From a correspondence with a Canadian friend
Dear Gila: Congratulations for winning the German PEN Association award. I have a question which I’d appreciate an answer to. After I sent you the script in which I used your story, you responded by saying you were glad the story was being used by someone who loves Judaism and loves Israel. I have thought about that since then. Do I love Judaism? It’s more like Judaism is a part of me like my left hand. There’s parts of Judaism I love, parts I don’t like at all, parts I don’t understand etc. As far as loving Israel; I have compassion for the Zionist project, but I cannot say that I love Israel. I have not been to Israel since 1967. I do not like what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Why am I writing this? because I want to know, Do you feel that you love Israel? Why? I’d really like to hear your response. I’m asking this because I am trying to figure out how I will speak publicly about Israel and in what situations I feel comfortable speaking about Israel. I’m uncomfortable with the litany of Israel’s sins without contextualizing the Zionist experiment historically. I know you are very busy, but I’d really appreciate your response.
Helen
Dear Helen, Let me say if I can do this succinctly; it could conceivably take a book. One subject at a time –
I love being Jewish. I suppose that’s different from loving Judaism. I’m not fond at all of formal Judaism, neither our sources nor our current institutions. I love being Jewish, being part of the Jewish people, which has such a rich and positive tradition of being on the side of justice and decency for so many centuries. To this very day, Jews are at the forefront of efforts for peace, justice, humanitarian aid, etc. Our contribution to world culture & science is immense. Recently, I learned about the Jewish contribution to peacekeeping in Europe during the middle ages – because they were regarded as neutral, outside the nationalisms of the warring parties. I love Jews because we are outsiders, and got to think for ourselves. Is this enough?
I love Israel. Needless to say, I hope, I hate its geopolitical policies over the past 36 years of occupation, I hate the behavior of its army in the territories, I hate everything our government has done to undermine the lives of Palestinians, to encourage them to leave this region. I also hate the fact that the creation of Israel was done at the expense of the Palestinian people, and we have yet to acknowledge that, let alone seek to make amends. But historically, if you look at the period 1948-67, you find a lot to love: a little community that worked enormously hard to build a country that worked, having no previous experience in governance, to create a safe haven after centuries of persecution, to give warmth and security to survivors of the European holocaust as well as hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the Arab countries, to grapple with insufficient water, a parched desert over most of the land, and to have created in this otherwise traditional region, a pearl of beauty and modernity, with wonderful irrigated agriculture, modern homes, excellent roads, fabulous resorts, and utmost attention to preserving the historical and archaeological sites. In fact, all this was accomplished even though Israel has almost always been comprised of 50% immigrants at any given time, meaning that the burden of absorbing these people – providing for their needs – was carried simultaneously with all the effort required to grow and develop. This is no mean feat! And all this was happening while Israel was teaching itself how to be a democracy, in a region where this is the exception, not the rule. Needless to say, we have made lots of mistakes throughout this period, but the overall thrust was one of growth and progress, while caring for the very needy and troubled souls sought succor here from afar.
The situation after 1967 is clouded miserably by the occupation. I don’t have to expand on that, I’m sure, as I have nothing but anger and criticism about Israel’s actions in that regard. But if you can step back from our brutal behavior there, you find a country like any other – worse in some ways and better in others. We’re worse because we’re still operating in the psyche of being persecuted – that the rest of the world is full of anti-Semitism and can’t be trusted. This is not uncommon among Jews, and in the case of Israel, it leads us to behave like the victim rather than the successful country that we are. We specialize in arms manufacture (and then end up selling it to dictators), we are fanatically competitive in international sports tournaments, we regard Ilan Ramon as the Israeli hero par excellence, even though his specialty as a bomber pilot is what made him a holy astronaut, and we demand special compensation about everything. But on the good side, we are actually, beneath it all, a family, a very close-knit community. Inside this country, I disagree with almost everybody about politics, and refuse to celebrate the national holidays with anyone but those who share my love-hate feelings, but I know that if I would fall down on the street, everybody would run to my aid. If I get hijacked by French bandits or fall into a ravine in Nepal, the Israeli army will go the extra mile to get me out of there and back home safely. No matter what happens, all of us do share a vision of making this very location a beautiful and safe place – and one that is morally better than most. I like the fact that I can argue intelligently with a beggar on the street, because everybody is well-informed and deeply cares. Of course we will disagree on politics, but we agree that we both love this country, and will argue until our last breath, and that there is room for both of us in it, no matter what. Yes, the issue of being exclusionary about Arabs is a grave miscarriage of justice here, and one of the things that the ‘beggar’ and I would probably fight about.
Helen, I can’t go on (must get to my work!), but I hope that gives you some sense of why I love Israel and being Jewish. Or maybe love is hard to explain?