ON THE TIGHTROPE

Been ruminating quite a bit on the tension between having to protect one's self and people and remaining true to their 'mission'.
As I wade in, let me begin with this question: is there or has there been any other army, anywhere, anytime, that has taken as much care as the IDF has and still does to avoid civilian casualties? Not us; we are SO out of the running it's not even funny. UK? France? Ditto. Canada? Nasty things are now coming out about Canada's record with its First Nations and it don't look too good. Don't know about Anzacs, though.
And I'm not talking about what most Western soldiers are taught nowadays; I'm talking in-the-field experience. Any other army hardly even merits mentioning here. Anyone who wants to differ; you'd better have examples at the ready!
Countries as well as individuals have straws which break the camel's back. I'd say the kidnapping and murder of the three yeshiva boys qualifies. Time will tell whether Bibi & co. were waiting for just such a straw and I'm not going into that right now. So, all you brainless weepers, what, then, should Israel have done this time? Especially when Hamas uses its own people as shields for its cowardly murderers?
And let us be thankful Israel had had enough when it did. That is, unless more dead Jews are kind of your 'thing'--and in which case I'll be only too glad to push you off a cliff if we ever meet!
I can hardly blame Israelis for despairing of the peace process over the last twenty years. Time and again the PA has been offered settlements with 95% of what they asked for and they've turned them all down. On one such occasion, then-Crown Prince (now King) Abdullah of Saudi Arabia threw up his hands and told Abbas, "You turned this deal down?! That's it! We can't support you anymore, you're on your own!"
However, Israelis are not the only ones despairing of it. I am told that among ordinary Palestinians, dissatisfaction with both Fatah and Hamas is rife. Maybe it's time to give the real Gandhis among them (and they do exist) more of a chance. Ditto the Israelis who want to, and do, work for real peace and whose numbers, once acquainted with their Arab counterparts, are likely to grow mightily.
Rabbi Michael Lerner, whom I largely respect, has written of his broken heart and how Israel is killing his Judaism. Let's take a look at that supposition.
I suggest it is, or ought to be, a given that Jews holding temporal power in their hands once more after at least a millennium and a half of being essentially powerless, will change and is changing Judaism. Judaism is also quite pluralistic, although some (including me) work on expanding that further. It may be trite, boring and just plain OLD to repeat that, so long as that powerlessness persisted, Jews could afford a sort of ethereal purity. That is no longer the case, nor should it be as it'd get them all killed today and only the Devil's servants want that!
In the 1930s, many if not most Jews were either indifferent or downright hostile to Zionism. In that respect, the Shoah was the last straw after 15 centuries which convinced many that they couldn't afford NOT to be Zionists. Never again, truly!
But for whom, the Left asks (as it should)? Shouldn't that apply to everyone and not only Jews? Of course it SHOULD, you omadhauns! (Gaelic for lunkheads) And I do agree with the good rabbi that Jews do have a charge to be out in front in that respect. The ideas of a common morality for all of common humanity are from God through Israel and Israel deserves our respect for being the first prism for that light!
We also live in a world where many HATE those ideas and want more than anything to banish them from our minds. In such a world, the first conveyors of such ideas will be in serious danger at least now and again! And because we all have a part of us which also hates those strictures and/or fears to go against the darkness-motivated mobs, can we be sure we'll help them when they need help? Need I remind my readers how dismally nearly all of us FAILED that test a mere seventy years ago?!
Under such conditions, the state of Israel is still only too necessary for Jews. Europe today is only underlining that uncomfortable fact!
"If I am not for myself, who will be? But if I am for myself only, what am I?" Hillel said and wrote it two millennia ago and it is as true now as then. And it's also true that Am Yisrael is still the pilot group in walking that tightrope, with the rest of us following with wildly different degrees of willingness and skill.