Building Community in Eshkol

So I asked the woman, what was the news back home? What were the people feeling about the latest incidents?

Silly me. I thought Batia would tell me about reaction to the air strikes by Israel in Syria and the rise in tensions along Israel's borders. Instead, the news of the day, she told me, on the lips of all, was the report that one of the unmarried news anchors of Channel 1 was pregnant. As if that wasn't enough of a blockbuster, an anchor of Channel 2 was involved in a traffic accident. No word on her condition.

Life goes on. Amid the bombs and rockets, life goes on.

Batia was one of eight women brought to the United States by Shalom Yisrael to enjoy two weeks of rest and relaxation  from the daily stress of living and working in the Eshkol Regional Council in Israel, the most frequently attacked district of their country. Situated along the southern portion of the Gaza Strip, hugging the border with Egypt, the Eshkol area is home to some 13,000 residents. It was a mostly peaceful 1,000 square miles when the women chose to live there, not out of any Zionistic fervor but because Eshkol was beautiful and away from the hustle and bustle of city life in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. 

All that changed in 2005 after Israel withdrew from Gaza. After Hamas brutally ousted Fatah, mortar after mortar attack ensued. It was from the Eshkol region that the soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped and held for five years in the Gaza Strip until released in 2011. The incursion into Israel last year by terrorists who stole two armored Egyptian vehicles occurred in the Eshkol region. Last November, when 1,200 rockets landed in all of Israel, 463 fell in Eshkol.

Some of the communities in Eshkol are so close to the border there isn’t time for an alarm to sound. Only the percussion of an exploding rocket or mortar startles residents into defensive activity. It is then that Batia and her colleagues spring into action as first responder trauma care providers. That’s not their primary jobs. Normally, they are social workers and psychologists in schools and welfare agencies, administering to the needs of the area’s population. When explosions break the tranquility of the day—a rocket landed Wednesday—they are transformed into first responder trauma care providers. 

By necessity, their discipline has been mostly self taught. As I wrote last year, when eight other first responders visited as part of the Shalom Yisrael program, the 32 communities of Eshkol (14 kibbutzim, 13 moshavim and five residential communities) are vulnerable in space and time. If their homes are within four and a half kilometers (2.7 miles) of the border they have been outfitted by the government with “safe rooms” built to withstand a direct hit. In communities more than four and a half kilometers from Gaza, no safe rooms are retrofitted to existing homes. The only government funded security is a shelter for kindergarten children. If they are lucky, they have, perhaps, 15 seconds to seek cover. 

Still, life goes on, as close to normal as the Israelis will permit. Tamar, a mother of three boys, 10, 5 and 3, and a 13 year old daughter, demonstrates her resiliency and determination by refusing to give in to fear. She purposely drives the road near the Gaza Strip rather than a route further away from danger. She will not allow the terrorists to alter her lifestyle. 

During their two week stay in New York and Washington, DC, which ended on Mother’s Day, the women visited many cultural and historic sites. And, of course, they shopped. But perhaps their most unique experience involved an aspect of Judaism they had never encountered. They are secular, for the most part, even to the edges of agnosticism because of the smothering influence the religious right has on the Israeli way of life. Their host families brought them to their respective synagogues on Saturdays, where they experienced prayer services far more inclusive and welcoming than any they knew of in Israel. Several received a joint aliyah, an honor of being called up to the Torah. And the Friday before they left they joined a demonstration in Madison Square in Manhattan in support of Women of the Wall, the Israeli group trying to gain equality for women at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Again, they received recognition from the New York community.

Community. Even though Eshkol is bombarded more than any other region, it doesn’t get the foreign press Sderot generates from attacks at the northern edge of Gaza. At times, the residents of Eshkol can feel isolated, alone. But two weeks of sharing and nurturing from heretofore strangers, two weeks of freedom from terror, recharged their internal batteries and revealed to them that their values were shared by a community across the ocean. Life can go on, knowing they are not alone. 

Double Standards

The loss of any innocent life is to be regretted, but two concurrent protests against the use of force by U.S. and Israeli military forces raise some troubling double standard questions. Actually, it’s a double-standard squared problem, as I will explain.

I am all for democratic countries waging war under “civilized” principles that include safeguarding civilian populations and never knowingly setting out to harm non combatants. It’s a standard all too often ignored by their foes. But one reason we believe America and Israel engage in “just wars” is the manner in which they are prosecuted. Both countries try to avoid civilian casualties.

The U.S., according to CBS News sources, has killed more than 500 terrorists in Pakistan over the last two years. They include the third-ranking Al Qaeda leader, killed in the last week. All died without the loss of a single U.S. serviceman, thanks to the technological efforts of our increasingly sophisticated unmanned drone air force. But in killing those terrorists, 30 civilians also died, CBS reported. Scores of civilians have died in Afghanistan from drone attacks, as well. A United Nations report claims drone strikes “amount to a license to kill” without being held accountable since neither the U.S. nor the Pakistani governments acknowledge the drones are operating over Pakistani soil. Further, the rise in drone warfare could lead to its adoption by other countries that would not be as discriminating in its use, the U.N. said (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/world/03drones.html?ref=world).

The death of nine activists aboard a ship trying to pierce the blockade of the the Gaza Strip has once again raised voices protesting Israel’s right to defend itself. Hardly a whimper is heard when North Korea sinks a South Korean vessel, or when one Muslim faction blows up innocents praying at a mosque. But when Israel justifiably tries to determine if contraband and explosives are part of cargo bound for an enemy that has vowed its destruction, the world seems to awaken from its lethargy. Even the United States seems ready to castigate a reliable partner in the war on terror.

And yet, and here’s where the double-standard squared part comes in, read through the remarks made by a U.S. official justifying the drone attacks: “The United States has an inherent right to protect itself and will not refrain from doing so based on someone else’s exceptionally narrow—if not faulty—definition of self-defense.” Perhaps someone in the Obama administration needs to put that statement, substituting Israel for the United States, in front of the president and every other world leader and their respective staffs. No government in a state of war, as Israel is with Hamas, should be expected to sit by idly while its enemy arms itself with weapons that could penetrate major population centers. Hamas already has shown it does not wage “civilized” war. It purposely fires missiles into civilian areas.

I regret the loss of life on the Mavi Marmara. I regret Israel’s military precision failed to secure its objective without the loss of life. But I most regret the absence of a single, civilized standard adhered to by all combatants and the failure of the American government’s understanding that Israel has no room for slight miscalculations, that its existence depends on eternal vigilance. As candidate Barack Obama said during a visit to Sderot on the border of the Gaza Strip, "If missiles were falling where my two daughters sleep, I would do everything in order to stop that."