Temple Emanuel Greensboro

There are few who are more left on the political spectrum than am I. Since moving to Israel almost 35 years ago, I have identified with virtually every progressive cause in the country. I have tried to follow the Talmudic dictum: "If someone in your household commits a crime, and you do nothing to prevent that crime, then you are responsible for the crimes of the entire household" (Shabbat 54b). In the words of our late teacher, Abraham Joshua Heschel: "While some are guilty, all are responsible."

It is when one's life is in danger that one's moral steadfastness is tested. While one must protect the body of Israel, one must also safeguard its soul. It is no easy task to balance the maintenance of one's security with the preservation of one's morality.

The ethical standards, which I apply to my own people, I would hope others would apply to theirs. If not – then it becomes fair game to talk about moral equivalency and moral comparisons, especially if one senses (or knows) that his or her physical well-being is threatened. I wish to see my Arab neighbors assume a measure of collective responsibility, just as we in the Israeli liberal camp do.

If one were to do comparative shopping at an ethical mall, Israel dwarfs virtually all other countries, particularly given the realities that we Israelis face on a day-to-day basis. While I oppose applying the lowest common denominator as a means to justify actions that are contrary to the Jewish value-heritage, I do wish to have the world judge us by universal standards of moral conduct.

Having never faced an Arab enemy up close, those of the Jewish liberal elite in America, who so are so critical of Israel's present actions in Lebanon, need to exercise some humility before making moral judgments on how we Jews in Israel behave. Any ideological discussion of a nation's ethical standards in war is best understood on the battlefield, where right and wrong do not assume the almost facile clarity of those who sit comfortably in their living rooms thousands of miles away.

As I watch the horrific scenes of Lebanese civilian deaths in Kfar Kana, Bint Jbeil and Maron A-Rous, I am not an armchair analyst. I have been to these places during the 1982 Lebanon War and know what I saw: Arsenals of weapons, rocket launchers and explosive belts placed in mosques, schools, medical clinics and apartment buildings; land-mines in the middle of villages, bunkers under hospitals and command posts in local groceries. When the Israeli army tells us that the streets and alleyways of most of these same Lebanese villages in southern Lebanon are awash with missile launchers, I know it to be true, having seen the same cynical use of civilians as human shields when I fought in Lebanon. However, I still am morally chagrined by some of the IDF's actions.

But, it is not sufficient to only speak about the tactical schemes of the "enemy," but also to address his strategic goals. In August, 1993, I addressed a UN conference in Dakar, Senegal, on "Africa and the Question of Israel/Palestine," held just as the Oslo Accords were announced. I heard Ikrema Sabri, then chief preacher of the Al Aksa mosque, now the head of the Wakf in Jerusalem; puncture the euphoria that surrounded the UN events with a speech that was reminiscent of the Protocols of the Elder's of Zion. It was the most vituperative and vitriolic anti-Semitic diatribe I had ever heard.

In 1933, when Hitler assumed the chancellorship of Germany, Mein Kamf was in its 25^th printing. This manifesto that detailed the "Final Solution" should have been sufficient warning to justify a preemptive strike against Germany in order to prevent the Germans from achieving the military capability to implement Hitler's evil plan. The Hamas and Hizbollah charters, fueled by the rhetoric of their Iranian patron, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, make Mein Kamp look moderate.

And yet, with this frightful merger of practice and ideology, combined to wipe the Jewish state off the face of the earth, Israel does not napalm the Lebanese countryside as did the Americans in Vietnam; does not employ indiscriminate carpet bombing as did the Americans in Fallujah and Najaf; and, it does not brutalized either the Palestinians or the Lebanese to a hundredth of the extent that the French did to the Algerians or the Russians did to the Afghanis or the Jordanians did to the Palestinians in 1970 or the Syrians to the Moslem Brotherhood in 1982 or the Iranians and Iraqis did to each other in their eight year war.

And, unlike America's war in Vietnam or France's war in Algeria or Russia's war in Afghanistan, this war has entered our homes, our malls, our factories and our playgrounds. Its practical fallout sees one million Israelis either living in shelters or fleeing their homes – 600 of which have been destroyed in Kiryat Shemona alone by Hizbollah rockets. The fact that the international media barely addresses the Israeli refugee issue should not excuse liberal Jews from focusing on it. Indeed, one would expect them to find this reality no less morally condemnable than is the plight of Lebanese refugees.

It is the ethical mission of any honorable Jew to make certain that a moral gap between Israel and other countries remains. But, no one should forget how this war started. In violation of UN resolution 1559, Hizbollah built a war-time infrastructure in Southern Lebanon, crossed into Israel, killing eight of its soldiers and kidnapping two. They then fired rockets purposely at our civilian population in Northern Israel – rockets issued by Iran, which is dedicated to our destruction.

The Arab nations can and have lost many wars. We cannot lose one war. Therefore, if there is any war that satisfies the halachic injunction for an obligatory war (milchemet mitzvah) as opposed to a mandatory war (milchemet reshut), it is this one.

Consequently, we liberals in Israel, almost without exception, understand that this could be the preliminary war for our ultimate survival. Faced with the practical and ideological commitment of Hizbollah, Hamas and Iran to rid the world of a Jewish state, we ask our liberal Jewish brothers and sisters in America to recognize that Jewish survival is no less an absolute moral value than is the protection of a Lebanese civilian population held hostage by our enemy.