There is perhaps no concept more central to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than the notion of home. While the rest of the world fights over resources or ideologies, the basic issue over which Jews (now Israelis) and Palestinians have fought for over 100+ years is simply where each side will have its home. Every other issue that has arisen along the way is an outgrowth of this one core concept.
It is this concept that I feel the need to come back to on this blog. Semitism.net has, in a way, been a home for me over the past few years: a home where I can express my ideas and feelings about things that mean so much to me and to others, and engage with others who agree or disagree with them. As with so many things that are important, so many homes, I only wish I had more time or energy to spend with it. I only hope this home will have me after such a prolonged absence (and bear with me, as I think I’m a bit rusty at this writing thing).
Of late, my family, too, has been immersed in the question of home. A few months back, we were faced with the possibility of making Jerusalem our home for a period of time, a decision we ultimately – painfully — declined. We have also been trying to sell our house for the past few weeks and have run smack in to the depths and irrational outcomes of the credit crisis and vagaries of the current housing market.
Amid these questions of how to feel at, and where to make, home, I came across an article that has stayed with me for these past few months, in an ever-more painful way. With the question growing more urgent every day of where and how Israelis and Palestinians can make a home for themselves, a home in which everyone may live in some level of peace, here comes Michael Handelzalts to say that every person needs not one homeland, but two.
Mr. Handelzalts makes what is a reasonable argument, at least in a vacuum. Taking the examples of man’s banishment from the Garden of Eden and Abram being sent by God from Ur to Canaan, he argues that the true meaning of God’s purpose for humans is that we should have a homeland of our birth and a homeland of our choosing. In the first instance, such a homeland provides a sense of belonging, of roots; the latter provides a place and space for the individual to be true to their individual self. Handelzalts quotes Gertrude Stein, who wrote that the country of choice is “romantic, it is separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there.”
Handelzalts then applies this theory to the Jewish community’s presence in Israel. Indicating that Jews are spread out in birth-countries throughout the world “because they misbehave[d],” he explains that the Jewish people ultimately established the State of Israel “to take matters into their own hands, after practically being annihilated by the Nazis.” As I have indicated in the past, I am not troubled by this concept of a Jewish homeland at all; indeed, as my wife and I pondered a few months back, and continue to ponder constantly, where to make our family’s home, the ideals that such a homeland, such a country of choice, should provide are truly unique and painfully difficult to turn away from.
For many, this “country of choice” could be rooted in the geography, geology, or culture of a particular place. Some people just feel more at home in France, Japan, or Kenya than they do in the United States. And there is no doubt that geography, geology, and culture all play a part in making Israel such an alluring country of choice. But, for Jews, Israel then takes the concept of a “country of choice” and raises it to an entirely new level. It becomes a country not just of individual or familial choice, but of communal morality, history, and responsibility; it becomes a home built not on “who can we be here?” but “who should we be here?”
But you also choose something else, a problem that Handelzalts breezes by and, ultimately, is my main concern with Mr. Handelzalts’ premise: his ignoring of the impact that the choice has on the people who were born in that country, or, how your choice of country #2 impacts those for whom that is country #1.
Handelzalts says simply this: “In any event, people who lived here all those years do pose a problem, but it is their problem, since we come – we always do – in peace.”
This site and so many like it are dedicated to struggling with this very concept: whose problem is it when those who choose to live in a place disrupt the lives of those who were born there? How does – or, really, can — a country grow and expand to include both?
We face this question in the United States, with the seemingly never-ending and ever-more painful debate on immigration. Can we who were born here deal with and include those who choose to come? If so, how (and how many)? Do we accept the languages and cultures they bring with them, or do we ask them to leave behind the countries of their birth? That is, by choosing a second country, do we tell them they must leave behind the first?
And regardless, what is the responsibility of each “side” to the other? How do they learn about one another? Who has the right to govern? And after how many generations do the offspring of those who chose a country as their own then become the community for whom it is their birth country, who then seek yet another land of choice?
Handelzalts says, to all of this, that the choosers shouldn’t have to give up their country of birth; he himself admits that he needs his birth country (Poland) as a refuge “when the going gets too tough.” (I’ll leave the implications of that one aside for now). And he also seems to say that the choosers should immediately have the same rights to the place as the native-born.
And with both of those premises, I agree. But what he skips over is the responsibility that each community has to the other. That is, the “problem” of the native cannot so easily be brushed aside by just saying “it is their problem,” whether or not you accept the concept of the Jewish people coming to Palestine in peace. When a homeland is beset by violence, by hatred, by discrimination, it is everyone’s problem, regardless of the benevolent motives of some on each side.
My immediate reaction to the Handelzalts principle of “two countries for every person” was “How on earth can he make such an argument when, in many ways, he has two homes, yet many Palestinians have 0, or maybe 1/2, let alone every refugee and impoverished person in the world? When many Israelis feel so alienated by their society that they now seek to follow his lead and move away from Israel? How blind, or callous can he be?”
But I now see it a bit differently. Perhaps Handelzalts is right, maybe it would be best if each of us had 2 countries. But on one condition – that we recognize the deeper responsibility we must have to those places. Perhaps if Handelzalts accepted his own concept of home, he would attempt to visit a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank or an unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev. Or the squalor of foreign workers in Tel Aviv. Or to try to travel from, say, Ramallah to Bethlehem, and understand how Palestinians are forced to live in their own home, at least partially as a result of his own personal choice. And from there, he could understand his responsibility to everyone who calls Israel and Palestine home.
We all have such a responsibility, of course. The fight for the establishment and meaning of Home may be the most central concept in this conflict, but it is also the most central aspect of each of our lives. May we all remember and give meaning to that each and every day. Maybe if God sees that as the basis and core of our struggles, Eden may again be one of those homes.
