A Vision of Peace, Out of War
A Vision of Peace, Out of War
Sermon Shabbat Hazon/Devarim 5785
Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha
Tomorrow night, at Tisha B’Av services, we will chant a powerful Megillah, the Scroll of Eycha, Lamentations from the last section of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. Eycha is a sad reminder of the terrible defeat and loss our people experienced in antiquity, the Churban Bayit Rishon, the destruction of the First Temple and the exile of our ancestors to the alien nation of Babylon. On Tisha b’Av tomorrow we’ll remember also the destruction of the 2nd Temple, the fall of Beitar ending the Bar Cochba Revolt, our Expulsion from Spain, and many other tragedies that befell us in our long, often disastrous history on this fateful date. And we know that a future potential calamity remains a possibility in a world in which far too many people simply don’t believe that we Jews have the right to our own country in our own homeland.
Tonight, however, we take inspiration from a different Megillah, also in the last section of the Tanakh. Ecclesiastes, Kohelet, famously says, לַכֹּ֖ל זְמָ֑ן וְעֵ֥ת לְכׇל־חֵ֖פֶץ תַּ֥חַת הַשָּׁמָֽיִם׃ - For everything there is a season, and a time for every experience under heaven.
עֵ֤ת לֶֽאֱהֹב֙ וְעֵ֣ת לִשְׂנֹ֔א עֵ֥ת מִלְחָמָ֖ה וְעֵ֥ת שָׁלֽוֹם׃
A time to love and a time to hate;
A time for war and a time for peace.
After a long time of war, and much hatred, we have now reached a time for peace in Israel. And that simply must be acted upon, and soon.
There is a subject that we need to address tonight, the elephant in the room among those of us who are devoted and committed supporters of Israel. Our Congregation Beit Simcha, and I personally, have always been and remain proud and vocal Zionists. In the last 22 months we have supported Israel and its citizens and its armed forces through the trauma, tragedy, and triumph of the war with the brutal Palestinian terrorists of Hamas, the Hezbollah terrorists of Lebanon, the Houthi terrorists of Yemen, the Islamist terrorist state of Iran, and the terrorists on both sides in the Syrian civil war. I have gone to Israel during this time of war, raised funds for its humanitarian needs, spoken out here and in local media and on the Too Jewish Radio Show and Podcast repeatedly on Israel’s behalf, and publicized the Jewish State’s struggles to maintain humanity and preserve life during a brutal, mostly urban war in a region with an incredibly dense population.
Many of us in the Jewish community in America have worked hard to counteract the well-funded propaganda of terrorist sympathizers and apologists, corrected the many lies spread about Israel, answered every challenge raised against its carefully structured responses that have turned the course of the war and brought Israel to a much stronger place than it has been in a long time.
There is no doubt Israel has had to fight a horrible war in Gaza that was forced on it by the war-criminals of Hamas, who slaughtered, tortured, raped and kidnapped civilians in order to create the disaster that has inevitably ensued for the Gaza Palestinians. Hamas insists on prolonging this war as long as possible by refusing to release the 23 living Israeli hostages—possibly still alive after 664 days of horrible captivity—and Hamas also won’t release the bodies of the 30 or so Israelis and other foreign nationals it is ghoulishly holding onto.
It is also completely true that Hamas has long used food as a weapon, has stolen the food sent into the territory by aid organizations and used it to extort Palestinians into working for it and even fighting for it, sold that food to Palestinians at black-market prices, and generally weaponized food to the profound detriment of all Palestinians in Gaza. Israel provided or transported into the region the food that kept Gaza Palestinians alive throughout this war, even though it is quite literally fighting a war against the Hamas terrorists who hold sway there and who have stolen most of the food for their own use and purposes.
We also know that starvation in Gaza has been predicted or falsely proclaimed since January 2024, over 18 months ago, but strangely it hasn’t materialized until now.
We also know that Israel has tried to control Hamas’ interception of food by setting up its own humanitarian relief system.
Unfortunately, this simply hasn’t worked. The reasons it isn’t working are likely complex, among them that, undoubtedly, Hamas has tried to sabotage the program; the Israeli government and military simply don’t have the administrative ability to actually pull off feeding a hostile civilian population; there is a great desperation of the population trapped in Gaza by the closed border with Egypt, the ongoing war including destruction of homes and other structures, and so on. Whatever the current cause, the net result is a humanitarian crisis, and a public relations disaster of the first order.
