I followed the funeral and memorial services for Ezra Schwartz, the American-Jewish boy who was murdered near Jerusalem last week. I am a friend of Ezra's family, and this has been an occasion to connect with the ongoing tragedy of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on a personal level. Ezra's family has been embraced by supporters around the world, from Australia to Israel to the Police Department in their home town of Sharon, Massachusetts, to the New England Patriots.
Their quiet street was a traffic jam of supporters for all of Thanksgiving week. This resilient community in mourning is engaged in a very specific exercise: confronting the tragedy of Ezra's death directly and unflinchingly, while still celebrating his life, seeking meaning, and lesson from his example.
Over the past week, I have heard and read some of the most thoughtful meditations on family, community and on mourning itself. Perhaps most striking has been Ezra's uncle, Yoav Schwartz's, probing of the communal norms that inspire the human beings perpetrating the current wave of murders in Israel, with profound concern for both populations involved.
It is a bitter coincidence that Yoav expressed some of these views in a CNN article last month, and a testament to his, and his family's, grace that he continues to probe them with sensitivity and humanity, despite the family's heartbreak. Yoav is a member of the Israeli majority that seeks understanding, and struggles to find a peaceful and mutually-constructive accommodation with the Palestinians.
Some have made the point that incitement to violence by the Palestinian leadership must end, not only to prevent tragedies like these, but for the sake of Palestinian society. I agree. Indeed, the raucous funeral celebrations in Gaza and Nablus for Palestinians killed in the act of killing Jews, and repeated scenes of Palestinian mothers rejoicing in their own children's deaths as "martyrs," (and in their children's murder of Jewish children) is the symptom of a deeply sick society. This sickness is perpetuated and exacerbated by the leadership's incitement. I am also a member of the majority that seeks accommodation. I agree that incitement needs to end, but it will not. I have not stopped thinking about Yoav's questions on these individuals' behavior and the societal norms that inspire it, but I believe there is an inter-societal dynamic at play here as well. Today, Palestinian and Israeli societies are like a codependent couple, locked in a self-destructive, mutually-reinforcing set of behaviors. If one of these individuals is the abuser, the other is the enabler. At this point, separation is the only way to end the dysfunction.
Perhaps reconciliation can come later, but only separation will work now.
I understand the Palestinian leadership's need to continue stoking violence. Violence feeds the Palestinian victimhood narrative, and victimhood is, tragically, the cornerstone of Palestinian identity. Remove it, and Palestinian identity becomes shaky. Many readers will instinctively balk at this assertion. I urge you to test it by offering a distinct list of the principles that the national construct we call Palestine stands for -- in the sense that most Americans perceive America to stand for Freedom and Democracy, among other ideals, or that most Iranians perceive Iran to stand for Persian Culture and the promotion of Shia Islam, or that most Israelis perceive Israel to stand for Innovation and Creativity.
What, exactly, does Palestine stand for, absent Israel? What has it stood for in other places, like Jordan, or in other times in the same places, like under Jordanian sovereignty in the West Bank, or Egyptian sovereignty in Gaza between 1948 and 1967, or under British sovereignty before that, or under Turkish sovereignty before that? Perhaps, and hopefully, Palestinian identity will evolve into something different but, for now, it is defined by victimhood, and that requires a victimizer -- real or purported.
In this sense, Israel serves as the skeletal structure of Palestinian identity. Constant, hostile, contact with Israelis is an essential management tool for the Palestinian leadership. Without an alternative vision, this leadership will remain dependent on its victimizer. So incitement will not end until the Palestinian identity is anchored by something else, when the Palestinian leadership and people stand for something constructive, as a heroic, but still very small, minority of Palestinian entrepreneurs does today. This can only happen through disengagement with Israel.
The Israeli perspective is more straightforward. We can and do complain about not having a partner for peace, but we play a key role in sustaining that reality. We are the proverbial enabler, just by virtue of our recurrent decision to engage. Yes. It is a choice. Perhaps not an easy choice, but still a choice. As with individual people, even when the enabler knows she should sever an abusive relationship, she usually finds reasons to stay - often legitimate reasons. It takes honesty and courage to weigh the costs and benefits of leaving. In our national case, the costs of severing the relationship are clear and real:
1.It would mean leaving Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), when Jews desire, and deserve, access to the Jewish holy sites there. We are correct in assuming we would be denied this access if Hebron were under Muslim rule. We know how the Middle East works.
2.Israelis want and deserve safety and security. They are correct in assuming they would be rocketed from the West Bank, just as they have been from Gaza for the ten years since that retreat. Our innovative, if expensive, defenses against these attacks are improving all the time, but there is clearly no perfect solution.
These are the two big reasons for staying. They are real. An honest reckoning would weigh these costs against the benefits of ending a dysfunctional and abusive relationship.
1.We could allocate fewer resources to defense, and invest them in education, innovation, culture, progress - the things that make us Israeli and Jewish.
2.We could reduce the exposure of our young people in uniform to moral dilemmas that come with close engagement with an enemy willing to sacrifice its own civilians if it helps him to kill ours.
3.We could end our intimate embrace of the sickness next door, the same death-sanctifying sickness ailing much of the Middle East, before it becomes an inextricable feature of our own delicate social fabric.
4.We could prevent so many future tragedies like the murder of Ezra Schwartz.
Ezra left his family with a wealth of precious memories and teachings. Perhaps his gift to the rest of us is clarity. We do not have to remain in this relationship. We have a choice.