By Rabbi Aaron Benson
I love Israel. I think the founding of the modern state in 1948 was a miracle, fulfilling 2,000 years of the Jewish people’s dreams.
“My eyes are dimmed with grief,” says Psalm 6. Images and stories of children, young adults, elderly and even whole families being kidnapped, beaten and murdered break me over and over since the war with the Hamas-controlled Palestinian enclave of Gaza began Saturday, Oct. 7.
I want justice done on their behalf and the perpetrators of such atrocities punished. But I know, even though I can’t imagine how, that there are people out there who see these things as justified, as necessary even, who think of the nation I view as a miracle as a curse.
And I know that if I talk to those people and cry out, “How can this possibly be right?” they will respond that it is. And they will mean it. That conversation will go nowhere, and that won’t stop anyone dying.
Back in college, I was very active in Jewish student life. I also took Arabic, at which I was not great. Often in college, we Jewish students would be demonstrating opposite Muslim students, including some of my Arab classmates, over Israel and Palestine. There was nothing about that topic the groups could say to each other civilly.
However, I could talk about homework with the other students from class. Not only because I could use the help, but because it made me and them human to the others on our opposing sides.
In the past, many Egyptians and Jordanians spilled Jewish blood in their own fighting wars with Israel, to no avail.
Miraculously, the leaders of those countries took a chance — not on winning, not on convincing the Israelis to disappear, but on coexisting. Israel did, too. And, by and large, it worked. And in recent years, other countries in the Arab and Muslim worlds have done the same with similar results.
One doesn’t make peace with those you like, but with those you hate. You don’t even need to stop hating them to have peace. You just need to agree further bloodshed isn’t going to finally make someone right, it will just make someone dead.
There is a growing list of countries making peace with Israel to the benefit of all. Add this to the centuries of generally positive coexistence between Muslims and Jews throughout history, and you might come away thinking that if vindication isn’t possible, then peace isn’t a bad consolation prize.
I pray those kidnapped will be found safe. And I pray that the blood has already been shed of that final person whose death will convince the sides that coexistence — that peace — is the only resolution.
Please, God, may that be so.
Aaron Benson is the rabbi at North Shore Jewish Center, based in Port Jefferson Station.
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