Gaza’s Hungry Are Now Our Responsibility

At the joint Israeli-Palestinian memorial ceremony, in 2018, the Israeli author and peace activist, David Grossman spoke about the unbearable pain of losing his son Uri in the 2006 Lebanon War. He then asked and answered a question that I have been pondering for some time. He said,

What is a home?

Home is a place whose walls—borders—are clear and accepted; whose existence is stable, solid, and relaxed; whose inhabitants know its intimate codes; whose relations with its neighbors have been settled. It projects a sense of the future.

And we Israelis, even after 70 years no matter how many words dripping with patriotic honey will be uttered in the coming days—we are not yet there. We are not yet home. Israel was established so that the Jewish people, who have nearly never felt at-home-in-the-world, would finally have a home. And now, 70 years later, strong Israel may be a fortress, but it is not yet a home. (“Israel Is a Fortress, but Not Yet a Home”)

When Israel wandered through the wilderness for forty years, they were not as we often suggest constantly on the move. They stopped, and camped, at forty-two stations along the way to the promised land of Israel. “These were the marching-stages of the Israelites who started out from the land of Egypt.” (Numbers 33)

As I watch my beloved Israel lay waste to Gaza and render it uninhabitable, as I witness Palestinians killed while clamoring for food, I am wondering if David Grossman’s intuition was tragically prescient. We are still wandering. We are not yet home! Is the modern state of Israel a mere station on our journey through history?

David Grossman concludes, “If the Palestinians don’t have a home, the Israelis won’t have a home either. The opposite is also true: if Israel will not be a home, then neither will Palestine.”

One can offer all sorts of explanations why Palestinians have not yet achieved sovereignty and why most Israelis reject a Palestinian state as a dangerous threat to their safety, nonetheless Grossman’s insight remains true. We can never arrive home if we deny others their rightful home. We will never feel at home as long as we are destroying other people’s homes.

Zionism was first and foremost about building that elusive home for ourselves. It believed our homelessness left us vulnerable to persecution. We are wanderers no more, Zionism declared. It need not, however, proclaim that this ancient land is only our home. Today’s Israel appears more focused on declaring that this place only provides enough room for us—and no one else. Despite its founding principles, the State of Israel appears to be saying this land can only be the Jewish people’s home. It focuses on buttressing the fortress’s walls and turning a blind eye to what happens outside the locked gates.

Gazans are starving!

All the cries about our security and the dismissing of every critic as an antisemite or a self-hating Jew or alternatively blaming everything on Hamas or denying that multitudes are starving, will never justify that people (infants!) are dying of hunger. Hamas started this war, but Israel now controls Gaza, and its starving people are now Israel’s responsibility. Their deaths are a stain on our collective Jewish soul. Feeding their hungry is now our duty. Has October 7th so hardened our hearts that we have no concern for other human beings? Gaza has become a humanitarian crisis that demands our compassion. (Read David Horowitz, “How Israel Made Itself Responsible for Gaza and All the Death and Destruction There”)

I do not know how Israelis and Palestinians can both feel at home in this same, shared—and shattered—land, but I remain convinced that this is our only hope. Two states for two peoples is the only path to providing a shred of light in this darkness. And while such a Palestinian home remains a far-off possibility, glimmers of Palestinian self-determination might begin to lead us away from today’s destruction and despair.

The State of Israel once imagined itself to be guided by the prophets of Israel when in 1948 David ben Gurion declared: “The state will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel.” Let their words serve as a reminder now.

The prophet Isaiah thunders, “Offer your compassion to the hungry, and satisfy the famished creature—then shall your light shine in darkness, and your gloom shall be like noonday.” (Isaiah 58)

We must lead with compassion rather than callousness.

Only then will this darkness begin to fade.