Archive for May, 2007

It Was Supposed to Be Different Here

Published by
Brad Brooks-Rubin
May 30, 2007 in Personal Reflections and Brad. 3 Comments

It was supposed to be different here, wasn’t it? Different for the better, that is?

After several days of thinking about Steffi’s comment to my last post in which she references “good Germans;” reading Gideon Levy’s story in Haaretz about Ronnie Kasrils, South African Minister of Intelligence Services, and his views that the Occupation is worse in many respects than apartheid in South Africa; reading just the title to Ze’ev Schiff’s piece in Friday’s paper: “If that’s how they act in Gaza;” and topping it off with Roger Cohen’s piece in the Sunday Times, “Israel and the Price of Blindness,” I realized what has been bugging me for these past few weeks (despite my admitted enjoyment of ignorance and detachment, or as Andrew might rightly put it, my personal disengagement), really the past 10 years, since I first experienced life in the West Bank.

Of course, this point has been made innumerable times on this site and so many others, and by so many other people far more articulate and knowledgeable than me. And so I apologize in advance for repeating it, for ranting without much of a point or new thought or new idea. But the message still has not been heard by everyone, for some reason. In fact, it seems sometimes that it’s hardly been heard by anyone. Given how little I seem to do about it anymore, I guess you could say even me, much of the time.

So perhaps I just feel the need to say it again, if only to wake myself up from my first few weeks of personal disengagement. The point is simply this: it was supposed to be different here.

Here in Jerusalem in 2007, we weren’t supposed to be reading in the weekly magazine about why the Occupation is worse than apartheid. And even if we disagree, we weren’t supposed to have arguments honed as to why the Occupation is not worse than apartheid. Apartheid wasn’t supposed to be part of the vocabulary, the ability to fashion technical arguments to the contrary not part of the national identity.

In 2007, we weren’t supposed to be asking American Jews to go on a first date with a 60-year-old Israel, but then be afraid of what they might learn on that date (such as, for example, the country you’re on a date with is the parent of a 40-year-old Occupation). There were not supposed to be skeletons in the closet here, literally or figuratively. The terms “Israeli policies” and “Holocaust” were not supposed to be even conceivably uttered in the same breath. Of course, as Steffi says, what’s happening here does not compare to what happened in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. But as I have said many times before, the mere notion that anyone has to even think for a second about whether there could be a comparison – that alone should be enough to change things here. And to cause pain to every Jew everywhere.

In 2007, we should not be reading articles that describe Palestinians as “they” in such dehumanizing terms as Schiff’s piece does, hearkening back to the pre-civil rights era U.S. But in fact, as we consider a 60-year-old Israel, we have to consider it in precisely those pre-civil rights terms. That is, the impact of disengagement and detachment are simply the equivalent of one of the most derided rulings in U.S. judicial history: Plessy v. Ferguson. I plan to write more on this in the future, but for now, I’ll ask everyone to consider simply that both inside Israel, and between Israelis and Palestinians, in 2007, Plessy’s notion of “separate but equal” would, in fact, be something of a dream, rather than a nightmare. As of now, all there is is “separate.” For all of the talk about the splendor of Israeli democracy, consider that, vis-à-vis “the other,” it has so long to go to even ascend to one of the worst moments in the history of American democracy.

The separation is so pervasive as to make even the tiniest moments when it’s absent seem like earth-shattering occasions. It should not have felt so odd on Shavuot to see observant Jews in talitot walking through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. But it did. Just as my wife and I should not have had to wonder aloud whether Palestinian families ever came to the Jerusalem Zoo (we encountered a handful of such families, I think, in a very crowded zoo – and all in one specific part of the zoo). But we did.

I should not feel like going into my son’s daycare at the Jerusalem Y is like entering some land of pre-apple Eden. But being in a place where Palestinian and Jewish children play, learn, eat, celebrate, and cry together feels like walking on to a movie set or a fairy tale. It feels that way because outside there are posters calling for “Chumat Magen 2” in Gaza. Chumat Magen being “Operation Defensive Shield” that caused so much devastation and destruction in Jenin and elsewhere in 2002 (in response, of course, to a wave of suicide bombings, including the horrific attack in Netanya during Pesach). Is this really what is needed to calm things in Gaza? More destruction? If only the people who put up those signs knew what was happening inside the Y.

