Page 23 - Iton 10

The author David Grossman had this opinion piece printed on the front page of Ha’aretz on January 20th

Gaza success proves Israel is strong, not right

Like the pairs of foxes in the biblical story of Samson, tied together by their tails, a flaming torch
between them, so Israel and the Palestinians - despite the imbalance of power - drag each other
along. Even when we try hard to wrest ourselves free, we burn those who are tethered to us - our
double, our misfortune - as well as ourselves.

And so, amidst the wave of nationalist hyperbole now sweeping the nation, it would not hurt to recall
that in the final analysis, this last operation in Gaza is just another stop along a trail blazing with
fire, violence and hatred.

As satisfied as Israelis are that the technical weaknesses of the Second Lebanon War were
corrected, we should be paying heed to another voice - the one that says the Israel Defense
Forces' successes in the confrontation with Hamas do not prove that it was right to embark on such
a massive campaign, and are certainly no justification for Israel's mode of operation in the course
of the fighting. These military successes merely confirm that Israel is stronger than Hamas, and
that under certain conditions it can be tough and cruel in its own way.

When the guns become completely silent, and the full scope of the killing and destruction becomes
known, to the point where even the most self-righteous and sophisticated of the Israeli psyche's
defense mechanisms are overcome, perhaps then some kind of lesson will imprint itself on our brain.
Perhaps then we will finally understand how deeply and fundamentally wrong our actions in this
region have been from time immemorial - how misguided, unethical, unwise and above all, responsible,
time after time, for fanning the flames that consume us.

Obviously, the Palestinians cannot be let off the hook for their crimes and mistakes. That would be
tantamount to belittling and condescending to them, as if they were not mature adults with minds
of their own, responsible for their own decisions and failures. The inhabitants of the Gaza Strip
may have been "strangulated" in many ways by Israel, but even they have other options for
protesting and drawing attention to their misery than the launching of thousands of rockets against
innocent citizens in Israel.

We must not forget that. We cannot pardon the Palestinians or treat them forgivingly, as if it were
obvious that whenever they feel put upon, violence will always be their sole response, the one they
embrace almost automatically.

Yet even when the Palestinians act with indiscriminate violence, when they use suicide bombings and
Qassam rocket fire, Israel is stronger than them, and it can have a tremendous impact on the level
of violence in the conflict as a whole - and hence on calming it down and even bringing it to an end.
The current confrontation has not shown that anyone in the Israeli leadership really grasps the
critical significance of this aspect of the conflict in any fully conscious or responsible way.

One day, after all, we will seek to heal the wounds we inflict today. How will that day ever come if
we do not understand that our military might cannot be the primary instrument for carving out a
path for ourselves in this region? How will that day ever come if we fail to comprehend just
how graveness is the responsibility that lies on our shoulders by dint of our complex and