To paraphrase a recent Jewish organizational tagline, I’ve “hugged and wrestled with Israel” for 20 years now. At first, it was all embrace: Zionist songs and culture nourished me like mother’s milk, and on my first trip to Israel I kissed the tarmac at Ben Gurion, as did the other USY (United Synagogue Youth) kids.
Eventually, the wrestling came to the fore, particularly as I became more conscious of Palestinians, settlements and religious-secular divides. In 2002, I wrote about being “a leftist and a Zionist” and how difficult it was to maintain those dual political identities. And for several years, I’ve argued for a more nuanced approach to Israel advocacy and education than the hail of falafel balls and the bludgeon of Taglit-Birthright.
But lately I’ve noticed that I’m becoming a candidate for advocacy myself. I’ve loved Israel for decades, lived there for three years, and studied in detail the subtleties of its society and conflicts. And so it is with the sadness that accompanies the end of any affair that I notice my love is starting to wane.
Why? There are four primary reasons.
First, I admit, it has become simply exhausting to maintain the ambivalence, the hugging and the wrestling, the endless fence sitting. My love of Israel has turned into a series of equivocations: “I do not support the expansion of settlements, but the Palestinians bear primary responsibility for the collapse of the peace process in 1999.” “The Israelis acted overzealously in Gaza, but they must be entitled to defend themselves against rocket attacks.” “Yes, the separation wall is odious, but it is also effective and necessary.” Yes, but; no, but; defend, but. At some point, the complexity and ambiguity wears one out, particularly when the visuals on the anti-Israel side are so compelling, and so stark: walls, tanks, checkpoints.
I admit that my exhaustion is exacerbated because, in my social circles, supporting Israel is like supporting segregation, apartheid or worse. I know this is a sign of weakness of will on my part, and I hope that the Times-magazine-sanctioned rise of J Street changes things, but I don’t think advocates of Israel understand exactly how bad the situation is on college campuses, in Europe, and in liberal or leftist social-political circles. Supporting Israel in these contexts is like supporting repression, or the war in Iraq, or George W. Bush. It’s gotten so bad, I don’t mention Israel in certain conversations anymore, and no longer defend it when it’s lumped in with South Africa and China by my friends. This is wrong of me, I know, but I’ve been defending Israel for years, and it’s gotten harder and harder to do so.
How much of Israel’s pariah status is fantasy and how much is reality is, of course, a complicated question, and one that I would not presume to answer in this column. In the conversations I’ve had, it’s some of each — and again a subject for equivocation. Yes, Israel’s new government is a right/far-right alliance whose foreign policy looks suspiciously like Yitzhak Shamir’s era of “Say yes and do nothing.” But on the other hand, I understand why many Israelis are fed up and voted for it, and the oversimplifications among Israel’s critics are many. For example, just because this government is expanding settlements does not make doing so an essential part of Israel’s identity.
But I’m not sure the parsing matters. I’m not sure any state with tanks can win a propaganda war against an occupied people with guns and Molotov cocktails — even if the occupied people’s leaders deserve plenty of blame. It’s exhausting to keep fighting this fight, especially as Israel’s authentically odious actions (excesses by soldiers, expropriations of land) continue to pile up, and the yes-buts grow harder and harder to maintain.
The second reason for my waning love of Israel is that the Israel I love is increasingly disappearing. It started in Jerusalem, with the exodus of the secular left and the slow, agonizing demise of the culture they created. Now, many of my sabra friends are leaving the country entirely, desperately looking for tech jobs in California or academic postings in Indiana. However worn out I may be by the matzav my friends who have lived in it are far worse. For now, Tel Aviv’s liberal, secular, life-celebrating culture continues to thrive and is even developing a spiritual aspect — but like many Israelis, I feel like I’m reading the writing on the wall.
Part of the problem here is that the Israel I love is not the Disneyland most of my fellow Americans seem to adore. Sure, I cry at Macadam and even feel moved at the kotel. But my Israel is one of shuks, cafes, shtiebels and hiking trails; of family and friends; of my alma mater on Mount Scopus and my favorite field in Talbieh (Churshat Hayareach, an open space continually threatened with destruction). Personally, I find the way many Americans strut in and out of Jerusalem for the holidays partly ridiculous and partly nauseating. So while the storybook Jerusalem remains more or less intact, I care less about it than the delicate, messy harmonies of the real ones.
Worse than that, the mythic Israel is now actively affecting — I would say harming — the real one. The handful of rich American conservatives who have influenced Israeli politics lately have tended to prefer grandiose myths to the messy realities that should govern pragmatic decision making — and eventually, all those simplifications add up to dangerous distortions in policy. The “fantasy Israel,” the one many Americans seem largely to inhabit, doesn’t compensate for the erosion of the real one. On the contrary, it causes it.
Nor am I myself immune; the third way in which my love for Israel is waning is that I’ve started to second-guess the love itself. How distant is my love of Churshat Hayareach from the sentimentality of a tourist at the Wall? (The Western one, that is, not the Separation one.) Am I not, too, an American moved, and thus partially blinded, by religious and national myth? How different am I, really, from those who value the poetry of the kotel over the prose of human rights? Am I really so different from those whose pro-Israel company I keep? It’s not that American Jews’ myths about Israel are false — it’s just that they have a way of shaping narrative, and papering over problems like, oh, the two million non-Jewish residents of Greater Israel.
This is especially the case because those problems are often rendered invisible. When my more liberal friends used to call me out about Israeli politics, I would sometimes respond that the picture they had, shaped by Western media, was a distorted one. Really, I’d say, Israel is a wonderful place — a place where doors are left unlocked and musicians play in the street, and where an almost-extinguished culture rose from literal ashes.
But, you know, a Southerner in the 1950s or an Afrikaner in the 1980s might say similar things. Yes, living within Green Line Israel, it’s possible to forget the Occupation (a term that certain Jewish news agencies feel obliged to scare quote). But maybe that’s part of the problem: The current regime of Separation (apart-ness, perhaps?) is all too effective. And so I’ve begun to second-guess even my own love of the place, wondering how much of it is built upon a foundation of deliberately constructed ignorance, a result of years of selective education. I sip my limonana, and five miles away a mother is harassed at a checkpoint. Which is reality and which fantasy?
Finally, I think my love of Israel is fading because I feel personally implicated by its injustices, even though I have chosen to live in America and have relinquished my right to have any say over Israeli policy. (If only some of my countrymen would feel similarly.) On a recent trip to Berlin, I remarked to a friend that I felt more relaxed there than in Jerusalem. Part of it was that Berlin is a liberal city, and part of it was that I didn’t have to be frisked every time I walked into a cafe. But mostly, I think, I felt relaxed because while there was certainly plenty of political baggage around, none of it was mine. I’m not implicated in Germany’s wrong decisions (to be clear, I refer more to Turks in 2009 than to Jews in 1939), whereas I do feel implicated by Israel’s.
This sense of implication is perhaps yet more fantasy — yet another American thinking he’s part of a country he doesn’t inhabit. But it comes with the territory of love, which is perhaps why I’m slowly disengaging. I understand why many Israelis feel fed up with the Palestinian problem and are ready to slam the door. But as an outsider, I no longer want to feel entangled by their decisions and implicated in their consequences. B’seder: It’s your choice to make… but count me out.
In my heart, I still love the stones and trees of Jerusalem, even though I know that love is sentimental, problematic and shared with people I mistrust. I am still awed by the tkuma, the resurrection and rebirth of my ancient people. And, yes, I feel like underscoring, I still support the State of Israel, its right to exist and the rest. Most important, it is still, in part, my home.
But especially on this side of the ocean, more and more of those who feel similarly have politics, agendas and overall experiences of Israel very different from mine. What they love is not what I love, and how they love is terrifying. And so while my love endures, my unease grows, and with it, the gnawing sense that this relationship is in trouble.
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Jay Michaelson is realistic in his assessment of the waning support for the State of Israel by a growing number of Jews in the States. Indeed I have used similar terminology in referring to Birthright tours to Israel as a Biblical/Zionist Disney adventure. May of us growing up in the Sixties and beyond were indoctrinated by Hebrew and Sunday school teachers about the importance of Israel so much so that it became a religion more potent than Judaism itself. While I do not downplay the immense tragedy Holocaust, that too became more of an emotional manipulation at the hands of the professional American Jewish community. But it worked on me like so many others: I made aliyah, served in the army and had a life on a kibbutz and Jerusalem. I recall one day of roaming around East Jerusalem with my army unit adorned in my uniform and M-16. I realized in the course of that day that I was a stranger here and I had lost track of my ethical compass. How odd it is, after close to 2000 years, we pick up our bags and knock on the proverbial Palestinian door.
Dear Mr. Michalson;
Please read and think! The ex President of the U.S.A. and a born again Gd fearing man Jimmy Carter has just stated that the problem of the audacious comment pertaining to Mr. Obama was that Obama is a liar and that many people are racist. Yet this paragon of virtue, Jimmy Carter has proven his hatred of Israel and I am sure of Jews too as Israel and Jews are one. We jews can't afford to be self-hating as no matter what happens yes, we must stand up for our holy land and our holy people. No one else really will. Jay don't be deluded! Have a Happy, Healthy New Year! The Parave Rebbe
The pomposity-combined-with-fake-anguish of this post would be laughable, if it were not so sad.
Jay Michaelson's left-wing, European friends do not like Israel very much - or at all. Despite his original discomfort with the vehemence of their hatred, he chooses to disengage from the debate. Apparently, maintaining the approval of those "social circles" is worth more than defending the country he purports to love.
He finds real supporters of Israel "terrifying", but cannot think of applying that adjective to his friends who so easily demonize the Jewish homeland. I'm an active supporter of Israel, a member of several of those organizations that Michaelson would find "terrifying" - no one that I know has a warped view of the country and its people. Our friends are lefties and settlers, hi-tech entrepreneurs and artists. We are not deluded or brainwashed-by-Birthright. We know that Israel is flawed, but that those flaws do not define her, and that her flaws pale in comparison to those of her enemies. We are proud of Israel and her many accomplishments - and would never change that for the sake of popularity on college campuses or Europe, that bastion of tolerance.
So, Mr. Michaelson, enjoy your cocktail parties and pseudo-intellectual kaffee-klatsches - I do believe Israel, and her supporters, will do just fine without you.
Love and imperfection are not mutually exclusive. I am increasingly disturbed by certain of Israel's actions, but my love for Israel is unabated and undiluted. If acting stupidly and unjustly at times precluded one from loving one's country, than no American could love the United States, a nation founded on genocide and slavery whose armed forces currently occupy two distant foreign countries and whose complicity in massive human rights abuses in its own hemisphere and elsewhere has been appalling. But I love America, too, deeply.
Speaking of which. In the circles in which Mr. Michaelson moves, circles in which Israel is equivalent to South Africa and in which Mr. Michaelson can no longer summon the stamina to defend her, the silence concerning American and British actions in Iraq and Afghanistan and the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths there has been deafening. As a witness to Vietnam-era protests and boycotts of Dow Chemical for producing napalm, I am ever astonished by the indifference of these anti-Israel activists to the deadly actions of their own nations, which have occurred on a far vaster scale than Israel's. Do the protests of assorted hypocritical cinema bimbos to the celebration of Tel-Aviv at the Toronto Film Festival upset me? Yes, they do, deeply. Do they cause me to question my love for Israel? No, not a bit.
Cheer up. South Africa was the pariah of the world, and once they accepted the inevitable and did the right thing, they became a beacon of human rights -- witness Richard Goldstone.
You have to feel sorry for someone like this. He has removed himself from the Jewish people. What can one say israel is under attack and those who do not support it will have to answer for it.
Love and imperfection are not mutually exclusive. I am increasingly disturbed by certain of Israel's actions, but my love for Israel is unabated and undiluted. If acting stupidly and unjustly at times precluded one from loving one's country, than no American could love the United States, a nation founded on genocide and slavery whose armed forces currently occupy two distant foreign countries and whose complicity in massive human rights abuses in its own hemisphere and elsewhere has been appalling. But I love America, too, deeply.
Speaking of which. In the circles in which Mr. Michaelson moves, circles in which Israel is equivalent to South Africa and in which Mr. Michaelson can no longer summon the stamina to defend her, the silence concerning American and British actions in Iraq and Afghanistan and the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths there has been deafening. As a witness to Vietnam-era protests and boycotts of Dow Chemical for producing napalm, I am ever astonished by the indifference of these anti-Israel activists to the deadly actions of their own nations, which have occurred on a far vaster scale than Israel's. Do the protests of assorted hypocritical cinema bimbos to the celebration of Tel-Aviv at the Toronto Film Festival upset me? Yes, they do, deeply. Do they cause me to question my love for Israel? No, not a bit.
In reading Mr. Michaelson I searched for mention of what he did those three years in Israel. Did he volunteer to visit the sick or comfort the crippled soldiers who will never again be normal, or help any of the many poor and destitute, or make any gesture of Jewish human solidarity? I am 75 and have seen a lot of the Jewish People and experienced more than my share of disappointment. Even Herzl said that his epitath should read, "Here lies a man who had too high an opinion of the Jewish People." At least Herzl EARNED the right to his disappointment. It is not easy to remain faithful to the Jewish cause when we encounter so many of those delicate super moral people like Mr. Michaelson who dump their personal anguish on us. My inspiration comes from the true 'Menchen' those men and women who selflessly give of themselves to help in building the reborn Jewish State which, despite all its faults, still stands far above so much of the world. And welcome back to America where you can rest comfortably as a Jewish settler living on stolen Indian land where most of the Indians were genocided. Sleep well.
My Comments :
"On a recent trip to Berlin, I remarked to a friend that I felt more relaxed there than in Jerusalem. Part of it was that Berlin is a liberal city, and part of it was that I didn’t have to be frisked every time I walked into a cafe. But mostly, I think, I felt relaxed because while there was certainly plenty of political baggage around, none of it was mine."
1) My Point: Political trumps all other concerns. If not, then why feel more comfortable in Berlin rather than, say, in Mobile or Bombay?
"But, you know, a Southerner in the 1950s or an Afrikaner in the 1980s might say similar things."
3) The crux of the matter in my opinion. The author's judgement. The rest of the article is commentary.
Fabulous comments! This is the first time I have seen an almost unanimous outcry of wonderful intelligent Jewish responses in defense of Israel by Forward readers, to a typically extreme leftist anti-Israel screed by a "Jewish" Forward columnist. You give me hope! Happy New Year!
"I admit that my exhaustion is exacerbated because, in my social circles, supporting Israel is like supporting segregation... I don’t mention Israel in certain conversations anymore, and no longer defend it when it’s lumped in with South Africa and China by my friends." These quoted lines are actually the most signifcant in this entire article. Jay Michaelson is admitting the loss of self-will. The opinions of others, the positions of his social circle, have the power of veto. Well, actually, the question is why doesn't Jay Michaelson have his own society in which loyalty to one's own is self-evident. The answer is, sadly, that the forces of assimilation have ended its existence. There is no distinct society, speaking its own Jewish language and expressing its own Jewish agenda. That has long disappeared. The Jews abandoned their own distinctiveness and became part of American society. The price was that the trends of American society are becoming the social trends of Jews. So, as Jay Michaelson admits, he is uncomfortable with Israel because of his peers. He admits that this is a type of weakness, but actually he is admitting something much more fundamental: He is admitting that even a committed and Jewishly-educated Jew can also become an assimilated Jew; i.e. his American identity (the social trends of his American peer group) is wearing down his Jewish identity.
This is a brilliant and very well-written article, essentially because it so perfectly captures a growing strain of thought among Jews in the US and other parts of the world. It is true, as RS says, Israel will do just fine without Jay Michaelson himself, but if Jay Michaelson does indeed represent a growing segment of the Jewish population in the US, Israel - and the Jewish People as a whole - ought to be rather concerned. If we are really honest with ourselves, it is extraordinarily difficult to separate myth from fact about Israel today, and both those who rush to support Israel in all instances and those who struggle deeply with some of its more dubious acts do so on the basis of strongly-held, and often deeply Jewish values.
To those who choose to abuse Mr Michaelson in a personal way for what he has written, shame on you. I don't agree with much of what he has to say, but his voice is an important one to hear, grapple with and learn from.
Lev-Aryeh Ben Yeshaya wrote:
>I am ever astonished by the indifference of these anti-Israel activists to the deadly actions of their own nations, which have occurred on a far vaster scale than Israel's.
You're getting your facts wrong so completely that it would be a useful education to examine the facts and show how you're wrong.
You are creating a straw man of "anti-Israel activists" who don't criticize their own nations. Name one. Most of the critics of Israel aren't anti-Israel at all; most of them are Jews who love Israel and are horrified at what Israel is doing -- even killing children http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfT4QrqOnYM -- and are trying to stop it.
Look at the facts:
Take the most prominent Jew to criticize Israel: Richard Goldstone. He was active in pursuing injustice not only his own country, South Africa, but also Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Argentina, Kosovo and Iraq.
Look at the critics of Israel on http://www.commondreams.org/ or http://www.democracynow.org/ http://www.amnesty.org/ or http://www.hrw.org/ You'll see that, to our credit, Jews are prominent in the fight for justice around the world. They criticize their own nations first, whether it's the U.S., the U.K., or South Africa. We led the civil rights movement and the movement against the Vietnam war.
Why should we make a special exception for Israel? We're helping people fight for justice in every other country. Why should we deny our help to the Israelis who are fighting for justice in their country? http://www.btselem.org/English/
Norman, the article is entitled "How I am Losing My Love for Israel". It's not an article about the right to criticize Israel (or helping Israel with her problems), as you have interpreted it. It's an article about a Jew whose feelings about Israel are changing because his peer group of intellectuals despises Israel. More exactly, the point of the article is actually about his fatigue - he is tired of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and he's tired of explaining his strong feelings of Israel to people who aren't really listening anyway.
'I admit that my exhaustion is exacerbated because, in my social circles, supporting Israel is like supporting segregation, apartheid or worse.'
If Jews in the past had this weak attitude there would be no Jews today.
"As a witness to Vietnam-era protests and boycotts of Dow Chemical for producing napalm, I am ever astonished by the indifference of these anti-Israel activists to the deadly actions of their own nations, which have occurred on a far vaster scale than Israel's"
This is a bizarre claim. The overwhelming majority of people who condemn Israel's behavior also condemn America's war crimes in Iraq and other places. There might be exceptions--it would not surprise me if there are some centrist and conservative types who condemn Israel out of amoral foreign policy realist considerations, recognizing that Israel's linkage to the US causes problems for the US image in the Arab world, but that's a different class of people from the activists.
It seems that Mr. Michaelson would love Israel more if she commited suicide, instead of protecting herself. Perhaps he is bowing to the peer pressure of some in the ant-semitic left
What bothers me here is not Jay's opinions--he is free to have them (though I have my personal issues with some of them)--but by how many Jews are so triggered whenever absolute loyalty to Israel is questioned.
When I hear friends or strangers talk about Israel, or "the occupier" or make other denigrating comments, I neither support Israel unconditionally, nor do I condemn her. Instead, I remind the parties involved of a very simple message: "It is complicated."
Unless you have lived in Israel for a while (which I have), you really don't and can't understand the situation there (and, even if you have, that does not give you a blank check, either). I believe, that more than anything, TO BE A JEW means to always be "struggling"--something that I applaud Jay for having the courage to admit, especially given the wrath of hell and fury he was certain to attract (and has).
Let us not forget our history: Yakov wrestling with the Angel of God and after a long night, being given the name "Yisrael"--which you can break down, etymologically, into "Sar"/"El"--or to "struggle with God."
We were born out of this struggle, just as we were with the Patriarch, Avraham, who challenged God's righteousness when he was going to destroy a city with presumably some good men and women it. Jews are people who struggle with what it means to be human and what it means to be just in particularly challenging situations.
I think those who try to simplify this situation on either side--by "blind" loyalty to Israel or by demonizing her--have ceased "struggling"--with God or themselves. And, this, for me is the greatest tragedy.
If your heart did not go out to the thousand Lebanese men, women, and children killed in the air-raids or for those innocent children killed in Gaza AT THE SAME TIME as you vehemently supported Israel's right to defend herself, then (and I am sorry to say this), your patriotism has become a "Hilul Hashem" and you should reclaim your hardened heart from whatever Pharoah in your life is holding it hostage.
No one in the world--no country--faces the kind of internal "struggle" that Israel is facing. And, yes my heart is pulled from both sides. In fact, if you go to a museum in Tel Aviv there is a quote, if I may try to recall (maybe someone here can help me), which says, "To be a Jew means to have a broken heart."
Ambivalence is not the same as apathy. Ambivalence is the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time--and make space for them. I think, as Jews, we must have "hearts with many chambers."
Thank you, Jay, for having the courage to publicize your wavering faith in Israel. I do not read this that you have closed the book and written Israel off forever; I read in your words that you are torn, perhaps a little like God’s love for Isael.
Commenters here are choosing to take advantage of the fact that this piece is written as a personal confession instead of an impersonal declaration of right and wrong, in order to attack the author for admitted lapses of self-will. But to do so is to ignore the larger point: it's not just that he disagrees with his friends but no longer wants to risk their disapproval. It's that time and reality have gnawed away at the original core disagreement itself. Which the hasbara-niks should be thinking about, if they weren't increasingly attracted to a kind of apocalyptic go-it-alone attitude formerly relegated to the furthest-right.
I too am tired of Jewish history-israel in the news, holocaust, etc. It is time for a new reality
Well, as the coiner of the 'hugging and wrestling' paradigm, and working for Makom - the organisation you refer to - I'd like to say how much I appreciate the article. I appreciate the honesty, and I appreciate the thoughtfulness. On our site www.makom.haaretz.com we're certainly going to respond to Jay's piece but my colleagues and I want to really think about what's being expressed here. Needless to say, there are some assumptions I disagree with, but personally I think it's too important a subject to fire a talkback from the hip. Finally a comment to all the angry talkbackers - Israel and the Jewish People will be in big trouble if we continue to communally crap on people who admit their heartfelt concerns about Israel.
with all respect to american jews they live pay tax in the usa
these are israelis that have been living under constant threat and wars over the years
these are israelis who lost parents kids brothers and friends en masse
so as much as american jews support is important israel has to make choices on its own and based on what is good for the security of israel
being far away from the US i wonder why hese "z streets" call themselves "pro israel" while they conxtantly critique israel
these are no pro israel
Jay Michaelson's heartfelt essay is met with a predictable chorus of vitriol. It certainly is true that one should generally resist adopting one's friends' opinions, but it's obvious that Jay is simply finding them to be persuasive. I have witnessed far more conformance to a pro-Israel line out of fear of making waves and causing personal discomfort. In fact, Jay is publicly confessing convictions that will no doubt land him in hot water with many of his relatives, friends and acquaintances. He is not changing his mind out of weakness.
The notion that Israeli Jews have built a modern, progressive, society is no doubt true, and it is easy for Jews to "love" such a creation. But the state was built on the ruins of another people who happened to live there and did not deserve to be subjugated and dispossessed. The state continues to exist on a foundation of discrimination against those people; those who are citizens are clearly second-class citizens, and the much larger non-citizen population are treated much, much worse. Jay is in the process of recognizing these realities, and has incurred the anger of the willfully blind. Many of the comments here are from people who allow their ethno-religious background to trump the notions of justice and fairness they would apply in other contexts. Congratulations to Jay for seriously questioning the actions taken in his name.
the problem with people questioning Israel's existence is that their parents and grandparents did not instill the plain truth in them: we will exist for as long as Israel does. This is not a doctrine, according to the author of the sad article. This is a grim reality that was so obvious to our half-educated granmothers and grandfathers who knew too well what happened when there was no Israel to save them, to flee to, to depend on in trying times. They witnessed their families perish without anyone in the entire world saying a word or lifting a finger. They have, luckily, survived, but there were much fewer of them in each family than before the war. And they knew for sure that the only condition of a further Jewish survival was support of Israel, making iot strong and powerful. No one ever took care of them, and no one ever will think twice when something horrible happens to you and your families. Again, as I keep saying on these pages, American peaceful prosperity has deeply affected Jewish brains. Jay Michaelson's are totally gone.
Psalm 93
18 When I said, "My foot is slipping," your love, O LORD, supported me.
19 When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul.
Blessings to you Jay, for consolation and support in the New Year.
You who attack Jay so personally should be reminded that none of us are dispensable. When our brother says "my foot is slipping" we should reach out to him. When our brother has anxiety, we should console him. This is done by thoughtfully addressing the issues he has raised, by taking action and working for righteousness in the land and justice among us. We should not always knee-jerk attack, always knee-jerk defend; one of Jay's points, I think. Jay is a beautiful Jew who has done SO MUCH for our people.
Am Israel Chai.
Much here resonates with me, but maybe especially what you say toward the end of the essay about feeling implicated. Thank you for this.
Great piece. To keep questioning and keeping the dialogue going, check out www.whywerefuse.org - a US national tour of two young Israeli women resisters speaking about the occupation of Palestine.
Jay has written an honest description of how he feels and why. If you don't agree--that is fine. Just don't equate his new feelings for hatred towards Israel (as many comments seem to do). There is a large distance between hate and love. While Israel needs its supporters--especially on the campus where I work--it does not need everyone to be the same. If you can only whole-heartedly support Israel or hate it, then we are much more trouble than I thought. Shanah tova
There's an old Yiddish saying that it is hard to be a Jew. Not much has changed except people like the author can now feel good about themselves when they abandon ship. I have read your stuff before and you really are a bit arrogant.
