Still Hungry for Peace

Talmud Bavli, Taanit 26b:
FIVE MISFORTUNES BEFELL OUR FATHERS ON THE SEVENTEENTH OF TAMMUZ : THE TABLES [OF THE LAW] WERE SHATTERED, THE DAILY OFFERING WAS DISCONTINUED, A BREACH WAS MADE IN THE CITY AND APOSTOMOS BURNED THE SCROLL OF THE LAW AND PLACED AN IDOL IN THE TEMPLE.

Two days after, along with “>argument that the Israeli authorities knew in a matter of hours that the kidnapped Israeli youths had been shot and that they prolonged the agony of three families and a nation with a misdirected investigation which provided the excuse for a general crackdown in the West Bank.  Goldberg argues further that it was general knowledge that the Hebron clan attached to Hamas, known to go regularly rogue, committed these murders without orders from anyone else.  Nevertheless, Goldberg continues, Prime Minister Netanyahu and his ministers contributed to unfocused rhetoric of revenge.

For its part, Hamas utilized the crisis to prop itself up at a time of general dissatisfaction with its misrule.  Rocket fire into Israel, which, as Goldberg documents, had abated, escalated until something had to be done. It appears that the government of Israel has decided that ‘something’ means another ground war.
I don’t pretend to know how that will work out, prophecy having been denied our people for generations.  I doubt very much if anything but further destruction and enmity will follow.

Let’s remember that Hamas was pretty effectively isolated before Israel launched its invasion, before homes and hospitals and schools were bombed; and four Palestinian youths playing soccer on a beach were shelled to death by Israeli forces—in a second “>Arabic—that the Hamas rockets fired into Israeli civilian territory constitute war crimes.  But now, once again, the death toll in Gaza has passed the 200 mark, and those dead are mostly civilians. In tandem, Hamas and the Netanyahu administration have created a situation in which it will be much less tenable for a Palestinian government to dislodge Hamas and make peace without losing credibility in the Palestinian streets.

On the other hand, let’s also remember that, before this ground campaign got underway, Hamas unveiled its own “>politicians with a settler base can’t go on.  The “>occupation.  Not with villages destroyed every year, with military checkpoints undermining their ability to move freely in their land, with shrinking access to water, with crops destroyed with impunity and universities subject to summary closure when they can get to them at all—and all of this at the hands of a government that they did not elect and would not choose.

The Arab citizens and residents of Israel cannot live in a society in which they are not safe in their own shops or even their homes; in which their children can be kidnapped and tortured to death.  The residents of “>documents how Jerusalem is now ripping apart, divided according to ethnicity into those who can walk the streets safely and those who can’t.

On 17 Tammuz the tablets of the law were shattered.