Israeli Pilots Object in Behalf of Justice
By Ruth Oron, Harriet Bernstein, Zehava Fishman,
Zvia Ratz, Avi Gvili, Rose Levy
As Israeli citizens, we are impelled
to express our admiration and respect for the Israeli pilots and the thirteen
reservist soldiers and officers in the elite Sayeret Matkal unit of the
Israel Defense Forces who recently wrote two impassioned letters, one to
Air Force Commander Dan Halutz and the other to Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon. The pilots wrote:
| "We, who were taught to love the
state of Israel and contribute to the endeavor of Zionism, refuse to take
part in the Air Force attacks on civilian population centers. We,
who see the Israeli Defense Forces and the Air Force as an inseparable
part of us, refuse to continue to hurt innocent civilians.
These attacks are illegal and unethical,
and are the direct result of an ongoing occupation that is corrupting the
Israeli society as a whole. This ongoing occupation is disastrous
to the security of the State of Israel and its moral fortitude." |
And just a week ago the soldiers
of Sayeret Matkal wrote:
| "We say to you today, we will no
longer give our hands to the oppressive reign int he territories and the
denial of human rights to millions of Palestinians...and we will no longer
serve as a defensive shield for the settlement enterprise." |
We respect these soldiers tremendously.
That they no longer can participate and go along with the immoral occupation
and attacks on innocent civilians, and want their objections known, is
brave. Their objection is in behalf of justice and stands for the
ethics of Judaism. They are true patriots.
In a lecture of 1968 given by Eli
Siegel, the American philosopher and founder of Aesthetic
Realism, he provided a definition of patriotism that we love and which
has the emotion people in countries all over the world are hoping to feel.
"Patriotism," he said, "can be defined as the sincere and large wish that
the best things happen to the country you see as yours, and the readiness
to think about it." On that "readiness to think" depends the integrity
of our very selves and the safety of the world.
There should have been the deepest
inquiry as to why these men who are willing to give their lives to defend
Israel are saying what they do. The fact that this inquiry is not
being carried out, and instead there is fury and a desire to punish them,
we see as coming from a determination to stop any questioning of one's
ego, even if it means untold agony and death. This determination,
we learned, comes from contempt "the disposition in every person to think
he will be for himself by making less of the outside world."
In The Right of Aesthetic Realism
to Be Known, Class Chairman Ellen Reiss, explains the way of seeing
needed by all people for the world to be civilized and kind. She
writes:
| "There is no greater emergency
in the world than for people to say: 'As I object to something myself,
as I feel there has been an injustice to me, I'm using that fact to see
the feelings of all people as more real. I want to understand the
objections, the grievances, of others--not dismiss them or decide in advance
I know all about them. I won't take care of myself, won't deal with
my objections well, unless I'm sure I want to see other human beings rightly,
unless I see them as existing as fully as I exist.'" |
The Israeli soldiers' statements
exemplifies what these urgent, beautiful sentences call for. A person
wanting to see the full existence of another, can never justify killing
a mother and child who happen to be in a place designated for "target killing"
in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank. And he or she could never rationalize
a suicide bomber blowing up a bus in Tel Aviv or in Haifa, killing innocent
men, women, and children.
In Aesthetic Realism consultations
and classes, we heard vital questions about the contemptuous way we once
saw the Arab people. In the early 1980s, Ellen Reiss suggested in
a class that persons from Israel studying Aesthetic Realism should write
a 500-word soliloquy about what a Palestinian person might feel--what are
his hopes and fears. Each of us wrote and came to see the person
whom we had seen with contempt and as only different and inferior--a Palestinian
mother, a student, a girl--have more in common with us than we ever imagined.
As a result, our unjust anger and feelings of superiority changed.
We passionately urge every Israeli
and Palestinian to write this assignment in order for the killing to stop,
and for understanding and the honest desire to know to begin. We
should use the courageous stand taken by these Israeli soldiers, who represent,
we believe, a growing feeling in the Israeli Army, to be brave in
seeing that the one way to take care of ourselves is by being fair to what
is not ourselves. It is what will have peace--real peace--succeed
in our dear land.
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