Nice piece Jay. I understand the tiredness - I've been in Jerusalem only two years, and am exhausted by the endless efforts to speak to people about Israel in a way that is respectful and engaging and completely honest. I also still love the place, even when it's hard. And it is increasingly very, very hard.
A friend of mine once said about her toddler daughter, "She's beautiful, she's wonderful, she's clever, she's amazing, I adore her. It's just that once in a while I want to fling her out the window." That seems appropriate to quote here!
Save your strength, take breaks, and once in a while be honest and tell someone, "I'm sorry, I just don't have the strength for this conversation right now." Later, if someone mentions Israel in the same breath as China, ask them "have you ever heard of anyone calling for an end to China?"
Keep up the good work, Jay, but take care of yourself too!
Jay's article combined with the various responses to it are a clear illustration of why the issue of support for Israel is so intensely complicated. More than anything, I agree with responders Yonatan and Alex. If we insist on wearing blinders (regardless of where our political leanings may be) and we ignore anyone else's ambivalence (which, as another responder noted, is not the same as apathy), we do ourselves - and Israel - a terrible disservice.
Increasingly - and not just around this issue - I find myself saying that we cannot reduce any issue to easily digestible soundbytes. "Black!" "White!" "Racist!" "Bigot!" "Pro!" "Anti!" To paraphrase Monty Python, this is not healthy debate, nor is it even argument. It's just contradiction. If we're ever going to progress, we have to be willing to grapple - to genuinely engage - with the issues that confront us, as Jay seems to be trying to do. We have to be willing to engage in meaningful dialogue and not just throw up our hands and storm away when our sensibilities are offended. It's the only possible path to progress.
Go ahead and join your inquisitor friends, you do afterall want to be accepted in your "social circle," don't you?
You are so disconnected from Israel it is sad. This is a vibrant democracy, every political view exists here under the sun, and the debate is vigorous and lively. But half-assimilated Diaspora Jews like yourselves, scared of their own shadow, would not know that. And frankly, that's fine with me.
Israel is the Jewish future. For the first time since the Temple era, more Jews live in Israel than in any other country on the planet. There's millions of Jewish Israelis here. Our cities are growing, our Hebrew Jewish civilization is reborn and flourishing, and our future is bright.
People like yourself prove time and time again that America has been the stage of a temporary Jewish Ashkenazi American culture. Our great grand children will read about you in the Diaspora museum in Tel Aviv. Yours will celebrate Christmas.
Ciao!
Jay,
Thank you for giving voice to what so many of us feel, yet might be to pained to say.
In response to Donald and Norman, if there are major demonstrations against the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan taking place on college campuses either in America or elsewhere, then I'm not aware of them. If there are massive campaigns of divestment being waged against companies invioved in the British/American war effort (Halliburton, Bechtel, etc), then I'm not aware of those, either. I read the news, both domestic and foreign, several times a day, so I think I would be aware if such campaigns existed. Over the past couple of years, the UN Human Rights Commission, among all the nations at war in the world, has condemned only Israel by name. I am aware of Goldstone's recent conclusions regarding Israel in Gaza. I am also aware that no similar investigation has taken place concerning US drone attacks in Afghanistan which have killed countless civilians. Over 90 were killed the other day in an attack on a hijacked oil tanker.
I am not against criticism of Israel and especially of its leadership; I criticize it myself frequently. I am against the utter lack of proportionality displayed in the vitriol directed at Israel and in the concrete measures taken against her. Nothing remotely similar has been directed against the US or Britain for their lethal adventures. Whatever tepid criticism that is directed toward them doesn't question their right to exist. DaveS comments that "...the state was built on the ruins of another people who happened to live there and did not deserve to be subjugated and dispossessed. The state continues to exist on a foundation of discrimination against those people..." So like the US, which stole all of its 3 1/2 million square miles from the original inhabitants and continues to relegate the survivors to miserable reservations. I don't justify either case, but again, I do ask for proportionality. And I do question the good sense of American Jews, and American college students and profesors, who join in boycotts, divestments and other concrete actions against Israel but who are not engaging in any similar actions toward the country of which they are citizens.
Accept the inevitable...Palestine Israel, 2 states, 1 country.
Note to all who wrote comments above attacking Jay for his desire to fit in and therefore to stop defending Israel among his friends - that's NOT what he said. Please read more carefully and try not to just throw out a kneejerk response to the once sentence or paragraph that caught your limited attention.
He listed four reasons for having a harder time loving Israel lately (and also note he didn't say he longer loves Israel - quite the opposite - his final comment was that "my love endures, [but] my unease grows"). The first reason, which is the one simplified by so many of the comments above as Jay having no courage and wanting to fit in, was offered with both an admission of guilt for feeling so and also a recognition that it's partly the challenge of defending Israel in such circles, but ALSO that he's finding it harder to personally believe in the arguments he might make in Israel's defense.
That doubt and that concern is really the crux of the essay and is reflected again in the other three reasons Jay offered. As DaveS noted above, it takes courage to publicly express such doubt in the Jewish community. If anyone wonders why it might take courage to do so, you need only look at the comments above attacking Jay as essentially a "race traitor." No one used that exact term, but it was implied repeatedly. For those who don't see the problem with attacking Jay in that way, well, I honestly don't know what to say.
I think your love for Israel was always conditional, but never true. As long as your friends said it was ok, you could "love" Israel. Now that your friends have vetoed it, you no longer love Israel. I am very happy that I am not your wife or child.
The essay is worth considering even by those, like myself, who fundamentally disagree with Jay. On the one hand, it appears that the author is the one falling out of love with Israel. But if one scratches beneath the surface, one can see that the Israel of today has pushed the likes of Jay away. The increasing power of the Haredi establishment has meant that many liberal jews are considered less than Jewish by the Jewish state. I can think of Jews married to converts as a prime example. I am sure that Jews who are Reform and Conservative also feel margainalized by the Haredi monopoly on religious authority -- and that is a large segment of the American Jewish community. This is in no way an attack on Orthodox Judaism or even those who practise according to Haredi standards. It does however, raise the question of whether using state authority to sanction religious practices is a good idea. I don't think Israel can afford to adopt a small tent policy given the challenges she faces. We need to welcome the like of Jay back into the tent and let them know how important and valued they are.
" I am against the utter lack of proportionality displayed in the vitriol directed at Israel and in the concrete measures taken against her. Nothing remotely similar has been directed against the US or Britain for their lethal adventures."
You're conflating several different groups. What nations do in the UN is one thing--most if not all governments are inherently hypocritical. The idea of Saudi Arabia criticizing anyone else's human rights violations is just funny. The US escapes criticism because it is the world's hyperpower and there might be consequences (economic ones, most likely) if a country started bashing the US for its human rights violations. There's no particular consequence in bashing Israel. And yes, the US is guilty of countless crimes all over the world. Most Americans outside the far left are willfully oblivious to this--this started to change with Bush's Iraq War, but even then, the tendency is to pretend as though Bush was some great aberration, something outside our usual wonderful humanitarian behavior. Which is nonsense, but Americans want to believe it because we're narcissists, just like the Israelis. And the rest of the world mostly lets us get away with it because we're a superpower.
But what you say about lefties in America is just weird to me, almost as though you live on some other planet. If anything, mainstream liberals in America have shown themselves much more willing to criticize America for its torture policies than they are willing to criticize Israel precisely because they are afraid they'll be called anti-semites. The leftists who do go ahead and criticize Israel are equally condemning of the US. I have no idea what sort of lefties you're talking about--in all my reading and talking with people I've never seen leftists who bash Israel who don't also bash American imperialism--in fact, they often see Israel's crimes as our crimes and some say that Obama is merely the extension of Bush and is a war criminal himself for precisely the reasons you mention--the bombing of civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now mainstream liberals don't say that, because they still like Obama and want to believe there is a huge difference between their hero and Bush the torturer, but then they are also unlikely to join in the condemnation of Israel without feeling considerable unease.
The right and center are more complicated. There are a few people who I alluded to above who seem critical of Israel for reasons of realpolitik. Then there are some segments of the right, to my surprise who are critical both of Israel's atrocities and American imperialism. I've only noticed this recently. Or in some cases, they are critical of American imperialism and if they've said anything about Israel, I haven't noticed it. Of course there are also some who are critical mainly of Israel for obviously anti-semitic reasons (I see a few of these on blogs), but I'm not denying that there are still some of the standard anti-semites lurking in the shadows.
I am completely in favor of the creation of an independent Palestinian State and I am also a strong supporter for the improvement of the treatment of Palestinians who are citizens of Israel. Without these developments, peace will never come for the region. For some Jews, the continuation of the suffering this conflict inflicts may change their feelings towards Israel, which is understandable. I hope Jay is able to reconnect with his feelings and I agree that we must give him strenght, not chastise him for expressing himself.
However, I have to side with Eytan on having a hard time lately considering myself as being part of the Left in America in what relates to Israel. I'm sorry, but the voices calling Israelis colonizers, imperialists, racists, bigots, "khazars", negating the right to a homeland for Jews, bringing back old canards substituting "Jews" for "Israelis", making Zionism a dirty word, accusing Israelis of blood libel, and other old tricks are very, very loud. Once it was the Jews who controlled everything under the sky, now is Israel...the economic collapse, 9/11, the wars, American foreign policy in general, the mainstream media and members of the government; all in the sticky hands of this nefarious group called the Zionists. Sometimes they need to throw some other terminology to help their stories; a dash of Mossad, a splash of AIPAC and you can't forget using the term "the chosen people" with disdain. This is not just some fringe, some kids, or some professors anymore. Now that the Democrats are in power and the Republican Party makes a mockery of itself on a daily basis, the Left needs something to keep them distracted from the fact that their side is governing the country. President Obama is not bringing the troops home anytime soon, the Health Care plan will only pass after being mutilated, the bankers are still partying with our money. So, let's focus on something most people have nothing constructive to say about, like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Because according to a lot of people in the Left, if the US stopped throwing a couple of billion dollars to Israel so it can buy weapons from US manufacturers, Israel would cease to exist in no time.
I also have to agree with people who said that the Left's outrage and actions against the wars the Western powers are waging and human rights violations around the world pales in comparison with the ever expanding number of very well organized and financed campaigns, groups and protests against Israel. Their objectives, names and actions rarely speak of things which are actually pro-Palestinian. It seems that some believe that establishing a nation will be the end of it, Palestine will be peaceful and prosperous just like that. For many of them, statehood will be the end. They will move to a new cause celebre, to "save" a new group of people. The latest rage in the issue is comparing South African Apartheid to Israel, but where is their support for South Africans now? One of the most violent countries in the world, amongst world leaders in murders, kidnappings, rapes, Aids, and poverty. South Africans get relegated to the occasional article in the news. There is no one left to call colonialist or racist, so the Left loses interest.
I know, there are people on the Left who truly wish for peace in the region and understand that both sides will have to agree and to be able to live with whatever agreement is reached. But when legitimate criticism of Israeli policy descends into complete vitriolic insanity, which at often times it does, these voices simply go mute.
israel will manage without your love
if you REALLY loved israel you would go and live there pay taxes send your kids for years to military and take risk of your kids blown up by fanatic palest muslim suicide bombers
but you are not in israel but in the comfort of you challet in the alps
therefore dont preach to israelis
they will manage withour your love
and when muslims take over your great grandkids - leave them a copy of this masterpiece
Frank,
Since you love Israel why don't you live there?
What this article tells me is that you were never really in love with Israel. Someone who is in love sticks with it through thick and thin. Israel has seen better and worse days and her true supporters will stick with her.
I can think of a better description for someone like you: a fair weather friend.
Suppose you were in love with somebody and you found out that he was killing children? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfT4QrqOnYM
Here in Canada the questioning of Israel's very legitimacy is far greater than in the United States; perhaps that's why the Toronto International Film Festival became a venue for attacks on the country. The United Church of Canada (a Methodist-Congregationalist-Presbyterian alliance) recently came close to passing a resolution calling for a boycott of Israel. The "default mode" among "well-meaning" people here has become almost unequivocal support for the Palestinian cause, up to and including a "one state" solution. Indeed, the terms "peace," human rights," and "resistance" have been appropriated by such people, to the point where they have become code-words for many who wish to see an end to the Jewish state.
Here is a conclusive critique of Goldstone's biased report by Richard Landes, a master historian:
"Fisking Goldstone: What’s happened to this man?"
http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2009/09/17/fisking-goldstone-whats-happened-to-this-man/
"Goldstone clearly counts on addressing a sympathetic audience ignorant of the facts — a choir. I address those readers of the news who still want to be part of a “reality-based” community, for whom evidence must be addressed, analyzed, and assessed. You make up your mind if Judge Goldstone is an honest, fair-minded man, or someone who, for whatever mysterious reason, is in thrall to a narrative he must serve, regardless of the evidence."
.
Justice in Gaza
By RICHARD GOLDSTONE
"I ACCEPTED with hesitation my United Nations mandate to investigate alleged violations of the laws of war and international human rights during Israel’s three-week war in Gaza last winter. The issue is deeply charged and politically loaded. I accepted because the mandate of the mission was to look at all parties: Israel; Hamas, which controls Gaza; and other armed Palestinian groups."
Landes replied:
"This is astonishing. Mary Robinson — the presiding genius of Durban I — rejected it because the mandate was only to investigate Israel, tainted from the beginning. Goldstone requested, in vain, that the mandate be widened. For him to pretend that the mandate was to investigate all groups when it never was, whether he threw in some comments on Hamas or not, assumes a pervasive illiteracy among his audience — the readers of the NYT."
Goldstone:
"I accepted because my fellow commissioners are professionals committed to an objective, fact-based investigation."
"The case against the composition of his committee — not one person sympathetic to Israel, at least one, Christine Chinkin, openly hostile — has led two groups of lawyers, in England and in Canada, to demand Chinkin’s disqualification since she had already pronounced herself — long before she saw any real evidence — on Israel’s guilt. Goldstone, even as he tossed out the petition on a subtle technicality, admitted that Chinkin’s case was borderline and the report reconfirms her prejudice. So whence comes this bland denial?"
Read the whole critique:
http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2009/09/17/fisking-goldstone-whats-happened-to-this-man/
typical self hating jew.
I see that Norman aka shoded Yam is still posting blood libel allegations against Jews.
Norman "Suppose you were in love with somebody and you found out that he was killing children?"
Actually, it is the PLO and Hamas who deliberately target children, NOrman's fake film notwithstanding.
Henry Srebrnik "Here in Canada the questioning of Israel's very legitimacy is far greater than in the United States;"
Henry, antisemitism in Canada was much more extensive than in the US. Their WW2 Prime Minister had said that 'none is too many' and didn't allow Jews to settle in Canada during the Holocaust.
Also a poll in 1946 found that most Canadians saw Jews as undesirable and preferred German "refugees" to Jewish ones.
I am not surprised then that these attitudes have never gone away completely.
Bill is a typical Jew hating goy.
This is a wonderful, brave column. You've captured my own feelings about Israel, which I have often been afraid to put in print. I hope more and more Jewish Americans will be willing to engage in the scary but necessary conversations about the topics you've raised.
Let's use correct terminology: "East Bank;" not "West Bank" "residences" not "settlements "Judeal & Samaria;" not "West Bank" Establish a Muslim state in Palestine? there's already Jordan & Gaza - If only we would use more honest terminology; instead of liberal-talking points, 90% of the battle would be won
Thom, I think you captured it in a nutshell.
Great article that is resonating with a large number of Israeli expats and Diaspora Jews who've lived in Israel. To the knee-jerk naysayers: Supporting and loving Israel does not have to mean supporting one political ideology. Israel is a diverse nation with a diverse population and wide range of political thought.
Mr. Michaelson has done all who have read his article a service. His views are not only thought provoking but reflect the feelings that many pro-Israeli supporters have come to have. We can agree in full or part or take issue in like measure.
Here's a fact that ALL should understand Jews and non-Jews alike. The barriers, checkpoints, and West Bank settlements in particular as well as Israel's current PM and Foreign Minister do not help the world view of Israel.
This world view might have to be placed in the background when there is a struggle for survival but the reality is that Israel like it or not was also shaped to reflect a higher moral ground.
When this expectation is not met it is the same as losing a moral compass. Conceptually this is more powerful than a suicide bomb. The negative consequences of which can be devastating.
For those who challenge the opinion of this author because he chose to use the "lost love" artifice you might consider that this is not just one person's view and kindly grant some literary license.
Israel has been guilty on the world scene of being the lone cowboy, going it alone at all costs and being damned proud of it too. Militant Palestinians have capitalized on this internationally as well.
The old paradigms are being challenged. Some of the responses in defense of Israel (defending from what? a view published here) sound more like "Israel (being Jewish) love it or leave it." That view won't be successful and isn't helpful.
Attack less and accept more. We can all do more to increase respect towards Israel and what it should stand for. As the New Year arrives I pray that I can aspire to be more, to improve and to be a better person. I will also be wishing the same for the State of Israel.
Michaelson and his supporters lose sight of the most critical issue: there would have been no invasion of Gaza if the Gazans had not been satisfied with the Israeli withdrawal. There would have been no occupation of the West Bank if the Egyptians had not closed the Straits of Hormuz and the Jordanians not attacked. There would be no refugee problem at all if the Arabs had accepted the 1948 UN partition. In 1966 the Arabs wanted to destroy the Israel of the armistice. By agreeing that Israel had a right to exist the Egyptians got back the Sinai - when have the Palestinian Arabs ever admitted that the Jews have a right to Israel? It is up to the Palestinians to accept a true peace, not the Jews to stop defending themselves.
Regarding the paragraph that began with the words words:"I admit that my exhaustion is exacerbated because, in my social circles, supporting Israel is like supporting segregation, apartheid or worse..."
It sounds like he needs new friends and new social circles. If he joined the Republican party he could find both. There is even a group called Jewish Republicans.
He could also help himself if he stopped comparing Israel to the idea of perfection that he has in his mind and compares it with other real live countries. Comparing a person to an ideal one has in one's mind is a recipe for disaster and the same for a relationship with a country. He could stop practising "searching for the missing tile" syndrome.
Perhaps Jay Michaelson, the writer of this article, should watch the excerpt from the movie "Overture To Glory" (Der Vilner Shtot Khazn "The Vilnius City Cantor") on youtube where Moishe Oysher sings "Kol Nidre" - a 1939 Yiddish film, and also read the write up on it. see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vkpsFwsQY4&NR=1
As I told someone I know, a fellow Jewish Republican, it shows one what a Jewish Film Festival could be.
There are lots of solutions to his problem.
It seems pretty clear and unfortunate from reading this as well as your Aushwitz piece that your methodology of discussing Jewish and Israeli affairs falls into "comment first, research later" category. Jewish persecution pre and post dates the Holocaust; and Jews can be both spiritual and strong. History can neither be forgotten nor may we live in the past. The State of Israel seeks to do both. Not always elegantly, but with far more spirit and much less guilt than your drums and renumerations of doubt.
"How much of Israel’s pariah status is fantasy and how much is reality is, of course, a complicated question, and one that I would not presume to answer in this column."
Indeed, reality's a tough thing to sort out. So much easier to embed ourselves into an emotional swamp where questions of fantasy and reality are immaterial -- we can all just drink tea and talk about our "complicated" feelings instead.
Jay Michaelson is losing his love for Israel.
I'm losing my love for leftism.
"How much of Israel’s pariah status is fantasy and how much is reality is, of course, a complicated question, and one that I would not presume to answer in this column."
Indeed, reality's a tough thing to sort out. So much easier to embed ourselves into an emotional swamp where questions of fantasy and reality are immaterial -- we can all just drink tea and talk about our "complicated" feelings instead.
Jay Michaelson is losing his love for Israel.
I'm losing my love for leftism.
Jay- maybe you should travel i na different circle- you have forgotten who the real victim is and the fuel against israel by the pa and their neighbors is the inherent anti-semitism in circles such as yours...
The writer does not distinguish between the Israeli government and Israel as a state, as a nation - or its people. If you don't like the government, vote against it - if you can. But disagreement with Israeli policies cannot justify (from my personal perspective only)alienation from Israel. If you still do, then there are other undisclosed reasons. See the neighborhood Israel lives in. The writer wants Israel to behave like the human rights activists expect it, but turns a blind eye to Israeli enemies' intentions. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3778899,00.html
Thank you Jay. I am tired of watching American right-wing Jews support apartment building in Ariel, West Bank, claiming they "love" Israel, yet destroying any possibility of Israel remaining Jewish and democratic. I am weary of those who claim to "love" Israel, like right-wing Christians, but actually advocate policies that will eliminate the Jewish state. Your honesty is brave, and appreciated. You actually love Israel enough to criticize their wrongs, which is a far greater love than that of those on this site who call you a "self-hating Jew."
Thank God, the State of Israel is headed by a prime minister who is aware that his job desription excludes pleasing the secular post Zionist and post modernist elites of the West, including the editors and columnists of the Forward.
"I admit that my exhaustion is exacerbated because, in my social circles, supporting Israel is like supporting segregation, apartheid or worse."
Get new friends or a spine...or both.
As an American goy, let me say that Israeli Jews are in an impossible situation and will remain there so long as Europe fails to acknowledge its historic and moral responsibility for the plight of the Palestinians. Oslo might well have succeeded had the nations of Europe offered, as part of the final package, to make monetary compensation to the Palestinian people on a scale sufficient to establish a Western standard of living in a future Palestinian state.
It would have to take the form of an ongoing program of aid and investment in the West Bank (and Jordan?), stretched over a generation, whose continuance would be conditional upon Palestinian adherence to the terms of a final settlement.
Until that happens the Palestinian (and Arab) sense of grievance and humiliation will almost certainly continue, with all its ugly consequences as with any blood feud.
As a crowning irony, among the nations of Europe Germany is best placed to take the lead in such a European initiative, having already acknowledged its share of responsibility for Europe's anti-Semitic past.
To quote the book of Isaiah (and Ezer Weitzman), "Israel shall be redeemed by judgement." Nothing more and nothing less.
Luke,
You don't understand the conflict.
Scott Atran and Jeremy Ginges interviewed top leadership on the Israeli and Palestinian side. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/opinion/25atran.html
The Palestinians want respect and justice, not money.
Both Palestinians and Israelis said that they refuse to take monetary compensation to give up what they think is right.
However, even Palestinian hard-liners said that they were willing to consider recognizing the right of Israel to exist if Israel simply offered an official apology for Palestinian suffering in the 1948 war. Conversely, Israelis said that they could accept a settlement close to the 1967 borders if Hamas and the other Palestinians accepted Israel's right to exist.
That's something Wolfowitz didn't understand.
Under international law, Israel has no legal right to occupy the West Bank. The Palestinians are merely demanding that Israel comply with international law. You could never build a functioning Palestinian state in the swiss-cheese map that Israel has offered.
Money is the least of the problems.
That's something the Israelis have never tried. If you want someone to stop firing rockets at you, try treating him with respect.
Isn't it long overdue that the Palestinians (so called) like Hezbollah & Hamas recognized Israel's right to exist? If that happened the settlements would come out of the West Bank tomorrow. However since that is not about to happen anytime soon then maybe it's long overdue that the Arab countries absorb the Palestinians into the mainstream of their countries,granted them citizenship and provided them with opportunity much like Israel did so with 900,000 Jews living in Arab countries for several thousand years from 1948 to 1956. But don't hold your breath and so much for losing patience with Israel's sense of reality, not perfection by any means but reality. Finally, I really wish Mr. Michaelson along with his self hating left wing zealots would hold the Palestinians and other Arabs up to the same standard he holds Israel. He might be more than abit disappointed.
The problem with exercises in navel-gazing such as this one is that they neglect context completely. You are drinking your limonana because generations of Jews sacrificed themselves to create and protect an oasis of democracy in the Middle East. And a mother is being "harrassed" at a checkpoint because generations of Arabs have continually rejected peace in favor of terror.
In many ways I agree with the writer of this article.When we read about settlers tearing up olive trees,burning the Pals.crops,the list goes on.No matter how bad the Pals. treat us Jews.We shouldn't act the same way.Everytime we Jews act as a wild mob,the ones who hate us smile. While always being asked to give money,political support to Israel.We American Jews are attacked by Israel.Most of our Shuls,Temples,and Rabbis are not accepted as Rabbis in Israel.The Israelis only see Amer. Jews as cash cows with no respect for their fellow Jews. Now I feel this way and I am not alone in feeling this way.I hold a Israeli Passport.I served in the IDF and did my time.I am also a veteran of the Yom Kippur War.
Norman "You don't understand the conflict."
This from a pro Palestinian activist and antisemite who hates Israel.
Palestinian Arabs define "respect" as the abolition of the Jewish State.
If they want peace let them try to respect Jewish aspirations to live in peace in their own land.
The author has bravely left himself exposed to all the harm that his fellow Jews are ready to inflict on one of their own who dares to share his conflicted emotional state. To wit: I was listening to Jeremy Ben-Ami of J-Street and Marty Peretz, editor of the New Republic. When a caller called in to say that she didn't know how to even bring the subject of having a dissenting view about Israel with her family on the holidays, Mr. Peretz belittled her, saying that her emotional issues were "her problem." He also grouped J-Street together with "dozens of simliar groups"--i.e., a passing fad when compared to AIPAC. My own experience is not better. The fact that we can't have this discussion in the Jewish community almost guarantees that a percentage of Jay's generation will turn off and tune out of the Zionist vision. I think we can survive intermarriage as a people (many practicing Jews come out of those unions), but I am not sure we can survive the demolition of that dream at the hands of those to whom dissent equals treason.
