A tale is told in the Midrash Rabbah about a group of people traveling together in a boat, when one man begins drilling a hole beneath his seat.
Alarmed, the others ask him, “What are you doing?”
“What do you care,” he replied. “I’m drilling under my own seat.” To which they responded, “Yes, but the water will rise and flood the boat for all of us.”
That parable, from Vayikra Rabbah, is well known because its lesson is so clear. In a tightly bound community, there is no such thing as a private act. What each person does – whether out of malice, thoughtlessness, or stupidity – can carry far-reaching ramifications for the whole community.
Israel has experienced two such moments in recent days. The first was the behavior and words of IDF soldiers toward a CNN crew doing a story on Jewish violence in Judea and Samaria. And the second was a police officer’s decision on Sunday to keep the Latin patriarch from conducting mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Palm Sunday.
Each incident may have been isolated and troubling, but still limited. But once exposed, once amplified, it became much bigger – two holes drilled into a boat already taking on a lot of water in the court of international opinion.
And yet, there is another part of the story that the midrash does not address. When one man drills a hole, the danger is real – but it is still only one man drilling. The rest of the passengers are not holding the drill. They did not choose the act, do not defend it, may in fact condemn it outright, and think it’s outrageous. Still, in Israel’s case, that distinction frequently collapses. The individual becomes the collective; the act of one becomes the stain of all.
That asymmetry is not just academic. It is important for societies to recognize and call out wrong, immoral, unethical, and irresponsible behavior. But likewise, it is also important to recognize when that behavior is being used – far beyond its scope – to indict an entire country in a way rarely done elsewhere.
CNN, Palm Sunday incidents
The first incident was reported on Saturday, when a CNN crew reporting on Jewish violence found itself at the center of the story. According to the report, Israeli soldiers detained members of the crew, and one photojournalist was put in a choke hold and thrown to the ground while filming. In the footage, one soldier spoke of “revenge” and another about how they were assisting the settlers who set up an illegal outpost.
The second incident took place in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, when Israeli police prevented two senior Catholic figures – including Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch – from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Authorities said the move had been driven by security concerns – just days ago, shrapnel fell near the church, and the Old City has been hit during the current war. The clerics went to the press immediately, and the incident quickly became one of religious freedom, with harsh criticism raining down on Israel from all directions, including such friends as US Ambassador Mike Huckabee.
Both incidents were completely unnecessary, a gratuitous own goal. It is wrong for IDF soldiers to manhandle journalists, talk about revenge, or show any sympathy for Jews breaking Israeli law.
It was dumb for a police officer to prevent the Catholic Church’s highest representative in the country from visiting his faith’s holiest sites on one of the holiest days of the Christian year. Dumb, but not malicious. It was, as Huckabee said, a case of overreach.
There is a real danger of projectiles – parts of missiles or interceptors – falling on the church, which is why participation at religious services there, at the Western Wall, and at Al-Aqsa Mosque has been limited to potentially save lives. But there is a difference between a massive prayer event and one involving a handful of churchmen.
Common sense should have prevailed.
In both cases, Israel acted quickly to control the damage.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir took the unprecedented step of not only taking disciplinary steps against the soldiers involved, but rather suspending the whole reserve battalion and sending them for educational training.
That was judicious. It sends a message both to IDF soldiers and to the world that these types of actions are intolerable. Coming at a time when Jewish violence in Judea and Samaria is on the rise – something that is first and foremost morally reprehensible and also damaging to Israel abroad – that message is both strong and necessary.
And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly apologized to the cardinal and assured him of unencumbered access to the site. Arrangements between the Church and the police for the rest of Holy Week were agreed upon.
Each of these incidents warranted scrutiny, and it was good that the misconduct was acknowledged and addressed.
Drilling holes in the boat is not something a society can afford to ignore, especially a boat already navigating through very choppy diplomatic waters.
But what followed these incidents is just as telling. Neither episode was treated as the act of specific individuals or the result of particular decisions made by those individuals. Instead, for many, they were quickly turned into a broader indictment – not just of policy, but of the country’s character. Israel, once again, was cast not as a state wrestling with the unacceptable actions of some of its members – as all states do – but as a monolith defined by them.
That is a standard rarely applied with equal force elsewhere. Countries with far more extensive records of internal misconduct are generally afforded the distinction between the actions of individuals and the identity of the state. Israel, far more often, is not.
Antisemites, of course, had a field day. Take this post on X/Twitter by conservative activist and former Miss California Carrie Prejean Boller in response to a statement issued by Huckabee: “The Israeli government hates Christians. We’re seeing now how Christians are treated in occupied Palestine. You can no longer hide it. This is the fruit of your heretical teaching of Zionist supremacy.”
A similar dynamic followed the episode involving the CNN crew. Footage of misconduct by individual soldiers – serious and troubling in its own right – was rapidly seized upon and reframed as emblematic of the evils of Zionism.
Those intent on bashing Israel conflated the actions of individuals with the character of the entire state.
The man drilling in the boat cannot be ignored. His actions matter, and they endanger everyone. But neither can the reaction be ignored: the rush to declare that the hole is the boat.
Israel must stop the drilling. And the world must stop pretending that one man’s actions define the vessel.