Hey, people are
shooting here! We're talking, arguing, discussing, and wrangling 24
hours a day, seven days a week. Could we ask for a little radio silence?
Just for the near future. At this stage, when our sons are fighting in
the Gaza Strip for their homes and their country, could we maybe stick
to practical analysis and facts? After the war we'll have plenty of time
to revisit to the old arguments and fights that have followed us since
1967. They won't let us be, anyway, and we won't let up on them.
Only a month ago we
drew so much from the great spirit of three mothers and fathers after
their children -- Gil-ad Shaer, Naftali Frenkel, and Eyal Yifrach --
were kidnapped. The wind in our sails steered our ship on a straight
course, in unity and strong faith. Now we have all the reasons in the
world to keep praying. Together -- observant and secular, Left and
Right, in different languages -- but with a single heart, like we did
then.
That spirit made
slogans and cliches tangible. It made us acknowledge good and brought
out the best in us: the ability to give thanks, love for soldiers and
for the state, togetherness and what bring us together and concern for
each other and a shared fate. That spirit shoved evil and cynicism and
disagreements and divisiveness aside.
Now we once again need
those powers of nobility, restraint, loving kindness, and mercy to
rediscover the spirit behind the words of Ariel Horowitz's song from the
time of Operation Cast Lead: "Like cyclamen between the rocks, the face
of the land is hidden."
This is just the time
to pull that face out of the boulders and the defenses and extend a hand
"to give, not to take," just like the three mothers and the poet Naomi
Shemer -- Horowitz's mother -- taught us. To remember that we are, first
and last, one people whose enemy doesn't distinguish between those of
us who hold different opinions.
* * *
Not for nothing Givati
Brigade commander Col. Ofer Winter wrote in the briefing page for his
soldiers that he lifted his eyes to the heavens and recited the Shema
Israel prayer together with them. We don't have to be religiously
observant to understand that Shema Israel expresses the shared Jewish
destiny and is part of our DNA, that it is appropriate not only to a
hero like Roi Klein, who called out "Shema Israel" as he threw himself
on a grenade to save his soldiers, but also to lead Israel's soldiers in
a war of no choice.
After the shooting
stops, we'll go back to clarifications and debating the wisdom or
foolishness of "containment," the ground operation and the air
pummeling, war ethics and more, but not now. Now is the time to bring
back moments of quiet and let the songs of prayer that accompanied our
soldiers when they were looking for the kidnapped teens sink in. Let
them accompany the soldiers who have set out to restore our lost calm
and security.
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