"Yochanan Hardisty" I don't believe that you served in the Israeli army or that you hold an Israeli passport.
The nonsense you posted above proves that you are not.
"The fact that we can't have this discussion in the Jewish community almost guarantees that a percentage of Jay's generation will turn off and tune out of the Zionist vision."
These are people who never embraced it in the first place. Many of them don't even know the first thing about Jewish culture secular or religious.
How many of them speak a Jewish language, either Ladino, Yiddish or Hebrew? If you are a Jews committed to Judaism you will not care what a bozo like Peretz thinks.
שָׁנָה טוֹבָה
ומתוקה
Jay's article captured the sense of despair that many American Jews, who care about Israel feel. I live in America, but I lived in Israel on a kibbutz for 12 years, and served in the IDF. I am a Zionist. I returned to America not because I loved Israel less, but because I loved my aging parents more. Living in galut, I see the path Israel is taking and I feel saddened, because the policies of the the democratically elected government seem to be at odds with my own sense of justice and mercy. I love Israel, but I don't know what to do with that love, because if I publicly proclaim my personal despair I will be attacked as a self-hating Jew. And that saddens me even more.
After reading all the comments written about this article all I can say is I am not surprised. When I was growing up I was taught not to fear anti-semitism, that you could fight. The biggest fear at that time was assimilation into American society. So, like so many other groups we created our own ghettos. I was brought up in the Boston ghetto of Dorchester. After High School, I joined the Marine Corps and served in Korea. You know I found out that Christians did not have two heads and some of them were quite nice, it opened up a whole new world to me. After I finished College and joined the Army, I thought that I wanted to be a professional soldier. In Germany I married a German girl(born in 1943) who converted to Judaism. Upon leaving the Army, I accepted a position in small townin Alabama, that had a reform synagogue. In that synagogue, I encountered the first instance of prejudics against me and my family because my wife was born in Germany. This was done by some liberal lawyers and their wives, I never forgot that experience. Some 30 years later, I have learned that the liberal movement is a cause that must grow or die. The Jewish tradition of "Human Justice" has been warped and twisted to say "you deserve justice if you believe as I do in the progessive agenda. America us evil, Israel is evil." They say unite together because we know what is better for you. They are part of international socialism and I maintain that Reform Judaism is a political movement, not a religous movement. They will support any group that is anti-american or anti-israel.
I live in Georgia now, most of my friends are Evangelical Christians (better known as the far right)I remain a Jew and proud of it.
In 25 years, not one evangelical person has tried to convert me or my family. Nor have I heard one say that it should be all one christian country. Their beliefs are similar to ours, derived from the old testament along with the new testament and they have a deep respect for the Jewish people. They are all pro-Israel and contribute financial and moral support. Well meaning Jews in this country missed an opportunity for a strong ally. Instead, they listened to the lies and slander of the mainstream media. Fortunately, Israel did not.
I ask Jews in this holiday season to reflect on their loyalties to people that will hurt them. Some of you have already discovered this.
Thanks jay. Good to see you're on the side of those looking to destroy Israel. If only a few more Jews like you were willing to speak out like this, I'm sure the US will drop Israel like a hot potato and the Arabs can start paving over Tel Aviv. Words have power, Jay, and yours are now among those to be used to delegitimize the Jewish state. Thanks.
Although I disagree with many of the things the government of Israel foolishly does, I am still a steadfast supporter of Israel. I am neither on the left or the right (as Talmud advises) but am an adamant centrist Jew. Why is it that only left and right extremist can be solidly committed to their positions? Probably it is because the extreme right and left have focused messages and the dedication to see their respective missions accomplished.
Is it not possible to formulate a practical centrist message and then fight like hell for it? So far nobody has had the wisdom to advance a centrist vision of Israel/Palestine, which is good for the long term health of both Jews and Palestinian Arabs and also has the gonads to stand up for it.
Once you think about what both peoples really need in the long term, the bread and butter issues critical to both sides, and what is really practical, an actionable vision becomes obvious. But what's the point if reasonable people simply walk away and leave the field to increasingly intransigent combatants?
Israel is doomed to remain a battlefield, at best, if you and I don't put an end to the dogmatic sectarian bickering. Of course, I am told it is none of my business since I don't live there. But, really, isn't it my business as a Jew to see that extremists don't destroy Israel and us along with it?
thank you Jay. You speak for many of us. Personally, I think our distress is due to our unrealistic expectations: the Israeli State acts like any other, with army, secret service, torture, and the whole arsenal required by "la raison d'Etat". To think that a "Jewish" State could have been different was an illusion. There's the story about an old Jewish woman who was talking in Yiddish to her grandson; asked why she was not speaking to him in Hebrew, she answered : "Because I want him to know he's a Jew". So: there are those of us who want to uphold the ancient Jewish ethos of justice, equity, compassion, conciliation, and forgiveness.. We can still do this individually, wherever we may be living, but to expect Israel AS A STATE to live by these principles is just not "on" ! The ideal remains worth fighting for, however, and groups such as Gush Shalom, Ta'ayush, the "refuseniks" and others are doing it (at considerable personal risk). So there's HOPE !! Happy 5770 .. Take heart !
Look, Israel's supporters don't contend it's perfect. But, at base, this comes down to whose narrative you buy - Israel's or the Palestinians'. And it's primarily because Michaelson buys the latter that he's disengaging from Israel.
Jews were in Israel MILLENNIA before Arabs and Islam even existed! If you accept that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state -- and let's face it, most of Michaelson's leftist friends don't and Michaelson himself questions it -- then you see a country that's been attacked from Day 1 and that has been trying to make peace from before independence (by accepting the Partition Plan). Arab rejectionism has been the Palestinians' biggest problem (and Israel's). Have the leftists already forgotten that in 2000 Arafat answered the offer of 97% of the West Bank (no more "occupation!" - and, yes, I do use "scare quotes") with a savage terrorist war of suicide bombers? That Olmert offered a similar deal? The three no's at Khartoum? The founding of the PLO BEFORE the Six Day War? That Arab countries dispossessed Jewish citizens in their countries?
The obsession with Israel as the world's worst human rights violator is ludicrous and can only be attributed to Jew-hatred. You never hear the left protest Saudi Arabia's religious apartheid -- the Saudis don't make any bones about it either -- or their barbaric criminal laws and second-class treatment of women. I could go on.
Too bad your article is not written in Hebrew, nor in Arabic. American jews has little influance, and their money will not solve a thing. It only causes trouble.
"The obsession with Israel as the world's worst human rights violator is ludicrous and can only be attributed to Jew-hatred."
yes and its worse than that since Jew hatred is a human rights issue which the hrw and amnesty international don't deal with because of their own biases.
If the Jews of America don't wake up, when the tables turn against fascism and socialism, they will find themselves on the wrong end of right as facilitators of American tyrrany.
shulamis' comment doesn't even make sense? what is she trying to say?
My advise to Mr. Michaelson is to stop defending the indefensible and join other Israelis and Jews in restructuring the crumbled Israeli Left so that it may once again provide an antidote for the suicide seeking right-wing extremists.
Mr Michaelson, and the World,
G-D is a G-D of many feelings, as we are. There has been times G-D has loved us, but nevertheless, does not like us, now. So please, do not lose you love for Israel. The work of G-D's hands was not meant just for Jewish speaking people, it was to be the garden of the world, were we could of all come to learn the deep love that G-D wants for all of us. They have turned it to the dogs! For it is written, Ezekiel 34....." and I will rise up for them a Plant of Renown, and they shall be no more consumed with hunger in the land, nor bear the shame of the heathen anymore."
World, take a deep look, at the god you serve. Does you god, have holy days, then look at these days, are they rooted in rituals, customs of old pagan gods. The ONE TRUE G_D does not mix! Ask your self why is there a law of G-D---not to have other gods before Him?
Why? Becouse there are other gods, they were set in place by our One True G-D. War came in the above many of these gods fell, do some study. ask the G-D of Truth to come into your hearts and minds. Put our sin. Look around you....G-D is at war,,,,and G-D will win. All nations, should fall down and turn to G-D.
We are to become one, when earth and heaven become one in mankind. When we turn we assume our rightful name and are called holy child of G-D, then by force of that name, it produced us in our complete form,,,in the mirror image of our Ahvee Ahd. For it is written Isaiah 9.....For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulder Wounderful, Counsellor, The mighty G-D, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his governament and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kigdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice form henceforth ever for ever. The zeal of the LORD of host will perform this. The LORD sent a word into Jacob, and it hath lighted upon Israel. And all the people shall know, even Ephraim and the inhabitant of Samaria, that say in the pride and stoutness of heart,
The bricks are fallen down, but we will build the hewn stones: the sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars.
Therefore the LORD shall set up the adversaries of Rezin aganist him, and join his enemies together;
The Syrians before, and the Philistines behind; and they shall devour Israel with open mouth.
For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. ( for us that have been brought forth, who are of earth and heaven)
For the people turneth not unto him that smiteh them, neither do they seek the LORD of Host.
Therefore the LORD will cut off from Israel head and tail, branch and rush, in one day.
The ancient and honourable. he is the head; and the prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail.
For the leaders of this people cause them ot err; and they that are led of them are destroyed.
So my world, turn. Mark this: Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, Spirit to spirit having One G-D the G-D of host. For it is written..... Isaiah 9....Through the wrath of the LORD of hosts is the land darkened, and the people shall be as the fuil of the fire: no man shall spare his brother.
And he shall snatch on the right hand, and be hungry; and he shall eat on the left hand, and they shall not be statisfied; they shall eat every man the flesh of his own arm: Manasseh, Ephraim and Ephraim , Manasseh: and they togerher shall be against Judah. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.
Turn, and be saved. Isaiah 10 Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed;
Leaders.....take heed of the words of G-D. He is the Judge.
Psalm 105 Glory in His holy name; let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice..
And here Yair Lapid says much the same thing. Someone going to accuse him of not being Israeli, or serving in the Army? Or is he just not a REAL Jew?
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3779015,00.html
Norman - It is not true that "under international law, Israel has no legal right to occupy the West Bank". Quite the contrary is true. States go to war, capture territory, and international law dictates the rules of occupation. Those who criticized Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, for example, claimed that Gaza is still occupied, and hence Israel is responsible for the well-being of the residents. Those who claim that the West Bank settlements are illegal, for another example, are also basing themselves on international law about the rules of occupation. In both cases, the assumption is obvious: Israel is the legal occupying force, and such a status obligates her. I know that the anti-Israel bashers like to have things both ways. They like to claim that Israel's occupation is illegal, and they like to attack Israel for not living up to her obligations as the occupying power. But that is a contradiction, obviously. If the occupation is illegal, then you can't quote "obligations as an occupying power". If there are obligations as the occupying power, then obviously the occupation is legal. The Security Council Resolution 242 from November 1967 made it clear that the occupation would be ended through the finalization of a peace treaty. During the debate leading up to resolution, the Soviets and the Arabs were insisting on branding Israel the "aggressor", meaning withdrawal from the territories unconditionally. But Israel's war was deemed legitimate, and there was no demand for unilateral withdrawal. The resolution calls for peace and withdrawal. With the finalizing of peace, the occupation will be ended.
"If you want someone to stop firing rockets at you, try treating him with respect". Perhaps you think this to be so. If so, you are not treating the Arabs with respect. You are belittling them. They say in very clear terms why they shoot rockets: They are at war with the "Zionist enemy", and hence they will not allow their enemy to have normalcy. What you are saying is that the Palestinians are children whose feelings have been hurt, and now they are behaving out of anger. Well, they are not children. They are a people in the midst of an armed conflict with another people. Shooting rockets is one way of expressing the continuity of conflict.
The settlements are illegal under international law. The Israeli government itself acknowledged that.
Theodor Meron, the Israeli foreign ministry legal counsel, wrote in a memorandum in 1964 that the settlements violated international law, including the Geneva conventions. The historian Gershom Gorenberg found the memo and published it. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/10/opinion/10gorenberg.html Meron, who now teaches at NYU law school, confirmed the memo and says he still believes it.
Wow being a Jew these days its seems if you dont goose step with the right-wing lukidniks you're a selfhating Jew.I hate what has become of Israel,and want nothing to do with it period! Us american Jews having been living in our own Wiemar republic,and we all know what happen after that.
Jays article should beheaded by Why I Love The Palestinians More Than Israel
Settlements are Not Illegal: The settlements are not located in "occupied territory." The last binding international legal instrument which divided the territory in the region of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza was the League of Nations Mandate, which explicitly recognized the right of Jewish settlement in all territory allocated to the Jewish national home in the context of the British Mandate. These rights under the British Mandate were preserved by the successor organization to the League of Nations, the United Nations, under Article 49 of the UN Charter.
The West Bank and Gaza are disputed, not occupied, with both Israel and the Palestinians exercising legitimate historical claims. There was no Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza Strip prior to 1967. Jews have a deep historic and emotional attachment to the land and, as their legal claims are at least equal to those of Palestinians, it is natural for Jews to build homes in communities in these areas, just as Palestinians build in theirs.
The territory of the West Bank and Gaza Strip was captured by Israel in a defensive war, which is a legal means to acquire territory under international law. In fact, Israel's seizing the land in 1967 was the only legal acquisition of the territory this century: the Jordanian occupation of the West Bank from 1947 to 1967, by contrast, had been the result of an offensive war in 1948 and was never recognized by the international community, including the Arab states, with the exception of Great Britain and Pakistan.
The Settlements are Consistent with Resolution 242
Many observers incorrectly assume that UN Security Council Resolution 242 requires a full Israeli withdrawal from the land Israel captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Some may have a hidden agenda aimed at depriving Israel of any legal rights whatsoever in the disputed areas. In either case, they use this misinterpretation to conclude that settlement activity is unlawful because it perpetuates an "illegal" Israeli occupation.
The assumption and the conclusion are deeply flawed. Resolution 242 calls for only an undefined withdrawal from a portion of the land -- and only to the extent required by "secure and recognized boundaries." Israel has already withdrawn from the majority of the land it had captured, and nearly all of the areas in which it retains communities are essential to "secure and recognized boundaries." The specific location of Israeli settlements was determined by Israel's Ministry of Defense over the last 30 years, not by the settlers themselves, and they were set up in order to strengthen Israel's presence in those few areas from which it cannot, militarily, afford to withdraw.
Settlements are Consistent with the Geneva Conventions
In three recent emergency special sessions of the UN General Assembly, Israeli settlement was cited as a violation of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention. These international humanitarian instruments, forged in the ashes of the Holocaust to prevent future genocidal brutality and oppression, were never invoked in 50 years until the case of condominium construction in Jerusalem during 1998. Was such construction -- any settlement construction -- a violation of the Geneva Convention?
No. The relevant clause, Article 49, prohibits the "occupying power" from transferring population into the "occupied territory." Aside from the fact that the territory is not occupied, but disputed, Morris Abrams, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, had pointed out that the clause refers to the forcible transfer of large populations. By contrast, the settlements involve the voluntary movement of civilians. The U.S. Department of State, accordingly, does not view Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention as applicable to settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. For that reason, the official U.S. position has been over the years that settlements are legal, even though successive administrations have criticized them on political grounds.
Arieh Zimmerman "My advise to Mr. Michaelson is to stop defending the indefensible and join other Israelis and Jews in restructuring the crumbled Israeli Left so that it may once again provide an antidote for the suicide seeking right-wing extremists."
Good post, Arieh.
Israel needs a left of center majority party. I hope it'll happen someday.
What they don't need is advice from Israel hating American Jews.
I sent Michaelson's article out to some of my friends and received this comment from one of them. "Poor dear. Those allied soldiers who spent five years in WWII Europe must have had similar feelings about their respective countries – those of the chaps who survived. I wonder if the author has any insight into his embarrassing self-portrayal? D.H.
Hi Jay, Snap out of it! Come back home to where you belong. We all have had moments of doubt in any type of relationship. In the light of day, with your moral compass & ideas I'm sure you can help forge a better future for Israelis and Palestinians.
The gaza arabs voted hamas into power and share the same jew-hating ideology. They are collectively responsible for all that has happened to them as a result of their choice. End of story.
Israel makes me tired. It has for years. Too much press coverage, too much criticism, too many threats from Iran to academic boycotts, to God knows what all else that afflicts the Jewish state. Then there are the Palestinians who play the victim card as a matter of instinct while refusing to be serious about peace. How can a man or woman live with all of that and still be sanely engaged with Israel and not live there?
Then there are the Israelis themselves who are stuck with the problems of the West Bank and their own failures of leaderhip as well as the vagaries of their politics. I do not mean to minimize the Occupation, nor do I claim expertise. I do know that the Arab world has less compassion for their Palestinian brothers and sisters than they have a love for the Palestinian cause as a means of deflecting their own totalitarian tendancies.
So when I read an essay as thorough and intelligent as Jay MIchaelson's I understand and empathize with his Israel exhaustion. Better to focus on American Jews and Judaism where the problems of exercising power are of a different type altogether. We American Jews do not have the problems of Israeli Jews and therefore are not put in the same position as our Israeli cousins. Politically speaking, it's infinitely easier here when it comes to the exercise of power.
Sure, Israel is not a Jewish Disneyland. It's full of faults as deep as canyon. It is the only Jewish country we've got, however,and it seems a failure of nerve on the part of Mr. Michaelson to assert that his Israel exhaustion is Israel's problem and not his.
For my part, Israel as a polity would have to sink deep before I could write a column such as his.
Norman, I understand that you have now corrected yourself. At first you claimed that the occupation is illegal, but now you are claiming that the settlements are illegal. Now that you have twice raised the issue of legality, one wonders if you really believe that the conflict in the Middle East is a legal question. One day, who knows when, there will be a peace agreement. Whatever will be agreed upon will be recognized by the entire world. Suddenly, by magic, "illegal" settlements will be legal. How is that possible? Well, it's very simple. It is a political conflict that will be settled by negotiations - not a legal dispute to be settled in court. So, why do you raise the issue of legality again and again? You are hiding behind claims of legality instead of stating your true (pro-Palestinian) point of view which negates the legitimacy of Israel.
American Liberal Jews have a luxury Israelis don't - they can pass judgement from a safe distance, never fully belonging, never taking responcibility. That's why Israel is NOT a country for American Jewish Liberals. It's a country for Tzabarim, and for Russians, and for Mizrahim, and for a French Jews who've discovered that's it's good to have a separation wall between you and your Muslim "neighbor", and for Ethiopians and for many others - but not you. You have two options - either support Israel or keep your mouth shut, and if you can't do either, in a generation or two your noise will die out with you.
Ben Levi, I didn't correct myself. I don't see where I said that the occupation was illegal.
I quoted Theodor Meron, the Israeli foreign ministry's legal counsel, as saying that the settlements beyond the 1967 border were illegal. I think that's a settled issue.
If Israel doesn't follow international law, why should other nations support Israel?
The Palestinians don't think that they can have a viable state, or a fair solution, with settlements cutting their country apart. Any resolution will have to return to the 1967 borders. If the Israeli settlers are living on Palestinian land, they will have no legal right to that land.
The Palestinian government is free to enter into an agreement with the Israeli government over the ownership of the land. They may decide to exchange land of equal value to accommodate some of the settlements. But the Palestinians will never freely agree to negotiate away the land that the settlements are on deep within the west bank. And they will never accept "Jewish-only" roads through their land.
Some of the Palestinian negotiators have said that they would welcome Israelis who wanted to continue to live in their settlements -- under the laws of the Palestinian state, on equal terms with Palestinians. I expect that few settlers would stay under those circumstances.
So the answer is, the settlements are illegal now. If the Palestinians agree to negotiate a resolution that includes certain settlements, those settlements will be legal from that time on.
The leftist critics of Israel claim they oppose the occupation of other people's land. How come they NEVER will admit that they are occupying millions of square miles of Indian land here in America? They will also NEVER admit that Muslims have conquered nine million square miles of other people's land (today including over 50 countries) starting with the birth of Mohammed. That is the greatest land grab in human history and it is still going on.
There are two moral rules that the left refuses to observe. One is to "tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth". The second is to avoid employing any double standard. But since the Jewish left considers itself superior to the Torah they need not observe the commandment to not bear false witness. For them it is the Communist belief that 'the end justifies the means'.
We should also remember that mass murderer Joseph Stalin had his fanatically loyal Jewish storm troopers who voluntarily spied on fellow Jews. When those Jewish spies found anyone teaching Judaism to Jewish children they reported them to the secret police and many of those teachers and rabbis just 'disappeared'. The Jewish left understands that the best place to attack the Jewish People is from the inside while posing as Jews and operating as a fifth column.
What a shock to discover that some Jews are uncomfortable with and have become alienated from Israel. Their loyalty to Israel was always conditional on Israel maintaining a "liberal/left" position and espousing (in spite of continued assault by most members of the "international community") an internationalist and "progressive" stance. Well, reality has been beating up on Israel. Despite the "disappointed" lovers, the Jewish state was merely reacting to world's hostility and as a result becoming more and more realistic in its politics. Too bad for our disappointed pilgrim, whose memories of kibbutzim and horah dancing have kept him ignorant of the real world, not that in the image of his upper west-side esthetes. It is obvious that our brave adventurer has got tired of explaining the reality of Israel's predicament to his friends as they were leaving for another anti-Israel/Aperthead protest. He wants so badly to fit in; he doesn't want to admit that the only supportive position that is left to him is to align himself with those nationalist pro-Zionis forces that are antithetical to his friends' vision of the world. Obviously his own commitment was not to Israel's survival and the eternal Jewish people, but to something entirely different. Well, former friend, we hate to see you go, but if you must, make sure you shut the door on the way out.
Norman, roll up to your comments to Luke (it's already very far up). There you stated: "Under international law, Israel has no legal right to occupy the West Bank". So, yes, you did claim that the occupation is illegal. That claim, obviously, is untrue.
I found it very interesting that you admit that, theoretically, a negotiated end of conflict with the Palestinians could change the status of some settlements to legal. That is very true. It is a political conflict that will be solved eventually through a political agreement. Whatever the content of that agreement may be - it will immediately be accepted by all as legitimate. So, why do you repeat again and again the "legalities" of the conflict? The decision of the Arab League to prevent by military force the implementation of the Nov 1947 UN Partition Plan - was that legal? Well, the whole question is simply irrelevant. They had decided to go to war - and the result of that war determined our fate. Are the settlements legal? One could argue for or against - and yet the whole question is simply irrelevant. Their fate will be determined by the outcome of the conflict. In the meanwhile, the only relevant debate is the very content of the final arrangement that will bring the conflict to its end.
"...But my Israel is one of shuks, cafes, shtiebels and hiking trails; of family and friends; of my alma mater on Mount Scopus and my favorite field in Talbieh (Churshat Hayareach, an open space continually threatened with destruction). Personally, I find the way many Americans strut in and out of Jerusalem for the holidays partly ridiculous and partly nauseating. So while the storybook Jerusalem remains more or less intact, I care less about it than the delicate, messy harmonies of the real ones.
Worse than that, the mythic Israel is now actively affecting — I would say harming — the real one. The handful of rich American conservatives who have influenced Israeli politics lately have tended to prefer grandiose myths to the messy realities that should govern pragmatic decision making — and eventually, all those simplifications add up to dangerous distortions in policy. The “fantasy Israel,” the one many Americans seem largely to inhabit, doesn’t compensate for the erosion of the real one. On the contrary, it causes it."
Being somewhat of a narcicist, rarely doI extend kudos to the opinions of others. In this case I will make an exception. Concise and to the point. Could not have said it better myself. An insightful and honest article, Mr. Michaelson. There are too many American Jews for whom Israel is somekind of Jewish Disneyland. They seem to forget that for some of us, its actually a real place, with friends, are favorite restaurants, inside jokes, etc, etc. You know like borough park, except at least up until recently, the inmates had been prevented from running the asylum. That being said, My family and I, all Israeli citizens as well as veterans of Zahal do not have the luxury of a divorce. Israel will just have to saved. Even if that means having to shoot a few settlers and politically disenfranchise the rest along with their haredi fellow travelers. Take heart, Mr. Michaelson. The Israeli secular majority are growing weary of being mules for the shtetl. They are tired of footing the bill for their housing and utilities. Tired of their children being used as human shields for so-called "pioneers", who while maneuvering behind a gaseous cloud of pseudo-halachic bullshit, are in actuality nothing more than real estate speculators from Brooklyn and Lakewood in search of an interest free mortgage and a make-work job donated by the Mirad HaChinuch. When the europeans finally inflict an economic embargo upon the republic, that begins to severely impact the Israeli secular workforce in the wallet, their children in the Army won't be so sqeamish about drilling some mitnachel in the head just for being a wiseguy (lets see what happens the next time one these people call a Chayal a "Nazi"), let alone for stealing land.
Nu, Frank,
You don't live in Israel, You don't serve in Zahal, your children are not going to be drafted. You have no skin in the game. Whats your interest?
Etan gives the standard Bard-Dershowitz-Israel Foreign Ministry argument for the legality of the settlements. He may be right. He may be wrong.
So I have a proposition for him....
I will donate $100 to the Zionist organization of his choice for any non-Zionist authority on international law that he can cite who accepts his argument
IF
he donates $10 to any Zionist authority on international law who does not.
My point is that his claim is rejected by all authorities on international law who are not Zionist and many who are.
I also would like him to show me where the US State Department declares that Israel settlements are *legal*.
