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Gaza War Diary IV - Can people die of ambivalence?
By Bradley Burston
Tags: Bradley Burston, Gaza 

Click here for more from Bradley Burston


Ambivalence (noun) - Simultaneous and contradictory attitudes or feelings (as attraction and repulsion) toward an object, person, or action.
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Can people die of ambivalence?

In the short term, the war seems to have proven that they cannot.

Were ambivalence a lethal condition, the resulting epidemic would decimate Israel. The depth of ambivalence is such that only a handful might survive the plague, perhaps no one, beside, say, Uri Avneri and Avshalom Kor.

The reasons for the ambivalence go to the complex heart of the Israeli psyche. The compartments there include well-insulated cells for past and future attempts at annihilation of Jewish people (adorned with posters of the Holocaust and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad); well-justified disgust with Hamas as a barbaric, cynically mercenary, murderous agent of the ideology of extermination; and the dread that accompanies the sinking suspicion that whatever action one takes to fight radical Islam in this region, radical Islam seems to profit from it.

Another distinct cell contains images of the Palestinian civilians killed in Israeli air strikes and artillery shelling in the Gaza Strip. Dedicated revilers of the Jewish state - who themselves occupy another distinct cell in the Israeli psyche - will doubtless dismiss this out of hand as crocodile tears, but news footage of Palestinian casualties, infants, women and the elderly killed and wounded in Gaza, causes tremendous emotional pain to Israelis.

No civilian casualties are ever justifiable, on either side.

In recent days, however, Israeli moderates and the center-left have been faced a new and bizarrely troubling thought: What if this most denounced of wars actually does some good?

Lurking at the margins, are signs that this war may have positive downstream effects for Israel, and for Palestinian peace prospects as well. Much of this hinges on the effect it may ultimately have on Iran and its satraps. In fact, viewed against the report that the Bush administration forbade an Israeli air strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, the war, as horrible as many of its direct results have been, may actually serve to break the momentum of the Iranian juggernaut. What can safely be assumed, is that if Iranian influence continues to grow in the Holy Land, peace prospects will be extinguished for years to come.

As if to emphasize the ambivalence that Israelis feel, polls have shown a large majority supporting the war, but only a tiny percentage believing that the offensive will achieve even the limited goal of ending Palestinian rocket fire into Israel.

The right, along with its supporters abroad, suspects that Israel will not go far enough, fight fiercely enough, see this through to the bitterest of necessary ends. "The question," concludes Chales Krauthammer in the Washington Post, "is whether Israel still retains the nerve - and the moral self-assurance - to win."

The left, along with its supporters abroad, suspects that the war could and should have been avoided altogether. The cover of Time Magazine leaves no room for second thoughts, headlined, as it is, "Why Israel can't win."

Inside, the coverage takes a turn for the apocalyptic. Correspondent Tim McGurk asks "Can Israel survive its assault on Gaza?"

To truly appreciate the bottomless Israeli capacity for ambivalence, one has only to understand the unpronounceable, indispensible expression hafuch al hafuch al hafuch (roughly, "the opposite of the opposite of the opposite"). The idiom describes a situation in which an action causes an equal and opposite reaction, which, in turn, may reverse again and, in the most convoluted of paths, achieve something akin to the original intention.

Everyone, all the experts, seem to agree that this cannot happen, and that the war will be a colossal waste of human life without a shred of positive outcome.

But such a consensus of expert opinion often makes Israelis, well, ambivalent. They just might have it right.


______________


Previous blogs:

A Jew's prayer for the children of Gaza
Gaza War Diary III: If Mexico shelled Texas, like Hamas shells Israel
Gaza 2009 - To win, all Israel has to do is survive
Gaza War Diary II - Who speaks for the Gazans?
Gaza War Diary I - Wartime in Gaza: The worst anti-Israel charges you'll hear
Can the First Gaza War be stopped before it starts?
The Madoff betrayal: Life imitates anti-Semitism
Hebron, Feiglin, and the self-hating Jews of the right
The Jihadi as Nazi, from 9/11 to Mumbai

