Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Rosh Hashana morning sermon 5775

About Israel
Rosh Hashana 5775
Temple Beth Jacob of Newburgh
Rabbi Larry Freedman

Today, I need to talk about Israel.  It’s not a very unusual topic for a crowd such as this and, spoiler alert, I support Israel.  But with Operation Protective Edge over the summer and the more vitriolic than usual fallout, it’s worth discussing Israel.  We need to remember why we stand by Israel and there are things to wrestle with and acknowledge.  Second spoiler alert: you won’t like those.
Let’s begin at the beginning.  In 1894, Alfred Dreyfuss, a French army officer was accused of treason.  Turns out he was framed.  Eventually, the true turncoat was found and after 5 years on Devil’s Island Dreyfuss was released. Theodore Herzl was an Austrian reporter sent to cover the trial and he witnessed the French shouting not “death to Dreyfuss” but “death to the Jews.”  He understood that there would never be a safe haven for Jews in Europe.  Whether poor and religious like Eastern European Jews or rich and secular like Western European Jews, Europe would never accept Jews and never be safe for them.  Herzl convened the first Zionist Congress in 1897 creating the modern Zionist movement to find a homeland for Jews, someplace where they could be safe.
Little by little, money was raised, land was purchased and the Jewish population in the Land of Israel began to be built up.  Jews had always been there but now European Jews started to move in and develop agriculture and towns and infrastructure.
The true story of the founding of a Jewish state is a story of how only Jews were going to look out for Jews; if Jews wanted a safe haven, they would have to create it themselves.  The romantic and heroic story of Jews leaving permanent victim status and creating their own state is very much true.  It is important to understand that the Jewish people since our dispersal by the Romans in 70 CE were no longer players on the world stage.  We were guests in someone else’s country, guests in someone else’s story.  In the 19th century, nationalism became a popular and prized political philosophy but Jews had no nation and so we had no place in the world.  Zionism returned a nationalist narrative to the Jewish people and 1948 returned us to the world stage. 
Of course, around this time, the dream of an independent state wasn’t unique. Empires around the globe were crumbling and former colonies were becoming actual countries.  India was founded in 1947.  Jordan, as we know it today, was founded in May of 1946, two years before Israel. The difference for Jews is that we encouraged more Jews to come and live in this new country.  I don’t know if India and Pakistan had a worldwide campaign to encourage Indians and Pakistanis to come home after their founding.  If they did, nobody seems to mind.
We returned to the world stage.  We had a country that would speak for Jews and we didn’t have to scrape and grovel to our host countries.  We had diplomats who would argue for the State of Israel and by extension Jews.  We had representation at sports events and scientific conferences under the banner of the State of Israel offering pride to Jews everywhere.  It cannot be overstated what life was like for Jews after the declaration of the State of Israel.  You became somebody.  You walked prouder and quite frankly, you didn’t take the crap you used to take.  The State of Israel looks out for Jews wherever they are and raises the pride of Jews wherever they are.
But this true heroic, romantic story is taking a hit these days by the reality that followed.  In Israel, the promise of equality for all remains but the reality is not what we might want.  Arabs and Jews for the most part live separately and go to school separately.  Everyone meets and mixes in the courts and hospitals, shopping malls and universities but in many other parts of society, there is separation.  Yes, everyone will be treated fairly in the hospitals.  Yes, there is an Arab supreme court justice.  Yes, there was an Arab Miss Israel.  Yes, yes, yes.  And even with all that, day-to-day, there’s bigotry towards Israeli Arabs.  They face a lot of discrimination.  It’s not even close to apartheid but it’s not good either.  We need to understand that.
Since 1967, there has also been another issue that we haven’t wanted to deal with.  When Israel won the 6-Day war, a success beyond belief, a miracle from on high, that victory brought the west bank of the Jordan river under Israeli control.  It was occupied by the military and it continues to be occupied.  Perhaps it is occupied because Israel never had the vision to get out or it is occupied as a necessary military buffer zone to keep terrorists at bay or it is occupied because Biblical lands, the very towns mentioned in the Torah are under Jewish control and cannot be relinquished.  But in the end, it is occupied territory.
For a number of years, the occupation was benign as far as these things go but in the 1970s, settlements started.  Some of the settlements are right on the Green Line boundary, populated by Jews who want inexpensive housing.  Other settlements built farther in are populated by religious Zionists; real zealots and as a group, not very nice to the Palestinians.  While I’m sure there are kind settlers, the settlers who cause friction are bigots and harass the Palestinians where they can.  Currently there is a Price Tag phenomenon whereby settlers vandalize and destroy Arab property.  The occupation itself is rough and brutal and oppresses the Palestinian people.  That’s the honest truth.  Of course, we know why.  Without it, the West Bank would return to a cauldron of suicide bombers.  Without the oppression, terrorism would be unchained.  But that doesn’t change the facts of occupation or that the settlements are taking land, taking resources and carving up the topography.  Palestinians fear that the real purpose of the settlements is to disrupt any ability for a State to Palestine to even exist.  And gauging by the current government, they just may be right. 
I’m reading Ari Shavit’s book, “My Promised Land.”  It is a compelling narrative based on first person interviews and arduous archive searches.  He recounts a glorious story of Jews buying and developing land into farms, kibbutzim, schools, medical clinics; of Jews giving up everything to build a place where Jews would be safe.  And they did this with the help and aid and friendship of the local Arabs.  Before the British left, Palestine was a place of orange groves and Arab-Jewish cooperation.  Except when it wasn’t.  There were lynchings of Jews, bombings of Jews, murders of Jews.  And at times, murders of Arabs.  It bred suspicion.  Could these friends of the Jews be trusted if war broke out?  Whom would an Arab village support?  The Jews or the Jordanian army?