No matter whose fault you think it is, no matter how right or wrong you think Israel is in this situation, no matter how little or much you think the Palestinians should have in a settlement — I don’t think anyone can possibly believe that this is how it’s supposed to be here. That if you had told Ben Gurion in 1947, just before the state would come into being, what Israel would be in 2007, he would have leaned back and said, “That’s exactly what I hope for.”

Perhaps it’s trite in a post like this to quote Buber. Just like it often seems trite to quote Martin Luther King Jr. when talking about race relations in the U.S. But in both cases, until their dreams are realized, we have few other choices. For his part, Buber more than most understood why it was supposed to be different here, that the goal of Zionism should have been the fulfillment of this land’s divine promise, not simply to be a nation like any other. Sadly, today, we have the latter.

Some thoughts from Buber:

We speak of a “national concept,” when a people makes its unity, spiritual coherence, historical character, traditions, origins and evolution, destiny and vocation the objects of its conscious life and the motive power behind its actions. In this sense, the Zion concept of the Jewish people can be called a national concept. But its essential quality lies precisely in that which differentiates it from all other national concepts.
…

This land was at no time in the history of Israel simply the property of the people; it was always at the same time a challenge to make of it what God intended to have made of it.
Thus, from the very beginning, the unique association between this people and this land was characterized by what was to be, by the intention that was to be realized.
…

The idea of Zion is rooted in deeper regions of the earth and rises into loftier regions of the air, and neither its deep roots nor its lofty heights, neither its memory of the past nor its ideal for the future, both of the selfsame texture, may be repudiated. If Israel renounces the mystery, it renounces the heart of reality itself. National forms without the eternal purpose from which they have arisen signify the end of Israel’s specific fruitfulness.

Renunciation of the mystery means renunciation of the reality of the land. As I got waved through an impromptu police checkpoint set up in East Jerusalem today, where only my and other cars with Hebrew written on the sides were allowed to pass without question, I realized the renunciation is near complete. Amid such a blatant exhibition of absolute power (albeit minor, in comparison to those unleashed in the West Bank), as Cohen so cogently called it last weekend, we must realize that Israel has repudiated its roots and renounced its mystery. And replaced it with pure power.

So what? Was this supposed to be a utopia, where Jew and Arab lived peacefully for eternity? Maybe not, but it was supposed to be different than this – the source of our redemption was not supposed to also be the source of others’ (and, ours too, in some ways) destruction. But, now, it is.

So what do we do? Is it Israel’s fault, anyway? Is Israel the one that has to change everything? Look around, after all – how could it be different here? Am I so naive as to think it could really be any other way?

Well, from here, you get to myriad other questions and debates, many of which leave you hungry for personal disengagement again because they are too hard, too frustrating, too demoralizing, too familiar. And, as I wrote a couple weeks ago, there is so much else here to grasp on to that makes you believe things really are okay.

But no matter what our answers to the above questions, no matter what we do or do not do each day to change things, no matter how long this tragedy continues to unfold, no matter how many good and positive things may come from this place, we have to always come back to a single notion, all of us, regardless of our politics: it should be different here.

Perhaps, as Buber says, this is a great challenge. But that is as it was intended. This land was supposed to be the realization, not only of a people’s dream and promise, but of God’s.

But, in Jerusalem in 2007, it isn’t.

“We’re at War! Are You Doing All You Can?”

Published by
Brad Brooks-Rubin
May 20, 2007 in Personal Reflections and Brad. 10 Comments

“We’re at War! Are you doing all you can?” As I walked into my new office for the first time in 2005, there he was: a pointing, glowering, eerily focused Uncle Sam, asking me about my commitment to the “War!” It stopped me in my tracks. Not because I necessarily opposed it’s being there, but because of how out of place the sign seemed, the sentiment seemed. That is, in my daily experience in Washington, working within shouting distance of the White House, I realized this was about the only direct reminder I had in my field of vision that our country is indeed fighting a war.