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  1.   The solution 16:40  |  Paul 12/01/09
  2.   Were the facts given rational intrepretation 17:34  |  Victor 12/01/09
  3.   Bursyon puts down a logic which he wholeheartedly embraces.Afuch! 17:45  |  David 12/01/09
  4.   Time for radicalization of our thinking perhaps? 17:47  |  lennybruce 12/01/09
  5.   The opposite of an opposite of minus is still minus 18:16  |  Kris Lazar 12/01/09
  6.   The best possible outcome of all this suffering 18:25  |  Pssd Off American 12/01/09
  7.   We are our own worst enemies 18:26  |  Gili 12/01/09
  8.   The Worse Thing Israel Can Do... 19:14  |  Yosemite 12/01/09
  9.   Burston is an honest, intelligent humane writer 19:34  |  Shalom Freedman 12/01/09
  10.   Sharon and "hafuch al hafuch al hafuch" 19:35  |  Boris 12/01/09
  11.   Moral self assurance? 19:41  |  Bitin Dawg 12/01/09
  12.   Sure you`re ambivalent 19:57  |  Colin Wright 12/01/09
  13.   Gili of Montreal, Canada, kudos!!! 20:27  |  Akiva P 12/01/09
  14.   Opposites repel or a hot cocktail mix 20:55  |  allang 12/01/09
  15.   Wishful Thinking 22:13  |  Sydney 12/01/09
  16.   Hats of to pssd off 22:28  |  Aaron Levitt 12/01/09
  17.   "Our own worst enemies" 22:37  |  Aaron Levitt 12/01/09
  18.   ambivalence is the opposite of fascism 22:46  |  peaceful 12/01/09
  19.   how ambivilant is a rocket on your home!!! 22:59  |  Jason 12/01/09
  20.   perversely something good may emerge 23:38  |  Truth 12/01/09
  21.   Can people die of ambivalence? 02:02  |  Mark Lincoln 13/01/09
  22.   brave article-I liked it 02:03  |  hipolito 13/01/09
  23.   Mr. Burston 02:06  |  dan 13/01/09
  24.   To # 2. From American to American 02:18  |  dan 13/01/09
  25.   How ambivalent Jason, is being malnurished? 04:49  |  Mark Lincoln 13/01/09
  26.   Ambivalence? 04:56  |  jbrinkmeyer 13/01/09
  27.   So Mr. Burston, you can ask answers, but never post them. 06:26  |  Mark Lincoln 13/01/09
  28.   Bradleys inappropriate sarcasm 10:40  |  Natallie Durson 13/01/09
  29.   IRAN`S GROWING INFLUENCE IS AN OUTCOME 10:46  |  indrajaya 13/01/09
  30.   I`m not convinced Israelis do care much about Pal civilians. 10:47  |  Michael 13/01/09
  31.   Dying of ambivalence 11:20  |  sh 13/01/09
  32.   my thoughts 11:35  |  JOHN 13/01/09
  33.   IRANIAN ROULETTE-2nd try 11:40  |  Steve 13/01/09
  34.   ANOTHER FAILURE... 2006-2009!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IMP.. 11:46  |  DAVID 13/01/09
  35.   nothing whatever ambivalent about hamas 11:47  |  Cipora Julianna Kohn 13/01/09
  36.   To solve a dilemma takes ambivalent measures 12:35  |  Alicia 13/01/09
  37.   Alicia - a massively irresponsible response 15:48  |  Mark Lincoln 13/01/09
  38.   You are really Don Rumsfeld 18:04  |  Marilyn 13/01/09
  39.   The answer is no 18:04  |  sean 13/01/09
  40.   Lincoln - Prime Minister of Israel 18:54  |  SDHD 13/01/09
  41.   I`m not convinced Michael has common sense 18:56  |  SDHD 13/01/09
  42.   Brilliant respones Mark Lincoln 20:27  |  Jade 13/01/09
  43.   JESUSALEN 01:37  |  cristian 14/01/09
  44.   well-justified? 02:42  |  hollingsworth 14/01/09
  45.   Brilliant response? 03:49  |  Mark Lincoln 14/01/09
  46.   # 35 Cipora Julianna Kohn ...... religious war 05:22  |  allang 14/01/09
  47.   What might upset Hollingsworth? 05:25  |  SDHD 14/01/09
  48.   Lincoln`s priorities 05:31  |  SDHD 14/01/09
  49.   Dis cant be ambivalence 06:23  |  sonicgumel 14/01/09
  50.   To Cipora #35 and the others who are willfully blind 15:20  |  Joel A. Levitt 14/01/09
  51.   #50 Levitt; Hamas`s popularity rocketing in the WB 16:28  |  Alicia 14/01/09
  52.   to Shalom Freedman #9 20:06  |  zeev 14/01/09
  53.   to Boris #10 20:51  |  zeev 14/01/09
 Read & React
Obama: Time for Palestinians, Israel to resume peace talks
Responses: 45
Miri Eisin: Is only the Israeli narrative 'the truth' and all the others wrong?
Responses: 22
Bradley Burston: The Gaza War as reality television
Responses: 17
EU aid chief: Hamas 'enormously responsible' for Gaza war
Responses: 57
Summit on Holocaust: Gaza war legitimized equating Jews with Nazis
Responses: 45


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