War repercussions felt in Terre Haute

Oct. 20—The Israel-Gaza war may be half a world away, but its deadly repercussions are being felt here in Terre Haute.

Shani Zucker, a member of the United Hebrew Congregation synagogue in Terre Haute, has a brother, Yossi (a nickname for Joseph), in Israel.

Yossi's daughter, Leah Rosental, lives in a kibbutz near where attacks took place and had to evacuate, but her family is currently fine. Her nephew Yuval has been called up to the reserves.

"No one in the Jewish community is OK right now," Zucker said. "It's a bittersweet time."

Zucker keeps up with Yossi via email and the Chatter app.

"We actually touch base pretty much every day," she said. "He just had a grandson and they had a bris.

The attack was on the 7th, and they managed to have the bris on the 9th."

Yossi runs a music publishing company in Tel Aviv, OR-TAV Music Shop, selling sheet music, primarily to schools.

"He's trying to keep as much a normal life as he can, so he goes into the shop every day," Zucker said. "I haven't asked if any people come in, because I'm trying to keep him positive."

She added, "He hadn't seen another shop owner for several days, and when the guy did come in, he said he had lost a lot of family members in the massacre. You hear lots of stories like that. These stories are close to everyone, the community is so closely integrated."

On Oct. 7, militants from Hamas — which the United States designated as a terrorist organization in 1997 — launched an unexpected attack on Israel, overwhelming military defenses and rampaging through civilian areas.

Authorities say at least 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, including 31 U.S. nationals, and 4,562 injured.

On the same day, Israel declared war on Hamas and since then, 3,478 Palestinians have been killed and more than 12,000 wounded in Gaza. On Oct. 9, Israel called for "full siege" of the Gaza Strip, denying electricity, food and fuel to an area that has long suffered.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to bring the complete and utter end to Hamas. And there's a growing risk that neighboring countries or even global powers will be drawn into the conflict.

President Joe Biden visited Israel this week to meet with both Israelis and Palestinians, but Palestinians canceled their meeting with him after a deadly blast at a Gaza hospital on Tuesday. It remains unclear who was responsible for the explosion, but American intelligence suggests it was not Israel.

Biden pledged support of Israel and has asked Congress for an aid package that provides $14.3 billion in Israeli military assistance and $10 billion in humanitarian assistance divided in unspecified amounts among Israel, Gaza and Ukraine. He had previously announced $100 million Palestinian civilians, but that effort has been slowed out of concern that Hamas would be able to access that money.

Betsy Frank, president of United Hebrew's congregation, said, "I can't speak for the entire congregation but we support Israel. The situation is very complex, but the bottom line is that Hamas' goal is to obliterate Israel. Even Palestinian children are taught to hate Israel.

"When Israel turned over Gaza to the Palestinians, the Palestinians destroyed the infrastructure," she added. "No shelters are in place and the military hides in schools and hospitals. Israel had no choice but to go to war. ... We want peace, but not by destroying Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel is often called the innovation nation for its medical and other research."

Pro-Palestinian groups have staged protests in Indianapolis, Fort Wayne and Bloomington. A member of the Palestinian Solidarity Committee told Indiana University's newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student, "We don't represent Hamas, and we don't condone the actions of Hamas. But we also don't condone the actions of the Israeli military. We do not want to see Palestinian children or Israeli children killed in this siege. It is a tragic event, and we hope things deescalate as soon as they can."

ISU professor's take

Indiana State University history professor James Gustafson — one of his specialties is the Middle East — put the war in perspective.

"More than anything, we need to view this through the lens of human rights and declare unequivocally that it is illegitimate to target civilians, whether it is suicide bombings and cowardly terror attacks on women and children in Israeli villages, or whether it is fighter jets and sophisticated military technology used to bomb out residential neighborhoods," he said.

"That situation has, in turn, made it difficult for any sort of moderate and reasonable leadership to arise on either side," Gustafson added. "It is easy to dismiss conflicts in the Middle East as just what happens 'over there,' or some ancient unsolvable feud, but there is nothing normal or natural about this. This is the result of choices made by political leaders over decades, and millions of normal people just trying to live their lives are caught in the middle of it."

Gustafson examined Hamas' thinking in making an attack and Israel's subsequent response.

"The goal of terrorism is to stoke fear and provoke a response," he said. "It is a choice to attack civilians, whether we are talking about terrorist attacks by Hamas militants, or attacks on residential neighborhoods, or to proceed with military campaigns that will inevitably create a humanitarian crisis."

Gustafson continued, "The response has only increased the suffering in Gaza, which moves everything in the wrong direction in terms of protecting human rights and finding a political solution. That would have to build from the principle of upholding the rights of all inhabitants of the region regardless of religion and ethnicity. It is enormously challenging for cooler heads to prevail in a moment like this."

The professor said that popular perception, the history and roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, are mistaken.

"The image in the press of the Israel-Palestine conflict as an ancient feud rooted in religious animosity is completely false," Gustafson said. "Prior to World War I, Muslims, Jews and Christians lived amongst one another in the same villages, doing the same jobs, speaking the same languages, all under a system of basic religious tolerance in the Ottoman Empire."

He added, "When the state of Israel was established, the aim was to create a Jewish majority state to protect the rights of Jews, especially those in Europe, who faced persecution and violence as minorities. Especially after the Holocaust, there was great sympathy for that project internationally. The problem was, at the time of Israeli independence, Jews made up less than one-third of the Palestine Mandate."

Some 750,000 Palestinian Muslims were displaced during the war of independence, Gustafson said, "some into neighboring countries like Jordan and Lebanon, and others into temporary settlements where there are now third or fourth generations of Palestinians living in difficult conditions and denied citizenship and equal rights in a state defined as a Jewish homeland."

To summarize the conflagration, Gustafson said, "The conflict today is barely 75 years old and is rooted in the question of political and human rights. Israelis have built a Jewish homeland that protects the rights of Jews who often lived under threats of violence and persecution as minorities elsewhere.

"The other part of that which is often missed is that it created a long-term humanitarian crisis for those militarily displaced to create a Jewish majority.

"Gaza, in particular, is often described as an 'open air prison' under occupation, and is now caught between a terrorist group — Hamas — and Israeli policies that deny them equal rights, control access to water, electricity, and fuel, and have proceeded with the building of settlements deep into Palestinian territories," he added.

"Terrorist groups like Hamas prey on marginalized and displaced communities," Gustafson said. "The people in Gaza are also victims of Hamas. ... They have taken illegitimate measures to reach their goals, attacking defenseless civilian populations and creating an atmosphere of fear and hostility.

"It's a choice to attack civilians, and one we must always forcefully condemn as a violation of basic human rights."

David Kronke can be reached at 812-231-4232 or at david.kronke@tribstar.com.