"...Jay Michaelson's left-wing, European friends do not like Israel very much - or at all. Despite his original discomfort with the vehemence of their hatred, he chooses to disengage from the debate. Apparently, maintaining the approval of those "social circles" is worth more than defending the country he purports to love."
If I were you, I would'nt be so flippant about Michaelson's Europaen freinds, since their the ones who will ultimately decide whether or not Israel's economy will collapse under the weight of an embargo.
"...I think RS should write for the Forward."
Perhaps they thought that retaining the services of someone named "Real Stupid", might have a deleterious effect upon their editorial credibility. Evil HR strikes again.
He finds real supporters of Israel "terrifying"
Though I can appreciate why (those who refer to themselves as Real Supporters are anything but supporters of Israel. What they supposrt are people like themselves, you know self-serving American Jewish eunuchs walking around exhorting actual Isarelis to shed their blood to assuage American Jewish guilt)I feel that "terrifying" would be the wrong adjetive. Try "repulsive", "disgusting", "contemptible", etc.
"...Our friends are lefties and settlers, hi-tech entrepreneurs and artists."
As opposed to what? Child molesting rabbis? Wife beaters? Theo-Facists, draft dodgers, hooligans, and seditionists?
Which do you think they're going to put on an EL AL poster at the travel agency?
What Mr. Michaelson evinces is the fact that the Palestinian Propaganda Machine has almost won. Their narrative is the one gaining ground in the mainstream media, on campuses and at the office water cooler. It will be up to Israel's left of center defenders to break down this intellectual hegemony and it won't happen if we all wimp out.
Mr. Michaelson is an excellent writer. Unfortunately, his moral compass has been twisted. Mr. Michaelson represents the attitude of secular liberal Jews who intermarry and leave Judaism forever.
Does he realize that Israel would not have become a world-class military power if it were not for its enemies whose aim is to destroy the only democracy in the middle east? Does his visit Arab cities and feel as comfortable as he did with his liberal friends in Berlin? How many thriving Jewish communities can he find in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia? How many of his liberal leftist Christians are welcome and comfortable in those countries.
How wonderful to have the ability to sit back, well-fed, safe and comfortable and join his left-wing social circle in bashing Israel. Ignore the atrocities in Asia and Africa. Forget the starvation in North Korea. Go live in Teharan and then tell us what you think.
As with many Americans, my own attachment to Israel began with the book and film "Exodus", was reinforced by accounts of kibbutz culture, reinforced by Holocaust history, reinforced by the Six Day War. Michaelson's account of slow disillusionment contrasts with the sudden epiphany effects caused by such Israeli actions as Deir Yassin in 1948, Sabra & Shatila in 1982 (my epiphany), or Gaza in 2008. Looking clearly at one such action, makes one suddenly realize that Palestinians are humans. They are humans who have suffered and continue to suffer injustice and destruction. And thus lovers of Jewish people and Jewish culture come to oppose Israeli actions.
Through Antiwar.com i came to this link, obviously a Jewish community one.
The column is interesting but the general problem i see with the Jewish people, liberal, orthodox or else, is their blindness to other cultures, mean-others to the Christian one, not only the Muslim one. This includes the difficulty they seem to meet to put themselves in another person's skin, totally, forgetting for a while about their Jewish condition.
As far as Jesus Christ is concerned, for the Jews just a Jew among others, he said, in his last night at the Olives Hill, to Peter who cut an ear of one of the soldiers of the Sanhedrin who came to arrest him : "Those who kill with a sword will die by the mean of a sword !".
Israel was created by the mean of blood spilling, killings, expulsions of people who had nothing to do with the Nazis' genocide.
Will it disappear the same way ?
I might understand that a Jew might want to live on the land he feels God assigned to him.
But did really God say that he should do so that way ?
If You didn't meet with a cousin for years and he occupies the whole house Your grandfather built, will You come back after 40 or 50 years killing a part of his family and throwing him out ?
Or will You come with gifts and love, telling him what Your life has been, helping him financially and with the education of his sons and, then, only then, asking him if it is possible to share again the house of Your common grandfathers ?
Which solution do You feel has a chance to have a happy end ?
Aren't the Palestinians and Arabs Semites just like You, Your cousins even if with another faith, but in the same God (Jahve, God, Allah : don't those words apply to the very same person even if Islam is controversial in some points : the place of the woman, the apostasy, ...?).
Wouldn't it be the right time, if still possible, now, to try to reverse the course : being humble enough to sincerely beg pardon for the bad done and restarting the discussion with the Palestinians, all the Palestinians including the refugees of Lebanon or else, from zero, without conditions, from a totally blank map of the region ?
Or will You go on, expecting it to be too late ? Are You so blind that You don't see that the demography alone dumps You ?
That America might not be omnipotent for ever, just declining like any empire ? Did You look at the lessons of the actual world crisis ? At the weakness of the US commercial balance, at the USA' s dependence on the goodwill of China and its financial reserves ? At the very fact that without China's financial goodwill, the USA would be unable to sustain their military supremacy ? That this is the first reason why Obama suppressed the anti-missiles shield in Poland and the Czech Republic ? aso, aso, ...
And finally,
I ever had doubts about how total could have been the expulsion of the Jews from Palestine by the Romans : did they really got it rid of the humble shepherds, the small farmers, ... Or did they deport the classes which were keen to promote revolts against Rome : the clergy, the burgers, the nobility and, more generally, the intelligentsia ?
If the humblest Jews remained in Palestine, without a clergy to back them, wouldn't they later and easily convert, first, the Christianity and finally to Islam ?
Aren't thus the Palestinians just the descendants of converted Jews ?
Before you can propose a solution you must understand the problem. There can never be peace in Israel because it's very existence is a fraud.Israel isn't a democracy, it's an apartheid state with a theocratic face. There can never be peace without justice and apartheid by very definition is injustice. There is no connection between the state of Israel and Judaism. Israel is a political construct called Zionism. It is based on the notion that there is such a thing as the "Jewish people". This is a myth, there is no such thing. There are people who are Jewish but no Jewish people anymore than there are a Christian people. Israel is the product of a group of Eastern European gangsters of central Asian decent who use biblical fairy tales of a minor tribe indigenous to Palestine as a pretext to steal Palestine from it's rightful occupants using terrorism. If Jews really want to live in peace in Palestine with it's majority they must do so as equals, the same way they did prior to the rise of Zionism in 19th century Europe. That is the reality of it.
Fred..
Mr. Michaelson-
Have you shared this article with your therapist?
Just wondering....
Jacek....in EVERY country, all throughout history it has always been and remains the majority ethnicity which is least aware of the minority cultures existing alongside him. The Jews have always been much more knowledgeable concerning the majority cultures among which they lived than vice versa. Needless to say, your entire comment suffers from the same lack of historical knowledge and truthfullness.
Fred....your ignorance is widely shared among the equally ignorant. All recent DNA and genetic studies of recent decades have confirmed the genetic kinship of every Jew, whether he be of Sephardic, Mizrahi or Ashkenazic descent.
I am not sure the Jews as people should, as a matter of race, be compared with Christians.
You mention the 19th century in Eastern Europe and hereby show a large array of ignorance of the phenomenon by then .
There was yet a double sided apartheid : - the Jews were still excluded, since the Middle Age, from the property of land and thus dedicated themselves to craft activities and trade - the rabbis cared drastically for the pureness of the Jewish race, fighting mixed marriages.
From another hand, in countries or areas like Poland (stopped existing as such from 1795 to 1921), where the Jews had ever been accepted with hospitality while chased from other European countries, there was a deep resentment among the local population against the Jews (in 1939 they amounted there to up to 30% of the total population) : - the way they traded was rarely fair against their non-Jew competitors, forming coalitions to dump the "goy" while the rabbis obliged the community to sustain financially the Jewish traders against any "goy" competitor.
This was traduced in common language as "Stanks für Danks !", a kind of mockery using the Yiddish vocabulary, which means : "We hosted them and look at how they thank us !".
This was just what the local populations remembered from the exclusion they felt, in terms of race, from their guests, with this feeling being exacerbated by the practices of some Jewish traders or in the craft industry.
This kind of attitude can be repeated by other races while a minority, this is not necessarily a monopole of the Jewish even if probably not so accentuated.
Hitler's genocide against the Jewish was in fact not the first one they suffered even if never so extended before (see Spain's expulsion by the end of the 15th century or Russia's end of the 19th century pogroms) and those who dictated those persecutions enjoyed the backing of the local populations due to their resentment.
What is written here is a start of explanation, never an excuse for said pogroms. Neither were all the rabbis and all the Jews bad, racist or egoistic persons, let's just remember Arthur Rubinstein's backing and love for Poland and he is just an example while there are many more example of non-discriminatory generosity from the hand of marvelous Jewish people and communities.
Briefly, this all means that against the external influences, the Jews remained "relatively" pure in terms of race over 19 centuries.
I think some of those errors are repeated now, for example, applying to the actual campaign against mixed marriages.
The rate of mixed marriages among the Jews has in fact gone up together with the raise of their fairness and non-discriminatory attitude in trade they show against "goys", - this last, a very positive fact for the reputation of the Jews worldwide -.
In the comments above, i often read that old Jewish reflex of purity of the race which, it seems, finds its roots in a distorted interpretation of the Holy Texts.
And even if God really meant that, - which i don't believe -, he surely didn't mean this should be preserved spilling blood.
The world reads about it and it is hard to believe that a "goy", American, European or Chinese feels comfortable with thinking that his son or his daughter is not good enough for a Jew.
Hence that the backing for Israel is going down on, even in the USA.
Adding to it, the reproaches of unilateralism end up heard, worldwide, and in the USA too : Iran still has no A-bomb but Israel has about 200, Israel doesn't comply with the UN resolutions but Saddam is attacked without the UN granting any support for it, the Palestinian derisory rockets are described a scandalous murder weapon while the Israeli tanks, helicopters, aircrafts and dead squads are just angels, ... (I am not assuming there are no terrorists among the Palestinians).
And, people end up fed up hearing about Hitler's genocide always named Shoah as if this, by itself, justifies any action from Israel (how do the Jews the 20th century genocide of the Armenians by the decadent Ottoman Empire ? Was this a Shoah too ? Or where there no millions enough to deserve that denomination too ?).
And, people end up fed up when, for any critic of what Israel does, they are qualified "antisemitic", (as if being against the Arabs wouldn't mean being antisemitic).
The "goys" will end up shredding their shoulders when hearing about the Shoah or when being named "antisemitic".
I fear that, within 20 or 30 years, when the USA will stop being a superpower and when the majority of its population will stop backing Israel, this one will simply disappear.
There will then appear a new prophet who will explain to the Jews why Jahve allowed that and castigated them.
By then, the Jewish will just have to wait for another 2000 years before Yahve will give them another chance.
Or will You wake up now (if it is not too late) ?
Nadav,
The minorities learn about the other's cultures but rarely place themselves in the skin of their hosts, remaining centered on the problems of the minority situation they live, trying to climb the welfare scale.
The main problem i see is the Jews rarely try to look at how they are perceived by "goys" and if they do, they more rarely again end up understanding that they might be the caused of the bad perception they inspire.
Those who do it are summoned by the other Jews as "bad" Jews and i read it again in the comments about this column.
I, in fact, do not want to start a dialectic with the Jews here who pretend they are the only who understand the situation, this seems to be useless and "tiring", "boring".
Just that if they remain the majority, Israel has no chance to survive.
Would You dare to say that so on, Israel will still exist within 50 years ?
In what we, Christians, name the New Testament, there is a story told by Jesus-Christ about a boss who goes for travel and call his three servants.
To the first he gives 10 talents (a kind of money), to the second 5 and to the third 2.
He tells them to care about the talents till when he will come back.
When back, the first servant brings him 20 talents because of he let the 10 talents fructify, the second one brings 10 talents having let the 5 talents fructify and the last one brings 2 talents.
The boss congratulates the 2 first servants and throws the third out of his house.
Jesus meant that the chances man gets from God are to be enjoyed and bring fruit and that, else, man should expect to lose everything.
Isn't Israel, aren't the Jews spilling now the chances God gave them when he permitted them to think about reconstructing Israel again ?
Curioso to me appears that a 100% a nonshemitic [or nonsemitic, if one will]melange of peoples and ethnics from europe have invaded palestine in '22-49 period,slaughtering thousands of another melange, but of a shemitic or semitic peoples; now lament that pointing out these facts, which wld also include the expulsion by violence or threat of violence of the shemites, is antisemitism.Can it get dumber than that? And they think that seasoned observers who look at all the facts that pertain, wld cease with observing what a nonsemitic multiethnicity do or have done. No way jose!
Marvin Kravetsky aka
holy land and holy people?
you ignorant bastard.
you think your holy
you think that land is yours you thief.
it will never be yours....ever
the palestinians will take it back......its their land and you stole it.
m.othm, I always get a laugh when ignorant bastards like yourself appear. Let me give you a quick education on the Jewish claim To The Land Of Israel.
A common misperception is that the Jews were forced into the diaspora by the Romans after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 A.D. and then, 1,800 years later, suddenly returned to Palestine demanding their country back. In reality, the Jewish people have maintained ties to their historic homeland for more than 3,700 years. A national language and a distinct civilization have been maintained.
The Jewish people base their claim to the land of Israel on at least four premises: 1) God promised the land to the patriarch Abraham; 2) the Jewish people settled and developed the land; 3) the international community granted political sovereignty in Palestine to the Jewish people and 4) the territory was captured in defensive wars.
The Twelve Tribes of Israel formed the first constitutional monarchy in Palestine about 1000 B.C. The second king, David, first made Jerusalem the nation's capital. Although eventually Palestine was split into two separate kingdoms, Jewish independence there lasted for 212 years. This is almost as long as Americans have enjoyed independence in what has become known as the United States.
Even after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and the beginning of the exile, Jewish life in Palestine continued and often flourished. Large communities were reestablished in Jerusalem and Tiberias by the ninth century. In the 11th century, Jewish communities grew in Rafah, Gaza, Ashkelon, Jaffa and Caesarea.
Many Jews were massacred by the Crusaders during the 12th century, but the community rebounded in the next two centuries as large numbers of rabbis and Jewish pilgrims immigrated to Jerusalem and the Galilee. Prominent rabbis established communities in Safed, Jerusalem and elsewhere during the next 300 years. By the early 19th century-years before the birth of the modern Zionist movement-more than 10,000 Jews lived throughout what is today Israel.
When Jews began to immigrate to Palestine in large numbers in 1882, fewer than 250,000 Arabs lived there, and the majority of them had arrived in recent decades. Palestine was never an exclusively Arab country, although Arabic gradually became the language of most the population after the Muslim invasions of the seventh century. No independent Arab or Palestinian state ever existed in Palestine. When the distinguished Arab-American historian, Princeton University Prof. Philip Hitti, testified against partition before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, he said: "There is no such thing as 'Palestine' in history, absolutely not." In fact, Palestine is never explicitly mentioned in the Koran, rather it is called "the holy land" (al-Arad al-Muqaddash).
Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity. When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted:
We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds.
In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine: "There is no such country [as Palestine]! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria."
The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations submitted a statement to the General Assembly in May 1947 that said "Palestine was part of the Province of Syria" and that, "politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity." A few years later, Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, told the Security Council: "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria."
Palestinian Arab nationalism is largely a post-World War I phenomenon that did not become a significant political movement until after the 1967 Six-Day War and Israel's capture of the West Bank.
Israel's international "birth certificate" was validated by the promise of the Bible; uninterrupted Jewish settlement from the time of Joshua onward; the Balfour Declaration of 1917; the League of Nations Mandate, which incorporated the Balfour Declaration; the United Nations partition resolution of 1947; Israel's admission to the UN in 1949; the recognition of Israel by most other states; and, most of all, the society created by Israel's people in decades of thriving, dynamic national existence.
The problem with being a Jew in America is that a) we seem to suffer from a "lesser than" identity crisis and b) Israeli national identity as a prevailing part of Jewish identity. The combination of the two has lead to a diminishment, in my estimation, of all that American Jewry has contributed, which in the view of history, will probably rival that of Enlightenment. It's also put us in an impossible situation when it comes to our own self-esteem. Love Israel too much, and you end up crushed when something you would never conscience the U.S. doing is something you end up defending when Israel does something even remotely similar.
I tell myself this: My (recent) forebears grew up balls made out of fish, not chick peas.
Even if you spent three years there, the fact holds true that Jerusalem *still* remains Jewish Disneyland to you as much as it does to the gilded fools who insist on traveling Israel on guided tours. If Greater Israel belongs to Jews in Diaspora, roam free. Some do, most don't.
Second, 90% of American Jews serve in no military at all, here or Israel, so national mistakes made here or there cost us virtually nothing.
The vote and national will of Israelis is the determinative factor in Israel's choices. They are the ones who are not the tourists. They are the ones who live, truly, with the consequences of their nation's choices. We might suffer for it in conversation over coffee, and fielding protests at college or taking scathing comments on Huffington Post, but it's the equivalent of getting dirt under our fingernails.
My recommendation: get over it. Israel must make its own choices. Until those choices truly do compromise you to the point where there's no choice but your fellow Jews or nothing at all, it's all worthy of the gag-me-to-death "emo" self-focus of this generation.
And for crying out loud, Berlin? Go to one of their soccer games and see how at home you feel about their political baggage. If you felt comfortable, you haven't spent enough time there.
to Nadav
Your comments about near to no Arabs leaving in Palestine before the Jews came there massively last century is the same language the South African Afrikaans people used to justify their apartheid system.
Apartheid is one of the main reproaches made to Israel our days.
Judaism, especially Zionism, has never been for the easily fatigued, or for those whose opinions must reflect the politics of their social circle, or for those who demand that Israel be the only nation on earth to conduct itself with moral purity, as if such a thing was even possible.
It's probably best that Jews such as Mr. Michaelson make their lives in the Diaspora, where they will be less embarrassed by the lives of the Jews who have chosen to re-emerge in history and act on the world stage.
Mr. Michaelson, you are a defeated man. You should convert to being a christian or muslim and you will be accepted and will not have to defend your people or hide your Jewishness.
I ,as an American Jew, am proud of my heritage and will defend it to the end against the gentile anti-semitism. Israel is the greatest country in the world and your psuedo-intellectual analysis is depressing. We, as a people, have survived for over 3000 years by being strong and united.
Go join our islamoracist arab enemies. They would appreciate your attitude.
when the jewish people and the peoples of the world can turn (heb. teshuvah), and together with rachel corrie, say to the palestinians, "you are our brothers and our sisters, then will the monstrous soul-devouring entity, part golden calf, part sabbatai zevi, and part golem, the state which hides behind the name "israel" be able to disappear, falling back into the abyss in the human spirit from which it arose....
=
to Noah
You are contradicting Yourself.
If the possession of the Holy Land by the Jews is an order from Yahve, this means, if You are the only one nation and people elected by Yahve, then You also have to be the only nation on earth to conduct Yourself with purity.
Or do You pretend that Yahve is a sins lover God ?
Do You pretend that Yahve elected You just to behave Yourselves like any other nation ?
Any positive feelings I had for Israel as a boy and early teenager quickly disappeared when I attended university and took a course on the modern Middle East. I soon learned of the monstrous crimes the Zionists committed against the native Palestinians from 1948 onward: Ethnic cleansing - 300,000 expelled between passage of the recommendatory only Partition Plan (no legal status and grossly unfair to the Palestinians) and the declaration of the Jewish state on May 14/48, necessitating intervention by poorly armed and outnumbered Arab state armies which lead to Israel's expulsion of about 450,000 more Palestinians, the destruction of around 450 of their towns and villages and Israel's seizure of 78% of Palestine; a further 25,000 Palestinians were driven out just prior to and during Israel's 1956 invasion of Egypt in collusion with France and Britain and an additional 400,000 were dispossessed during and after the war Israel launched in June 1967 in which it seized the rest of Palestine, Egypt's Sinai, Syria's Golan Heights and Lebanon's Shebaa Farms. All of this, along with Israel's brutal occupation of Palestinian and other Arab lands since 1967; its illegal annexation of occupied East Jerusalem (and extension of its boundaries which include huge portions of the West Bank); the construction of the so-called Separation Barrier (not along the green line) which is just another land grab; the ongoing construction of illegal Jewish only settlements; collective punishments etc.. and of course, Israel's crowning glory - Operation Cast Lead and its massacre of over 1,400 near defenseless caged Palestinians (a kill ratio of 100 to 1) have caused me and an increasing number of my friends to detest Israel.
I feel very sorry for Jay, because it is painful to see a cherished home and a cherished idea be stripped bare a little bit at a tim and revealed for what it is. But, he is an American, and so he is, presumably, a visitor--peculiar type of tourist--in this world of Israel.
Yes, many to most other nations have committed imperialist and colonial atrocities. Interesting to see how many apologists for the expansionist Zionist state take this tack, though in no other court of law or public opinion would it carry any weight whatsoever to say someone else also kicked sand. But the problem with Israel is that it uses the Holocaust as an excuse to think and declare that it has the right to commit atrocities and do whatever it feels it needs to do to "defend" itself, eternally playing the victim, while projecting all the aggression onto the actuall victims. The Zionists always felt entitled to take Palestine for themselves and commit atrocities if necessary to do so, and this antedated the Holocaust by decades. Modern-day Israel is subsisting on a myth of victimhood (and I am NOT a Holocaust denier) but the myth part of it is that the Holocaust is used to totally supplant the previous history of the Zionist colonial enterprise and its planned and executed dispossession of the Palestinians, with the support of Great Britain. Another part of the myth is the idea that today's Jews are descended from historical Jews who lived in Palestine. The DNA simply doesn't match. I am not the first to say these things, of course. Practicing Jews say them, too. in fact, with greater empahsis and a whole lot of scholarship. I hope Jay's essay will help other American Jews think more critically about the real historical Israel and their obligation/lack of obligation to it.
The ugly head of Semitism is a well documented history of ordered massacres, systematic killings, the destruction of hundreds of villages, the ethnic cleansing of a pacific people, and the in your face robbery of an entire country. Simply put: A religious/ gangster cult sits fat and righteous on stolen property. For anyone whom disagrees with this comment just keep denying and worry not: be it said that nowhere in the world is it against the law to deny the long term rancid on-going holocaust by “God’s ahem chosen people”. L'Chaim.
The age of Nations
Man can love everything from an idea, a thing, a country and of course idols made of stone like in antic times. But you are modern people now, so you love you nation, like the rest of the mad inhabitants of this planet and your are proud of it. You may call yourself Jews and your country Israel, as far as I know there is not any trademark notice in the writings of the old times. You think by naming your will have some mystical connection but it will be your actions not your words by which you will be judged. Your prayers are not that important only our loyalty is. If you are loyal to the state of Israel than your are not loyal the Almighty. You know there is only One and he dislikes split loyalty as you may have noticed. If some of you like to escape the labyrinths of modern philosophy it helps if you stop to fear the antisemites and start to understand that the history is a tale of self-love and arrogance which will always be punished.
Nationalism brings you to the point where you commit horrible crimes in the name of an idol. The intoxication of "Israel, Israel über alles" create the blindness your enemies need to lure your into their trap.
Q
As you may no doubt have gathered. I'm not Jewish. I am Catholic. Not that I had a say in it and when I became an adult and could choose for myself, I chose to reject the hypocrisy that is Catholicism. By the same token Judaism is hypocritical, given that we are referring to the religious belief system that Judaism represents and its adherents are supposed to live by. I see no evidence of the love and charity that both the Jewish and Catholic religions, or any other religion for that matter, claim to be the purveyors of. Is being Jewish a religion or is it a racial entity?. Are Jews different from the rest of humanity by virtue of birth or belief?. Are Ashkenazim Jews Semitic or Caucasian? Does one have to be born a Semite to be a real Jew or is it Just the religion that makes a Jew a Jew?. Is murder not a crime in the Jewish religion or does that simply refer to the killing of another Jew and not a Goyim, such as myself? As an Irishman I am well aware of what it's like to be on the wrong side of the fence, to have to bow to a foreign power and be an outcast in your own land. If you are an Ashkenazim Jew and have a modicum of education then you will know that you have no right, God given or otherwise to claim a right to live in Palestine for the simple and real fact that you to are Caucasian in origin, as Arthur Koestler, himself an Ashkenazim pointed out, much to the chagrin of your Zionist masters. You cannot, from your religious perspective, or any other perspective, subjugate and abuse another people for personal gain. The very act of resettlement and forced evictions must have some effect on your conscience. If not then you are really are the evil nation, that even your own people, such as the man that wrote the article, can no longer defend. I know you really believe you are the "Chosen People" as to what you were chosen for remains to be seen. "Reap what you sow"
Yehuda: Every square inch of land Israel invaded during the war it launched on 5 June 1967 (in violation of Eshkol’s cabled promise to President Johnson to give Washington until at least 11 June to pursue a diplomatic solution to the crisis with Egypt) and has occupied since, including East Jerusalem and its illegally expanded boundaries, is illegally and belligerently occupied and in violation of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention (as well as the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) all agreed to by Israel
The settlements are indeed in flagrant violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (12 August 1949) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Paragraph 6 of Article 49 provides: "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." As a UN member, Israel is a signatory to the Fourth Geneva Convention which it ratified in 1952.
