Page 34 - HaMizrachi Tisha bAv 5783 USA

Creating Freedom Without Anarchy,

Order Without Tyranny

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks ל״צז

On July 8th, 2014, Operation Protective Edge began in Gaza. Following the kidnap
and murder of three Jewish teenagers and rocket fire into Israel, Israel launched
what would become a six-week military operation, in which 73 Israelis were killed.
During those tense days, Rabbi Sacks published the following article.

ine days from now, Jewish commu- cry of “Death to the Jews” would once
nities around the world will sit in again be heard in the streets of France
collective mourning on Tisha B’Av, and Germany? But it happened. The new
Nthe day of Jewish tears. So many antisemitism is not the old antisemitism,
tears. For the destruction of the First and The new antisemitism is not but it tells us that the world’s oldest virus
Second Temples. For the defeat of the the old antisemitism, but it tells of hate has mutated again. The tears of
Bar Kochba rebellion. For the expulsion us that the world’s oldest virus Tisha B’Av have not yet ended.
of Jews from England in 1290 and Spain of hate has mutated again. My concern here, however, is not with the
in 1492. For the day on which Himmler political, moral and legal issues of what
was given the go-ahead for Die Endlösung, constitutes a just war, but rather with the
“The Final Solution,” that is, the extermi- Much of the world has condemned Israel intense spiritual question that arises for
nation of the Jews of Europe. for fulfilling the first duty of any govern- us at this time of year in the context of
ment anywhere: to defend its citizens from
Yet as one of the generation born after the an attack on their lives. What is the alter- Jewish history as a whole. Why so much
Holocaust, whose identity was shaped in native in a situation in which Hamas was suffering for so long? Have we not lived
the wake of the Six Day War, I believed that storing missiles in schools, placing rocket long enough in the valley of tears? “Shall
Tisha B’Av and its sensibility belonged to launchers beside hospitals and mosques, the Judge of all the earth not do justice?”
the world of my parents and theirs. It was using ambulances to transport terrorists, What is the meaning of this hour? What
not ours. They were haZorim b’dima and we placing entrances to tunnels under apart- does it tell us about the Jewish destiny
were b’rinah yiktzoru. They had sown in ment blocks, and using an entire civilian and fate?
tears so that we could reap in joy. population as human shields? As Colonel At the beginning of time, G-d created the
Richard Kemp, a former commander of universe in a burst of energy that eventu-
The past three weeks were very difficult British troops in Afghanistan, wrote, ally gave birth to stars, then to planets,
for Jews around the world but above all Israel uses “the most sophisticated and then to life. Among the millions of forms
for Am Yisrael be-Medinat Yisrael. Rocket comprehensive means of avoiding civilian of life that eventually emerged was one
attacks from Hamas intensified, resulting casualties yet employed by any army in different from all the others: Homo sapi-
in a sustained assault of a kind no country the world.” And as Princeton political phi- ens, the only life-form known to us capa-
in the world has had to face: worse than losopher Michael Walzer has argued, it is ble of asking the question, “Why?” On this
the Blitz in World War II. (At the height of “a central principle of just war theory that one being, G-d bestowed the highest token
the Blitz, on average 100 German missiles the self-defense of a people or a country of His love, setting His image and likeness
were launched against Britain every day. cannot be made morally impossible.” on every human individual regardless of
On average during the present conflict The worldwide tide of protest was not colour, culture, creed, or class. He invited
in 2014, Hamas has fired 130 missiles a merely against Israel. It was, according to humanity to become His “partners in the
day against Israel). We felt the tears of the foreign ministers of France, Germany work of creation,” calling us to create what
the injured and bereaved. We felt for the and Italy, also against Jews. Did anyone He Himself had created: freedom and
Palestinians too, held hostage by Hamas, think that 120 years after the Dreyfus Trial order, the order of nature and the freedom
a ruthless terrorist organization. and seventy years after the Holocaust the that allows humans, alone in the universe,

34 |