A letter to a son at sleep-away camp

Andrew Silow-Carroll
NJJN Editor-in-Chief

It was great seeing you at visiting day. I can’t believe how much you’ve grown and how happy you seemed with your friends and counselors. I was also relieved to hear that the Israeli counselors are going to be staying here in the United States, at least for now. That tells me they haven’t been called up to the front and their families are safe.

We talked only briefly about the fighting in Israel, when you spoke of the footage you’d seen on CNN during one of your overnights. You talked of the destruction in Lebanon, and the numbers of Lebanese civilians who had died in the bombings. I remember the grimace you made and what you said next, almost apologetically: “It seems like too much.”

I said something like, “It’s complicated” and that while all Jews are pained by the loss of innocent lives, Israel feels it is justified in routing an enemy that is killing and terrorizing its people and is dedicated to its destruction.

That ended the conversation, and we moved on to other things. But I wasn’t sure I had reassured you, and I know for sure that there are plenty of people wondering what you were wondering, and not all of them are the kinds of people who always look to blame Israel first.

So the first thing I want to tell you is that it’s okay to ask whether Israel’s campaign is “proportionate,” or justified. I think the minute you stop asking questions like that is the minute I’ll feel we wasted our money on your Jewish education. It doesn’t show a lack of resolve or morale to challenge assumptions of our own presumed goodness and the presumed infallibility of Israel’s leaders. I believe the Jewish state stands head and shoulders above the rest of the world because its people have constantly asked themselves those sorts of questions. As a result, Israel’s enemies can thank their lucky stars for the restraint with which Israel has waged its wars of self-defense. Just ask the citizens of Hama, the Syrian town where perhaps 20,000 people were killed by their own government in 1982. Or consider the Iran-Iraq war, where some one million Muslims died at each other’s hands in eight years of fighting.

But God forbid that Israel’s standards for good behavior be set by its neighbors. Your question was whether the rain of Katyushas on Israel’s north justifies retaliation that has leveled Lebanon’s bridges and roads, killed hundreds of noncombatants, caused a humanitarian crisis among hundreds of thousands, and possibly set a once-thriving Lebanese economy back a decade or more. Just listing the effects of the bombing after its second week is enough to give one pause.

But unless you are a pacifist — a terrible idea, I would suggest, considering the presence of real evil in this world — you must consider whether the long-term effects of this campaign outweigh the terrible violence of the moment.

Again, even some friends of Israel are asking if Israel is merely planting the seeds for another generation of Islamist recruits. Could be. But it is also possible that if Israel doesn’t stand up now to Hizbullah, it will only strengthen the hands of the Islamists and embolden both their front-line fanatics and puppet-masters in Damascus and Tehran. Is that a formula for future peace and stability? According to this calculation, it is better to drive Hizbullah out of southern Lebanon now and cripple its leadership than to allow Hizbullah, Iran, and Syria (not to mention Hamas) to think that they can wage a more “symmetrical” war down the road. If a small, intense, and, yes, bloody war today can prevent a wider, more cataclysmic war tomorrow, then it can be justified as humane.

But it is possible to win the argument over “proportionality” and still lose the war itself, in perception and reality. You can be in the right, and still be doing things wrong. And that’s what Israel is struggling with now. As the war enters its third week, Israel suspects that a window of opportunity — in which the world community is essentially supportive of, or at least not actively opposing, the operation — is closing fast. Its own people are going to start asking whether the military has anything to show for all the regrettable scenes of destruction.

And that, it seems to me, is the question you should start asking now. Israelis themselves are asking it. Some suspect that bombing raids on a cynical and elusive enemy, who hide among a civilian population, are not enough to halt the rocket attacks in the north. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wanted to avoid an invasion by ground forces, but such an incursion might be unavoidable.

Israelis are also leaving the door open to diplomacy, warming to the idea of some sort of international force that will enforce a cease-fire, stand as a buffer between their country and Hizbullah, and give Lebanon’s fledgling government the security it needs to disarm the militias and establish its authority.

Again, you might hear from some friends and adults that talk of a cease-fire is a sign of weakness and that Israel needs to continue the pursuit of Hizbullah “for as long as it takes.” That’s easy for them to say, but Israel has never fooled itself into thinking it lives in an “easy” region. It knows that its survival depends not only on overwhelming military force, but also on knowing when to use it — or not.

These are questions, of course, that only Israel can answer. When you get home, we’ll continue this conversation. I just want you to know that all questions are fair game, and that part of loving Israel is trying to understand its challenges in all their complexity.