In addition to previous resolutions, mandatory UN Security Council Resolution 446 (22 March 1979), “[Affirms] once more that the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949 is applicable to the Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem,
“1. Determines that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East;
“3. Calls once more upon Israel, as the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, to rescind its previous measures and to desist from taking any action which would result in changing the legal status and geographical nature and materially affecting the demographic composition of the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and, in particular, not to transfer parts of its own civilian population into the occupied Arab territories;…”
Mandatory Security Council Resolution 465 (1 March 1980) "determines that all measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, or any part thereof, have no legal validity and that Israel's policy and practices of settling parts of its population and new immigrants in those territories constitute a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and also constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East."
Security Council Resolution 476 (June 30, 1980) "Reaffirms the overriding necessity to end the prolonged occupation of Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem."
Further underscoring the illegality of the settlements, Part 2, Article 8, section B, paragraph viii of the Rome Statue of the International Court (1998) defines "the transfer directly or indirectly by the Occupying power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies" as a War Crime, indictable by the International Criminal Court.
Under international law Israel is a belligerent occupier of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. This is due to the fact that it is only through the entry of its armed forces during the 1967 war and their continued presence that Israel has been able to control and exercise authority over these territories.
In an opinion presented to the U.S. Congress on 21 April 1978 regarding the legal status of Israeli settlements, the Legal Adviser of the State Department declared that "the civilian settlements in the territories occupied by Israel do not appear to be consistent with [the] limits on Israel’s authority as belligerent occupant in that they do not seem intended to be of limited duration or established to provide orderly government of the territories and, though some may serve incidental security purposes, they do not appear to be required to meet military needs during the occupation."
The contention on the part of Israel’s supporters that "the principles of belligerent occupation, including Article 49, paragraph 6 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, may not apply to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip because Jordan and Egypt were not the respective legitimate sovereigns of these territories" is without foundation: As the Legal Adviser of the Department of State advised the Congress, in its opinion "…those principles [of belligerent occupation] appear applicable whether or not Jordan and Egypt possessed legitimate sovereign rights in respect of those territories. Protecting the reversionary interest of an ousted sovereign is not their sole or essential purpose; the paramount purposes are protecting the civilian population of an occupied territory and reserving permanent territorial changes, if any, until settlement of the conflict."
The Legal Adviser to the Department of State also declared: "While Israel may undertake, in the occupied territories, actions necessary to meet its military needs and to provide for orderly government during the occupation, for the reasons indicated above the establishment of the civilian settlements in those territories is inconsistent with international law."
On 24 February 2004, the U.S. State Department reaffirmed its earlier position in a report entitled Israel and the Occupied Territories, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: "Israel occupied the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights after the 1967 War.... The international community does not recognize Israel's sovereignty over any part of the occupied territories."
In 2004, both the U.N. Security Council and the General Assembly again declared the Palestinian Territories to be “occupied” as a matter of law. UNSC Resolution 1544 (19 May 2004) "reiterate[s] the obligation of Israel, the occupying power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations and responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilian persons in time of war..." Resolution 1544 also expresses the Security Council's "grave concern at the continued deterioration of the situation on the ground occupied by Israel since 1967."
United Nations General Assembly resolution 58/292 (17 May 2004) affirms “that the status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, remains one of military occupation.”
Although it selectively enforces international law regarding the activities of Jewish troops therein, even Israel's Supreme Court routinely refers to the Palestinian Territories as "occupied." In 1979, for example, the Israeli Supreme Court stated: "This is a situation of belligerency and the status of [Israel] with respect to the occupied territory is that of an Occupying Power."
In June, 2004, the Israeli Supreme Court reaffirmed that the Territories are occupied under international law: “Since 1967, Israel has been holding [the Palestinian Territories] in belligerent occupation.”
Significantly, an article published in the New York Times (10 March 2006) revealed that the government of Levi Eshkol knew from the very beginning that the establishment of settlements in lands Israel invaded and occupied during the 1967 war (including Syria's Golan Heights) was illegal:
"The legal counsel of the Foreign Ministry, Theodor Meron, was asked whether international law allowed settlement in the newly conquered land. In a memo marked 'Top Secret,' Meron wrote unequivocally: 'My conclusion is that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.'”
On 9 July 2004, in its ruling declaring Israel’s construction of the so-called Separation Wall (known to most of the world as the Apartheid/Annexation wall) to be illegal under international law (unless built along Israel’s side of the “green line”), the World Court also declared the West Bank and East Jerusalem/the Old City to illegally and belligerently occupied.
Israel long ago became what it most hated... They learned from the best ! It is not a land of peace...
David, read on and learn:
Settlements are Not Illegal: The settlements are not located in "occupied territory." The last binding international legal instrument which divided the territory in the region of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza was the League of Nations Mandate, which explicitly recognized the right of Jewish settlement in all territory allocated to the Jewish national home in the context of the British Mandate. These rights under the British Mandate were preserved by the successor organization to the League of Nations, the United Nations, under Article 49 of the UN Charter.
The West Bank and Gaza are disputed, not occupied, with both Israel and the Palestinians exercising legitimate historical claims. There was no Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza Strip prior to 1967. Jews have a deep historic and emotional attachment to the land and, as their legal claims are at least equal to those of Palestinians, it is natural for Jews to build homes in communities in these areas, just as Palestinians build in theirs.
The territory of the West Bank and Gaza Strip was captured by Israel in a defensive war, which is a legal means to acquire territory under international law. In fact, Israel's seizing the land in 1967 was the only legal acquisition of the territory this century: the Jordanian occupation of the West Bank from 1947 to 1967, by contrast, had been the result of an offensive war in 1948 and was never recognized by the international community, including the Arab states, with the exception of Great Britain and Pakistan.
The Settlements are Consistent with Resolution 242
Many observers incorrectly assume that UN Security Council Resolution 242 requires a full Israeli withdrawal from the land Israel captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Some may have a hidden agenda aimed at depriving Israel of any legal rights whatsoever in the disputed areas. In either case, they use this misinterpretation to conclude that settlement activity is unlawful because it perpetuates an "illegal" Israeli occupation.
The assumption and the conclusion are deeply flawed. Resolution 242 calls for only an undefined withdrawal from a portion of the land -- and only to the extent required by "secure and recognized boundaries." Israel has already withdrawn from the majority of the land it had captured, and nearly all of the areas in which it retains communities are essential to "secure and recognized boundaries." The specific location of Israeli settlements was determined by Israel's Ministry of Defense over the last 30 years, not by the settlers themselves, and they were set up in order to strengthen Israel's presence in those few areas from which it cannot, militarily, afford to withdraw.
The Settlements are Consistent with the Geneva Conventions
In three recent emergency special sessions of the UN General Assembly, Israeli settlement was cited as a violation of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention. These international humanitarian instruments, forged in the ashes of the Holocaust to prevent future genocidal brutality and oppression, were never invoked in 50 years until the case of condominium construction in Jerusalem during 1998. Was such construction -- any settlement construction -- a violation of the Geneva Convention?
No. The relevant clause, Article 49, prohibits the "occupying power" from transferring population into the "occupied territory." Aside from the fact that the territory is not occupied, but disputed, Morris Abrams, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, had pointed out that the clause refers to the forcible transfer of large populations. By contrast, the settlements involve the voluntary movement of civilians. The U.S. Department of State, accordingly, does not view Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention as applicable to settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. For that reason, the official U.S. position has been over the years that settlements are legal, even though successive administrations have criticized them on political grounds.
Jay, here are some of my thoughts. And thank you for such a frank personal essay.
This is an essay about midlife - love - and rediscovering what love really is, rather than about politics. Most of political life - particularly when we speak of such things as "love" of a place comes from inside of us. In fact, human love does as well.
I may be presumptious here, Jay, but I invite you to consider that what you are going through is a process of giving up an idealized love. All of us go through it in one way or another, whether it has to do with a career, a spouse or the love of our fair country - Israel.
She deserves to be loved. But loved as a real entity. Not as some moment of youth. And so, I wonder if you are ready for stage two, which is reengaging her, getting to know her again and accepting her flaws, God knows your friends, the countries they admire and their relationships are filled with crap.
Why don't you go back for a year. Take your family. Reengage as an adult does with another adult. But don't simply distance. Then lethargy wins - and the Jewish people with all are flaws have never been about lethargy.
Finally, think about the Palestinians, your liberal friends and others who have distain for Israel. How long ago did they fall in love with their liberalism and contempt for Western excesses without being able to look at their own. You may be giving up an idealized view of the world, but our enemies have not. They have the weak approach of lumping Israel together with the worst of what has happened in modern history. In a way, their infantile thinking has a power which has worn you down. Don't let it. You probably loved for a good reason deep down. Don't give up on it.
About the posts: I am so impressed with the passion expressed in these notes. And passion speaks of a love many of us have for this vital and flawed nation that we call Israel. History tells us that we are priviledged to be alive in a generation that can even consider the questions, love and confusion expressed by Jay.
"I understand Jay. Excuse us for living. Jews have no human rights. We should move to california or just roll over and die."
Or how about the Rochild family blow up Jew York in order to encourage more jews to move to Israel? Would that be ok with you, my little zionist punkin;=))?
http://www.adolfthegreat.com/Trails-Trivia/trivia-JewsForHitler.html
Etan: Lack of time and inclination compel me to be brief. Your response is nonsensical in its entirety. Apart from misinterpreting the League of Nations British Mandate and the UN Charter (e.g. in 1948, Jews owned a mere 5% of Palestine and incidentally, only one half of one percent of East Jerusalem/the Old City), as well as UNSC Res. 242 which "[emphasizes] the inadmissibility of the acquistion of territory by war" (in accordance with the UN Charter), you have failed utterly to respond to the documentation that I provided that proves beyond doubt to any reasonable person that every square centimeter of land that Israel invaded in June 1967 is "occupied" under international law. Apparently, in your view the UN Security Council, the Legal Advisor to the State Dept., Israel's Supreme Court, Theodor Meron, the legal counsel of Israel's Foreign Ministry in 1967, as well as the World Court, et al. are all in error and do not understand the law.
BTW, Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban revealed at the time that he realized Resolution 242 calls for Israel’s complete withdrawal: “The words ‘in the recent conflict’ convert the principle of eliminating occupation into a mathematically precise formula for restoring the June 4 [1967] Map.” (Comment by Foreign Minister of Israel and Telegram 3164, UK Mission in New York to Foreign Office, 12 Nov 1967. FO961/24) Indeed, During negotiations to determine Resolution 242’s wording, Abba Eban failed in an attempt to delete the phrase “in the recent conflict.”
Moshe Dayan also understood that Resolution 242 calls for full withdrawal and urged the government to reject it. In June 1968, during a closed session of the Labor Party, he counseled against endorsing Resolution 242 as "it means withdrawal to the 4 June [1967] boundaries, and because we are in conflict with the SC [Security Council] on that resolution." (Daniel Dishon (ed.), Middle East Record, v. 4, 1968, Jerusalem: 1973), p. 247)
In short you have no case whatsoever. Unless, of course, you can provide me with a provision in international law that renders Israel exempt from international law.
I have no desire to continue debating you. You are a classic "true believer" and as such, incapable of accepting the truth.
Not a mention that the western wall is nothing to do with being jewish, whatever that is, nothing about the suffering of Palestinians as human beings, just a self-serving whine.
Get over it.
The world is disgusted with Israel, not because of the jews, but because of their brutal illegal occupation of Palestine.
I grew up in a Zionist youth movement... lived on kibbutz... did ulpan... toured Israel. It was fun and fascinating. But from a very young age I had an implicit sense of mistrust and foreboding around this notion of "loving" Israel, how we're supposed to have this deep emotional relationship with "her". Israel is a state. A modern nation-state, founded in war and conquest -- ask Jabotinsky if you think I'm using loaded language -- and most importantly, founded by HUMANS. It has a government, a bureaucracy, an army, all populated by mortal human beings. It has an economy; it imports and exports goods. It makes decisions strategically, based on its own perceived self-interest. It has allies and enemies. In other words? It's a country like any other. Oh: no, one difference. "My" people live there. Okay. Fine. So what? It's a country, like Uganda is a country, and like Canada is a country, and like Iceland is a country, except Israel is a country full of, founded by, and intended for Jews. The notion that this is supposed to fill me with the kind of agitated emotional turbulence (all kinds of exotic pronouncements of love) that you usually hear about in Celine Dion songs is kind of strange to me, and bodes very badly.
It's one thing to love a land. I love the land I'm from (Western Canada.) I love it deeply. It has a character all its own, and vast reserves of natural beauty that are ancient and have their own wisdom.
But a person can love more than just geography or topography. I love New York City, for instance. I love how it's built, how it feels, and the things that are possible there that aren't possible anywhere else (e.g. giving birth to things like hip-hop and Bob Dylan's career.)
And I think it's EVEN legitimate to love one's people. I love being Jewish. I love the traditions, the rich heritage of thought and culture, the humor, the unique perspective on the world. These are real aspects of being Jewish -- certainly they're not the only aspects, but they're the ones that resonate with me.
However, when "love" gets attached to an IDEA, that's when I fear we're on dangerous ground. And a good many "lovers of Israel" are actually lovers of "Israel", the idea, the abstraction. They will defend that idea against all encroachment, including that of reality. ("Because reality," as Stephen Colbert brilliantly quipped, "has a well-known liberal bias.") They will defend that idea EVEN IF IT MEANS DESTROYING THE ACTUAL THING THE IDEA IS ABOUT. That is called fanaticism. It's always self-destructive. And it's a human phenomenon. We Jews didn't invent it. We've suffered on the receiving end of its evils over the centuries, that's for sure. But woe be to us if we think we're immune to it.
That's why those who cry "self-hater!" are, like Joe Wilson crying "you lie!", merely projecting their own emotions onto others. They know on some level that they're very afraid, and that they need their "Israel" idea to remain intact or they risk feeling totally vulnerable. And that is a kind of self-hatred, shared by the anti-Semite and the fanatical Zionist alike: it says "Jews are not welcome in this world, therefore we must become as callous as 'them'."
Now, I'm not talking about people who actually love Israel, the society, the land, the community of people, the rich tapestry of contradictions and difficulties, warts and all. (Probably for most Jews, there's a mix of both kinds of love.) That kind of love can be healthy. It acknowledges nuance. It also acknowledges that change is possible -- that a healthier, happier, more built-to-last Israel could be built. That kind of love imbues people with the courage needed to face the truth, because it contains compassion. Not selective compassion that holds Jews above Arabs. Compassion for our shared humanity, AND a commitment to a thriving Jewish society that expresses our humanity in a uniquely Jewish way. That kind of love could actually save Israel. The first kind is almost certainly going to destroy it.
David, this is for you
http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp495.htm
David,
Thanks for your discussion of international law. (You did take a course on the modern Middle East.)
I've been citing Theodor Meron's opinion, because that's what the Israeli government admitted to itself in private.
The UN rulings are also part of International law, which Israel agreed to follow, but many hard-liners reject UN rulings entirely. But even if you reject the UN's interpretation, it's hard to dismiss the Israeli government's own interpretation.
The problem with most of the comments is the fact that they treat the problem from Jewish-Zionist point of view. I was born in Tel Aviv-Palestine i.e before 1948 and started school in 1951.I was raised and educated to be a good zionist and believed in everything i was told.(We asked the Palestinians to stay but the left on their own free will).Only in my 20ies i started asking naive questions-if they left on their own free will and "we" asked them to stay why,on earth,we refuse to let them return ??? I started my own research only to find out that Zionism is a colonialist movement that ethnic cleansed Palestine inorder to establish the "Jewish state" Ethnic cleansing is going on until this very day and the Zionists will not sit still until Palestine is purely Jewish. The fact that I am a jew does not mean I have to automatically suport this process just because it is being run by Jews. On the contrary - Zionism does not represent Judaism or the Jewish people,it makes a jew living in the Diaspora a person with double loyalty(American jews sitting in US jails for spying for Israel)and because Israel commits war crimes and crimes against humanity (See the Goldstone report)Jews all over the world get the blame for these crimes because the so called "Jewish leadership " is a mouth piece for Israel and support openly the Israeli government. Israel has to be looked upon through "human ayes" not through "Jewish eyes". It is ok for a jew to criticise Israel without having to feel guilty about it (even if he/she did not take part in the zionist adventure) just as he/she was aloud to do so in the case of Appartheid in South Africa or racism in any other form and shape.
It's easy to see how one can lose a love of Israel: not have a strong Jewish identity to begin with, and then swallow all the Arab propaganda there is.
And this so close to the Day of Atonement! This was painful to read - not just as a Jew, but as a Jewish mother. His own must be in agony.
"On a recent trip to Berlin, I remarked to a friend that I felt more relaxed there than in Jerusalem. Part of it was that Berlin is a liberal city, and part of it was that I didn’t have to be frisked every time I walked into a cafe. But mostly, I think, I felt relaxed because while there was certainly plenty of political baggage around, none of it was mine."
Interesting point - why not just make Germany your new Israel and Berlin your new Jerusalem? This was the motto of the reform movement at the center of its creation.
The truth is that those Americans who come in and out of Israel for the high holidays get what Israel is really about more than you do with your hiking trips, I'm afraid.
You have to look inward this Yom Kippur and not ask what it means to be a supporter of Israel but what it means to be a Jew. If you're going to Israel for an emotional high in seeing the kotel and then running off to a shuk to get the "real experience," I'm afraid you might be missing a point. In Amidah everyday there's a prayer that talks about the building of Jerusalem...it's not past and it's not future tense - it's present. We are always building up Jerusalem - it's an ongoing process. How do we do it? Everytime your college friends lump Israel in with China or South Africa and you defend it, you're building Jerusalem back up. The life of a Jew is not supposed to be easy it's supposed to be meaningful. Easy is not Israel, as anyone who's ever had to drive there can attest to - we are not always a people synonmous with patience and kindliness - but we're trying.
If you want easy I'm afraid you should have stayed in Europe and skipped your three years in Israel.
Many Palestinians fled in 1948 because Arab states said they should get out of the way of the war until the new state was defeated. Others took flight to avoid the fighting. Instances did occur in which Jewish forces drove the Palestinians out of their homes and Palestinian civilians were killed. But these occurrences were comparatively rare and take place in all wars. Unquestionably, the prime responsibility lies with those who started the war-in this case the Arab states.
Yes, it's very difficult to retain "love" for Israel, given the atrocities perpetrated by Israel upon the people of Palestine; especially the Gazans. Yet, one can "love" the Jewish people, as a whole, while detesting both the government's actions AND that of the IDF. Of course, there are then the video reports of (few to some) "Settlers", too, that cause me to harken back to Nazi-Germany and the civilians of Germany at the time. I, personally, am thrilled over the "Goldstone" report (as it is being called) and I think Israel certainly needs to answer for their human-rights "errors". I don't know that Israel ever will, when I see some comments as I have read above, BUT, Isreal is surely NOT above any other nation when it comes to violating the International LAWS. When (all) Jews said, "Never again"; when the world agreed with them, nobody meant ONLY for Jews. Never again was intended to be in regard to ALL people on this earth..; for Jews, of ALL people, to commit such heinous crimes against an oppressed people for so many decades, I have to say it's well past time for this to stop, for Israel to BE stopped! Isreal needs to be forced back to the times of 1967, as far as land-ownership is concerned, and give back to Palestinians what was supposed to BE for Palestine. If that does not happen, I have absolutely NO hope for peace in the region.
No country would submit it's citizens to continuous land take overs where bulldozers destroy the buildings and people are driven out of their homes and their land taken from them. This is what Israel is doing to palestinians today.
How many of you would stand by idly watching as your family home is bulldozed and others take your land?
This is what more and more palestinians are forced to do every day as Israel is continuing to expand its area. There is no possibility for peace as long as Israel wages war and conquers land illegally.
No Real Jew can ever lose their love for Israel and the Jewish people unless they have converted to the new religion of the West, the Liberal Torah of secularism which glorifies abortion, homosexual marriage and the doctrine of Victimology which decrees that in any conflict between two parties it is always the perceived 'weaker' of the antagonists who is to be supported. no matter their responsibility for their present conditions.
''I admit that my exhaustion is exacerbated because, in my social circles, supporting Israel is like supporting segregation, apartheid or worse. I know this is a sign of weakness of will on my part..."
So, Jay, I think the answer is not to abandon Israel, but to find new friends. Respectfully, your essay seems to give a lot of credence to Anthony Julius's essay in Z Word, where he refers to Jewish criticism of Israel as the ''morality of vanity.'' At times you seem to almost admit that though Israel is largely right, your overriding concern is to be seen as ''progressive'' by your political circle.
Let me suggest that the problem isn't with Israel, its with what the word ''progressive'' has come to mean. Let me suggest that there's nothing at all progressive about demonizing the only Jewish state in the world - and one that, contrary to their enemies, upholds the liberal values that you, and your friends, constantly profess fealty towards.
Jay Michaelson, the latest failure of United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.
Wow, this really, really, really hits home. I lived in Tel Aviv over a year and the love for Israel is there, but I am pretty damn embarrassed now. This said it all perfectly.
Theonly occupiers and settlers are the Arab Fakestinians! There has never been a Palestinian country, people, language, or culture. These Arab terrorists are from Arabia and should go back!
END THE BRUTAL ARAB OCCUPTION OF JEWISH LAND! ARABS BACK TO THEIR HOMELAND OF ARABIA! ISRAEL BELONGS TO THE JEWS!
Correction: "2 million Arabs in Greater Israel" It's closer to 4 or 5 million in reality.
Thanks for writing what many in our generation are feeling Jay. The right-wing attacks that are a response are a reason that so many who agree with you end up feeling that they have no place in the Jewish community. So it is all the more important that your voice is published - to remind them that there are other thoughtful and engaged Jews who struggle with the policies/actions of the state of Israel but still have a deep love for their people.
Jay writes, "I am still awed by the tkuma, the resurrection and rebirth of my ancient people. And, yes, I feel like underscoring, I still support the State of Israel, its right to exist and the rest."
My response is, "Nu?"
If you really feel that way then you have to support defending the gains of the revolution. Israel still faces an existential threat to it's existence. And we have the right to defend ourselves against that threat (as Malcolm X would have put it), "by all means necessary".
The problem facing Jay, and many like him, is that they have been deflected from talking about the undeniable rights of the Jews to our homeland and the peaceful enjoyment of it. Instead they focus on the "real issue", i.e. Israel's supposed misdeeds. In being forced into this position they become unable to clearly see that it is in fact their friends on the left who have abandoned their principles and not the supporters of Israel.
Hey Jay -
why don't you just keep on keeping on with your writing and wonderful seminars in NY state etc. Meanwhile the Jews in Israel will be sad to see you not fully support us....but we will get over it. And move on.
You are just not as important as you seem to think you are.
"I admit that my exhaustion is exacerbated because, in my social circles, supporting Israel is like supporting segregation, apartheid or worse." Grow up and then learn how to deal with people who feed on propaganda. Don't groupthink. Don't be a follower. Grow a backbone and explain to people the REASONS why things happen. The Gaza and Lebanon attacks by Israel did not come out of nowhere. The wall did not happen just because someone got bored or because the notoriously corrupt Israeli government wanted to buy someone's cement...
Tell you friends to move to Sderot. Tell them to move to N. Israel and hope that their children do not die from a mortar or missile strike. Ask them to move to the border across from Juarez, Mexico, and imagine what their demands would be of our government if the wholesale slaughter of Mexicans moved to their neighborhood - not even TALKING about what we'd do if the cartels there started to shoot mortars at American homes... Would they be so calm as the Israels were, where they waited until after EIGHT THOUSAND projectiles hit Israel, over two dozen died and hundreds harmed? Would they be go hyper-Lefty then?
No, no they would not. Just like the wall around the West Bank did not happen with the first suicide mission - where a woman on a bus outside of Jerusalem grabbed the wheel of the bus, sending all 40+ people to a rocky death, hundreds of feet down the side of the mountain. Hell, the wall didn't start after the Sbarro bombing either...remember that one? The 11 year old girl's birthday party? Mr. Michaelson, if that was YOUR daughter, would you be so quick to feel such 'exhaustion' supporting Israel? I wonder.
Find a backbone. Find balance. Remind your Lefty (of which I am one) friends that there's a cause and effect relationship, and if they fall for propaganda, that makes them about as intelligent as the 14 year old mentally challenged boy that Hamas sent to a checkpoint to blow himself up. Luckily for you, you can learn to be balanced and honest with the situation, and lucky for all those at the checkpoint (before the wall was put in) that this boy was afraid to die in the end and they were able to talk him out of fulfilling his mission.
Idiocy leads to cowardice, and cowardice leads then to a closing of the circle back to stupidity. Don't be a coward - don't fall for the propaganda - get a backbone and speak out against the REASONS for why these things happen. Violence does not exist in a vacuum.
Mr. David ben Gurion in September 12,1937 said, "The Arabs will have to go.What we need is a pretext to make it happen, such as a war." And the Nakba followed in short order....and continued and continued and continued....
wow- what an incredibly provocative thing- to speak from the heart... and as many responses show, and anyone who reads the surveys showing young peoples sense of connection to israel, Jays hardship in just loving Israel is shared by not a few of us... to that, i really identified with the comment that talked about Love maturing from idealistic to "in it for the long haul-" which as we find out really does take hard work and constant renewal- of which this piece is a part. which leads to... to all those for whom Jays piece triggered a sense of "fair weather jew" and "ungrateful b----" - If reading a piece like this (which is emblematic of many of our holy people) I think we need to reflect on that space. There is undoubtedly some azut d'kdusha in there- "holy chutzpa," but... perhaps the truly Jewish response to hearing a confession from another Jew like this is to pray? (and Jay- please don't feel patronized by me advocating people praying for you--) to feel the pain of our people and the Shechina- of Knesset Yisrael- that our people are torn. the pain of what this world is- that instead of dwelling under our grape vines in peace we are stuck in the mire of a million serious thorns... In the religious Zionist world when the need to serve in the army came up- there arose a term- "l'chatchila b'diavad". It means- that it shouldn't have to be like this, but since it is- this is what must be done. Jay's sketch of his relationship to Israel- "yes, but no"-- "yeah, but" is a realistic expressino of l'chatchila b'diavad. And when we hear someone crying out from there- as Jewish people our first address goes to the Creator- the (Kol Yachol)Omnipotent- who is clearly present in Jays struggle and capable in a second of bringing about change and invigoration... Pray for our next generation to have strength and vision, and ways of manifesting their love for israel...