I have now gone from Washington to Jerusalem. If you asked many people in the world what the two most vital conflicts are to determining whether our future is a stable or volatile one, they would likely say Iraq and Palestine. So here I have traveled between the two capitals arguably most directly involved in creating – and ultimately ending — these conflicts that may well determine the future of the world.

And walking around the streets of either one, you would have no clue.

Unless you really look and think about it, it’s hard to imagine as you stroll down Pennsylvania Avenue or Jaffa St. that either country’s young men and women are fighting a war. Or that, here in Israel, a town is being bombarded daily from Gaza. Never mind that, within mere miles of the incredible zoo my wife and I took our kids to over the weekend, Gaza is descending even further into chaos and the West Bank continues to suffer under an ever more constricting and stifling occupation.

I wish I had a pointed anecdote or moment to demonstrate this phenomenon. But that’s just it – there’s nothing. No comments in shops, no arguments, hard to even catch anyone reading the paper intently as you drink a kafeh hafuch in a café. Sayed Kashua captures the phenomenon pretty aptly in his column this week, describing a conversation of his own when entering a café the morning after Jerusalem Day last week.

“What’s eating you, so early in the morning?” he asked as he went about his work, snipping open sacks of milk, turning on a machine, refilling the containers of ground coffee.

“It’s nothing, I’m just a little stuck. And this whole thing in Gaza is killing me. Did you see Channel 10 yesterday?”

“What really bugged me yesterday wasn’t Gaza, but my own people, who stood in Sacher Park waving yellow flags and hailing Caesar,” he demonstrated by clenching his fist and holding his arm straight out. “How, how is it that they don’t get it …?” He shook his head in annoyance. The door opened and his expression instantly changed, as he said: “Hello, ma’am. How are you this morning?”

People may well be angry or bothered by what is happening in Gaza, or Iraq, or the insensitivity or outright hypocrisy of their own people in responding to these crises, but, well, then they have to get on with serving the next customer. Or getting their next cup of coffee themselves.

And, in no small way, I am a proto-typical example of this. In DC, I am too busy with work and family and activities to go out of my way to think about Iraq; most of the time, I barely listen to the news from Iraq on the radio or TV. Here, I’m a bit busier with kids than work, but still trying to do some of the latter, too, not to mention travel a bit and catch up with old friends. If we don’t have to know that war is happening, that people are suffering elsewhere, why should we? If we’re within the society that is not the locus of the fighting, what is the proper level of attention to pay, of concern to show, of distraction to feel?

In neither place is this notion of detachment new. I remember when in Israel and Palestine in 1997 and 1998 that I would often have to hear from friends and family back home that something of note had happened in Nablus or Gaza. The same has been true this time. Off I go each day on my rounds, and I wait to hear in emails from friends or on CNN that I should probably be experiencing something other than an enjoyable, comfortable spring day (although this weekend was a bit more like summer, and earlier in the week more like winter, with a torrential downpour).

And in DC, well, once you leave the airport, there is literally nothing that would force you to ever know there was a war or two that our soldiers had any part of (unless you come into my office building to see that Uncle Sam sign, of course). People in much of D.C. generally don’t know what’s going on two neighborhoods away in their own city, let alone half a world away.

Of course, in the U.S., and particularly in the American Jewish community, we like to believe that people in Israel live with this over-arching sense of terror every day, that they are more keenly aware of what is happening in their own country and in Palestine. And, no doubt they are, in some way, at least, as Andrew points out, those who serve in the Palestinian Territories. And there are certainly the reminders of those killed in various terrorist attacks that you pass on the street, or the special security guards sitting out front of many restaurants or shops to check your bags. But more than that?

How many times did we hear after 9/11 that “now we Americans know what Israelis go through every day”? I used to scoff when I heard that, for a lot of reasons, but perhaps, in a way different than I think this statement was intended, it really is true.

Perhaps what it means is that now we know what it was like to go about our daily business with a bit more vulnerability, even fear, in the back of our minds. But be sure that we still go about that business. Or maybe now we understand a bit more about what it means to have a government that acts more of its own calculation, taking actions counter to civil liberties and human rights under the rubric of security, a word that has been a trump card in Israel for decades. (I wrote about this subject last year for the Israeli civil rights group Adalah – you can see that article here.)

