“That war . . . almost a kind of ideal”

“How did we, as a society, lose the ability to formulate questions about the feasibility of a political alternative? How did it happen that a person who suggests a nonviolent solution is the delusional one, the traitor, and the one who calls for the leveling of Gaza is the true patriot? How did peace become the enemy of the people, and war always the preferred option?”

These are just some of Nomika Zion’s poignant questions. Nomika lives on a kibbutz in Sderot, an Israeli city close to the Gaza Strip border. The people of Sderot suffer terribly from being the regular target of rockets launched from Gaza. But during the years she’s lived there, Nomika has come to fear not just those rockets. She fears that war, and no longer possibilities of peace, has become, or is soon to become, “the most consistent and contrast feature of our lives.” She has many good and sufficient reasons for concluding this.

In November 2012, she put those reasons, in a short, gut-wrenching, open letter to Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu. I was unaware of what Isareli citizens like Nomika were thinking until I read her open letter. We need to hear Nomika as she raises “another voice in the dwindling light.”  Here’s the link to her letter, “It’s not just about fear, Bibi, it’s about hopelessness,” which was re-printed in the New York Review of Books (Jan. 10, 2013).

At the same time Nomika’s insights came to my attention, so did this short, insightful article by Gershom Gorenberg, in the Christian Century (Jan. 9, 2013), “A land divided.” It clearly explains why Netanyahu’s policy toward toward the land is undermining democracy in Israel and “is designed to prevent the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.” It’s highly unlikely that Gorenberg knew about Nomika’s open letter, yet it makes her cry more believable to me. It is a cry for a way wiser than war. See what you think. C.S.