The perception that Israel is using food as a weapon against Palestinians may be false, but at this point that doesn’t matter. Israel must find a way out of this quagmire, and fast. Even if Hamas exploits a dramatic increase in food supplies flowing into Gaza—and it will—we cannot have the perception that Jews are denying food to civilians and that people are starving.
I know, many of the widely circulated photos of starving children are of kids with underlying genetic problems, and some of them are actually taken in other countries. But these images of starving-looking children remain in people’s minds, and the issue is getting more problematic by the day.
Israel has to resolve this, and allow more food into Gaza, and do so now. It is not likely that allowing a greater humanitarian crisis to ensue, caused by Hamas, yes, but in the eyes of a hyper-critical world it is happening under the control of the powerful Israeli military will improve anything. It will not save any of the hostages, nor end this war with a positive result.
In fact, the visuals and the reports of actual starvation are moving governments that have previously resisted the propaganda push to recognize a “State of Palestine” to arrange to do so next month. France, the United Kingdom and Canada have never before recognized “Palestine”; they are offering or threatening to do so now, to try to resolve the current disastrous situation in Gaza. Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, has even agreed, supposedly, to hold elections, something he hasn’t done in over 20 years, two full decades, in order to secure such recognition.
Frankly, Israelis are more concerned with liberating the remaining hostages than they are with a further destruction of Gaza and its population, even including Hamas. All the current surveys, and the large rallies against the government being held regularly now, demonstrate that the public in Israel wants the hostages back, and now.
Speaking as a rabbi, there is no positive result from widespread starvation in Gaza. Starving your enemy may have been a typical way for armies to act throughout history. It is not an option that the army representing the Jewish State, an army that emphasizes and teaches Tohar haNeshek, the purity of arms, can utilize, or permit. That ethical code of conduct for the IDF prohibits harming non-combatants or prisoners of war and emphasizes avoiding harm to their lives, bodies, dignity, and property.
In fact, throughout this Gaza War in a densely populated small area with nearly 2 million inhabitants, it has been maintained. How else do you explain the fact that far from a so-called “genocide” taking place, the vast majority of the Gaza Strip’s civilian population remains alive and essentially healthy after nearly two years of warfare? The death of civilians, like the 1200 murdered in Israel by Hamas and the 38 who died at the hands of Iranian missiles and rockets, is always tragic. It is likely that 20-30,000 Palestinian civilians have died in Gaza over this war, some of whom were accidentally killed by Israeli munitions. That is sad and tragic, the consequence of a war that Israel never sought to fight. The majority of the deaths in Gaza have, to this point, been Hamas and other Islamist terrorists, armed and shooting at Israeli soldiers and civilians.
The conduct of Israel through this war has been, almost always, in keeping with its own doctrine of purity of arms. It is crucial to maintain that, and not use starvation as a weapon of war, intentionally or accidentally. War has been forced on our people. We must continue to conduct ourselves in this conflict with intelligence and care.
A final comment about the Gaza War. As we have previously noted, on October 7th, 2023, 251 hostages were dragged into the horror tunnels of Gaza by the Palestinian terrorists of Hamas. Of those who have somehow survived, 8 hostages have been freed by IDF action in the nearly two years since that terrible day. 8. The other 140 hostages who were redeemed and returned to freedom were liberated through negotiations.
There is a time for war and a time to make peace. We are now at a point where further war in Gaza is likely to produce only more death and destruction, including, of course, the deaths of more young Israeli soldiers. It will now add starvation and further international opprobrium to the mix, and it is very unlikely to free the remaining hostages. There is a time when the practical choice and the ethical choice coincide. That is the time for peace. That time has come.
We continue to support Israel fully, and to understand at this season in which we recall destruction and loss that its security is crucial for all Jews, everywhere, and for the future of the Middle East. That security, now, is best guaranteed through saving the remaining hostages and finding a workable agreement for peace. At this season of Tisha B’Av, on this Shabbat Hazon, the Sabbath of vision, may the vision of Israel’s leaders come to coincide with her best and most moral needs.