Tisha B’Av lessons: Compromise over conflict to avert catastrophe - comment

Who remembers Operation Breaking Dawn?

Operation Breaking Dawn was the last significant round of fighting in Gaza before the Gaza war we are still fighting.

Operation Breaking Dawn took place exactly two years ago, with a ceasefire declared on Tisha B’Av (August 7 that year). It was the fifth major campaign that the IDF had launched in Gaza since then-prime minister Ariel Sharon withdrew Israel from the coastal strip 19 years ago, a move that officially started on the day after Tisha B’Av that year.

Operation Breaking Dawn targeted Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but not Hamas, and began after PIJ threatened massive rocket fire on Israel if it did not release its West Bank chief Bassem Saadi, arrested a few days earlier in Jenin.

The day after the ceasefire went into effect, then-defense minister Benny Gantz said, “Yesterday we marked the Tisha B’Av fast. In these days of mourning and remembrance of the destruction of the temples, we all demonstrated solidarity and displayed national resilience… My hope is that we know some of that same spirit throughout the year. Only in this way will we be able to deal with the challenges that we face.”

That hope proved to be in vain, and the spirit of solidarity that he praised was short-lived.

On November 1, 2022, a badly polarized and divided country went back to the polls for the fifth time in three-and-a-half years, voting Binyamin Netanyahu back into power and becoming even more polarized and divided.

Last Tisha B’Av, with the country reeling from months of protests and discord surrounding the judicial overhaul plan, many reflected on the day’s historical lessons: that sinat hinam (baseless hatred) and zealotry were responsible for the destruction of the First and Second Temples. These reflections served as a cautionary tale, warning that the current disunity and animosity stemming from the debate could lead to catastrophic consequences.

When the country was focused on judicial reform

The country, or at least politicians and the extremists on both sides, did not heed the warnings; they did not heed the pleas for civility, let alone unity, and catastrophe came calling a few months later on October 7.

It is widely acknowledged that Hamas had been planning an attack of this magnitude for years, dating back even earlier than Operation Breaking Dawn. During that operation, Hamas’s decision to stay out of the conflict with PIJ is now recognized as a ruse to make Israel believe they had moderated.

Nevertheless, the timing of the attack last Simchat Torah had to do with the unprecedented disunity and discord in the country at the time: with reservists threatening not to serve, doctors threatening to leave the country, hi-tech moguls moving their money abroad, and Jews physically fighting with other Jews over whether a mehitza (a barrier separating the genders) could be erected in a public square in Tel Aviv for Yom Kippur prayers.

Author and philosopher Micah Goodman, in one of the Mifleget Hamachshavot podcasts he hosted with Efrat Shapira Rosenberg in the early stages of the current war, had an insightful take on how Israel found itself in its current predicament.

He boiled the whole judicial reform debate down to a fight over the identity of the state: Would Israel be first and foremost a Jewish state, and then a democratic one, a position he attributed to the judicial reform zealots; or would it first and foremost be a democratic state, and only then a Jewish one, which was the position of the anti-reform radicals.

For those pushing judicial reform, the Jewishness of the state was their supreme value, something they could never compromise on – because could anyone with integrity compromise on one’s supreme value?

For those adamantly opposed to judicial reform, the democracy of the state was the supreme value, something they could never compromise on – because how could anyone of integrity compromise on one’s supreme value?

Some of those in the middle, representing the vast majority of the country, recognized the destructive nature of the discord and urged compromise in the name of unity. But they were dismissed as naive, timid, weak, or sell-outs. What type of person compromises on their highest values in the name of unity?

Then October 7 hit, and it became apparent that unity itself was a supreme value, Goodman argued, one for which other values needed to be subsumed. Because if there was no unity – if the two sides, convinced of the righteousness of their respective causes, would not compromise for the sake of unity – then there may neither be a Jewish-democratic state nor a democratic-Jewish state; but instead there might be no state at all because the country’s enemies, as the Jews’ enemies did during the First and Second Temple periods, would exploit the nation’s disunity to bring about catastrophe.

That message was internalized in the immediate aftermath of October 7. Overnight, protestors who were at each other’s throats over the judicial overhaul plan were fighting in the same tanks, sleeping in the same tents, and confronting a common enemy.

But as the war is now well into its 11th month, that message has – as expected – receded, and the pre-October 7 divisions, in various permutations, are again resurfacing.

The best example is a decision by the Tel Aviv Municipality last week to forbid the erecting of any gender separation barriers in the city’s public spaces during the High Holy Days. It’s as if they learned nothing from the trauma of the last year.

Not only did they not learn anything, neither did the Rosh Yehudi organization that was seeking permission for gender separated prayer in the public square.

Borrowing Goodman’s template, one side, the Tel Aviv municipality, is adamant that the city is first democratic; the other side wants to demonstrate that it is first Jewish. What is needed is for both sides to compromise and realize that this is not the time for this battle; and that there is no need to push the envelope on this issue now. The Tel Aviv Municipality was wrong to reject the request; the Rosh Yehudi organization, given last year’s dreadful experience, was wrong in asking for it again in the first place.

Now is the time to compromise on what one views as exalted values for the sake of unity. This is neither timid nor backing down: It’s simply wise. It’s one of the messages of the Ninth of Av Tisha B’Av. It’s also one of the messages of the Seventh of October.