As I have written here before, I don’t think much changed for the average American’s daily life after 9/11. At this point, not much changes for an Israeli’s daily life when Gaza falls apart or an Israeli town gets shelled because it doesn’t have to. Maybe it should, maybe we expect it to, but as one friend and long-time social activist here has described it, the previously critical social fabric of Israel is coming apart quickly in the 21st century. Hence, no protests (as many predicted, the post-Winograd protest came and went, without seeming to stake a real hold), no introspection, no demands. (Shlomo Ben-Ami had an interesting article over the weekend that, oddly enough, seemed to blame investigative committees, a la Winograd, for a lack of real democratic action in Israel — perhaps more on that later in the summer). No level of concern that we may have come to expect from Israel and Israelis.

I guess now the question is have we become more like the Israelis post 9/11, or have they become more like us?

Used to be, at various times, that that question of Uncle Sam’s meant something to both Americans and Israelis – are we really doing all we can for our men and women soldiers? Now, seems we do all we can to forget. I am no different, of course, and am not sure I will be any time soon (although my perspective here will likely change in the coming days, when we move over to East Jerusalem). But I wonder what will – or could – change in our societies in 2007 to make it different?

Any ideas?

A First Date with Israel

Published by
Brad Brooks-Rubin
May 16, 2007 in All Posts. 6 Comments

Shortly before we arrived in Israel last week, I had the chance to speak with one of the organizers of the DC “Israel at 60” celebration to be held next year. In the course of our discussion, he explained that, because of how disconnected so much of the Jewish audience is from Israel, the operating approach of the organizers for the content of the events was going to be at a level of asking American Jews to “go on a first date” with Israel. As a result, the specific program I had in mind related to the occupation was not going to work because, well, you don’t talk about such things on a first date.

A lot went through my mind when I heard that, but I held my tongue. And I’m glad I did, as I have thought a lot about this statement, this dating service approach, in the intervening weeks and think it sheds a lot of insight on the current state of American Jewish thinking, both in the mainstream and on the left, about Israel. In both good and bad ways, but primarily in ways that could actually help us all move forward.

And for me, now that I have returned to Israel for the first time in nearly 9 years, with 2 small kids this time, it means even more personally.

First, my initial response to the notion that the “Israel at 60” events should be conceived as having American Jews go on a “first date with Israel.” In short, a first date with Israel is like a first date with Pam Anderson. Okay, maybe that’s a tad unfair; let’s say Courtney Love (remember her, Kurt Cobain’s widow and singer for the band Hole?) Someone who had tragedy thrust upon her, who has made plenty of her own mistakes and who appears to have myriad ongoing issues, and about whom there is so much is out there already.

So when you’re on a first date with Courtney Love, do you really need an ice-breaker? There may be a lot to learn about the real person, but even in the first date, you’d probably end up dealing with some of the tough issues, rather than just pretending they don’t exist at all, right?

So, too, with Israel. Just as you wouldn’t ask Courtney Love on your first date, “so, just curious — have you ever tried drugs?” why bother pretending for potential American Jewish suitors that Israel has no difficult issues of her own that are of her own making?

But if you think about it, this sums up precisely the approach taken by the mainstream Jewish organizations to Israel overall. That is, poll after poll, year after year, shows that the American Jewish community is less and less connected to Israel. We come to Israel less, we know less about it, we have mixed views on its future, whether politically, sociologically, economically, even religiously. This is none too surprising given the overall, relatively prosperous state of the community in America. We’re doing pretty well in the USA, and well, Israel is complicated. So who needs a relationship?

Aha – it’s complicated. Conflict with the Palestinians, hot and cold conflicts with other Arab neighbors, discrimination against Israeli Arabs and other minorities, a complex relationship with the US (no, it’s not as simple as anyone tries to portray), huge tensions among the Jewish groups in Israel, issues between Jews in Israel and the Diaspora, hyper-capitalism vs. socialist roots, and on and on and on. Not one of these is simple, let alone trying to understand all of them in even a first year of dating.

