God's Place in the Israel-Gaza Conflict

The Torah is there to teach us important lessons. Are we listening?

artwork by Future of Jewish

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This is a guest essay by Malki Sinensky, a teacher and community activist.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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Recently, amid all the opinions on who is wrong and who is right in the current Gaza conflict, I had a thought: Where does God fit in?

That question has been weighing on me. As I scroll through the massive number of opinions, “facts,” and posts, everyone seems to weigh in on our physical or moral responsibilities — but nowhere is God mentioned.

I suppose that’s taboo in the media world. They claim to deal in “facts” — and perhaps, in their minds, God does not qualify as one. When I respond with an answer that includes God in a WhatsApp chat, I am met with a variety of emojis … like my belief in God, or my understanding of how God expects us to behave is up there with conspiracy theorists.

I hate that I feel the need to offer a disclaimer, but that’s the world we live in. I consider myself open-minded and educated. I have struggled with the Torah text, and I accept that my view is one of thousands. However, to discount what faith has to do with this conflict is, in my opinion, only providing half the story. (I also want to say that when I use the term “statutes of God” I am not referring to any particular way that the Jewish People today follow the statutes; I am referring to them in a general sense.)

So let me share what I believe: I believe in the one God. I believe that this God created the world and all beings in it. I believe in the Torah, and I believe that Torah was given to us at Mount Sinai. I believe that, in a world of many gods, Abraham found and acknowledged the one God, and for that he and his children were rewarded with the very special Land of Israel.

I also believe that God made a covenant with Abraham, his sons, and also the Children of Israel. Israel is a holy place, and the land is holy. The people inhabiting it ought to treat it as such. The covenant that God made with the Children of Israel was clear: As long as you follow my statutes, you will remain in the land, but if not, the land will “spit you out.”

In the days of our prophets, we were told through them when we were failing in our mission. We did not listen and we were summarily exiled. We can blame Assyria or Babylon, but ultimately we as Jews bore the ultimate responsibility. The other nations were “messengers from God” to carry out the decree that was set because we failed to adhere to the statutes.

By the time of the Second Temple, we had no prophets, so the rabbis provided insight as to why the Temple was destroyed and we were exiled. Whatever reason they provided, though, the responsibility ultimately fell on the shoulders of the Jewish People. Our relationship with God was fractured and our relationship amongst ourselves was in disarray.

The Jewish People were subjected to living in the diaspora, working on repairing their relationship with God, and always praying and hoping that one day, God will allow them to return to the land that was promised to them. This was not a colonizing idea; we were not raising armies; this was prayer that, in the same miraculous ways God brought us to the Land of Israel in the past, God would do the same.

I could be boring and provide a history of the birth of the modern State of Israel, but that is not my point. I believe that the United Nations voting to create the State of Israel in the vicinity of the ancient Jewish homeland was a miracle. I believe that the defensive wars that Israel has fought have been miracles from God, and yes, I believe that God’s hand is actively involved in the ongoing Gaza war.

However, I also believe that God views all humankind as “his children.” I believe that God believes in preserving life. I also believe that God allows the humans of the world to make their own choices and, as we have seen throughout history, many of the choices have cost millions (not only Jews) their lives.

As a Jew, I can empathize with many sides of this debate. I believe that God does not want anyone to go hungry, and as Jews we are required to ensure that we care for the poor, so from a Torah view, one may say we have an obligation to ensure that the innocents are being fed. On the other hand, God also says that if someone is trying to kill you, you can defend yourself; what this means practically has been debated by the rabbis for thousands of years, because ultimately we believe in protecting life.

I can only imagine the debates and conversations our ancient rabbis would have over the ethics of this war, because that is what we do. There are hostages, and the Torah tells us we need to redeem the hostages, but the rabbis warned about this as well. In their times, the other nations kidnapped Jews all the time because they knew that the Jewish People would redeem them for money. The debate raged, how are we, humans, supposed to put a value on a human life?

I know Jews differ in how we interpret the Torah, but the State of Israel was founded on the values Judaism instilled in us — and so the debates continue, driven by the shared pursuit of what we, as Jews, believe is right. Unfortunately, none of us are privy to the answer the God has in mind.

In a world without prophets, I believe God must be in the equation with everything we do. We have been raised to understand that the world is complex, that each situation comes with its own set of parameters and there should be no cookie cutter answer. I believe that God put his faith in us, all of us, to collectively find the right answer. The Torah is not silent on how a people should live and defend themselves, especially in morally complex situations like war.

The Torah is and has always been our guide. God told us very clearly that we need to follow the statutes, we need to be active, but also to trust in God. The story of Amalek can help shed light on what our responsibility needs to be. In a class recently given by Dr. Yael Ziegler (an American-Israeli author, Hebrew bible scholar, and educator), she taught that Amalek, although listed as a people in the Bible, was also a philosophy.

