By Berl Falbaum
Yis’ga’dal v’viskadash sh’may ra’boo… (May the great name of God be exalted and sanctified…)
That is the opening sentence of the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead translated phonetically from the Hebrew, that Israel is reciting to mourn its dead following the barbaric attack by Hamas, the terrorist organization.
Sadly, the prayer will be recited often -- too often -- in the coming days and weeks.
But despite the around-the-clock news coverage of the bloody siege, it is hard, if not impossible, to grasp the emotional and psychological toll on Israelis.
Many have compared the onslaught to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor but there are important distinctions between those two catastrophes and Hamas’s brutal, ferocious surprise attack.
Most Americans did not have a direct or indirect relationship with those who died or the survivors of 9/11 or Pearl Harbor. America is a big country and while the entire nation mourned, few had connections with the victims.
That is not true for Israel. To fully digest how this attack affected the very soul of Israel, one needs to understand a little of its history and geography.
First, its history with war and terrorism. Israelis have suffered from terrorism since its founding in 1948. They also learned to live with war, having fought eight (including two intifadas) in 75 years, one every nine years. The Jewish Virtual Library lists 67 terrorist attacks against Israel, killing 3,200, since 1948 and another 27 attack, killing 600, going back to 1920.
In the military confrontations, Israel has always been victorious, and perhaps complacency contributed to what some labeled the largest intelligence failure in the country’s history. This was inconceivable; anyone predicting it would have been considered unhinged.
The country took pride in the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) and its ability to survive in an area where many of its neighbors have long sought its destruction.
True, the Yom Kippur war in 1973 involved a surprise military operation. But that war pitted the armies of Egypt and Syria against Israel’s armed forces. Hamas does not have an organized army but is composed of thousands of terrorists who, theoretically, should not have been able to launch such a clandestine operation -- and so successfully.
Some described the onslaught which, at this writing, killed more than 700, mostly civilians including 260 young people attending a music festival, and wounded thousands, one of the darkest moments in Israel’s history.
It will take a long time for Israel to restore its self-assurance. Instead, it will be haunted by doubt, mistrust, and distrust.
More important, to feel the full depth of Israelis’ tragedy one needs to consider the size of the country. It is the 47th smallest country in the world.
It is only roughly 265 miles from north to south, about equal to the miles north and south of Michigan’s lower peninsula. At its narrowest, it is only about nine miles (I am omitting, for this column, the contentious West Bank.)
Its population totals a mere 10 million (just a million more than New York City) of which 75 percent (seven million) is Jewish and 21 percent (two million) are Arabs while 5.5 percent (534,000) are of other religions or nationalities.
Given its history with war and terrorism, “everyone” either has suffered a loss in military engagements or knows someone who did. They have all shared the tragedies of war and terrorism; they attended each other’s funerals, and tried to soothe each other’s heartbreak.
Death and tragedy are no strangers in this land besieged over the years by those who seek its demise.
The assault affected every citizen in the country. Those in the north and west felt the pain of those killed or captured in the south and east. Tears and grief blanketed the entire country in all directions. They saying, “six degrees of separation” has a special meaning in Israel.
Millions of e-mails, texts and telephone calls crisscrossed the country to check on relatives, friends and co-workers. No one was immune from the agony and suffering.
(Indeed, there are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of Oakland County residents who have relatives or friends in Israel.)
Along with burying the dead, Israelis are dealing with disappointment, humiliation, anger, bitterness, anxiety, shock, frustration, and uncertainty.
Americans mourned 9/11 and grieved Pearl Harbor -- the day that FDR said would live in infamy -- but given the size and population of the U.S., its soul was not crushed.
Lacking Israel’s history and geography, those two calamities did not destroy or damage the nation’s psyche or undermine its confidence.
Israel’s immediate objective will be to destroy Hamas or at least severely diminish its military capabilities. Most likely, if the past portends the future, it will succeed. But it will be a long fight, fierce and bloody with more trauma for the country.
After completing its military mission, it will undertake a second equally difficult goal: to restore the nation’s belief in itself, pride in being a beacon of democracy -- the only democracy in the Middle East -- repair the psychological and emotional damage suffered by its citizens and renew trust in its leaders, whether conservative or liberal.
Israelis know all too well the latter will be as challenging to achieve as the former.
Meanwhile, Israel will seek consolation in the Kaddish.
––––––––––––––––––––
Subscribe to the Legal News!
http://legalnews.com/subscriptions
Full access to public notices, articles, columns, archives, statistics, calendar and more
Day Pass Only $4.95!
One-County $80/year
Three-County & Full Pass also available
––––––––––––––––––––
Subscribe to the Legal News!
https://legalnews.com/Home/Subscription
Full access to public notices, articles, columns, archives, statistics, calendar and more
Day Pass Only $4.95!
One-County $80/year
Three-County & Full Pass also available