And, whether the organizations will admit it or not, most American Jews at least know that it’s complicated. They may know very little to nothing of the reality (other than the shades they may have picked up in Hebrew school) as Jews, but they certainly have plenty of access to media of all stripes that, if nothing else, lets them know that this is a complicated place, filled with complicated people. Sticking with the metaphor, no one is coming to the first date asking whether Israel has a past that could cause commitment issues; they know as much already.

But they may not know much more; just enough to know they don’t know very much. So when they turn to AJCommittee or Hillel or Federation or “Israel at 60” for insight and are instead told just “Support Israel” or “Go on a First Date with Israel” and shown pictures of falafel, a kibbutz orchard, the Western Wall, and the glitter of Dizengoff St. in Tel Aviv (and maybe a Bedouin man thrown in for diversity), they shake their heads. Little will be said about the Palestinians or any of the other conflicts, other than some basic “facts” about Israel’s rights, followed by claims that other perspectives they may have heard lack “balance” or “context.”

And although these “first date” approaches for the disconnected American Jews have continued to fail – i.e. the polls get worse and worse each year — the M.O. continues to hold within the mainstream community organizations. And so the disconnected who might be interested in another date, maybe even two more, were they spoken to in a mature way about the reality in Israel simply turn off all the way. No one has time for people who won’t admit to their own issues, especially when they’re obvious ones. So the dating pool gets smaller and smaller.

As I see it, the organizations have been trying to be a dating service between Israel and American Jews for so long, they have no idea how to provide relationship counseling when things go south, let alone can’t even get started.

Now, in the past, my post would have stopped here, perhaps with a concluding paragraph or two about how what’s needed is for the community to let us get beyond the first date, to grow up and live a little together, to let American Jews see and understand the not-so-nice parts of Israel because that’s precisely where the love for the place comes in (at least it did for me, and has for so many people I have encountered and whose writing I have read). It is inherently Jewish to want to get beyond that first date, to start a relationship, to start trying to fix the other person – but, in this case, we rarely get the chance.

But this post will go on a bit into my current feelings. And these were somewhat inspired by Steffi’s recent post in response to her Israel Bonds dinner invitation. Eloquent and powerful and incisive and accurate as her post was, it left me feeling a little empty. And since coming here last week, I realize why.

Those of us in the Jewish community who criticize the mainstream, who work in one way or another to try to solve some of Israel’s problems – and that’s ultimately what we’re trying to do – well, we focus mostly on those problems. Way beyond first dates, we act like jilted lovers, or maybe more precisely, a couple who has forgotten why they fell in love and instead spend most of their time thinking about how every aspect of the other person makes them cringe.

I did this the last two times I was here and have done so consistently over the last 9 years – given the complexities and the moral challenges and the human lives at stake on all sides of this, it’s hard to think about anything else sometimes. And, as I wrote about during the Gaza disengagement, for me, it’s often to the point that when I overhear people talking about Israel or when I see someone whose car or clothing bears an Israeli flag or an IDF insignia, I immediately jump to numerous conclusions about their beliefs, identities, etc. Maybe something others do when they see a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker.

That is, we on the left are often as single-minded in criticism as the other side tries to be in support. Whereas they refuse to admit to Israeli flaws other than relatively minor ones, we generally refuse to see anything but. Maybe not to ourselves, or in our own discussions, but to the world — to the disconnected we want so desparately to hear us — this is who we are.

In the contexts of many different difficult political or social issues, this black/white dichotomy is typical and uninteresting. But in this case, where there is such a large and important group of silent and disconnected potential daters, our focus on the difficult is as unappealing as the mainstream obsession with the simplistic. Maybe moreso.

So here I am – in Israel not for human rights or civil rights work, but, ultimately, to take care of my children while my wife is on a work assignment here. Figuring out where the good playgrounds are, what restaurants to go to, how to ask in Hebrew for the things that my older son wants that were never in my college Hebrew vocab lessons. And rather than some level of discomfort or guilt, I am feeling strangely good to be here – realizing that Israel can – already does — mean something good. That the revulsion I feel at seeing the separation wall as I drive around can actually be mitigated (at least for me; certainly not for the Palestinians impacted by it in such a horrific way) by, say, the experience of Shabbat here. That there is something overpowering and special in the Jewish people having a home – at least part of a home — here.