To Jay: (we met a few years ago in an attic in Nachlaot?) One of the things that you brought for questioning in your piece was the dreamlike vision of Israel-- that was nurtured in hatikva at summer camp and etc etc... That dream of Israel... so for sure that space must grow- but don't get carried away by the hyper-rationalist modernist shtick to do away with your lev. Without dreams..??? rav kook has a piece in Orot about imagination- (#5 under Eretz yisrael) What i wanted to say from the piece was this: that the imagination and the intellect hold together a chevruta- they act and react together and through the two of them comes the next step- the achievement of vision and manifestation of what our souls recognize and yearn for... but the truth is- when I opened the piece and reread it again- Rav Kook says something different- though maybe not unrelated to the dilemma of 1960s' Zionism that is out of reach for those growing up with the challenges of Intifada and anti-Israel propoganda blitz... what he says is: "The imagination of Eretz Yisrael is clear and , clean and pure and capable of allowing an expression of Divine truth, to manifest the highest desire- of the ideals of the holiest sanctities..." the imagination that is grown from outside the land of Israel is murky, clouded with darkness and unable to be the vessel from which can arise the vision of ideals freed from their entrappings. From the holding of the intellect and the imagination upon each other and acting one on the other one from the other...- " The paradoxes and challenges of Israel are in some ways hardest when viewed and addressed from across the oceans... Living in paradox means living, physically in the paradox? for all those who commented: "just get up and come" be a part of the tkuma- for it is surely still in dire need... maybe more than ever I think that Israel the country needs the contribution of each Jew to fully manifest- the torah and the mystical traditions are replete with the parallel between the people and the land-... American Jewry has tremendous things to learn and to teach in Israel- My heart goes out to trying to keep the fire alive in the diaspora- I don't think living in Israel means giving up on being a part of the world picture- if anything it gives us personally a better standing and a more grounded approach to being world citizens... It is a phenomenal gift and blessing to be born into an identity as rich and real as our own in the year 2009... May we all have strength of prayer and action, heart, humility and drive to fight the struggles that entails.... and to encourage each other along the way...
I never fully understood the Talmudic saying that one who lives outside of Israel has no God, until I contemplated this essay and the many responses to it. The agony of a long distance relationship is too difficult to sustain, even in the best of circumstances, let alone when one surrounds oneself with those for whom left-wing liberal ideology is more important than the life of the Jewish people. Love can be, as Pirkei Avot teaches, dependent upon something external or independent. The former is often not love, but rather an expression of satisfaction with what the beloved provides me. Over a quarter of a century ago, I decided that living with the Jewish people, in the Jewish homeland was to be my life's priority. Like any sensible person in any nation-state, I have my own disatifactions with past, current (and I'm sure future) gov't policies. Yet life is here, living with the Jewish people, helping to create and perpetuate the Jewish ideal of God's sanctuary on earth. (Unless they have found some paradise on earth unbeknowst to all others, I wonder how those who bemoan things from afar can stand the policies of their own untopias enough to stay where they do in fact live.) R. Kook wrote how those Zionists (non-religious) who didn't see the state as a means to the greater end of holiness would eventually come to hate the very thing that they created. I think that he has been proved correct. The state is not our goal--but it is (especially in light of last century's difficult lessons) a necessary but not sufficient piece of the whole. Those who want to prioritize career, inter-denominational friendships or ideology, will find it more difficult to commit to actually living here (I mean why snidely remark on the rich holiday visitors, when compared to those who have actually made aliyah, you might be seen as just as repugnent in your fair-weather visits, no?But why not cast stones if you can, eh?) But-if you want to commit, first and foremost to the Jewish people, there is but one place to do so. Come home, come home, embrace your land, your people, your life as it can be lived fully as a Jew. That is--if you dare!
Dear Jay, I am sorry to hear this heart-felt confession, and thank you for writing as my guess is that it is somehwat representative of others in your situation. And taking Robbie Gringras' advice, I'll try not "to communally crap on people who admit their heartfelt concerns about Israel." However, I would like to express my sadness to you. It seems from your essay that you actually do love Israel, but just don't like it very much right now. Yeah, you did a stint here which gives you some street cred, but at the moment it's kind of cramping your style so, in a mild eulogy you attempt to rid yourself of connection and responsibility. Sure, runaway. Go as far as Berlin (which you know evokes emotional eyebrow raising)and sit on its hip and fashionable strasses sipping espresso and being foreign. Would that we all just got up and left for the tolerant and liberal urban havens of Western Europe and NYC.
Do you think we like having to check our bags at every building? I just returned from traveling abroad and was brought back quickly to this reality. Of course we don't. Do you think that we, as soldiers, enjoy or take pleasure in standing at checkpoints, and having to deliberate the human rights vs. civil rights calculation??? Of course not, but we do so in order for people like you to come and drink limonana and picnic in hurshat hayareah, and yes, even visit the kotel - however annoying and cheesy that may be.
Some of us just don't have that luxury. Are you arguing for a full dismantling of the State of Israel? I doubt it. Israel for you is like a friend who you sometimes visit, and now you and that friend are kind of growing apart right now. You're in to different things, have come under different influences. But for others of us, we have committed ourselves to living here. Israel is family. And we don't always agree, see eye-to-eye or even like family, but we don't just write them off because they kind of rub us the wrong way or it gets tiresome defending us to the intolerant masses. Interestingly enough, I doubt you would never say such words about the USA. You survived 8 years of the Bush administration without so much as a divorce, and all your feelings of America (whether you are critical or supportive) come from a sense of belonging and even sub-conscious loyalty. It's so convenient to criticize "someone else's children" yet it is even more difficult to make change from within.
By the way, I live a stones throw away from your beloved Hurshat HaYareah. As a matter of fact, I went jogging through it this morning. Even though you might not come by for a visit it, or are exhausted by the idea of defending my right to live here, I just want to let you know that it's still here and will be waiting for you to renew your love/ignore relationship with it.
B'vracha, Josh Weinberg Jerusalem, Israel
Dear Jay, I am sorry to hear this heart-felt confession, and thank you for writing as my guess is that it is somehwat representative of others in your situation. And taking Robbie Gringras' advice, I'll try not "to communally crap on people who admit their heartfelt concerns about Israel." However, I would like to express my sadness to you. It seems from your essay that you actually do love Israel, but just don't like it very much right now. Yeah, you did a stint here which gives you some street cred, but at the moment it's kind of cramping your style so, in a mild eulogy you attempt to rid yourself of connection and responsibility. Sure, runaway. Go as far as Berlin (which you know evokes emotional eyebrow raising)and sit on its hip and fashionable strasses sipping espresso and being foreign. Would that we all just got up and left for the tolerant and liberal urban havens of Western Europe and NYC.
Do you think we like having to check our bags at every building? I just returned from traveling abroad and was brought back quickly to this reality. Of course we don't. Do you think that we, as soldiers, enjoy or take pleasure in standing at checkpoints, and having to deliberate the human rights vs. civil rights calculation??? Of course not, but we do so in order for people like you to come and drink limonana and picnic in hurshat hayareah, and yes, even visit the kotel - however annoying and cheesy that may be.
Some of us just don't have that luxury. Are you arguing for a full dismantling of the State of Israel? I doubt it. Israel for you is like a friend who you sometimes visit, and now you and that friend are kind of growing apart right now. You're in to different things, have come under different influences. But for others of us, we have committed ourselves to living here. Israel is family. And we don't always agree, see eye-to-eye or even like family, but we don't just write them off because they kind of rub us the wrong way or it gets tiresome defending us to the intolerant masses. Interestingly enough, I doubt you would never say such words about the USA. You survived 8 years of the Bush administration without so much as a divorce, and all your feelings of America (whether you are critical or supportive) come from a sense of belonging and even sub-conscious loyalty. It's so convenient to criticize "someone else's children" yet it is even more difficult to make change from within.
By the way, I live a stones throw away from your beloved Hurshat HaYareah. As a matter of fact, I went jogging through it this morning. Even though you might not come by for a visit it, or are exhausted by the idea of defending my right to live here, I just want to let you know that it's still here and will be waiting for you to renew your love/ignore relationship with it.
B'vracha, Josh Weinberg Jerusalem, Israel
it is very interesting to read an American Jew point of view about Israel but i really can't understand your attraction to this awful place maybe it is because i have spent all my life in that city, but Jerusalem you describe and imagine doesn't exist for allot more then a decade. it always was a city of separation and neglect. of kosher sushi bars and steakhouses in garbage ridden street, of old crumbling palaces used as national insurance offices. there is nothing magical about that city. so please if you still have any need to defend this country, don't! this land is dieing out of neglect and abuse. if the land is to heal, the trees to grow again and people to live in peace, real peace. you must do the opposite of defending, the opposite of loving.
Gad Yariv, Jerusalem, Israel
During that period in history when Hitler was forcing Emigration out of Germany, he ran into a quandry. He wanted the Jews , after their possesions were confiscated, to emigrate to other countries in Europe. He also wanted the jews to emigrate to Palistine. Europe didn't want Jews, who would compete in the workforce, had no possessions and had a big "J" on their travel papers, to enter their countries in large numbers. Another problem that was of concern to Hitler, was the fact that he did not want too many Jews to enter Palestine for fear that if a Jewish state were created, such a country would change the political chemstry of the world. Now the State of israel is a fact. We are no longer mongrels finding homes in other countries, without a country of our own. Jews are still living in a dangerouly pedjudicial and discrimanatory world. Make no mistake about it Jews, your fat will fry Should anything happen to Israel no matter how "good" and rightous you think you are,just take a look at your values, culture and other fine qualities of your heritage and smell the stink of the world around you. To put it straight forward don't shoot yourself in the foot or don't do what even amimals don't do , don't crap where you eat. You support Israel, disagree with policies if you wish, but you better damned well support her every chance you get.
Jay, thank you for putting this out there. I read in it an enduring love for Israel, a real love that allows for genuine thought and emotion.
The responses to this article amplify the crux of the problem: If Jews can't listen to each other's pain, but only vilify the Jew with whom they disagree, we have failed in the basic mitzvah of "v'ahavtah l're'acha camocha." We have stopped seeing the essential humanity of our own people. A schande, and time to do teshuvah.
There are many ways to love Israel. And anytime we love passionately, we risk pain and risk falling out of love to some degree. Maintaining love for Israel is a challenge in its on-going political crisis. Maintaining an unimpeded love for the United States was brutally hard for me during the years of the Bush regime.
For those who see and feel things differently from Jay: If you can't speak persuasively and simply of your love for Israel, but only spew angry rhetoric about Jay's experience, what kind of testimony is that to your love?
What a bunch of self indulgent pap. The very existence of Israel is at stake and you worry about how you feel. You luxuriate in an orgy of navel gazing with Only a passing mention about rockets raining down on Israel from Gaza, about the number of terrorist attacks against Israel about the indoctrination of Palestinian and other Arab children with the most blatant anti-Jewish propganda. If you cannot see the unremitting hatred of Jews emanating from the entire Arab Middle East and much of the Non Arab Middle East (Iranians are not Arabs), then you really need to get your glasses checked. Israel does what it needs to do to survive and it is not always pretty. What do you suggest, that they tear down the wall, withdraw from the "occupied territories" and stop defending themselves? Of course, you didn't say that. Those are the dirty details that you don't want to have to engage in. Rather, you want to sit on a cliff looking at the scenery and occasionally throw rocks at the people who make the hard decisions to defend Israel. Certainly that seems a more attractive alternative, just as many, when Hitler took over German, wanted to pretend that, really, everything was going to be okay. What is really sad is that I am a gentile and I love Israel more than you. Yes, I have never visited Israel but I know that the claims of the Jews to a homeland are not random. Israel is the historic home of the Jews. The names and places in Israel are echoed throughout our country, given in honor of the G-d and people of what I call the Old Testament. Salem was short for Jerusalem. It is not a Disneyland to be visited for amusement. It is a country Of great historic importance. Your dithering in the face of the threats which face Israel is unconscionable.
Dear Jay, I am sorry to hear that your circles are essentially fascist. If you think that betraying your Jewish brothers will help you to survive among those little eichmanns, then you do not know history. They hate Israel not because what Israel does to Arab terrorists, but because they are looking for excuse for the oldest mental disease, namely Jew-hatred. They despise you even more than they hate Jews who do not try to hide who they are. So if you feel that it is impossible to stand for truth in your circles, probably you should change circles.
Do any of you read the word of G-D, and what he says about us and Israel?
Anguish and frustration, is in the voice of G-D when you read Ezekiel 12:17-28
12:17 the word of the LORD came to me: Mortal, eat your bread with quaking, and drink your water with trembling and with fearfulness; and say to the people of the land, Thus says the LORD G-D concerning the inhabitants of Jerusalem in the land of Israel: They shall eat their bread with fearfulness, and drink their water in dismay, because their land shall be stripped of all it contains, on account of the violence of all those who live in it...... verse 21 The word of the LORD came to me: Mortal, what is this proverb of yours about the land of Israel, which says, "The days are prolonged, and every vision comes to nothing:" Tell them therefore, "Thus says the LORD G-D: I will put and end to this proverb, and they shall use it no more as a proverb in Israel." But say to them, The days are near, and the fulfillment of every vision..... None of my words will be delayed any longer, but the word that I speak will be fulfilled, says the LORD G-D.
People then and now, same old same old, they laughed at him as a scaremonger and a doomsday Johnny. They said his message simply was NOT TRUE and in any case, was similar to warnings from the past that had given needless cause for alarm.
Better take a good look at actual course of events now. Sometimes nothing can be more unwelcome to hear than the truth!
m. othm The World belongs to G-D and mankind are here in their generation for a short time, death comes to all flesh. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, but Spirit to spirit. And when the shit hits the fans so to speak, the Spirit will take her holy children with her to the Almighty, into the new world.
People, want to laugh and say it is ridiculous, reject as untrue, or more subtly respected as true but nonetheless dismissed as only relevant to a more distant time. All such responses are simply eccuses for not facing up to reality.
The prophet Jeremiah experienced similar difficulties, as did Michah at an earlier time.
Ezekiel references to false proghets, to woman who injoyed any kind of officially approved status. He speaks of rituals and practices that we usually associate more with magic. Today, more than ever it is out their, and in bed time tales, for the very yound. You see people having amulets and bands on their arms, So, Ezekiel's impatience and hostility toward false men and women prophets can be readily understood. It is no time for cheap remedies and glib assurances when the very existence of Israel as a nation was being threatened, inside and out.
This is the Visit of the Elders....Ezekiel 14:1-14 read please.
Ezekiel 14:1 Certain elders of Israel come to me and sat down before me. And the word of the LORD came to me: Mortal, these men have taken their idols into their hearts, and placed their iniquity as a stumbling block before them; shall I let myself be consulted by them? Therefore speak to them, and say to them, Thus says the LORD G-D: Any of those of the house of Israel who take their idols into their hearts and place their iniquity as a stumbling block before them, and yet come to the prophet I the LORD will answer those who come with the multitude of their idols, in order that I may take hold of the hearts of the house of Israel, all of whom are estranged form me through their idols.
Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the LORD G-D: REPENT AND TURN away from your idols; and turn away your faces from all your adominations.....
If a prophet is deceived and speaks a word, I, the LORD, have deceived that proghet, and I will stretch out my hand against him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel. and they shall bear their punishment.... The word of the LORD came to me: Mortal, when a land sins against me by acting faithlessly, and I stretch out my hand against it, and break its staff of bread and send famine upon it, and cut off from it human beings and animals, even if Noah, Daniel, and Job, these three, were in it, they would save only their own lives by their righteousness, says the LORD G-D...
For thus says the LORD G-D: how much more when I send upon Jerusalem my four deadly acts of judjment, sword, famine, wild animals, and pestilence, to cut off humnas and animals from it! Yet survivors shall be left in it, sons and daughters who will be brought out; they will come out to you. when you see thir ways and their deeds, you will be consoled form the evil that I have brought upon Jerusalem, for all that I have brought upon it... and you shall know that it was not without cause that I did all that I have done in it, says the LORD G-D.
Ezekiel is suggesting it would of been a form of spiritual idolatry, which is meant by taking---"their idols into their hearts" money, all typs of sin, loving that more than G-D, not putting sin out so G-D could rest upon them and the land. G-D will not be defiled.
'I admit that my exhaustion is exacerbated because, in my social circles, supporting Israel is like supporting segregation, apartheid or worse.'
Whiny claptrap. You have no backbone and no moral clarity. You clearly run in a similarly whiny, weak, self-loathing social circle that feels itself morally superior to those of us who are not ashamed to be Jews and who openly fight for and defend Israel.
Judaism woud have died long out before if it had had defenders like you. Since you have no historical, or religious, understanding of who the Jewish people are, you may as well stop identifying yourself as a Jew and pick some other group in which you can declare yourself a member. You are are a disgrace.
I remember reading about Peter Bergson. He came to the US to fight for the establishment of Israel, but something bigger diverted him: The death of his fellow Jews. So, he turned his attention into saving them. Unfortunately, and for some unknown reason, Rabbi Stephen Wise, instead of putting aside political differences & joining in this fight to save Jewish life, sought to belittle Bergson's outcry & impeded his efforts. Wise parsed words, painted Bergson as kind of a Jewish Nazi & campaigned to misinform the public & the US administration.
Harry Truman once said that there is nothing new in history, but that which you do not know. It seems to me that history is kind of repeating itself again.
Mr. Michaelson, with all due respect, because I would never be disrespectful of anyone, Israel, the Jewish people are in trouble & you dare to write such an article.
If you are so concerned about the Palestinian Arabs having a state, then why was not this article yelling & bemoaning Abbas (& Arafat before him) to finally accept the Israeli offers for statehood? Why are you parsing words about "being against settlements" when Israel had an agreement with the US about settlements, about which Obama reneged. Moreover, your fellow "liberal Jew" Ehud Barak said very specifically, that "natural growth" (that which had been agreed upon) was infinitesimal & made up with land adjustments.
If you are so appalled about a wall & checkpoints, why are you not going ballistic about about the people shooting rockets to stop? (I hope you remember your article the next time you board on a plane in the US or go inside a building with its "walls" & "check points" to make sure another 9/11 doesn't happen again.)
If you are so afraid of "losing your love Israel" you need to wake up & smell the coffee that you could "lose Israel" because there is a country developing a nuclear weapon & its intent & aim is to harm Israel. So, why in the world are you not beating your chest for the world to stop Iran?
If you are so moved about justice, then how can you not scream out about the misinformation of the Human Rights Council's fountain of propagranda in its Goldstone report that is going to be used to harm Israel?
Mr. Michaelson, you have a choice. You can act like a Rabbi Stephen Wise (& his name is certainly an oxymoron because he neither acted like a teacher of the truth nor very wisely) or a Peter Bergson.
Yale law professor, Eugene W Rostow was USA Undersecretary-of-State for polictical affairs between 1966 and 1969. He played a leading role in producing UN resolution 242. In an article in 1991 http://www.take-a-pen.org/english/Articles/Art13122003.htm he lays out the legal and historical basis for Jewish settlements.
Before 1967, those hostile to the jewish people regarded all of Israel as "illegal jewish settlement". After 1967, the bleating of "illegal jewish settlement" focussed on areas beyond the 1967 borders. Jewish settlement is not an obstacle to peace with Israel. Even when Gaza was made Judenrein by expelling 8000 Jews, this brought no peace - in fact it increased the Arab appetite for hostility as the withdrawal was interpreted as weakness. The israeli public who have always yearned for peace and were willing to take risks to achieve it, have learned the hard way that there is no point any long being a sucker ("freier") in regard to conflict with Arabs who are more intent on bringing down the only jewish state than in building up any palestinian arab state. The jewish state continues forward. If some american jews find it more comfortable to rationalize a hostile dissassociation or a waffling distancing from Israel, this is unfortunate. But they are the major losers. Israel will prevail.
Yale law professor, Eugene W Rostow was USA Undersecretary-of-State for polictical affairs between 1966 and 1969. He played a leading role in producing UN resolution 242. In an article in 1991 http://www.take-a-pen.org/english/Articles/Art13122003.htm he lays out the legal and historical basis for Jewish settlements.
Before 1967, those hostile to the jewish people regarded all of Israel as "illegal jewish settlement". After 1967, the bleating of "illegal jewish settlement" focussed on areas beyond the 1967 borders. Jewish settlement is not an obstacle to peace with Israel. Even when Gaza was made Judenrein by expelling 8000 Jews, this brought no peace - in fact it increased the Arab appetite for hostility as the withdrawal was interpreted as weakness. The israeli public who have always yearned for peace and were willing to take risks to achieve it, have learned the hard way that there is no point any long being a sucker ("freier") in regard to conflict with Arabs who are more intent on bringing down the only jewish state than in building up any palestinian arab state. The jewish state continues forward. If some american jews find it more comfortable to rationalize a hostile dissassociation or a waffling distancing from Israel, this is unfortunate. But they are the major losers. Israel will prevail.
Yale law professor, Eugene W Rostow was USA Undersecretary-of-State for polictical affairs between 1966 and 1969. He played a leading role in producing UN resolution 242. In an article in 1991 http://www.take-a-pen.org/english/Articles/Art13122003.htm he lays out the legal and historical basis for Jewish settlements.
Before 1967, those hostile to the jewish people regarded all of Israel as "illegal jewish settlement". After 1967, the bleating of "illegal jewish settlement" focussed on areas beyond the 1967 borders. Jewish settlement is not an obstacle to peace with Israel. Even when Gaza was made Judenrein by expelling 8000 Jews, this brought no peace - in fact it increased the Arab appetite for hostility as the withdrawal was interpreted as weakness. The israeli public who have always yearned for peace and were willing to take risks to achieve it, have learned the hard way that there is no point any long being a sucker ("freier") in regard to conflict with Arabs who are more intent on bringing down the only jewish state than in building up any palestinian arab state. The jewish state continues forward. If some american jews find it more comfortable to rationalize a hostile dissassociation or a waffling distancing from Israel, this is unfortunate. But they are the major losers. Israel will prevail.
Yale law professor, Eugene W Rostow was USA Undersecretary-of-State for polictical affairs between 1966 and 1969. He played a leading role in producing UN resolution 242. In an article in 1991 http://www.take-a-pen.org/english/Articles/Art13122003.htm he lays out the legal and historical basis for Jewish settlements.
Before 1967, those hostile to the jewish people regarded all of Israel as "illegal jewish settlement". After 1967, the bleating of "illegal jewish settlement" focussed on areas beyond the 1967 borders. Jewish settlement is not an obstacle to peace with Israel. Even when Gaza was made Judenrein by expelling 8000 Jews, this brought no peace - in fact it increased the Arab appetite for hostility as the withdrawal was interpreted as weakness. The israeli public who have always yearned for peace and were willing to take risks to achieve it, have learned the hard way that there is no point any long being a sucker ("freier") in regard to conflict with Arabs who are more intent on bringing down the only jewish state than in building up any palestinian arab state. The jewish state continues forward. If some american jews find it more comfortable to rationalize a hostile dissassociation or a waffling distancing from Israel, this is unfortunate. But they are the major losers. Israel will prevail.
Jay's conflict is understandable and sad. It is the conflict between a nation that is not only surviving but progressing and the "ego-ideal" that always accompanies us in life. America is hardly a paragon of virtue and Americans kill innocent Iraqis and Afghans, but no one kvetches or angst about his or her love for America. Actually, most of these reflective types are happily living in the USA. Imperfection is inherent in the human condition. I don't apologize or try to defend/explain the fact that more Palestinians were killed than people in Sederot. Actually, the propaganda effect of Molotov cocktails versus tanks doesn't disturb me. This is not an intellectual debate; it is a war and I'm thankful that we have replaced the old Molotov cocktails of the War of Liberation with Merkavah tanks.
Jay Michaelson is a text-book case of the psychiatric illness known as The Stockholm Syndrome. After years of exposure to the mental strain and pressure of the seemingly never-ending Middle-East wars and political struggle, Jay has become psychologically overwhelmed, and has decided to throw his lot with the enemy in the hope that his mental anguish will be assuaged. Subconsciously, he hopes by siding with the Palestinians and other Anti-Israel radical leftists, his personal guilt feelings over the preceived mistreatment of Palestinians by Jews will cease. Michaelson needs to study the true history of the middle-east conflict, he also needs to increase his knowledge of Torah. Finally, he should consult with a good psychiatrist who has experience with the Stockholm Syndrome. Good Luck and G'Mar Chasima Tova.
" It’s gotten so bad, I don’t mention Israel in certain conversations anymore."
OK, you're right, Mr. Michaelson. It was nice while it lasted. Time to call it a day. Let's ring up all the MOTs in Palestine and tell them the moving trucks are coming. G-d forbid one Jay Michaelson should feel uncomfortable in conversations in his esteemed social circles. Boy, you're right up there with Gilad Shalit in suffering, let me tell you.
