Israeli Supreme Court & People vs. ’Yahu
Gazans & Political Hamas vs. Military-Murderous Hamas
Four Sides, Not Two, in the War
by Rabbi Arthur Waskow
We are living at one of the great choice points in the history of the Jewish People.
The strong decision yesterday of the Israeli Supreme Court to reject the anti-judiciary, anti-democratic program of the Netanyahu regime strengthens a great deal my belief that the Israeli people is not magnetically attached to the 'Yahu regime.
Can the Resistance movement surface and publicly assert the whole government failed the state and must be replaced as soon as possible?
There were five regime failures. Different people may be alienated by different failures of the regime. We must strive to bind them together in a force to ReJewvenate Democracy.
Racist contempt for Hamas’ ability to pull off such a complex operation;
Regime sexist refusal to pay attention to the Hamas documents that women "spotters" discovered and reported to high echelons;
'Yahu's long-standing policy of pitting off Hamas to keep making trouble for the Palestinian secular nationalist political parties;
'Yahu’s falling precisely in the Hamas military committee trap of portraying Israeli military as aimed at killing thousands of women and children;
Each of the two regimes is authoritarian, racist in their contempt for the neighboring people, and has no compunction about committing war crimes against civilians of the “Other” people.
The Hamas-related war crimes were mostly horrendously personal — by pistol, by fire, by rape. The Netanyahu-related war crimes were much more often "impersonal" — by bombs and artillery shells. But when the targets were whole neighborhoods, when the victims were thousands of women and children, many of them crushed by the rubble of their own homes and dying in pain for days, others pierced not by gang rape but by steel bars from the wreckage of their schools or hospitals, those suffering were still “persons." The bombers were still "persons." Not so impersonal.
I reserve my opposition for the two violence-addicted regimes. The two peoples I regard as our neighbors (as in “Love your neighbor as yourself”), and as co-descendants with me of Avraham our Forebear.
I think each of the peoples is entitled to self-determination through a state of its own or, if both chose, through a confederal arrangement. To get to either of those places will take deep spiritual and political transfomations in both peoples.
The Political Committee of Hamas roused the fury of the head of the Military Committee by offering to join with West Bank forces to form a united national Palestinian government and work to toward a two-state peaceful solution. That is the first crack in the solid public wall of Palestinian rage.
Blessings of shalom, salaam, peace
— Arthur
Photo: Israel Supreme Court, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY 2.0.