In 1948 when the Yishuv, the pre-State government, declared independence with its arm outstretched to neighboring Arab countries, it was, to no one’s surprise, smacked away.  War broke out and while some Arabs fled their villages those Arab villages in strategic areas were occupied and then emptied by Jews.  Israel itself was not cleansed of Arabs but this town here, that village there certainly was.  The Palestinian story of being kicked out of their homes is not just rhetoric.  It really happened and they really believe they are entitled to return.  We have to come to grips with that.  You may feel better knowing that Jews were expelled from any territory the Arab armies captured, most famously the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem.  They were also attacked and expelled from Arab countries before and after 1948.  Babylonian Jews, a presence for 3000 years, were unceremoniously expelled from Iraq.  We are not speaking of polite times.  The ugly side of nationalism was alive and well all around the middle east.  War brings out the worst in everyone.
The Palestinians call the Israel War of Independence the Naqba, disaster.  From their point of view, it surely was. And I feel pretty bad about that. I really do feel for them if their grandparents and great-grandparents were forced out of their homes.  What kind of person would I be if I ignored suffering? I’m sorry if Palestinians feel like they are trapped in Gaza because of that Naqba.  A decent Jew should be willing to discuss that history.  But a decent Jew also has to live in the modern day and today they are shooting rockets at my people.  In word and deed they seek the destruction of the State of Israel and the death of as many Jews as possible.  So, honestly, I want to be sympathetic but first things first.  Stop trying to kill my family.  We have much to discuss.  We can look forward to reconciliation but first stop… killing…my … family.  Palestinians want to talk about a lost home from 1948.  I want to talk about rockets in 2014.  I think my issue has more urgency.
That’s why we defend Israel.  That’s why we stand by Israel.  The outcome if we don’t is too horrible to imagine. Jews who feel more for the plight of the Palestinians than Israelis are either ill informed or fools.  However, Jews who ignore the claims of the Palestinians are either ill informed or cruel.  I’m not a fool but I also don’t want to be cruel.  The issue isn’t that I don’t care.  It’s that I have to prioritize.  Multiple things are happening all at the same time and they can’t all be dealt with at the same time.  There are legitimate grievances of Palestinians.  Then there is the more pressing matter of rockets being fired to kill Jews.  My full defense of Israel’s self defense doesn’t presume I’ve forgotten about the suffering of the Palestinian populace.  My sympathy towards those who suffer war’s effects doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten why Israel went after Hamas in the first place:  to wipe out the State of Israel, slowly but surely.
And if that’s not reason enough to support Israel, the worldwide reaction to the war in Gaza offers more.
This past summer, out of anger at Israel, there was a near lynching of a Jew in Calgary.[1] A supermarket in England was attacked by a protest that yanked kosher foods off the shelves.  Following this, another supermarket in England pulled it’s kosher products of their shelves though they’ve since apologized.[2]  European protests called for gassing the Jews and shouts of Hitler was right.  In Paris, 200 Jews were besieged in a synagogue.  In Germany an orthodox Jewish 18 year old punched in the face and a Molotov cocktail thrown.  Why did so many protests include the cry “death to the Jews” and not “death to Israel”?
We’re back to the Dreyfus case.  We’ve returned to where we see people around the world feeling comfortable not just to criticize Israel but also to hate Jews.  That’s something new – and old – and new.  And this, too, needs our voices raised in protest.  This, too, is why we must support Israel because what happened around the world this summer is the very reason Israel came to be.  To support Israel means refusing to go backwards in time.
The history of the State of Israel is complicated and filled with uncomfortable truths of what we, in the name of self-preservation, did and what we continue to do to others.  And it’s a story of what others did to us: expulsions, lynchings, bombings, hatred.
Let’s acknowledge that but let’s not lose focus.  We have to support Israel during times of self-defense.  Decent people everywhere need to speak out in support of the only country interested in the national liberation aspirations of the Jewish people.  Israel remains a refuge for oppressed Jews.  Israel remains a source of Jewish culture and learning and a protector of Jewish heritage.  It is home to the largest population of Jews with very hostile terrorist groups all about. We have to speak up and defend Israel’s right to exist.  The rest of it is up for discussion but don’t let anyone confuse the issue.  There is disagreeing with the policies of a sovereign nation and then there is the desire to erase that sovereign nation.  One is fair, the other is pure hatred. 
In lightening speed, Jews from around the world turned a former Ottoman Empire backwater into an amazing economic, cultural, academic, tour de force.  Israel is simply, on so many levels amazing.  We should never let the headlines make us forget that.  That’s why it’s okay to celebrate Israel even as you remember the legitimate grievances of the Palestinian people.  It’s not okay to let the world get away demonizing the State of Israel while ignoring the right of Israeli self-defense against thousands and thousands of rockets.  It’s okay to be torn over Israeli policy and proud that Israel remains strong.  There is no shame in being strong.  There is no shame in acknowledging mistakes.  One can make mistakes and be strong and on balance, be just.  That is a complicated position but it is the right position.  Welcome to the middle east.  Welcome to Israel.





[1] http://www.calgarysun.com/2014/07/21/family-recounts-attack-calgary-rally-organizers-to-apologize-for-violence
[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/sainsburys-condemned-for-taking-kosher-food-off-shelves-during-propalestinian-protest-9675242.html

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