The current Israeli operations against Hamas in Gaza is named – as was pointed out to me by our older son – “Operation Cast Lead,” a direct reference to Hayim Nachman Bialik’s famous poem “In Honor of Hanukkah.” In the poem, a teacher presents his student with a dreidel made of cast lead which at the time – right after the 1903 Kishinev pogroms – was the finest kind of dreidel for which a young Jewish child could hope. Did that shetl child dare hope for liberation in a Jewish state? We can barely speculate.

The child receiving the dreidel in Bialik’s poem likely interpreted the Hebrew letters on its four sides in Yiddish, assigning each a meaning as to how many coins or nuts to put into the pot or take out. If she were really bright she may have noticed that spinning the dreidel was pretty much the same as tossing a coin. At any moment one player may be up or down but in the long run the game still offered its players the same odds. Later on, the assigned value of the ‘nun, gimel, hey & shin’ may have been reinterpreted into something that sounded right in English or even Modern Hebrew but you still put in and took out based on how the top landed after any given spin. Cast lead has been replaced by wood, plastic or even a digital image, but not much has really changed – it is still like a coin toss.

If Bialik were alive he would see that in the Hanukkah just past we are no longer cowering in a shetl, but he might also point out that in many ways we are still spinning the same dreidel and tossing the same coins – even if the materials and delivery methods have changed. Never at a loss for textual imagery, Bialik might also have called upon the story of Joseph, the first positional Jew who lead us to survival by fronting for pharaoh and doing the king’s ‘dirty work’ in containing, dislocating and bankrupting the Egyptian peasantry in a time of famine. (Genesis 47) We survived, but slavery was still ahead.

Operation Cast Lead, similar to the story of the Hebrews in Egypt or a spin of the dreidel, will prove to be another necessary but repetitive coin toss because:

Tails we lose:

Even if militarily successful, our case is well made and Israel protects civilians as much as possible, we will lose in the court of international opinion. After Joseph, the pharaoh did not like the idea that his Hebrews were getting too strong. With very few exceptions, the world is still uncomfortable with Jews who can and do defend themselves. The dearth of statements opposing Hamas and the plethora of condemnations of Israel’s self-defense does not have to be recounted here.

Hiding behind the canard of “proportionality,” Israel is called to task for finally, after years, trying to put an end to terrorism with superior force. Would the world be better off if the weaponry available to Israel were put into the hands of Hamas? Should Israel limit its response to only sending crude missiles indiscriminately aimed at densely populated Gaza City? The last greatest example of proportionality may have been the inconclusive and costly standoff of trench warfare in WWI. Should, in the name of proportionality, the Allies have reduced their forces in Europe as Hitler’s war machine was dismembered? Should the U.S.’s response to 9/11 have been limited to military use of a few commercial airliners?

No matter when or how the bombing (or even a ground invasion) of Gaza ends Israel will not, in the strict sense of the term, ‘win’. Somehow the nearly daily rocket attacks that now can reach almost a million Israelis will be brought to a halt. Even if, by some miracle, Hamas is dislodged as the rulers of Gaza (and I don’t think this is likely to happen soon) there will still be elements albeit called by other names, that will remain committed to Israel’s destruction. Remember that Hamas’s attacks from Gaza are not aimed at territory conquered in 1967 but at land within Israel’s 1948 borders. When Hamas says ‘occupied land’ they mean all of Israel.

Heads they win:

Ibrahim al-Amine, board chairman of Al Akhbar, a Lebanese pro-Hezbollah newspaper, was quoted in the New York Times (Dec 31 2008 pg A10) as saying: “Israel would be satisfied with a compromise but the Arab regimes want to finish Hamas completely.” Like Joseph for the pharaoh, Israel is being allowed to do the dirty work. The rulers of some secular (although in no way democratic) Arab countries may be more threatened by Hamas than Israel. President Mubarak of Egypt has offered to open his border with Gaza only if the Palestinian Authority takes over. Like the pharaoh of Exodus, he is concerned about Egyptians, in this case the Muslim Brotherhood, linking up with his enemies and overpowering him. It is a reasonable fear should Israel stop keeping Hamas busy on their other borders Remember that Egypt could have had Gaza back if it wanted it.

Secular leaders in other Islamic countries are also walking a fine line between appeasement of the “street” and their own need to oppose militant Islamists. While they may have to make statements in support of Hamas or take some heat for seeming to cooperate with Israel on another level they are glad to have Israel as an unintentional ‘stand in’ against challengers to their own authority. Others, like the Saudis have been using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the 60-year-old excuse as to why the unprivileged of their own countries have no freedom and only limited benefits from the great wealth their countries produce. They do not want to get caught in between Hamas and their customers (us) so it is in their interest to keep the pot ‘simmering’ without really boiling over.

Arab rulers win, maybe even along with Israel, because when Israel fights Hamas they can avoid doing battle against or openly opposing Hamas and its sponsors.

Keep spinning

There is no magic solution. I think that Operation Cast Lead will continue until Hamas is ready to suspend (because theologically they cannot ‘stop’) firing missiles at Israel because of their inability or the hope of a better deal from their fellow Muslims. As Mr. al-Amine predicts, Israel will just hope to stop the rockets and survive – until we have to spin the dreidel again.

Leave a comment; let me know what you think!

Rabbi Steve Denker