During the past few months, while arguing the case for Gush Katif, I've come across a lot of one-line counter-arguments. Ranging from the paternalistic ("The prime minister knows best.") to the maternalistic ("It is too dangerous to live there; think about your children."). Some tried to be "realistic" in their defeatism by saying, "You are only 8,000 Jews in a sea of more than a million Arabs," while yet others try to be philosophic when they rhetorically asked, "What do you have to look for in Gaza?"
To each one of these one-liners, I can explain, in short or in length, as to the justice and sense of Jews living on Jewish land anywhere in Israel.
But there is one anti-Gush Katif utterance that evokes from me an even more concise response; it consists of two words, and they are not "Merry Christmas."
"Soldiers are dying to protect you," they say.
Am I to go straight home and look in the mirror and see myself as an irresponsible adventurer, causing needless death, at best, or maybe an accomplice to murder, at worst? Does my every breath bring about sorrow? When my daughter goes to kindergarten, does every flower she picks along the way account for another soldier's life?
When will they ever learn?
Most of the soldiers killed in or near Gaza have been those protecting the Arabs' "right" to work in the Erez industrial area, twenty-five kilometers from Gush Katif and not at all related to it. Others have been killed on the Philadelphi route on the border with Egypt, trying to prevent the smuggling of anti-tank, anti-aircraft and other missiles from Egypt. Most recently, soldiers have been killed at a checkpoint set up to intercept those weapons from getting to within firing range of Sderot and Ashkelon. And even though soldiers did fall defending the Jewish towns and their access roads, can anyone crown himself with the right to speak in their name?
Arabs have been killing Jews ever since the Arabs came into being. They began with rocks, advanced to knives, and graduated to guns and missiles (and we all know who is responsible for this technological proliferation). The Arabs have never needed an excuse, to them it is natural; history bares this out. They supported Hitler and continue to revere him and his ilk, as in Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat, to this day. At the same time, they accuse the "Zionists" (in English, but in Arabic, it's still "Yahud") of being Nazis, and see no dichotomy in this.
But my argument is not with the Arabs. This is the only thing I have in common with my Jewish accusers. My problem is with him, as he says his problem is with me. He presumes to speak for the dead; whereas, I speak for something living.
When the past is a nonentity and for all practical purposes, a dead issue, and the goal for the future is just to stay alive and maybe even have a 'good time', we are left with "now-ism." The "now-est" speaker for the dead soldiers turns everything into simple arithmetic and says: no settlers + no soldiers = no killing.
If there is a Jewish past and a Jewish future, then the Jewish present is worth fighting for. We, the Jews, are alive this day because we believed from day one that there is a reason for our existence. If at any time we had decided to live for today, we would have ceased to be around on the morrow.
The Arabs are willing to kill and be killed to create their twenty-third country and to wipe out the Jewish entity, either in the process or as a result of its creation. Yet, as stated above, the real enemy is not the Arabs; it is Jewish self-doubt. If there is no real reason to live as a Jew, then there is certainly no reason to have a Jewish country and even less of a reason to fight for it.
The consensus we need to establish is not the minimum amount of land we need to protect ourselves and to disengage from the rest, but to establish that every Jew in every part of Jewish land is an established fact worth defending.
To each one of these one-liners, I can explain, in short or in length, as to the justice and sense of Jews living on Jewish land anywhere in Israel.
But there is one anti-Gush Katif utterance that evokes from me an even more concise response; it consists of two words, and they are not "Merry Christmas."
"Soldiers are dying to protect you," they say.
Am I to go straight home and look in the mirror and see myself as an irresponsible adventurer, causing needless death, at best, or maybe an accomplice to murder, at worst? Does my every breath bring about sorrow? When my daughter goes to kindergarten, does every flower she picks along the way account for another soldier's life?
When will they ever learn?
Most of the soldiers killed in or near Gaza have been those protecting the Arabs' "right" to work in the Erez industrial area, twenty-five kilometers from Gush Katif and not at all related to it. Others have been killed on the Philadelphi route on the border with Egypt, trying to prevent the smuggling of anti-tank, anti-aircraft and other missiles from Egypt. Most recently, soldiers have been killed at a checkpoint set up to intercept those weapons from getting to within firing range of Sderot and Ashkelon. And even though soldiers did fall defending the Jewish towns and their access roads, can anyone crown himself with the right to speak in their name?
Arabs have been killing Jews ever since the Arabs came into being. They began with rocks, advanced to knives, and graduated to guns and missiles (and we all know who is responsible for this technological proliferation). The Arabs have never needed an excuse, to them it is natural; history bares this out. They supported Hitler and continue to revere him and his ilk, as in Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat, to this day. At the same time, they accuse the "Zionists" (in English, but in Arabic, it's still "Yahud") of being Nazis, and see no dichotomy in this.
But my argument is not with the Arabs. This is the only thing I have in common with my Jewish accusers. My problem is with him, as he says his problem is with me. He presumes to speak for the dead; whereas, I speak for something living.
When the past is a nonentity and for all practical purposes, a dead issue, and the goal for the future is just to stay alive and maybe even have a 'good time', we are left with "now-ism." The "now-est" speaker for the dead soldiers turns everything into simple arithmetic and says: no settlers + no soldiers = no killing.
If there is a Jewish past and a Jewish future, then the Jewish present is worth fighting for. We, the Jews, are alive this day because we believed from day one that there is a reason for our existence. If at any time we had decided to live for today, we would have ceased to be around on the morrow.
The Arabs are willing to kill and be killed to create their twenty-third country and to wipe out the Jewish entity, either in the process or as a result of its creation. Yet, as stated above, the real enemy is not the Arabs; it is Jewish self-doubt. If there is no real reason to live as a Jew, then there is certainly no reason to have a Jewish country and even less of a reason to fight for it.
The consensus we need to establish is not the minimum amount of land we need to protect ourselves and to disengage from the rest, but to establish that every Jew in every part of Jewish land is an established fact worth defending.