Amalek, according to Dr. Ziegler (based on the teachings of Rabbi Medan¹), were a group of nomadic people who did not invest in the future. They are only interested in things that are useful to them “now.” They are not interested in fighting a war as much as they are interested in what they can gain in the short term. In his article on Amalek, Rabbi Medan hypothesizes that the Amalekites saw an opportunity to attack a defenseless group of people, and perhaps their goal was not to kill them, but to kidnap them and sell them back to the Egyptians. Thus, the group struck from behind at those most weak and defenseless.

Rabbi Medan also notes that the Amalek attack comes right after the story of Mei Meriva — named for the quarrel of Benei Yisrael and their testing of God, saying, “Is God in our midst or not?” He argues that this was a triple failure by the Jewish People: the first, their lack of faith in God, the second, their quarrel against Moses, to the point that Moses feared he would be stoned, and the third their focus on their selfish needs and their lack of concern for the nation as a whole.

He understands the narrative that, to get the water, Moses, Joshua and the elders left the camp to walk to the mountain of Horeb, where there they witnessed Moses hitting the rock. Rabbi Medan argues that the Israelites did not see this miracle; they only saw the water as it flowed from Horeb to Rephidim.

However, the leadership was not there, and the chaos that ensued from everyone trying to help themselves to the water was the result. Rabbi Medan says this is where Amalek came in. He writes: “Amalek saw before them a nation that was thirsty and tired, with no internal cohesion and with no leadership — in other words, lacking the most basic conditions to defend itself and fight back.”

This is the philosophy of Hamas. They are not concerned with building, with the future of their people. The weak and the infirm among them are useless, unless they help to fill a narrative. Kidnapping is a means for their immediate gain. When they send missiles, they do so indiscriminately into Israel. They did not attack the Israeli army; they attacked innocent towns, communities filled with elderly, women, and children. They hide behind women and children when they attack. They are not concerned with feeding their people, because that does not suit their immediate needs. This character trait is supported in 1 Samuel 30 with the attack on the city of Ziklag. In many ways, this ancient mindset continues to manifest today.

Once Amalek attacked, in addition to assembling an army to fight them, Moses stood on a mountain with his hands up. The verse in the Torah says, “The hands of Moses were heavy, and they took a stone and placed it under him and he sat upon it, and Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on this side and one on that. And his hands were steadfast until the sun set.”

Isn’t this strange? Moses, God’s instrument in Egypt when it came to the plagues, needed help from others to raise his hands? Why?

Perhaps because, unlike the miracle of the plagues, which was sent by God as a demonstration of strength, the battle against Amalek cannot be won alone. The word in Hebrew that is used in the verse is “emunah.” Moses held his hands up in “emunah” — which has been translated to steadfast.

In that chapter, we note that Joshua did not destroy Amalek, just weakened them, and Rashi the sage, in his prophetic wisdom, said that Joshua killed the strong ones and left the weak ones alive. After this “war” we are instructed by God to remember what they did.

From a moral perspective, God is speaking to a nation that is about to build its own society. God, in a sense, tells them don’t be like them, build for the future, not just for the present. God is also saying, remember how they got to you. You lacked faith in me, you attacked your leaders, and you did not think about others. You lacked unity and cohesion. This is what we must remember. Our physical fighting against them can only be successful with our “steadfast” belief in God, a healthy respect for our leaders and a concern for everyone in our nation.

This is why the word “emunah” was used, and this is why Moses needed for Israel to see that Aaron and Hur were flanking him, helping him to raise his hands. We have only been around since our exile because of our “emunah.”

That does not mean we lay down our weapons. The Torah is there to teach us important lessons. The lesson from Rephidim seems clear: Our society should be based on the society that God laid out for us. We need to have faith in God, and we need to be unified. But respect for our leaders? Even Moses needed two righteous people at his side to support him. Our leaders should learn from that too.

However, we the people have a powerful tool to use should our leaders not be as steadfast in their “emunah.” Our prayers to God, our unity, our consideration for each other has the power to storm the heavens and force God to look.

Faith is not easy; it is a challenge. Even Moses needed two people at his side “until sunset.” To truly fight Hamas, we need to lift our hands, we need to pray. No matter where you stand in this conflict, the one thing that can unite us is our prayers. Our prayer for peace, our prayer that God is “the God who exercises loving kindness, justice, and righteousness” — and we need to continue to follow the statutes of God and treat each other with respect and kindness.

I recognize that the intricacies of this war are beyond my expertise and I know that everything I read is sprinkled with bias, or purposefully missing important information. I am not asking us to stop debating. Instead, I would ask that we remember we are way stronger when we debate with love. At the end of the day, we should be able to sit with each other, perhaps pray with each other. Instead of group protests, we should arrange group prayers. This is what truly unites us. When our divisiveness is visible, it weakens us and allows Amalek to penetrate our defenses.

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1. Yaaqov Medan is an Israeli Orthodox rabbi; respected leader in the Religious-Zionist community; and a lecturer in Tanakh, Gemara, and Jewish philosophy.