Thursday, March 28, 2024 -
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Tragedy could help bridge the divide

The images are searing. People searching through the snow in the desperate hopes of finding family members alive.

The powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Southern Turkey and Northern Syria has sent ripples of fear and devastation through the region.

Just a tiny example. Today I was at the store purchasing a snack when the voice of the woman near me rose in panic as she suddenly turned to me, a perfect stranger, and said, “Did you feel that? . . . the floor . . . it just moved!” I hadn’t felt a thing in that moment, nor the night of the earthquake.

But other residents of Israel had felt tremors in the middle of the night that the earthquake hit Turkey.

While I was awakened by nature in the middle of that same night, it was by the fierce gales and gusts of wind supposedly coming from Greece.

Only hours later, in the morning, did I learn of the earthquake.

Certainly, the tragedy of it is how, in an unexpected moment’s time, it sliced through Turkey and Syria, leaving a mounting death toll that is simply horrifying. The sense I get is that the proximity of the earthquake has also rattled some residents in adjacent Israel.

The painful images have gripped the world.

I think witnessing the power of nature’s destructive forces, on some level, conscious or not, strikes a chord of fear in everyone.

Unlike a war, a crisis catalyzed by man, an earthquake leaves one with a profound sense of vulnerability, of how very limited our human power and capacity is in this grand material world of ours.

While this is not the primary facet of the story to focus on, the story of Israel immediately offering search and rescue aid, medical relief, as well as blankets and tents to Turkey and Syria, seems to have sharply exposed a political fault line within the earth’s geologic fault line.

Syria, a country which has been in a state of war with Israel since it was founded in 1948, has received the news of Israel’s extending aid within this crisis with mixed reaction. At first it was denial, then it was reluctant acceptance.

As always, I am so proud of Israel for actively helping in this humanitarian crisis. In one voice, across party lines, all Israeli leadership expressed solidarity and support.

Additionally, emergency services such as Magen David Adom and Hatzalah immediately mobilized to coordinate with their counterparts in Turkey and Syria in an effort to arrive as soon as possible with the manpower and materials to help.

It’s this humanity that is so very touching. It suspends any of the prevailing tensions in a time of great tragic need; it calls a truce when innocent lives are at stake, when people are suffering in the aftermath of nature’s fury.

I wonder: If we can manage to come together in such moments, why is it so difficult to near impossible in building the same bridges in “normal” times?

Yet, Syria’s response to Israel extending its hand in help has shown that, even in this time of crisis, clinging to existing hostilities remains a barrier.

The fault line between Israel and Syria remains.

It seems that the conflict is cardinal within certain sectors in Syria. 
 Syria is cleaved by its own civil war. Damascus wants nothing to do with accepting aid from Israel, but it seems that the opposition in northwest Syria to Bashar al-Assad’s government begs to differ.

The tragic reality of war-torn Syria and its government’s hate for Israel has been been exposed by this tragedy.

Israel has called its efforts to aid Turkey and Syria “Operation Olive Branches.” In both word and deed, Israel has extended a true olive branch.

Nothing can console the bereaved people of Syria and Turkey who are grieving the loss of their loved ones, the uprooting, the forced displacement and, generally speaking, the shattered lives they are now forced to cope with. Yet, if only a seed can be planted now. If only out of this terrible wreckage silvery olive branches can somehow find a way to make contact with one another, and start a new chapter in the hostilities that Israel has had to live with for so long . . .

It should never have to take human tragedies to bring about change for the better. However, if the tragedies have already struck, perhaps in their aftermath it is possible to build across national borders, instead of sustaining the split and rupture. Perhaps it is not possible to put in place a paradigm shift, which demands more sophisticated and complex processes, but even so, perhaps it is possible to start a new chapter . . .

Copyright © 2023 by the Intermountain Jewish News



Tehilla Goldberg

IJN columnist | View from Central Park


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