|
|
By Gary Rosenblatt
June 29, 2001
Reprinted with the permission of The Jewish Week.
Ariel Sharon may not be Moses, but he finds himself sharing a dilemma with the greatest leader in Jewish history: when to use force and when to use diplomacy.
Sharon was warmly received at the White House this week, appreciated by the Bush administration for the very reason that he is becoming less popular at home: his surprisingly restrained response, to date, to murderous Palestinian attacks.
Elected in an unprecedented landslide in February, presumably to step up Israel's response to the renewed war of attrition, the hawkish Sharon has, uncharacteristically, favored international diplomacy and military self-control rather than satisfy the natural urge to strike back at one's enemies with full force. Such behavior has won him begrudging respect from some liberals, who expected the prime minister to have widened the conflict by now. But it has brought increasingly outspoken criticism from those on the right, particularly in the settlements, where patience has given way to cynicism as the man long known as "The Bulldozer" is perceived as having buckled to U.S. pressure.
As a student of the Bible and Jewish history, Sharon knows well that leaders in Israel have long struggled with how best to confront a crisis, or one's enemy. One famous paradigm occurs in Genesis, when Jacob is about to meet his twin brother, Esau, a father of the Arab race, after a 20-year separation. Fearing that Esau still hates him for deceiving their father Isaac and receiving the blessing of the first-born, Jacob prepares for the encounter with a three-part strategy: offering gifts, planning for war, and praying to God. "Deliver me, I pray, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau?" [Genesis 32:12]
War, of course, is the last alternative. In the end, Jacob and Esau have a tearful reconciliation, though Jacob declines his brother's offer to travel together and is relieved when they part ways.
Similarly, thousands of years later, Sharon said publicly in recent days that he will do all he can to avoid another Mideast war, and one of the options being discussed in Israel today is unilateral separation, echoing the parting of the ways between Arab and Jew that first took place in biblical times.
Perhaps the best-known example of the Jewish leader's dilemma of might vs. diplomacy is found in this week's Torah portion, Chukat. We read how Moses, frustrated and angered by the Israelites' demand for water in the desert, hits a rock with his staff rather than speak to it, as God had commanded. Water flows from the rock and the people are satisfied. But God is displeased with Moses' action, telling him that because of it he will not be allowed to enter the Promised Land and will die at the end of the Jewish people's 40 years of desert wandering.
"Because you did not believe in Me," God tells Moses, "to make Me holy in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them." [Numbers 20:12]
What was Moses' great sin? More than a dozen biblical commentators struggled mightily with this story, wondering why Moses' seemingly minor transgression would warrant such a serious punishment since, after all, Moses wanted more than anything else to be blessed to lead the people into the land of Israel himself.
The best-known interpretation is from Rashi, who says that Moses was punished for hitting the rock. But the Ramban says the mistake Moses made was in saying "we" will bring forth water from the rock, implying that he had a role in the miracle as well as God. Another commentator, Rambam, says Moses erred in losing patience with the people and calling them "rebels." Others note that the greater the leader, the more he is held accountable for his actions.
One could also suggest that rather than being punished for any one specific act, Moses, who was losing patience with the people, was being told that his time of leadership was at an end, that a new generation of Jews, born in the desert, needed a younger man, in this case Joshua, to lead them.
In any case, as the Rambam notes, one important lesson from this episode is the importance of staying calm in times of stress; other commentators mention the need to use all means of calming speech and diplomacy before resorting to force.
Has Ariel Sharon taken this lesson to heart? Some suggest that he has gone out of his way to show restraint so that, when the time comes, inevitably, to strike hard at the Palestinians, he can say he tried every alternative first. Others argue that Sharon has changed, that once in power he has come to recognize fully the dangers of all-out war and is struggling mightily to avoid it.
Either way, the biblical perspective points out that the decisions he confronts, however difficult, are not new, and that, mindful of the words of Ecclesiastes, there is a time for war and a time for peace. It is Sharon's responsibility to determine when is the time for each, and whether peace and security can be achieved without "hitting the rock."
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
|
|
|
|
Click on the blue headline to read a Talkback comment and respond to it. Click on the  icon to send a private email to the talkback writer. The icon appears only if the writer has decided to be contacted. If no popup window appears, please make sure your popup blocker allows israelinsider.com.
|
|
| |
|
|
