Eight Possible Answers to a Single Question

This is the situation as I understand it now: For a year, Israel has been committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip systemically. These are not “rotten apples”, not individual soldiers violating orders – these are the orders themselves, and these crimes are growing worse all the time, and in the Northern Strip have now turned into genocide in the most literal sense ever. The plan of the Israeli government, apparently, is to kill or expel the hundreds of thousands of people in the Northern Strip, and leave the remaining population in the Southern Strip ghetto to die or live under inhuman conditions for years (or to do the same thing – killing or expelling – to them too), and then found new permanent colonies in the area that will thus be emptied. Right now, inside Israel or outside, there do not seem to be strong enough political forces to stop it.

The present post is not meant to convince anyone that this is indeed the situation, but to discuss a question that seems to be ripping the mind/soul of any Israeli who understands the situation in this or in a similar manner: How does one live, what can one do, how can one now be human and Israeli. I am rather surprised personally to understand to what extent everything I had read and heard all my life contains no good answers to these questions.

There is some general principle in the question how to live and act as a part of a collective that is now perpetrating such horrors – I have no answer, and feel that no one, in or out of Israel has such an answer. Perhaps there is no answer because the question itself is hardly ever asked, not really. There is something flawed there and one’s mind/soul escapes it. Usually, one throws such a question out, places the responsibility for the horrors as well as the action to stop them as far away from one as possible, on others. The Hamas, the Palestinians, leftists, Israelis, the Government, never mind – just let it fall upon some group of which I am not a part. Sometimes one’s mind/soul tries the contrary, take it all in in order to kick out the world. Then one becomes ill, collapses, is silenced, paralyzed, dead. This is no help, either. So, what else can one do? How go about it differently? I have a sense of direction for an answer, but not yet the answer itself.

But I also do nurture the thought that perhaps what is needed right now is not some great principle answer to the great principle question, but rather practical answers. And I do have some of those. Certainly, you do too. One can gather them and see what is possible right now for each and every one of us. Here is mine.

How can one be a patriotic Israeli right now?

1. Refuse to serve in the military

Refuse to serve in the army, or refuse to be a combatant, or refuse to serve in Gaza. In a declared manner if possible, or as “gray refusal”. In my mind this is the most significant political action open to us right now. And I know that many people whom I respect have a hard time considering it, even under the present circumstances, so I shall expound a bit.

Around me, the most popular reasoning against refusal, is that Israel has dangerous enemies and it needs an army to defend itself against them, and if everyone refuses there will be no army. Another popular reasoning is that tens of thousands of Israelis have served in this war and sacrificed heavily in the defense of their homeland, and this should be honored and not for nothing. I agree with both reasonings.

But not a single one of them is really against refusal. If the War in Gaza is not really a war waged in defense of Israel, if it is destructive and criminal, this means that the way to defend Israel and honor the memory and courage of the fallen is not to continue the same crime and create more and more fallen, but to stop the war. There is no danger that everyone will refuse and that there won’t be an army – there is the tiny possibility that if enough of us refuse, the army will be different. Israel will be different.

2. Talk to people

Talk with people in your life to whom the possibility of refusal is relevant, the reasons.

3. Act in the opposite direction of war

Do active things in the diametrically opposed direction to war – solidarity with the Gazans. I don’t know of many relevant possibilities for such action, except to donate, to the wonderful “Clean Refuge” for example.

4. Actions of Israeli-Palestinian solidarity

Act in the opposite direction in a broader sense – actions of Israeli-Palestinian solidarity outside Gaza, for example in the West Bank or inside Israel or abroad. There are many ways to do this, and many of them have an immediate, concrete effect besides the long-term, abstract and unmeasurable effect of the solidarity itself. One possibility out of my own experience: it is now the olive harvest season, and a supportive presence of Israelis in the West Bank harvests with interested Palestinian farmers is significant to all sides on numerous levels.

5. Active resistance to the war

Express active resistance to the war. Sign petitions, write, demonstrate, talk. Say clearly why I am against it.

It is good to have real conversations about painful subjects when all sides are able and interested. Often this is not the case. Even when such a conversation is impossible, a position of integrity is be taken publicly, with an open invitation for all others to find that integrity on their side, this is something that is always valuable. Like solidarity, it is not a single quantifiable value - it is a part of a momentum whose fruits are as yet invisible, and it is not up to us to know them.

Personally, I think there is special value in resistance planted not in some universal identity, but in particular identities such as my identities as a Jew, an Israeli, a Dharma practitioner, a woman.

6. It is not about “who is good and who is bad”, but about what is beneficial and what is harmful

To move actively, again and again, from the (Protestant, capitalist) ethics of “who are the good guys here and who the bad” to an ethic of “which actions are beneficial and which are harmful”.

As for the bad/harmful – this means, for instance, not to let my caring crash on the rocks of the question “am I doing enough?” (in other words, “am I a good person?”). Realizing at a certain point that no one feels they are doing enough – this helped me. In a way, nothing that is done is enough. But, again, that is not the point. I want to act beneficially within my capabilities.

7. Know what is happening

Knowing what is going on does not necessarily mean watching the news the whole time. Not even every day. But finding and reading/hearing/watching occasional sources of information and interpretation that are credible, profound, varied. Especially, finding information that upends this de-humanization of the other. Any other – but as Israelis, and not just as Israelis, this other for us is above all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. This is a political action – finding for ourselves information that re-humanizes them.

8. Grow beyond the political

Dedicate time and energy to grow beyond the political in its limited sense: be in living relations with the animal world, the not-just-human world, with divinity as I understand it, with the sacred, the beautiful, the true. When you do this, be attentive to it and conceptualize it as an expansion – not a reduction into myself, not an escape. It is a move of refusal, an action that bears political value. From such expansion it is possible to return to the political “we” in all its forms, as someone who is alive not just as part of the political ‘we’, who remembers we are all alive not just there. Moving between these worlds, invite others to move among them.

These are my answers. What are yours?

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This post originally published on Keren Sheffi's website, and is published here with some editorial changes. To read the original post, please click here.