaws can be analyzed and discussed, which is busily done by many peace-wishers. For your benefit, I’ll join them.
To put your and our (I and Tali) minds at peace: We had a tranquil night’s rest and enjoyable breakfast, and experience the havoc only on screen and radio (the single rocket that was intended for Jerusalem fell on a hillside not far away and rattled our windows). It’s easy to write about trouble when you are not in it.
Now for the troubles: Four Horsemen of Apocalypse (people here don’t know the metaphor) came pounding in a row: Coronavirus (green, greener, happy green); Still no coalition to form a government (“What’s difficult we do instantly. What’s impossible takes weeks and weeks”); A rainstorm of rockets from Gaza (Insufferable and painful, but not a blitz calamity); A never- expected and never-experienced outbreak of mob violence. I’ll try to talk soothingly about the last two horses, which for the time are still thoroughly untamed.
1 It is not War. In war many people die, and here there are six victims, two of them children under 8. Hamas is winning this round. They are smart, rich, powerful, motivated and unscrupulous. They know what they think what they want and how to get it. Will they achieve their wishes?
What they want is to fulfill the intoxicating dream of killing all Jews and retake Falastin. But they are smart enough to realize that for this they are not powerful enough. So they have an interim target: To break the country”s morale to the point where anarchy will break out, no leadership is trusted or obeyed, internal strife will disable self-defense – everything that caused the Palestinian disaster (the Arab naqbah) and enabled the rise of Israel (tomorrow May 15).
2 This dream is infiltrating into the minds of a part of Israel’s Arabs, mainly in the form of Islamic zeal and incitement. It runs contrary to the everyday logic that it is much better for them to integrate economically as well as socially into the country in which they by now exist for 3 generations, instead of their suicidal demise if Israel is destroyed.
But daydreams lead to daydeeds which have no relationship. People are motivated no less by what they feel they can do than by what they want to, and to do it in unity, the leaderless savagery of the rabble. Savagery feeds savagery, no ideals are needed or even exist. It is highly contagious, and like coronavirus it can kill, and is moreover unpredictable. I think that America has its share of experience with that, and still has no true remedy, if such a remedy exists. Blaming individual leaders increases, not decreases, the phenomenon.
Here I think that I’ve philosophized myself into in impasse. So I’ll return to local affairs.
3 Hamas must be credited for inventing a new, successful form of warfare, by which a determined party can fearlessly attack a formidable, well trained army with a powerful air force and armored corps, while they have none. They can do it thanks to several crucial conditions which act in their favor. Two of these are geology and climate. The Gaza strip sits on soft eolian sandstone which can be easily tunneled, and in which they have a huge subterranean city that offers shelter from any bombing (or so they thought) and can house big ammunition plants, store tens of thousands of Iranian and Russian rockets (including the deadly Kornet D1), and extend attack tunnels into Israel territory. A strong westerly breeze blows all summer, and enables to carry by balloon or kite incendiary bombs to burn down huge swaths of farmland and occasional barns, schools and factories.
Hamas’ rocket reserves are inexhaustible. They are launched by remote control from concealed firing pits strewn throughout the countryside, or schools, hospitals and mosques or playgrounds. Their imprecision is compensated by saturation volleys which occasionally overwhelm the Israeli Iron Dome system. Their destructive power is relatively small, but their psychological effect is inestimable: No schools, no normal daily business, continuous civilian panic. Imagine San Diego receiving a daily dose of a thousand rockets. What would Washington do?
Add to this two moral paradigms: 1. While the fabric of Hamas’ infrastructure is woven into the Gaza population, the Israeli Army is incapable of intentionally targeting civilians. 2. Hamas wants to achieve as many victims as possible, preferably women and children, to draw world hostility against Israel. The more bodies the better, with children’s toys strewn between. Negotiations are meaningless: The Israelis have nothing to demand from Hamas (except the bodies of two soldiers which Hamas keeps, to arouse public opinion in Israel against the Government which is still unformed). The Arabs want nothing from Israel, except the release of a few hundred convicted terrorists, to continue the strife.
Total victory or total defeat seem for the time unattainable. It will (temporarily) end by mutual exhaustion, like it has done for over 70 years.
Much worse is the tide of Arab riots in Israel. Non-acceptance of Israel (or anything Jewish) is pumped into the Arab mind by imams who hate Israel, and the excitable Arab soul seemingly feels no hurt or harm as long as they can inflict it on others. The upside is that on the everyday level the Jew and Arab are quite businesslike and usually very friendly, and that the innate Arab hate can be turned on and off, like a shark’s frenzy by the smell of blood. The belief that killing and/or dying is noble is also rampant in Arab society, which redirects some of its lethal energy to the Arab domestic scene, which is drenched in homicidal crime.
Do I sound morbid? Not at all. Being realistic confers peace of mind, and when combined with a sense of strength, sustains an optimistic mood. We anticipate a happy holiday of Shavuoth, celebrated with dairy delicacies.
Chag Same’ach!
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Ithamar Perath is a retired Israeli tour guide and author, with a background in geology, oceanography, science editing and translating.