Our last hope

Let us reflect for a moment, albeit with a degree of speculation. Somewhere secluded in Gaza, the relatively short strip of land on the eastern Mediterranean coast just north of the Sinai desert, a young man sits in solitude and enormous inner torment waiting for the unknown. Although he could have never imagined the excruciating seemingly open-ended saga of isolation and loneliness, he continues to endure this horrific fate, a unique brand of existential suffering. His only human contact is with his captors, and those who love him have been cruelly shut out from all but the briefest and most agonizingly teasing glances. And after four years, Gilad Shalit remains elusively imprisoned.
What exactly he has experienced, what he endures on a daily basis, is really impossible to know. His location and the terms of his treatment are well-guarded secrets, and the continued ambiguity only helps to serve his captors’ purpose. Shalit is a pawn in a larger game of torment and psychological welfare. Every day that his parents pass his empty room at home, every moment that the activists sit in the protest tent on the ironically named Azza Street outside the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem, the terrorists weaken the resolve of the Israeli people. With each passing hour, the people become more despondent and more desperate, more ready to concede to the demands of a cruel and ruthless enemy.
Noam Shalit, the young man’s anxious and restless father, has seemingly left no stone unturned in his heroic efforts to obtain information about his son’s welfare, to send messages of support, and ultimately to procure his son’s release. But with all the media attention, with the sympathies of millions of people, including supposedly powerful politicians such as Nicholas Sarkozy and Arnold Schwarzenegger, his efforts have produced no meaningful results.
On the diplomatic front, Israel’s Prime Ministers and members of Knesset defiantly swore that the terrorists could not manipulatively hold the kidnapped soldier for ransom of convicted terrorists and ruthless murderers. Time and again, under the enormous pressures of a bleeding public, wearily frightened and embittered parents, and a good measure of Jewish sympathy, the government softened their stance and offered more and more concessions. The terrorists demanded the release of some four hundred convicted terrorists, many with “blood on their hands”, and Israel painstakingly and heavy-hearted weighed the proposal. At the twilight of his term as Prime Minister, a proud but profoundly sad Ehud Olmert declared that Israel was prepared to make enormous concessions, to go well past the dictates of reason and international protocol, for the sake of a single soldier. But, he insisted, Israel must have its own red lines. Public safety could not justify the release of so many murderers and so dangerous a precedent.
Olmert was widely criticized, branded a failure. And while Shalit remained in captivity, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was expected to go further in its efforts. Twenty prisoners were released in exchange for a short video clip that proved Shalit was alive and apparently reasonably healthy. The pressure increased, and Israel reportedly offered an exchange more than twice the size of that which Olmert had rejected.
Over the same four years, a confident and resolute Israel launched two aggressive military campaigns and a bold naval blockade with the explicit aim of crippling the ruling party and forcing them to release Gilad, but to no avail. With the international pressure urging Israel to ease or completely lift its embargo on Gaza, the last of Israel’s tools seems slipping away. The situation continues to grow ever more helpless and ever more desperate.
But, as naïve and fantastic as it may sound, I would vociferously insist that we have, in fact, not exhausted every option and lost all hope. While we can and must concede that the situation is not within our control, and that we cannot assure any particular outcome, we simply must accept and acknowledge that the situation is very much still under some control. And by that, of course, I mean that it is under G-d’s control.
For just a moment, let us forget that this is the age of media, exploitation, nuclear arms, sanctions, and terrorism. Let us ignore that Israel upholds, or at least desperately attempts to uphold, the noble standing of a liberal state in an Enlightened world of reason. These conditions make it uncomfortable, even unthinkable, to speak openly about religion. But despite the requisite preachiness inherent in such a position, it’s outright foolish to ignore that the Jewish people have, at every juncture of their rich and adverse history, turned to G-d for help. The selfsame tradition that has carried Jews through the vicissitudes of history and inspired them to return to the land of Israel is replete with the accounts of an embattled people crying out to Heaven for salvation. Frankly, we have never known another way.
With all the steps that have been taken to keep Shalit under careful watch, what would it really take for him to reach his freedom? The two guards on the night watch get into a fight about a personal conflict, and the altercation escalates to the point of violence, giving the prisoner the right window to escape. A power outage causes commotion and confusion when the prisoner is being transferred to another hideout, and he is errantly entrusted to someone with sympathies and loyalties to Israel. Experience has shown how quickly the tide can turn, if G-d wills it.
To be sure, people have been praying for him from the beginning. But if we are to talk about extreme measures, about pulling out all the stops, why shouldn’t we encourage the whole nation to pray? Why shouldn’t we encourage the government to pray? Our cynical, knee-jerk reaction is that the ostensibly secular government officials of an ostensibly secular populace would never pray. It’s the pipedream of a naïve, religious American immigrant. But this is our lifeline; it is Gilad Shalit’s lifeline. Nothing else has given us the faintest glimmer of hope. Are we so pompous as to reject the most basic expression of our national identity, the impulse to reach out to G-d? What would it mean for the cabinet, or the whole Knesset, to join in the recitation of a single, heartfelt Psalm, crying to G-d for the return of the kidnapped soldier and the safety of a nation?
What would it mean?
It could mean Gilad Shalit’s homecoming. May it be G-d’s will.