Who knows, maybe you have to be 2 years old to really enjoy Israel any more?

Perhaps I will sound like a sell-out to those in the anti-occupation movement, and probably worse to Palestinians. That I am now just another Jew accepting ignorance of Israeli occupation policies as as a way of being. I don’t think that’s the case, and know this really won’t change my approach or my activism overall, but even if no one believes that, I guess I think that’s okay; maybe all of us on the left need this once in awhile. Maybe in the end, the people who need to go on a first date with Israel are not the currently disconnected, those who have no reason to go out with Israel again, but rather those of us who have lost our way in love because of all of the pain involved.

What’s always so frustrating to American Jewish anti-occupation activists is that the mainstream demeans and diminishes our Judaism, our connection to Jewish tradition and to Israel. Perhaps we do that to ourselves, though, by not focusing on anything but the problems. Not because we should ignore the problems, but precisely because the solutions we seek will ultimately have to come from within a loving relationship, not from without. We shouldn’t forget the pain or the tears; we just need to remember — and to work to show others that we know — that there is more.

When we forget that, when we forget our connections, we lose not only our ultimate strength in trying to work for change, but we lose any chance at connecting to the disconnected. And believe me, we need the disconnected to go on a first date with us more than the mainstream does. Yet the way we’re going, we will never succeed.

So, at least for a little while longer, I am going to keep up my first date (as I approach the 15th anniversary of my first trip here) and try to regain the feeling of why it is that I care so much about what happens here, about what my people do here, about why I think I (or my wife or my sons) can, indeed must, have at least a tiny part in fixing it.

I just hope the mainstream and the disconnected will do the same and make their own first dates mean something more. So they too will love this place, these people, and ultimately be willing to listen to what we think needs to be done to really make the relationship work.

