Published: 13 August 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
MY FIRST TAKE on the morning’s news is frequently rather foggy. The alarm rings, I push the snooze button, turn on ABC News and drift in and out of sleep, absorbing disconnected fragments: “… blast ripped through … killed … worse than wars and civil unrest … reporting from Jerusalem.”
The final word jolts me awake. Our ability to filter information is much greater when it has emotional content and for many of us, the word “Jew” or “Israel” – sometimes even a capital “J” is a cognitive tripwire.
Of course, when I am sufficiently awake for the next set of headlines, I learn that the explosion is not in Israel but at the Port of Beirut – it is just being reported by the ABC’s correspondent based in Jerusalem.
The new information sets off a different trail of anxieties. Is Israel responsible? Is this a sign of renewed military tension? Is it justified? Is it the beginning of another war?
For Jews every piece of news from the Middle East tends to be filtered through this framework. The phrase “Middle East tensions” evokes for us the conflict over Israel – as if there were no civil war in Syria, no military manoeuvres in the Persian Gulf, no Kurdish separatist movement…and as if the Middle East were not a powder keg of all the problems typically found in developing countries, corruption, poverty, nepotism, poor regulation, ineffective enforcement, and downright mismanagement.
As the news trickles through, it become clear that the latter two or three are to blame for the tragic explosion in Beirut. Lebanon's President, Michel Aoun, announces that the explosion was caused by the detonation was 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored unsafely at a warehouse in the port. Evidence emerges that Lebanese officials knew of the danger posed by the cargo six years ago. We are dealing with a tragedy of civil management not military conflict.
Now comes my third wave of emotion – the Jewish response to the Arab world when it stays on its own side of the fence. It is a curious curdled mixture of distress and relief.
Now comes my third wave of emotion – the Jewish response to the Arab world when it stays on its own side of the fence. It is a curious curdled mixture of distress and relief. On the one hand, no one can be anything but distressed as they learn of an industrial disaster which has killed at least 137 people and left 5,000 injured and more than 300,000 homeless. That the tragedy could have been avoided with decent safety systems is even more upsetting.
On the other, it would be disingenuous to deny that it is a relief that Israel is neither the victim nor the perpetrator and that it can swing into the much more comfortable role of good neighbour.
Good neighbourliness, is of course, not widespread in the vicinity. Israel has declared Lebanon as an enemy state because it harbours Hezbollah terrorists. Just days before the Beirut accident, terrorists again attempted to cross the border, resulting in a heavy exchange of fire.
But the deep antipathies did not stop Israel responding to the tragic industrial accident in Beirut in an exemplary fashion. The Netanyahu Government immediately offered humanitarian aid. In Tel Aviv the municipal building displayed the Lebanese flag in lights as a sign of sympathy and solidarity.
But even in the midst of its disaster, Lebanon did not respond to the offer, leaving Israeli hospitals only 100km away willing but unable to help.
So, frustration and anger joined the growing list of emotions felt by Jews around the world. It’s confronting, especially for those of us who are used to calling out the hawks on our side, to see Israel do the right thing and have it thrown back in its face. It’s infuriating that injured innocents and homeless families will miss out on care because the Lebanese government is too frightened of Hezbollah or too entrenched in its anti-Israel habits to accept Israeli aid.
Reflex perceptions of Israel as threat and enemy have been all over the response to the Beirut accident. Israel’s offer of help was dismissed as “mere PR”. Only Israel’s – though every country with the capacity to offer foreign aid does so out of mixed motives, diplomacy as well as decency.
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Worse was the persistent insinuations that Israel was responsible. US President Donald Trump was one of the worst offenders, telling reporters the blast was a “terrible attack” and claiming he has been told by generals it was a “bomb of some kind”. Pentagon officials promptly and frankly contradicted the President.
In Australia, Channel Ten’s The Project broadcast a segment interviewing Beirut-based photographer João Sousa, who claimed “99% of people” thought the explosion more likely to be the result of a military attack, possibly by Israel, than an accident. The Project subsequently removed the video of the segment but refused to apologise.
Social media kept the canon ball rolling with ever wilder conspiracy theories: the port was a cover for a Hezbollah munitions dump, the smoke pattern show it was an atomic bomb, the US was forewarned of an explosion…I’d like to dismiss them as nonsense – which they are - but pogroms were based on blood libels, the Holocaust on the myth of Jewish power.
Conspiracy theories are like ammonium nitrate. Mishandle them and they can explode.
So, after a week’s emotional roller coaster, we are back to anxiety for Israel and the Jewish world. We are neither the victims nor the perpetrators of this tragedy but we are never merely bystanders.
An explosion in a neighbour’s backyard is always going to drop sparks on the tinder dangerously stacked in our own little patch.
Photo: The army helps survivors evacuate after the explosion (AP)