The Proudest Moment

To call today’s events unnerving would be quite an understatement. On my long drives in and out of Jerusalem, I heard uninterrupted coverage of the aftermath of the bloody fight that had taken place hours earlier in the open waters of the Mediterranean. It was with great urgency that Israel Army Radio ran from reporter to reporter, updating the scene at the Ashdod port where the escorted ‘Mavi Marmara’ boat was being unloaded; in Canada, where Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was making plans to abruptly end his North American mission; and at an Israeli Arab village where protestors were hurling stones. The tension was understandable. At least 9 were dead and dozens more were wounded on a boat that had proudly and loudly set out under the slogan of peace and solidarity.

Some of the international headlines reflect the global ire again aimed at Israel. These sentiments ring crystal clear: “Israeli Leadership Faces Fallout”; “Israel Faces International Criticism for Raid on Gaza Aid Flotilla”; and “Protests erupt across the world after Israeli raid“. With the United Nations holding an emergency session to discuss the situation, and with the makings of an unprecedented diplomatic crisis with formerly warm ally Turkey, one gets the sense that Israel finds itself in a most uncomfortable predicament.

For my part, an overwhelming internal sense of identity urges me to mount my soapbox and offer my two cents. Here and now, I have never felt prouder to be an Israeli citizen and a Jew.

The uniform story reported by Israeli naval personnel and the local press, substantiated by the documented video and audio records (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLrX7fznVgI), demonstrate conclusively that the boat’s mission was not quite as peaceful as claimed. After hours of hailing the ship, trying to verify its purportedly peaceful intentions, to answers of vulgarities and cries of “Jihad”, Israel’s navy felt it necessary to board the ship themselves. The decision to board the ship was borne out of the very real understanding that the boat, whose hostile behavior only fanned the flames of suspicion, could have easily harbored caches of an assortment of weapons and/or terrorists. When the navy successfully intercepted an enormous shipment of assorted rockets, shells, and other weapons last November, Israel learned that it cannot trust anyone to convey ostensibly innocent cargo to local waters, without the lingering threats of heavy weaponry.

So in the wee hours of the morning, Israel started to lower naval commandoes onto the ‘relief ship’. As each soldier landed on the craft, he was met by a team of hostile attackers, relentlessly and mercilessly bent on killing him. While the so-called ‘peace activists’, wielding knives, metal pipes, and other pleasantries, did not hesitate in their quest to lynch the commandoes, the Israelis strictly followed orders not to open fire with live ammunition. When it was more than abundantly clear that there was no alternative, they fired on and killed a number of the ‘activists.’

The mission of vessels, billed as a relief convoy, has been strummed up in the media for the past week. The stage was artfully set for a most uncomfortable confrontation when Israel repeatedly insisted on its right to protect its waters and block the conveyance of threatening materials. Although explicitly committing to deliver any received humanitarian materials to Gaza, Israel could not afford to blindly trust shipments into hostile Hamas-controlled territory.

Evidently, then, the plans were laid by some ill-intending ‘activists’ to speed up the anticipated confrontation. Those aboard the vessel reasoned as follows. Whereas other civilized militaries might defend themselves and protect individual soldiers by firing upon hostile vessels, Israel would risk the life of each of its own commandoes in the interests of preventing innocent bloodshed. When the Israelis would land on the boat, the plotters envisioned a win-win scenario. If the Israelis were surprised and overwhelmed enough, there would be a repeat of the gore and glory from the second Intifada. Members of the lynch mob could exult in their kills, with blood-stained hands before an adoring crowd. And if the Israelis would somehow survive the onslaught of attackers on the ship’s deck, the ‘activists’ were prepared to nobly give their lives for the cause. They would become holy martyrs to the media cause, ripe for the international community to consecrate and idolize. The world would erupt in protest and condemnation should Israel be accused of attacking an aid vessel. The choreographic scripting of the whole event is already more than familiar, with Israel consistently having to choose between mourning its own losses and being damned for defending itself.

Although it is not comforting or consoling to think of those killed on board that fateful ship this morning, it comes as an enormous relief that the aggressors failed in their bid to kill Israelis. But for me, something even greater resonates from the harrowing incident. Under unmistakable threats of the greatest personal danger, the naval commandoes lowered themselves into the eye of the storm and, with enormous dignity, defended the sanctity of human life. As long as they could avoid risking killing others, they bravely did so. And when it was clear that there was no choice, they bravely defended their lives and the lives of their fellows. And then, with herculean discipline, they stopped.

What could be nobler?