It saddens me to say this, but I have begun to lose interest in appeasing the "Israel-didn't-turn-out-how-I-wanted-so-I'm-taking-my-ball-and-going-home" crowd. The reality is that most of these people, or their children, will not be Jewish in another generation and it is simply not the best use of the community's time to worry about them. I think it makes more sense to build upon the very real bases of support among Jews and Christians who are committed to Israel for lasting religious and cultural reasons and let those who are looking for trendy political causes look somewhere else.
To - MARTIN K., Fri. Sept. 18
SO! - "Jews were in Israel MILLENNIA before Arabs and Islam even existed!"
FACT 1 - JEWS ARE ARABS - which points up the absurdity af CALLING advocates of the rights of Palestinians "ANTI-SEMITIC"
( - EXCEPTION!?! - the "ASHKENAZIS" whom I have heard described as a (Turkic?) tribe who in the Eastern European Diaspora asked to be allowed to join the Jews & their faith.)
FACT 2 - THE CARTHAGINIANS were Palestinians who left Tyre/Sidon 2600 years ago to found a new trading port near the Straits of Gibraltar. How much longer must they have lived in Palestine before, in the face of Egyptian Imperial Power. they built up a trading empire rich enough to support establishing a new Port City so far away?
Some versions of history I have read suggest the Hebrews were just a Palestinian faction who adopted a Monotheism of their own centuries before Mohammmed.
The Land Issue? - the little Palestinian homesteds, where families had dwelt for generations, were bulldozed by the new state and that beloved land turned into Plantations of Citrus and cut flowers for the post-WW2 European Market! Who has the better spiritual claim to that land - those whose roots are there - or those who don't even live on it, but use Palestinian (and, latterly, other FOREIGN) labor to do business???
We all were duped into supporting Israel out of pity for the victims of the Holocaust - but they were mostly dead, and most of those who took over and made REAL money from that land were opportunists who fled & evaded the NAZI plague.
The Living Holocause victims were often too poor and shattered to take the opportunity. Today they get a tiny stipend of shekels to survive on in old age.
And the other Holocause victims? - the Communists and Homosexuals and mental defectives - did they get THEIR "Israel".
NO! - the victors of WW2 turned the Communists over to the the tender mercies of Stalin, who saw their loyalty as suspect; the others were relegated to their previous PARIAH status in Europe, or sent as "D.P.s" to Canada (where the term D.P. was perjorative then) - the U.S., Australia, etc.
THE BRITISH WHO HAD FREED PALESTINE FROM THE TURKS IN WW1 AT HE COST OF THEIR BLOOD AND THAT OF THE ARABS WHO JOINED LAWRENCE (FOR THE PROMISES OF A UNIFIED ARAB STATE THEY HAD AUTHORISED LAWRENCE TO GIVE THE ARABS - SPECIFICALLY, THE HA'ARETH, HOWEITAT AND THE HASHEMITES) QUIETLY ABANDONED THEM AT VERSAILLES, AND THE DOOR WAS OPENED FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL.
- JUST TO KEEP THINGS STRAIGHT!
- LawrenceFan
To - MARTIN K., Fri. Sept. 18
SO! - "Jews were in Israel MILLENNIA before Arabs and Islam even existed!"
FACT 1 - JEWS ARE ARABS - which points up the absurdity af CALLING advocates of the rights of Palestinians "ANTI-SEMITIC"
( - EXCEPTION!?! - the "ASHKENAZIS" whom I have heard described as a (Turkic?) tribe who in the Eastern European Diaspora asked to be allowed to join the Jews & their faith.)
FACT 2 - THE CARTHAGINIANS were Palestinians who left Tyre/Sidon 2600 years ago to found a new trading port near the Straits of Gibraltar. How much longer must they have lived in Palestine before, in the face of Egyptian Imperial Power. they built up a trading empire rich enough to support establishing a new Port City so far away?
Some versions of history I have read suggest the Hebrews were just a Palestinian faction who adopted a Monotheism of their own centuries before Mohammmed.
The Land Issue? - the little Palestinian homesteds, where families had dwelt for generations, were bulldozed by the new state and that beloved land turned into Plantations of Citrus and cut flowers for the post-WW2 European Market! Who has the better spiritual claim to that land - those whose roots are there - or those who don't even live on it, but use Palestinian (and, latterly, other FOREIGN) labor to do business???
We all were duped into supporting Israel out of pity for the victims of the Holocaust - but they were mostly dead, and most of those who took over and made REAL money from that land were opportunists who fled & evaded the NAZI plague.
The Living Holocause victims were often too poor and shattered to take the opportunity. Today they get a tiny stipend of shekels to survive on in old age.
And the other Holocause victims? - the Communists and Homosexuals and mental defectives - did they get THEIR "Israel".
NO! - the victors of WW2 turned the Communists over to the the tender mercies of Stalin, who saw their loyalty as suspect; the others were relegated to their previous PARIAH status in Europe, or sent as "D.P.s" to Canada (where the term D.P. was perjorative then) - the U.S., Australia, etc.
THE BRITISH WHO HAD FREED PALESTINE FROM THE TURKS IN WW1 AT HE COST OF THEIR BLOOD AND THAT OF THE ARABS WHO JOINED LAWRENCE (FOR THE PROMISES OF A UNIFIED ARAB STATE THEY HAD AUTHORISED LAWRENCE TO GIVE THE ARABS - SPECIFICALLY, THE HA'ARETH, HOWEITAT AND THE HASHEMITES) QUIETLY ABANDONED THEM AT VERSAILLES, AND THE DOOR WAS OPENED FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL.
- JUST TO KEEP THINGS STRAIGHT!
- LawrenceFan
Well, lets face it, force works, war works if you have enought guts to use it and an International Organization (the UN) willing to finance you as long as it takes (the Palestines get more foreign aid per capita than any people on earth). The Palestines have realized that if they just keep killing enough, the rest of the world will turn its back, the jews of the United States will close their eyes, and poof, the problem will be gone, the West Wall truly be only a memory and peace will come to the Holly Land. Michaelson will pout a bit, feal sorry for himself a little (how could he not have forseen the distruction of Isreal?), Palestine will revert the the fly-blown hellhole it was in the 1800's before the Zionism started and the dead Jews of Isreal will be given as much thought as the millions of Vietnamise who died in leaky small boats in the Yellow Sea from Thi Priates or heavy seas. Who cares?, they were losers anyway.
It is G-D who controls the world...it is G-D who wars on mankind.
Israel, what does G-D say about other nations.
It is written....Ezekiel 31 Consider Assyria, a cedar of Lebanon. with fair branches and forest shade, and of great height, its top among the clouds... I made it beautiful with its mass of branches, the envy of all the trees of Eden that were in the garden of G-D.
G-D is at work among the nations. Jews are not living on an island. G-D'S purpose is world wide. Israel, political alliances are looking in the wrong direction, to human beings and not to G-D, for salvation.
Jay, when you are torn as you have become, stop using your heart as your guide. Use unvarnished facts as your guide.
Last year, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip fired about 3200 mortars and rockets into southern Israel, and it was always in the papers in Israel. The people of Sderot were banging on Olmert's door demanding rocket protection.
What wasn't in the papers was the number of people those rockets and mortars killed: four total. I'm not sure that all of them were Israeli. And there were maybe a couple dozen wounded but I couldn't find figures. And a couple dozen buildings and other property like cars damaged. Roughly one rocket in 40 did damage. The other 39 may as well have been filled with marshmallows or cream puffs.
For that, the Israelis launched an operation at the end of 2008 that killed over 1400 Palestinians, 926 of whom were noncombatant civilians. They blew up homes and Palestinian infrastructure in Gaza amounting to over $2 billion, with a minimum of 2000 homes demolished. The youngest baby killed in that operation was a month old. Even after a the names of each of the victims, their ages, sex, hometown, time shot, time died, place shot, were published on the Internet, showing that 926 were noncombatant civilians, the Israeli army insisted on saying they killed more fighters than civilians. So realize that Israeli government figures are put up to make the Israeli government look good, and at times may have nothing to do with the facts. Israel said ten soldiers and four civilians were killed and a total of 518 were wounded of which 336 were soldiers. The Palestinians reported about 6000 wounded. According to Israeli figures, the ratio of wounded two killed soldiers was over 30 to one. There has never been a battle in history in which the ratio of wounded to killed was much different from five to one. Hamas put out a statement saying that their own fighters personally observed the deaths of about 50 Israeli soldiers. Using Hamas figures, the ratio of wounded to killed was about six to one, much closer to the historical ratio of five to one for major battles. I can't trust the Israeli figures because they don't make sense.
So, Jay, when you look for facts, look for hard facts. Look for believable facts. Over a period of years of reading both Palestinian and Israeli media, I have come to the conclusion that I cannot trust the word of the Israeli army or the Israeli government. They seem to show the public what makes them look good. Not that they don't give correct figures many times, but that I can't trust them to give correct figures all the time.
This is one case in which you can't let your heart be your guide. EU must dispassionately look for accurate facts to help you get a full assessment of the people you have loved for so many years.
The point I'm making is that
I have no trouble at all with my left-wing friends who dislike Israel. They also think in boringly predictable ways about everything else. They were untroubled by Arafat, Saddam, Gaddafi, the Iranians, ayatollahs of various stripes,homophobia in Arab countries and subjugation of women everywhere in the Third World. Even 9/11 did not really seem to bother them because we apparently largely deserved it. I remain friendly with them and regard their thinking in the same way as I might tolerate other minor social disorders such as obesity, halitosis or excessive sweating.
Jay, when you are torn as you have become, stop using your heart as your guide. Use unvarnished facts as your guide.
Last year, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip fired about 3200 mortars and rockets into southern Israel, and it was always in the papers in Israel. The people of Sderot were banging on Olmert's door demanding rocket protection.
What wasn't in the papers was the number of people those rockets and mortars killed: four total. I'm not sure that all of them were Israeli. And there were maybe a couple dozen wounded but I couldn't find figures. And a couple dozen buildings and other property like cars damaged. Roughly one rocket in 40 did damage. The other 39 may as well have been filled with marshmallows or cream puffs.
For that, the Israelis launched an operation at the end of 2008 that killed over 1400 Palestinians, 926 of whom were noncombatant civilians. They blew up homes and Palestinian infrastructure in Gaza amounting to over $2 billion, with a minimum of 2000 homes demolished. The youngest baby killed in that operation was a month old. Even after a the names of each of the victims, their ages, sex, hometown, time shot, time died, place shot, were published on the Internet, showing that 926 were noncombatant civilians, the Israeli army insisted on saying they killed more fighters than civilians. So realize that Israeli government figures are put up to make the Israeli government look good, and at times may have nothing to do with the facts. Israel said ten soldiers and four civilians were killed and a total of 518 were wounded of which 336 were soldiers. The Palestinians reported about 6000 wounded. According to Israeli figures, the ratio of wounded two killed soldiers was over 30 to one. There has never been a battle in history in which the ratio of wounded to killed was much different from five to one. Hamas put out a statement saying that their own fighters personally observed the deaths of about 50 Israeli soldiers. Using Hamas figures, the ratio of wounded to killed was about six to one, much closer to the historical ratio of five to one for major battles. I can't trust the Israeli figures because they don't make sense.
So, Jay, when you look for facts, look for hard facts. Look for believable facts. Over a period of years of reading both Palestinian and Israeli media, I have come to the conclusion that I cannot trust the word of the Israeli army or the Israeli government. They seem to show the public what makes them look good. Not that they don't give correct figures many times, but that I can't trust them to give correct figures all the time.
This is one case in which you can't let your heart be your guide. EU must dispassionately look for accurate facts to help you get a full assessment of the people you have loved for so many years.
The point I'm making is that
Being far less verbose, the point I'm making is that
After tens of thousands of rockets, the effects of which were hardly mitigated by poor marksmenship, and hundreds of written Israeli complaints to the UN, the rockets have essentially stopped coming. What caused this?
a.) Palestinian remorce?
b.) Operation Lead Shield?
Zionists appologists like to pick the most convenient time of History to back up their arguments. Today they introduce the UN as an antisemitic organisation coming up with Anti Israel resolutions but the UN was OK when it granted them a Jewish state on Palestinian stolen lands in november 1947. They used the hollocaust as a reason for demanding a Jewish state but they forget that the aim of establishing a Jewish state in Arab Palestine started way back at the end of the 19th century when Jewish population in Palestine was no more than few thaousand jews. If the Hollocaust did not exist the Zionists would have had to invent it. Some of the people here talk about thousands of rockets into Israel which led to "Cast lead" operation but the colonising of Palestine by the Zionists started as I mentioned way back and Palestinian resistance to the occupation of their homeland goes back to the early days of the 20ieth century .I suggest you all read "the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians" by the Israeli Prof. Ilan Pappe and get some historical facts as to the chain of events. All I can say is what mother, who came to Palestine as early as 1921, told me-there were no clashes nor animosity between arab and Jews in Palestine and all the middle east bwfore the Zionist embarked upon colonosing Palestine and turning an arab populated country into a pure Jews only state.
Jay is just being a wimp. You don't have to be the type of guy who wears an Israeli Army T-shirt in order to speak up if your friends/associates group Israel with pre-apartheid South Africa.
What do these people know about occupation or apartheid? Do these people know anything about the Arab province of Khuzestan in Iran? Have they seen the West Bank compared to other Middle East areas in the UN development report? http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2006/
What is their response to the most recent polling, in which 71% of Palestinians think its "essential or desireable" to eventually (after a two-state stage, or whatever) put Israel under an Islamic waqf? http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/nycdefender/2009/04/poll-shows-most-israelis-and-p.php
Perhaps Jay's "pariah" dilemma has been affected by his wanting his friends/associates to seem less obtuse.
Oh, BTW, I am on the Left, so I can't attribute Jay's lack of mettle to his political leanings.
Unfortunately, pro-Palestinianism often gets away from trying to break a status quo that restricts the human rights of Palestinians. It becomes reactionary, and therefore worthy of the Left's criticism, if we're awake.
Jay, I've read some of your pieces before, and this one too is intelligent and well written. but i find it quite strange. you write about your love for israel as if she was a band you once toured around with, or an old flame you once fell for. about these things, it's fine to fall in or out of love. but it would be totally inappropriate to write such things about your parents or children. why? not because one doesn't fall in and out of love with them too, but because it's not important. what overshadows whether your "into" them this day or this year or not, is that they are yours - you are bound to them through the deep moral bonds of who are you. in my understanding of what it means to be a Jew, talk about falling in and out of love with Israel confuses a deep moral and spiritual bond, fraught with existential responsibility, with having a good time. how about the Jewish people? how about your family? are they still a good time? and if one day, God forbid, they are not, if they shame and anger you, will you write a piece about falling out of love with them, too? shannah tovah, and may this year be a year of peace, and may Israel find a way to rekindle your love for her. shaiya rothberg
Great article, Jay. My own love affair with Israel has also been on the wane, mainly for the reasons you say, but also because I see how the religious right there have destroyed Judaism for everyone else. I am not Orthodox but very observant in my own way, and I can't stand the downright hostility most secular Israelis show toward our religion. Americans may be intermarrying, but usually they don't have the same outright hatred of Judaism as many Israelis do...so many young Israelis call themselves "Israeli" and not "Jewish." And yet I know that if I was raised there, I would be that way too. Luckily, I was fortunate to discover a kind of Judaism that really resonates with me. I congratulate you for your bravery in writing this because obviously it's getting you lots of kind messages in return ;)
Dear Mr. Michaelson, I was saddened to read your article as it hit right through the heart. Israel nowadays is, unfortunately, not "fantasy Israel", as you say. it is certainly different than the one I went to school in, nourished with and adored. The shift from "the holy land" to simply another country on the global map took a while but I fear that it has arrived. And with this status we must understand our political obligations and not just religious rights. We no longer have that "Zionist identity" as before, and yes, it is extremely difficult to resolve the conflict. And yes, Jews all over the world use old school terminology when supporting my country. but we, Israelis, can honestly say that "It’s exhausting to keep fighting this fight" and not those who are no longer a part of us. I, too, miss the days when Israel was more of a symbol rather than a country. However, it is my country and I will continue to love it, for as long as I live. And love doesn't always mean agreeing with everything. There are some obstacles in every relationship. I can only hope that you and all of the previous "supporters" will never lose that feeling. We, in Israel, will continue to try and make this place as safe as possible and a "home away from home" for so many people worldwide.
I was deeply affected by Michaelson's piece. Perhaps the fact that he was born in 1971 might have something to do with his reactions. Still, it hurts me to agree with him on some issues; I don't WANT to agree, and keep looking for ways NOT to agree. Yet is not Israel, as Ben-Gurion, wished a "normal" country now, not a light unto nations, but one of extremes, brilliance, pettiness, affluence, and power. A westernized country influenced by the all the accomplishments and all the ugliness of the 21st C. Elaine Starkman, Walnut Creek, CA 94598
Thank you, so many times over, for writing this. And for publishing it.
כל אהבה שהיא תלויה בדבר - בטל דבר, בטלה אהבה. ואהבה שאינה תלויה בדבר - אינה בטלה לעולם. איזו היא אהבה שהיא תלויה בדבר? זו אהבת אמנון ותמר. ושאינה תלויה בדבר? זו אהבת דוד ויהונתן. (פרקי אבות, פרק ה, משנה יט)
Any love that depends on a specific cause, when that cause is gone, the love is gone; but if it does not depend on a specific cause, it will never cease. What sort of love depended upon a specific cause? The love of Amnon for Tamar. And what did not depend upon a specific cause? The love of David and Jonathan. (Pirkei Avot, chapter 5)
I think that your third point is closest to the crux of the problem - you suspect that your "love" of/for Israel is rooted in sentimentality, and I tend to agree with you. You describe the end of a fickle love, an infatuation, really, a state that, because of lack of real depth, may not survive the transition to real love.
And so, you are "exhausted" by the ambivalence, unable to deal with the discovered warts and imperfections of an idealized "mate."
And you remain silent now when exposed to the rabidly anti-Israeli doctrine of your friends from the left, a phenomenon which is well documented and has been strident for over forty years on college campuses across the US. Does that include remaining silent too when, inevitably, the leftist hyperbole slides into actual brushes of anti-semitic innuendo?
Rest assured that the visiting conservative Jews from American do not define Israel and have no real influence on life here other than inflating real estate prices beyond comprehension and creating neighborhoods which are veritable ghost towns in their collective absence.
Israel is an experiment, a worthy endeavor, the renewal of the Jewish people in their national home. We all know what this means and why this is worthy. It is a long-term experiment and we are at one point on the time line. This point may not be in our comfort zone - I know that I am appalled by many of the policies, attitudes and actions of some of the people and of the State of Israel.
But this is, again, one point in the long haul. Israel may not be so lovable just now, but that doesn't mean that she shouldn't be loved. What is really called for, though, is "commitment" rather than "love," commitment to a worthy ideal, commitment to taking part in this historic process, commitment to seeing that Israel continues live and breathe so that the warts of today become anachronistic footnotes in the history of Israel of tomorrow.
Jay, I am an American Palestinian, but more of the latter because of my love for the land that you've come to love too and because my American passport doesn't do enough to hide my Palestinian heritage when I cross a check point or fly in into the Ben Gurion Airport. I was deeply affected by your article especially for your honesty about your conflicting feelings for the holy land. You have lived there for only 3 years and you immediately fell in love with the stones and trees of Jerusalem. It makes me wonder how the Palestinian refugees, who had lived there for decades, feel about not being able to return to the land they were born into. It saddens me that people who survived the treacherous Nazi regime migrated to a land only so that they themselves become oppressors and consequently Palestine was wiped off the map. I envy that you’ve liberated yourself from the problems by moving to out of Israel. I currently live in America, yet my heritage still handicaps me thanks to the media’s bias towards Israel. As soon as Americans find out that I am Palestinian, I am automatically viewed as anti Semite thanks to the American media that indirectly equates Palestinians with anti Semites. Anyone that criticizes Israel or supports Palestinians for that matter is automatically labeled as an anti-Semite. Not only are we Palestinians occupied but we have to accept the occupation without putting up any kind of resistance. Israel’s policy is that to perform the aaliyah and reside in the Holy Land you must be Jewish. Does this not sound discriminatory to anyone? Yet Israel is hailed for being the only democracy in the Middle East. I find it shocking that rational people can make irrational arguments. How can those who have ties to the land not be allowed to return yet those who had never seen the land be allowed to become a resident because a particular religion prequalifies them. Even during the recent presidential elections, the media tried to hurt Obama by reporting that he had shared a table with a Palestinian professor at some event. However, with all that said, I am glad that some Israelis recognize that Palestinians are humans with aspirations to have their own national identity. I want to thank you for not pretending like many others that we Palestinians are not suffering under the occupation and are not being humiliated at checkpoints, and most of all I want to thank you for coming out and revealing the real situation in the Holy Land. We Palestinians know how difficult it is for an Israeli and/or a Jew to support Palestinians. Ironically, our greatest supporters are Jewish and/or Israelis. Thank you and I am sure that I am not only speaking for myself when I say that I would enjoy living next to an Israeli neighbor that recognizes my right to basic human rights before I am asked to accept the occupier’s right to existence. Thank you for understanding and maybe someday we can both enjoy the stones and the trees of Jerusalem.
See Daniel Gordis' response, "No Right to Exhaustion," at http://danielgordis.org/2009/10/09/no-right-to-exhaustion/.
Josh Teitelbaum Ra'anana, Israel
Conveniently left out of Jay's article is any mention of the Muslim's intent to exterminate the Jews. If it were not for the soldiers guarding his beloved coffee shops and eateries, he would be a statistic of Intifadah.
Funny that I have had the opposite reactions to Israel. I hated the fantasy Zionist paradise Israel was supposed to be in the 60's and 70's. Never wanted to go near the place. What changed my attitude was learning about Israel's enemies. They are entirely candid about their intentions. Why can't we take them seriously? Why are they patronizingly supposed to mean something different from what they say? What kind of leaders would allow their own people to languish in camps for the sake of revenge? Wake up, Jay. Cut the crap. This is not about feeling good about yourself and feeling warm and fuzzy about a Jewish state. This is about life and death, and the rights of Jews to political self-determination. If we support this right, there is a chance that Jews can live in freedom in Israel and elsewhere. If we don't, there is not much hope for Israel to survive or, frankly, for Jews outside of Israel to preserve civil rights. I'm not very sorry to hear that Jay no longer warmth towards Israel. I wonder how he's going feel when he sees Jews slaughtered and the world not lifting a finger.
How small am I and how great are you, o Lord. We did not have the strength to protect your Temple and until today, we live in strange lands. How egotistic can some of we Jews be, when we prattle on and on about I, me and my? Today we have the strength to say we WILL return and rebuild the Temple. Whatever course of action is required we will do, for His purposes.
Quitter
Piece smacks of selfishness. Myopically focused on the near-term and approval of fair-weather friends. Gordis isn't always right -- wrong more often than right -- but his description of the sacrifice young Israelis make every day is spot on. We're in this for the historic and enduring transformation that is Israel. We pray that one day our leadership, clairvoyance, sense of justice, and circumstances will improve. But the quitters will long be forgotten by then. Their all-too-precocious progeny will be fully assimilated, scrambling for spots at Princeton and the soccer team, while Israeli youth will have paid a steep but invaluable price building the Jewish future.
Dear Sir
I have just learned of your book "How I am Losing my love for Israel" and how you are exhausted in defending Israel in your circle. I understand your predicament and wish you well, HOWEVER, love is an emotion that develops from INFATUATION......it is what we feel when our desired "object of affection" becomes real and not some fantasy. I wish that Israel could have remained naive,pure and always on the side of the gods but after 60 years of existing in a very hostile neighbourhood,absorbing millions of Arab Jewish refugees as well as European Jewish refugees, it may be that some of the glitter has faded. Perhaps another country would have packed it in already, so much hatred, so much resistance. so much propaganda,so much double standards, high expectations, idolization and demonization. from the rest of the world. How many wars???? Threats of wiping Israel off the map etc etc. Gosh, and YOU are EXHAUSTED???? Maybe you have to yawn,rest and sweat a little and be able to mature and learn to accept that things in the Middle East are complicated and there are very different mentalities around. Of course there are many aspects of life in Israel that are unacceptable,against our beliefs and aspirations BUT why give up? Why not look for those things that are genuine and real and worthy of your love? That's right Jay, real love not infatuation.
Remember, your circle of friends may want to be persuaded that Israel, although not perfect is still the best little country around!!!!Imagine your life without it!!!
While your concerns about events in Israel are valid, they are not the whole picture. Yes the separation wall is not pretty, but neither were the terrorist explosions that the wall prevents.
I do not like religious fundamentalists, or the power of wealthy conservatives, or unjust treatment of minority groups. But we have these things in the US as well. And even more in the other countries in the Middle East.
Israel is involved in a war fought with propaganda, as well as with bombs. Don't join the enemy.
Thank you so much Jay. Your honesty is really inspiring to me and gives me hope that the great tradition of social justice is alive, well and thriving in the Jewish community carried on by people such as yourself.
Peace.
I appreciate a lot of your points but this line makes me feel very uncomfortable:
"I understand why many Israelis feel fed up with the Palestinian problem and are ready to slam the door. I no longer want to feel entangled by their decisions and implicated in their consequences. B’seder: It’s your choice to make… but count me out."