An RSVP to my invitation to the Israel Bonds Dinner

Published by
Steffi
May 4, 2007 in All Posts. 18 Comments

(Andrew’s mom posting here: with thanks to Brad Brooks-Rubin’s post, “A Winograd of Our Own” for inspiring me.)
I sat at my kitchen table today reading an invitation, addressed to my husband and me, to the Annual Israel Bond dinner for Western Massachusetts. I assume we received the invitation because, having joined our local conservative synagogue, we were put on the mailing list of the Western Mass. State of Israel Bonds organization.
On the cover of the invitation are photos of this year’s honorees, none of whom is familiar to me. I think these folks and I don’t hang out in the same circles. Inside the invitation, the guest speaker is announced: Professor Kenneth Stein, “an advisor on Mideast Affairs and colleague of Jimmy Carter for many years [who] has broken with him and has publicly and expertly critiqued the ex-president’s provocative work.” An insert to the invitation, a “personal” letter from two of the honorees who are fellow congregants at my synagogue, urges me to show my love of Judaism and Zion by purchasing a bond. “Supporting Israel takes many forms,” they tell me, listing things like “teaching our children a love of Judaism and Zion” as one of several examples. It is clear, of course, that the particular form they wish my support to take is purchasing an Israel Bond. However, the letter writers are savvy enough about the liberalism of their audience in this part of Western Massachusetts to acknowledge that “Here in the Diaspora, we do not always agree with the policies of the government of Israel, however, as Jews, we must be united in affirming our commitment to our people and our homeland.”
Here is my RSVP.
Dear Honorees,Tribute Committee, and others involved,
Thank you for your invitation to attend a dinner honoring various members of the Western Massachusetts Jewish community who, presumably, have demonstrated their devotion to “Judaism and Zionism” by contributing their money to Israel Bonds as well as engaging in other pro-Israel activities. You suggest that if I help “fill in the seats at the Israel Bonds dinner,” and invest in as large a bond as I am able to, I will be showing my support for Israel.
I would like to ask you: what Israel would you have me support? Would you like me to support the Israel that went precipitously to war in Lebanon, bombing Lebanese civilians, homes and roads, putting its own population at risk, leaving its own soldiers vulnerable and incurring many casualties of both dead and wounded? Should I contribute to the Israel whose Prime Minister is now stubbornly fighting to retain his position in spite of the devestating Winograd Report and a rally in which over 100,000 people urged him to step down? You would have labeled me a “Jewish anti-Semite” had you taken note of me — and a small minority of fellow Western Mass. Jews — who, when the war in Lebanon broke out, did NOT lend our voices to the chorus of supporters of this folly, who urged diplomacy and negotiations instead, who voiced the same concerns then that the Winograd Report now takes the government to task for.
Would you like me to invest in the Israel whose soldiers all too often kill or wound innocent Palestinian civilians? The Israel whose security police, in January, killed a 10 year old Palestinian girl (Abir Aramin) when they fired rubber bullets at some school children who they claim were throwing rocks at them? Abir’s father, a leading member of a Palestinian/Israeli peace organization (Combatants for Peace) that urges both Palestinians and Israelis to lay down their arms and talk, spoke out after her killing to affirm his commitment to continue to work with his Israeli colleagues toward a peaceful solution to the conflict.
Would you like me to invest in the Israel that built a wall which deprives many innocent Palestinian farmers access to their fields, which makes travel from one West Bank town to another difficult and often impossible? A wall which, if it truly existed for security and not as another tool to appropriate land, would have served its purpose equally well if it had been built along the 1967 borders? Should my money go to the Israel which gives guns to 18-year old kids serving in the IDF and puts them in charge of checkpoints where they have to make judgment calls that are morally and politically laden, and where their major job is to control (and often humiliate) Palestinians who are for the most part trying to shop, go to work, go to school, get medical care, visit family, attend weddings?
Would you like me to invest in the Israel that continues to build new settlements and expand old ones, over even the occasional objections of the US government, creating ever more “facts on the ground” while giving lip service to various peace proposals such as The Road Map and the latest Arab League Peace Plan? The Israel which closes its eyes to the proliferating illegal settlements that spring up all over the West Bank?
I could continue along these lines. But I think you get the idea. By this time, perhaps you have stopped reading and decided that I’m a self-hating Jew, even though I’d like to reassure you that I take my Judaism very seriously AND that I care deeply about Israel and its right to exist, albeit not at its current borders. Or perhaps you have read what I’ve written but have filtered it through the counter-arguments that enable you to push aside the painful realities of the Israel that you support. I know many Israelis have been killed by suicide bombers. I know there are many in the Arab world who would like to see Israel cease to exist. I also know there are continual raids by the IDF into Palestinian homes, where fathers, brothers, sons are seized and imprisoned in Israeli prisons. I know too that there are targeted assassinations of presumed Palestinian “militants” occurring much more often than we hear about in the US papers. The occupation has created a cycle of retaliation and revenge that has gone on for 40 years now.
But in this situation it is the Israelis who have the power. It is the Israelis who can move toward a political, not a military, response and eventual solution. It is the Israelis who can stop building settlements, who can make a different set of “facts on the ground” which might lead to a just and fair solution. I am not interested in a “peace” which is only a euphemism for “quiet”, for keeping the Palestinian rockets at bay, for keeping the suicide bombers out of Israel, for maintaining a veneer of false calm that enables Israelis to get on with their daily lives while the Palestinians continue to suffer economic hardships, daily humiliations, and erosion of their human rights. That kind of “peace” is not a just or fair solution.
There are groups of Israelis who are working for real peace, for a fair and just resolution to the conflict. It is those Israeli (and Jewish-American) organizations that I choose to support. The Israel I support is that of Combatants for Peace, MachsomWatch, Refuser Solidarity Network, The Parents’ Circle, and (in America), Jewish Voice for Peace, Rabbis for Human Rights and Brit Tzedek v’Shalom.
So I regret that I will not attend your dinner, nor will I buy a bond for Israel until you can show me that the money will go to support the Judaism and Israel that I believe in: a community of justice, compassion, committed to human rights of all people.
Sincerely,
Stephanie Schamess

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