|
This letter was written by Julia Chaitan, a former visiting professor at Nova State University in Broward County. She lives in a Kibbutz in the Negev desert in southern Israel near Gaza and has 2 children currently serving in the IDF.
Dear all
How to put into words what this war is doing to us?
The things that I have dreaded most are happening. The war goes on but its purpose becomes more and more unclear. The war is demanding too much of us, leaving us full of anxiety, and yet with such a feeling of emptiness and loss. It is taking away our lives and our children's lives. It is physically destroying our homes and our communities. It has turned approximately half a million Lebanese and 300,000 Israelis into refugees as they do what they can to escape the bombs and look for safer ground.
In 20 days, it has managed to build massive walls of hate that will take generations to bring down.
Does anyone remember how THIS war began? Two soldiers - Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev - were abducted from within Israel, under a barrage of katushot fired by the Hizbollah in Lebanon. Nasrallah announced that the Hizbollah had kidnapped them in order to negotiate a prisoner exchange with Israel. We were told that the war began in order to get these soldiers back. Then we were told that we were at war in order to push the Hizbollah out of southern Lebanon for once and for all. And then we were told that we need to bomb civilian areas in Beirut and, yesterday, in Kfar Qana, because that is how the Hizbollah operates - they hide themselves within civilian populations and wage their war against us from there. We are told that the IAF is sorry for the loss of innocent lives in Kfar Qana. We are told that Olmert expresses "deep regret" for the loss of innocent lives. We are told that it was a mistake, but that in a day or two people will forget since the media will be showing us new pictures of horror, to take our minds off the 'old' ones.
Yesterday, 140 rockets were shelled into northern Israel. Every day, between 60 - 150 rockets fall in the north - on Kiryat Shmona, on Acco, on Haifa, on Tiberias, on Nazreth, etc etc. On Friday, one rocket hit the hospital in Nahariya and on Saturday one of the rockets hit the hospital in Haifa. Israelis who haven't fled from the north are living in bomb shelters and safe rooms. Israelis who haven't left are, for the most part, the elderly and the poor, those who do not have anywhere to go, or any money or way to get there, if they had somewhere to go.
On Saturday evening, I participated in a demonstration against the war and for negotiations in Tel Aviv, that had been organized by Women against War. I went, though I wasn't completely comfortable with my decision to go. On the one hand, we have every right to defend ourselves. When someone is out to kill you, you have the right and the responsibility to protect yourself. So, this is a just war. On the other hand, I cannot understand how the displacing of so many Lebanese people and the destruction of so much of Lebanon and the killing of so many Lebanese innocent people accomplishes this. And so, so much of this war is unjust. Killing their innocents in order to protect our innocents doesn't make sense. It is neither moral nor logical. As I walked with the other demonstrators and called out the slogans: "In Beirut and in the North, children want to live (this rhymes in Hebrew); :War - no! Peace - yes!"; "War is not the solution - leave Lebanon immediately" (another slogan that rhymes in Hebrew), I felt both guilty and not guilty about my participation. I felt right about demonstrating since this killing has got to stop; I felt guilty about demonstrating since our children - Daniel, Eyahl Omer, Amir, Yoav, Yaniv, Nadav, and others - are putting themselves in danger in order to protect us.
I am told that there is no other way to fight the Hizbollah. That there is no other way to fight a terrorist organization that strikes from within civilian populations. I am also told that we need to continue on with this war since this is the only way we will be able to get to a meaningful ceasefire. But where do we draw the line between justly fighting a terrorist organization and using terrorist tactics yourself? How can we say - it is wrong of you to kill our citizens but it is understandable and acceptable that we kill yours?
I wish I knew how to convince the decision makers - in Lebanon, in Syria, in Palestine and in Israel - that this war will only become another war in the long series if we do not sit down together at the negotiations table and work out a comprehensive peace agreement. I wonder how to get through to them that withdrawals - unilateral or bi-lateral - or ceasefires are useless if not accompanied by comprehensive negotiations that end in signed peace agreements. We withdrew from Lebanon 6 years ago and we withdrew from Gaza one year ago, but we know no peace since we did not sit down afterward to talk with our enemies. And it is with our enemies we must talk, with all the difficulties that this entails, for it is with them that we are at war and with them that we must find the way to peace.
I do not believe that we can negotiate with Hizbollah. They want our destruction and are not a partner for peace or even some kind of co-existence. But we can negotiate with Lebanon (if we leave anything left in that country) and we can negotiate with Syria, and we can negotiate with the Palestinians, just as we saw in the past that we could negotiate with Jordan and Egypt. We can do this with the help of the international community. We must believe that it is within our power to arrive at a workable plan that allows us all to live our lives without having to take the lives of the other. We need to believe that such agreements are not only important for the peace that they would bring with our neighbors, but also because they would ultimately ostracize organizations that preach and carry out terror.
There is extremely wide consensus for this war in Israel. People - some very close to me - are angry with me for speaking out against military actions taken in this war. They say my actions are stupid and that I am betraying my country. They call into question my love for my country and say that by publicly protesting I am supporting Nasrallah and making his job easier. They say this is not the time to demonstrate and protest, and that protests must wait until this war has ended. I only know how to express my love of my country by living here and speaking out against injustices by saying - I know we can do better. I know that we can.
For those who may be wondering - Gilad Shalit, the soldier who was kidnapped from within Israel near the border with Gaza, is still being held in captivity. And the war in Gaza is continuing. They shoot kassam rockets at us - today one hit a dining room in one of the kibbutzim, thankfully no one was harmed - and we fire our shells into them, and bomb them from the air. Every day we hear how many Palestinians were killed, how many wounded, if some of our soldiers were hurt, if some of our citizens were hurt when a kassam rocket hit. Our war in the north is making the international headlines, but the war in the south is no less silent.
Today I remembered an old peace saying - What if they held a war and nobody came?
Halevi - Oh that! - we could turn this vision into our reality.
Yours
Julia
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
