Dow Marmur and Meir Hirsch: two tragedies, two Jewish opinions

by Aidan Maconachy

It was interesting to note how the media covered the Israeli attack on Gaza, as compared to how it covered the tragic shooting of eight young students at the yeshiva in Jerusalem.

The Israeli incursion into Gaza involved ground troops, bulldozers, tanks, helicopters and F-16's. Over 120 Palestinians were killed, including women and children. How many times have we seen this before? You begin to wonder if the faceless Palestinians who are killed and injured are simply human collateral damage that the world has grown accustomed to sweeping aside in the name of support for the state of Israel. Do we even know the name of one victim? Gazans are dispensable. No names, no faces, no family history - just more unfortunate Arabs caught in the crossfire.

By contrast when a lone gunman entered the Jerusalem seminary and killed eight students, the media cast it as "the moment the peace process died," with politicians right and left full of condemnation and regret. British PM, Gordon Brown, even said it was an act that "strikes at the heart of peace". So what of the Gaza attack? It didn't?

Two Jewish voices provide starkly different analysis of the tragedies in Gaza and Jerusalem.

One of the most outspoken statements in condemnation of the Gaza operation came from the Jews of Neturei Karta. In a letter to the UN general-secretary Ban Ki-Moon, Rabbi Meir Hirsch, spoke for those Orthodox Jews who believe that Zionism is a betrayal of the Jewish faith and its people:

"For sixty years the authorities of what is mischaracterized as the "Jewish State" have been undertaking a vicious campaign of oppression and ethnic cleansing against millions of Palestinians who currently still live in historic Palestine and who are refugees from Palestine in other countries. And they have been committing all these crimes in the name of the ancient and holy Jewish religion!"

Full text of the letter here.

Dow Marmur, rabbi emiritus at Toronto's Holy Blossom Temple, has a column in the Toronto Star on the yeshiva killings. He offers no significant comment about the Gaza operation and the loss of civilian lives - an event that very likely provoked the gunman to enter the yeshiva in Jerusalem. Instead Marmur focuses exclusively on the yeshiva tragedy as though it somehow exists in isolation, unconnected from other events.

Marmur then goes on to take the part of the moderate, referring to Arabs of East Jerusalem who are in possession of identity cards, passports and driving licenses with Israeli plates, as though this means anything at all in real terms. Any close examination of the conditions experienced by Arabs in East Jerusalem and elsewhere in Israel makes it clear that they are victims of systemic discrimination.

Marmur thinks that calls to build fences/walls around Arab neighborhoods in reaction to the yeshiva killings is a bad idea. He says this proposal isn't "moral". However his lack of comment on the real immorality (the gorilla in the room), makes his "moral" high mindedness about fences seem disingenuous. Illegal settlements, criminal "incursions" by the Israeli military, massive and widespread discrimination is the quicksand at the root of Israel's intractable and it seems, never ending problems - fences are merely a cosmetic consideration.

While the yeshiva killing was a tragedy, it wasn't a random act but rather an act linked to decades of injustice and oppression. The recent mayhem in Gaza is part of an ongoing pattern that becomes obvious when you look back over the past few decades. A welcome report by Amnesty International addresses some of the injustices that rabbi Marmur failed to address.


About the Author

Freelance artist and writer based in Ontario