I don’t typically bring traditional Jewish sources into these columns. Every now and then, though, something pops up in the world of Jewish tradition which echoes so loudly in our own time that some mention of it seems more than appropriate.
The Daf Yomi cycle (in which one studies one page of Talmud a day and finishes the entire corpus in about seven and a half years—we have about two years to go in this round) is currently studying the Tractate of Avodah Zarah, which discusses social and economic relations between Jews and Gentiles. That subject is touched upon in the second of the three questions the residents of Ginzak asked Rabbi Akiva in the selection above, which is why this whole passage appears in this tractate.
This paragraph appeared in one of the pages for last week. The questions are somewhat technical and we won’t address what’s really at stake in each one in this space. But I mention the passage here because when we studied it last week, I couldn’t help but think to myself, “How refreshing. One doesn’t pretend to know what one doesn’t know, and what knows what one doesn’t know.”
Rabbi Akiva, one of the greatest Jewish sages of all time, did not know the answer to the questions he was asked. When faced with the questions, though, he did not pretend that he knew. Nor is his not having known the answer presented as some sort of blemish. He was human, and he didn’t know everything. Plain and simple.
Part of his greatness lay in acknowledging what he did not know.
Not knowing is what Israelis are facing when it comes to the question of Gaza and hunger. That there is food insecurity in Gaza is denied by almost no one. Whether Gazans are facing starvation is another question, and who’s responsible for the dire situation is also not clear. To those of us who can do little more than read the news, the answers are frustratingly evasive.
Many Israelis acknowledge that they don’t know, while many others—as is human—are sure that they know, even if they know opposite things.
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Nachman Shai is an Israeli public figure widely respected and admired for his intellect and character. He’s had a phenomenally successful career, as both a journalist as well as politician. He has served as Israel's Minister of Diaspora Affairs, prior to which he served as a member of the Knesset and its Deputy Speaker, as well as the IDF spokesman.
If anyone in Israeli society should have access to the people who can tell him what the “real” story in Gaza is, it would be Nachman Shai.
That is precisely what made his recent Facebook post (Google-translated below) so telling. Nachman Shai appears to acknowledge—he just doesn’t know. (For careful readers who note the date that Google assigns the post, I confess that I don’t know what “Jinland” is. In Hebrew, it reads “July”.)
To give a sense of the multiplicity of views that make up Israeli life, here are just a few of the responses, again Google-translated (the posts are all public, but I’m blurring the names just so we think more about what’s being said than about who said it).
Note that there’s not a lot of discussion as to whether or not there are food shortages. That, among most Israelis, is no longer a contended issue. What’s debated is the reason: Hamas? Egypt? Israel? What’s discussed is the moral issue: let Hamas release the hostages first, and this will all be over; why is Israel falling into Hamas’ trap again? Should this even be Israel’s responsibility? Etc.
While I certainly do not resonate to all the comments above (or many of the others written in response to Nachman Shai’s post), it’s parenthetically worth noting the civility of the discussion. That’s not true everywhere on Israeli social media, and a lot of it in this instance has to do with Nachman Shai’s thoughtful and respectful reputation. But still, this is, at times, still a society that knows how to talk. I’m not sure about listen, but at least talk civilly.
So why is the question of whether there is serious hunger in Gaza no longer much of a question? Interestingly, it’s largely because the mainstream news has recently started focusing on it in ways that it didn’t in the past. Here’s a longer version of the video clip at the top of this post, which comes from Channel 12. It was shared by the group UnXeptable and we added English subtitles.
UnXeptable posted it, I imagine, because it is indicative of a shift in how Israeli news outlets are covering the subject.
Now, the question is, “what’s behind all this?” The main news coming from Gaza today (in addition to the horrifying deaths of two more soldiers) is about the “humanitarian pause” in fighting that the IDF has suddenly imposed. Who insisted on that? Why was it only agreed to now? Is it a long term plan or something to mollify someone?
That there’s something political brewing is obvious, even from the brief notifications that papers like the Jerusalem Post have been sending out today:
The ceasefires are in place, for now, but they’re going to be very, very unpopular with Netanyahu’s right flank, which continues to insist that there must be no lull in the fighting, anyway, not for Gazan civilians and not for hostages, until Hamas is destroyed. So Israeli officials are busy denying that the ceasefires are a “concession” (to whom are they not a concession?) and Netanyahu is equally busy trying to stay off the radar screen.
How long are these humanitarian lulls going to last? How much of a difference will they make?
That depends, probably, on who insisted on them in the first place—and that, like much else about this story, we still do not know.