So basically, because the going has got tough, and there are some very painful and difficult decisions to be made by your country, you would rather take the easy option and be "counted out".
Of course Israel has its problems and we all want to fix them. But counting yourself out isn't going to help fix anything
thank you, you have voiced what so many people feel but cannot express for fear of seeming un-Jewish. Like the US hunting down un-American (communist) activities during the Cold War, we are turning on one another for questioning those in power, for asking the important questions. This Bush-ist idea that you're either with us or against us is proposterous, I shouldn't feel less Jewish for questioning Israel and i shouldn't be scared to express my concerns. I struggle with what Israel does and how i should feel about it, if we didn't struggle and question it then we would no longer be Jewish, we would be pushed into accepting it all out of fear. No good Jew fails to question their world, Israel is no exception.
Mr. Michaelson: I guess you will be the hit of your social circles and not feel like an outcast anymore. I cannot prejudge you on this, since in my jewish circles most folks are much more supportive of Israel. On the other hand, perhaps you should have looked into getting a new bunch of friends rather than falling out of love with israel.
I'd ask the author to respond to Rabbi Daniel Gordis who tells it like it is in his moving piece 'no right to exhaustion'! mr michaelson --- i dare you to read it! You may have to become an outcast at your cocktail parties again.
http://danielgordis.org/2009/10/09/no-right-to-exhaustion/
You poor pathetic thing, Jay. You ignore the two elephants in the room: there would be no 'occupation' if the Palestinian Authority lived up to its commitments at Oslo. It is the PA responsibility to stop the violence against Israelis, not the Israel gov't's. When the PA fails to do that, Israel builds a wall - the least lethal method of responding to human explosive devices. When the PA fails to do that, Israel staffs the checkpoints. These are PA responsibilities, not Israel's. Too bad for them, if they are not doing their job, that they don't like the way we are doing it for them. The other elephant in the room is the racism of Arab nations in not allowing a single Jew to live among them, of casting all Jews out as they did in Egypt, Libya and many other places (see www.jimenajustice.com), as well as in Gaza. Yes, it is tiring to have dialog with liberal friends who are really close-minded fascists, who cast you out of their circle if you don't agree with them - and they know nothing of the geography or history of Israel whom they condemn with empty headed platitudes. I know, I too, have been cast out by former friends who call themselves liberal but who by their personal behavior towards me, and by whom they support internationally are truly fascists. You poor, pathethic thing who would rather keep your party time going (never mind with whom), while Israelis are struggling for the right to live their lives without being exploded. Poor, poor, cuckolded thing. Pathetic.
jay- shame. if you do not care to defend israel in your polite social circles you are spineless. you call the idf's actions in gaza as 'overzealous'. my son served w/ the idf in gaza and I resent yours and the other lefties implications and exhortations of inappropriateness. only israel doesn't have the right to defend itself. it acted w/ restraint unlike hamas which showed none: by shelling israeli homes and schools and, like the cowards they are, hiding amongst 'civilians'. I say the following and not as a criticism: even the u.s. does not take the extraordinary lengths taken by the idf to warn civilians of impending military actions even at the risk of its own soldiers like my son. your reference to the J Street crew is revealing. they profess to be pro israeli so long as israel does not defend itself and surrenders territories to the palestinians w/o getting anything in return. the analogy to south africa is also highly inappropriate: the israeli arabs have full rights. and, I, for one, am not about to concede that the west bank is (your) occupied territory. you have adopted the language of israel's enemies. if you are ashamed to defend israel your support is unwanted. you have bought into the left's playbook which is decidedly hostile to israel. obambi has an approval rate of 4% in israel. george bush, who is reviled by you and your friends, was a great friend of israel. he saw evil and recognized the need to confront it. you and the lefties see evil and seek to appease it; rationalize it; and succumb to it. there is a banality to liberalism and you, sir, are banal.
To all of you who love so much Arabs/muslims/hamasiens? take them to your country then? let them to have your daughter to married to? Teach them to stop to explosed them them, their children for going to their G-d? Teach the Arabs to behave cilivizd? not animals as they do, not to push down their own wifes, daughtes? who stop who to go to school and get educations? arabs-muslims or Jews? think realy now! our Jewish people no matte we survived, we always came up and get Noble prizes, are the best in everything, everywhere..yess everywhere we Jews are the best, that is the way it is. we can not beg sorry to be born Jews :-D nopp never..we never blaimed the Nazis to pushed us to fare during the second ware and explosed our self and our beautiful babes/childrens? Never, we are not animals like our neighbours and will never be that eighter, we are to cilivized and educated for that.. so stop to be against the Jews and our country...
was it not saddam or...kadafi mabe?hahah who keep all the mony for the palestiniens? The arabs countrys dont whant to have the palestiniens too?? and that is the truth..the arabs countrys exploit the palestiniens to make mony on them, cause they lie all the time about their wonderful and lovely Jews neighbores :-D In all the history have the Jews been accepted no where,not in Europe, not in US, not in arabs countrys, no where, but G-d gived us the Holly Land just cause he choosed us his people, not arabs and nothing, nobody, no ware can change what G-d decided, and no propaganda eighte. On thing the world dont whant to reconise is: they are scared for arabs/muslims, you gived them the little finger, they take all your hand..and the whole world knows that. TAke the arabs/muslims/hamasiens...if you whant in your country, live with them and you will se why we Jews dont whant them.
American Jews vs. Israeli Jews
To: Mr. Jay Michaelson,
I was not surprised to read your article "How I'm losing my love for Israel" and I'd like you know "How I'm losing my love for American Jew like you.
When I decided to reflect on the relationship between the American and Israeli Jews, I must say that I had a dilemma. Do I really want to stir the pot with this issue? The answer is YES because I’ve had enough and it’s time to talk about it even if it’s painful.
I am an Israeli born and American citizen. Now, at the age of 47, I’ve spent half of my life in Israel and the other half to date as an American citizen. After serving in the Israeli army for four years I’ve decided to temporary leave Israel at the age of 23 to a place where there are more opportunities for young people like me. I came to America for the first time in my young life and I fell in love. What a Country. Amazing people and without a doubt the land of opportunity. Given the amount of people, cultures and different ethnic background, my wife and I felt that it would be very important for us to live in a Jewish community where we can both feel comfortable being a young Jewish couple from Israel.
The 2008 Presidential Elections was probably the most impotent event since 9/11 that made me think about who I am and what really bothers me in my relationships with so many American Jews that I’ve got to know over the years. After all, we are both Jewish, same Jewish history, same Yiddish Cult, same holidays, but yet very different. What I saw were wonderful people with great affection and dedication to Jewish traditions, Education and great sense of successful community. But, I also saw a community that constantly struggle between being an American Jew and what was supposed to be their loyalty to the State of Israel.
I like our President, Barak Obama, I didn’t vote for him. I fundamentally disagree with him on just about every issue, but I truly believe that he’s really passionate about his beliefs and I respect him for that. One thing I do know for a fact is that he is not qualified to be the Commander and Chief of the free world when it comes to the Middle East.
The Middle East is as real as it gets with the ultimate consequences – Death or Survival. American Jews overwhelmingly (80%) voted for President Obama for a simple reason – Fear. They still live their lives as Jews did 2,000 years ago where Jews were chased and prosecuted all over the world and all they wanted to do is to blend in and not attract any attention. Don’t get me wrong, every person of any background or religion has the right to live their lives as they wish, but I do have a serious problem with people telling other people how to run their lives especially when it comes to Israel. Yes, many Jewish communities and Organizations have been donating a lot of money to Israel over the years but that does NOT give them the right to criticize Israel for anything. In case you didn’t know, we, the Israelis and the Jews around the world have an unconditional and unsigned contract. We the Israelis are willing to defend Israel with Blood and you, the Jewish people around the world, will contribute with money. You cannot buy people’s lives with money but you can sacrifice lives for other people’s lives. I truly believe that all Jewish people around the world are one big family. Some of you donate money, some visit Israel, some are helping in the political arena and some are willing to scarify their lives and love ones by living in Israel and serving in the Army or living in a place like Sderot with 12,000 rockets over their head for the past eight years or by taking the chance of ridding a public transportation without getting blown up. So, in my humble opinion, those of us that are willing to sacrifice the ultimate are the ones that should make the decisions of how, when, where, and who will run the daily lives of the people in Israel, and if you have nothing nice to say, then– SHUT UP. Yes, the Israelis are different, they can be loud, rude and aggressive, but hey, nobody is perfect. It is very hard to be perfect in a country where there is a war every five years that is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate you in any possible way. In case you didn’t know, Israel is not surrounded by European neighbors, rather with cold blooded enemies.
For those of you that are sitting in your comfortable homes and successful careers I suggest that you learn something meaningful from those who left everything behind and did an Aliya to Israel, or those that send their 18 year old kid to serve in the Israeli Army, even those who send their kids to a University in Israel. These are real deeds from real people unlike those of you that like to give advises all day long.
Israel is only 61 years old and maybe we should be reminded of how Jews lived around the world prior to 1948, when the Jewish state was founded. If you need a current reminder, all you need to do is to look at the Jewish people in France and see what happens when Anti-Semitism start to bobble again and how they all run away to the ONLY safety net in the world – Israel. The only place in world that will welcome Jewish people with open arms no matter where they came from.
I’m sorry my fellow American Jews, but without the State of Israel your comfortable lives will turn up side down and will go back to the dark ages prior to 1948. That’s why you need to keep the state of Israel as a precious jewel that is simply irreplaceable, much like your jewelries that you keep in your safe. Yes, it is hard to defend a family member that sometime misbehaves, but you must protect him at all costs because no one else will. You see, we the Israelis can defend ourselves from the Muslims, the Anti Semitic UN and the Hypocrites for Europe but we cannot afford frictions in our own Jewish family that ultimately will destroy all of us.
As you can see, we have had our hands full in the past 61 years and most likely for the next 100 years. The people of Israel will always welcome your kind words and support but if you cannot help us with such simple request, so please SHUT UP because now you are worse than our enemies.
On a final note I’d like to touch on everyone’s’ favorite subject especially our president, Barak Obama. Jewish settlements in the west bank. Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t we the people of the United States of America occupying the vast majority of “our” land while we all know is that we actually took it by force from the Indians? Isn’t true that France and England occupy land in different parts of the world and refuse to give it back to its original owners? However, at the same time they love to criticize Israel every opportunity they have. Unlike other countries, Israel was attacked from the first day that it was founded and never ever had any ambitions to take over any properties that does not belong to her. Israel occupy these territories because it was forced on her by all the Arab countries that understand full well that if you live by the sword you’ll die by the sword.
So, to my Jewish Liberal friends, please have the courage to stand by the TRUTH and not burry your head in the sand.
Bobby Ben-Simon
Wow! What a collection we Jews are. Reading most of the comments finds me agreeing and disagreeing with people coming at the issue from many different sides. Reminds me of that '60's song line :"Nobody's right if everyobody's wrong." Maybe here we're all right? I'm as old as the Jewish State. Never been there. So maybe I just don't know enough to have an opinion. I do have Israeli friends and have had many discussions. Jay is kinda spilling his heart out, expressing his anguish. I go through some of the same, but with far less of the detail expressed by Jay. He has been there, and has seen quite a bit. He seems to have given this a good deal of thought, searching for a comfortable answer. Maybe there really is no comfortable answer. Somehow it doesn't seem that any important issue we face has a "comfortable" answer. Damn! What seems to me a harsh and uncomfortable reality is that no collection of people under any flag ever has or ever can ever behave completely consistently in a way that conforms to the idealists among us. Myself included. I have lots of beautiful family and friends, not a single one of whom is "perfect." And me? Damn! But the comparison to the Nazis or to a people who just today car bombed first one group, then their would be rescuers and followed up by an attempted car bombing of the hospital? I respect anyone's right to question the actions of individual soldiers, generals, or governments. I do know I'd much rather live in a country where that right...we call it "freedom of speech"... is somewhat ingrained (though never, it must be admitted, inviolate) and to violate that right is illegal. So I feel comfortable, knowing that right is in place in my place of birth...USA...and believe...based on what I read in the from of criticism of Israel in Israeli news sources...and discussions with Israelis...that the same is true of Israel. We who live in freedom have the right...paid for in blood, I feel compelled to emphasize...to speak our minds. Jay has that right. Were he to live under Palestinian or Egyptian or Syrian rule, he would not. I think he knows that. I do feel his anguish, to borrow a bit from Bill Clinton. But...but...when Jay talks about his weariness in defending Israel in "his circles," and upon reading his lament about the unpopularity of Israel on campuses...I am a bit repelled by him. Truly sorry to say that. As I read him telling of his "weariness," jumps to my mind the photos and newsreels of soldiers on the Bataan Death March, or Israeli troops marching in the '67 war. Maybe their weariness showed in their faces as something more akin to desperation. Sorry to compare one form of weariness to another. But it's something, to me, like overhearing someone waiting on line in a restaurant who complains "I'm starving." Figure of speech. Annoying, to be sure if you've seen people who actually suffered starvation. But we understand when we hear that, the person is not really starving. Just feeling a bit inconvenienced. Jay, isn't that what you really mean? Isn't your weariness more like an inconvenience, not even remotely like the desperate weariness of the soldier who can't stop lest he be killed, or continues to march lest his homeland be overrun? Brother, fellow Jew, fellow American, fellow human being, I do appreciate your humanitarian instincts. I know that you know our Israel is but a sliver on the map. Other countires were created by similar decrees or proclamations of international bodies. We need only look at a map of the region from 1850 to appreciate the changing of boundaries. Yet it seems that the boundaries only of Israel, homeland of our people, is so vehemently and globally denounced. Next time you are outnumbered at a cocktail party, remember the '48 war. Or any other, you do have a few to choose from. Have a quick brandy, use the weapon of your voice, and defend your people. Bet you feel damn good the next day. Shalom!
Hava, You call U.S. and Israel, dinosaurs, your words, seem to me cold blooded, you hatered should give you chills to your bones.
U. S. is the land of the free, your free to get out, so, why are you still their?? Cold blooded dinosaurs, move very slow, I am told.
You, little kvetch, the world is to hot for you?
I see by your words, that the light of the Torah a privilege has not been granted you , or seeked by you.
You are all bound up with cycles of past and what you think is now.
G-D is at war with mankind....in every nation. One by one, G-D of All That Is will show them.
words are a powerful thing. We were to be engraved with all the letters of the seventy-two names of our G-D. All of mankind has walked in error, G-D is not seen in any nation. Sin was not put out, but held up, every nation has sinned against the creator.
The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the LORD; A good understanding have all they that do hereafter. His praise endureth for ever. Ps.111.
We are to turn from sin, when we turn, the numbers of those letters amounts to two hundred and sixteen, and they were all engraved by the breath of the Almighty on the child that is brought forth into their spiritual body, so as to put again into them the breath of life through the pwoer of the letters of the seventy two names. Habakkuk, a name of double significance, alluding in its sound to the twoflod embracing, of the Spirit of G-D who made us flesh, and by the breath of the Almighty that brings forth the spirit child, who becomes a son to the Living G-D.
Those who are brought forth have come out of all generations. For dust to dust, ashes to ashes, Spirit to spirit. G-D is a G-D of All The Earth.
For it is written....For your Maker is your husband the LORD Almighty is his name the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the G-D OF ALL THE EARTH.
So, my little kvetch, whistle a deffrent tune. Your on His land.
We are to love everyone as our selves, but nevertheless, there are those I do not like, because of what they do today.
When my children, do something wrong, I still love them, but I do not like how they have acted.
O yes, and becouse I have many,....I do not blame, any one of the others for the actions of one or a few of them.
You want peace in your house, so does G-D.
I'm not tired of loving Israel, as a land and state and I don't let others to propagate and break these ties between us. Now in the end of the summer and beginning of the autumn every one is quite tired as the trees are turning their leaves to red. I can understand Jay Michaelson and Zvuv that they are quite tied dealing with Israel and they turned their faces against her, but it has nothing to do with the real Israelis themselves which are tackling with the Arab Palestinian hate mongers on daily basis, but with there own withered spirit and virtue.
As long as your belief in the truth is being chocked your sympathy with the Arab Palestinian lies get stronger. Leftist-ism is leaving your conscience behind a leafy levee and reject your living love and love of living and let it like a lave to lift liefly to the lav on cost of others lives.
• Jews felt more relaxed in Berlin than in Jerusalem in 1932 too. Personal of collective relaxation feelings may be deceiving sometimes. So check yourself, Mr. Michaelson. • There is no a sole and unique one profile of the "American people". Forget it. You are either a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim. White, Hispanic or Black. Citizen or alien. Etc. The collision among the Judeo-Christians and the Muslim-Blacks is beyond the corner and the price, as usually, the Jews will pay. You may feel well, as Jews felt the hot days of the twenties in Germany. • Norman: Citing ProPALganda videos from Pro-Islamic sources (or should I say fierce Anti Israel sources?) won't bring aid to your claims. No-fact is just a lie. aviefar@yahoo.com .
Apparently Mr. Michaelson's credential as a true left progressive mean more to him than understanding the reality Israelis live with and the intentions of their Arab neighbors. Time to take off the rose colored glasses.
Sounds to me like Mr. Michaelson needs a new set of friends. He could come out here to Hutchinson, MN, but he'd have to look long and hard to find any liberals like he is used to mixing with in New York out here. Why, even the Democrats in this area held their meeting in Biscay.
Jay Michaelson is right about one thing: being both leftist and Zionist makes one somewhat exhausted. It's like sitting on two chairs, which are slowly but surely pulling apart. Sooner or later, one will end on the floor, or choose one of the chairs.
So which chair does Jay Michaelson choose? The leftist one. Never mind oceans of blood leftists spilled all over the world in 20th century. Never mind all the Western leftist support for support Stalin, Mao, Castro, Ortega, Saddam Hussein, Hugo Chavez, or whatever other monster. Never mind all the Baader-Meinhof Group, Japanese Red Army, Revolutionary Cells, Red Brigades, The Weathermen, etc.
And he leaves Zionism, even though all it did was build a little country in the Middle East, made it a local powerhouse (and I don't mean just militarily), and solved the "Jewish Issue" differently from the "Final Solution." One would think this would be enough to make it exalted as one of the best achievements of humanity. One would think.
But no.
And why does Jay Michaelson choose the left. The answer is clear in his frequent references to his leftist friends. He is afraid to loose his friends. He wants to circulate among "us people," "thinking and reasonable people," "the people of conscience" or whatever self-congratulatory epithets his friends attribute to themselves. He is afraid to end up all alone.
Your friends equate Israel with South Africa or American South. Or worse. Some friends you have, Jay.
He is also disappointed that fantasies don't look as good when they come into reality. Well, as my friend Winnie the Pooh said, "The only thing better than the taste of honey is anticipating the taste of honey." No reality ever looks as good as a dream. Nevertheless, only a fool or a spoiled brat would confuse a not-so-perfect implementation of a dream with a nightmare. The left, which produced nightmare after nightmare, complains that Israel is not perfect. What's wrong with this picture?
One thing he is not is exhausted. Someone who writes a whole book about his exhaustion is not exhausted. Where did he get the energy to write that book?
Well, good bye, Jay Michaelson. And good riddance.
Thank you for writing this. You've given a nuanced, thoughtful voice to these complex issues. As someone who has spent over 6 years living in Israel (and studied at both Mt scopus in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv U.), I can relate to so much of this article. I love Israel in a visceral way that's as powerful as any love I've experienced (and probably more than most). And I'm proud of Israel's accomplishments and beauty. Growing up, I spent most of my summers living in Israel, so it even feels like my truest of homes, as all my relatives still live there. I grew up in an Orthodox home, and I'm still deeply connected to the rituals that bind us to our ancestors. And yet, it is impossible to ignore the backdrop of injustice that increasingly characterizes our role in the plight of the Palestinians. More and more, I find myself despairing over the path we're choosing, and I think, "we're better than this". Clearly, Michaelson's discomfort with his friends is not just about gaining acceptance (if he was so concerned about being accepted, I don't think he would have published this article). It stems from finding it harder and harder to justify Israel's military actions and overall approach to the Palestinians. I, too, find myself exhausted at times from trying to straddle multiple worlds. And I am finding it harder and harder to engage in debates about the subject... NOT because I am afraid to defend Israel to those who criticize her, but because the complexity itself can be overwhelming. It is hard to love Israel and feel so disappointed with the country at the same time. I have many friends who support Israel 100%, at all costs, without placing importance on the plight of the Palestinians (ie, it's their problem, we can't trust them, there will never be peace... of course it's sad, but it's not our fault). And I have many friends who see Israel as an unjust military occupier creating an apartheid state, and see only injustices when they look at Israel. I argue with both, and I try to get each side to see the complexity of the situation... to understand Israel's legitimate concerns while still acknowledging what is becoming the new reality of our role as an occupier.
I rarely find people like me... people who love Israel dearly, who visit every year and contribute to Israeli causes, who seek out Israeli events and celebrations (at least 2/3 of my closest friends in Los Angeles are Israelis), and yet who are also deeply critical of the Israeli government and military's approach to the Palestinians. It's not either/or. It's not 100% support or else you're "against" Israel. It's COMPLICATED. And that struggle, between loving Israel and being disappointed/critical of Israel, is complicated. I just really appreciate hearing those thoughts articulated so well. So thanks.
Everyone brings up very interesting points in this discourse. And I often think about the dichotomy that has ensued between Israeli Jews and Diaspora Jews "re.bobby ben simon". Being from the latter, as much as we try to, it is nearly impossible for us to understand Israeli perspectives and thought processes as it is so different from our own. We each grow up in completely different contexts, almost as opposite as societies can be; one of war and one of peace.
Israelis often fail to understand the way many diaspora Jews grow up (and vice versa but i have no knowledge of the other). The anti-zionist institutions and general societies that Jay speaks of in his essay (and i'm exluding even American cities of big jewish populations) are where we grow up. This has profound psychological effects that many Israelis don't realize. Our identity is questioned from day 1. This is something I had to learn to overcome which took a long time and a lot of suffering. Although a proud Jew on the inside I have always been timid and hiding and, i hate to say it, but ashamed of Israel and Judaism on the outside. I grew up in a society that condemns Israel constantly. I went to a university program where working for the UN is an ultimate life goal, where 30 students in a class will be to able condemn Israel with persuasive arguments and no-one will be there to defend her. Since I grew up equating my Judaism to Israel I neglected my identity of both. To grow up without an identity is to grow up lost in the world. I presume many diaspora jews grow up facing similar problems as unless you're extremely knowledgeable and wise at 15 years of age, you don't know otherwise. Our society dictates who we become, and we fear otherwise. So yes 'bobby ben' you're right in saying that we do act based on fear even if we don't know it, although putting it in such simple terms is a little crude.
It took me years to overcome this and only by living in a very foreign country very removed from my own, where I could reflect as an outsider. If i learned anything from this experience, the one thing I do know that American Jews and Israeli Jews have in common, the thing I learned from being tens of thousands of km away from the nearest jew, is just that- our judaism. BOTH societies take for granted this simple fact- any politics or frustrations between these two diverging communities is of minimal importance compared to our shared religion and true identity. We must never forget this. From my experience of growing up with a repressed identity, I like to believe that I understand the importance of having a society where one does not have to fear this. There is only one place in the world where this exists. We must protect her with all our strength, and although we must criticize her, we must never break our guard. As we think of ourselves as a wandering people, we mustn't forget the pain which wandering really infers- its not the walking. Am Yisrael Chai.
Thank you for posting this. I just returned from a semester in Israel with exactly these sentiments--and I find it hard to describe and explain to friends and family (regardless of the side they take).
It often scares me how strongly people I know and love seem to unquestioningly grasp onto their point of view. It is not that simple, and Israel is not the "always morally correct" land we wish it was (the view I was taught and still held until recently, I am almost ashamed to admit).
I will be sharing this article with many friends and family. I hope this helps them to begin to understand some of the complexities and to start thinking for themselves.
I agree with the commentary that I am happy not to be Jay's wife or child. Too many books and very little wisdom he has this Jay.
First of all, everyone should read Daniel Gordis's response to this essay at http://danielgordis.org/2009/10/09/no-right-to-exhaustion/#more-1347. Second, I think that Michaelson has some valid points. But where he loses me is his confession that he stops arguing with his so called friends when they group Israel with China and other human rights violators. That doesn't come from exhaustion or waning love for Israel. That inability to speak comes from cowardice, for not standing up for what you know is right. Because, Jay,you still love Israel even if you if think you don't. You know deep inside you, that for all the complexities of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Israel is NOT a human rights violator. It still remains the only democracy in the Middle East, albeit a messy one. But messy and complicated is how real life works and did you really expect Israel to be perfect? Israel remains the only place where Jews can live as Jews and not as Jewish citizens of a foreign country.
For how long can Israeli's love hatred?
I've been involved with Israel since 1969 and have lived here all and all for 30 years. I've seen it change, morph, suffer, rejoice, fail and triumph. I've seen a society hold on to its democracy in the face of 100 years of war and violence. I've seen it hang on to its integrity and morality by its teeth, challenged by hateful and powerful forces. I've seen it develop a first-class economy, health care system and public welfare system. I've seen it fail in war. I've seen it lose its grip on education. I've seen it at its less than great and at its absolute best. I've experienced suicide bombings, kassam rockets from North and South, bombs and shelters. I'm heart-broken by its weaknesses and amazed by its heart. I've seen it weary from battle and lifted back up. It is the manifestation of a people fighting for its life. I am not tired.