Violence is Always a Zero-Sum Game

The Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman Foundation for Peace and Justice looks on with profound sorrow at the devastating violence that has consumed Israel-Palestine in the past week. The violence issues from many sources, but at its core is the denial of freedom and full equality to Palestinians, who have suffered from the double burdens of discrimination and occupation for decades. This current cycle of violent acts was triggered by a rising tide of hateful Jewish rhetoric and deeds that devalue the lives of Palestinians and seek to remove them in the hope of achieving a truly mono-ethnic state.

In moments such as this, we recall the powerful words of Leonard Beerman. In the last Yom Kippur sermon he delivered at Leo Baeck Temple on October 4, 2014, he intoned a phrase he had used before to capture both the familiarity of the day and the recurring cycle of violence in the Holy Land: “And here we are again, you and I. Another Yom Kippur…Another war in Gaza.” Leonard then chronicled the number of rockets launched by Hamas and the number of children killed in Gaza in Israeli air raids. For him, there were no victors, only losers. The loss of a single life meant, as Jewish and Muslim scripture affirm, the loss of the entire world.

Like his friend, the Reverend James Lawson, Leonard was completely committed to the principle of non-violence. And together with our board member, Jim Lawson, we hold out the hope that opposition to violence can, as Leonard preached in 1982, “so stir the conscience of the opponent that reconciliation becomes a reality.” The alternative is one in which children die in the rubble of collapsed apartments, families cower in bomb shelters, and neighbors turn on one another in an orgy of violence.

We fervently hope and pray for a Jerusalem that is a true city of peace, where all are afforded equal access to rights, dignity, and property.

We fervently hope and pray for the restoration of order and peace in Israeli cities such that Arabs and Jews can dwell together safely.

And we fervently hope and pray for an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. The United States has the leverage to push for a political settlement in the region—and, in equal measure, it has the responsibility to support UN Security Council resolutions for a cease fire.

Violence is always a zero-sum game. We believe that the world needs to recognize that the violence itself is an enemy of the human race. Silence in the face of it is not an option.