Teaching
Israel
Rabbi
Larry Freedman
Erev
Yom Kippur
Temple
Beth Jacob of Newburgh
It all began with
my boys complaining and my ignoring them.
They were talking about summer camp.
Ethan went to Eisner, Lev to Crane Lake and they loved their experiences
but when it came to Israel at camp, they both complained. They hated the way Israel was taught. They complained that camp presented Israel as
Disneyland, a happy shiny place filled with goodness and positivity.
At this point, my
boys had been to Israel a couple
times for bar mitzvah trips so they had seen Israel as a happy shiny place
filled with goodness and positivity. But
as is the case for any country, they had also seen some of the problems Israel
faces. Along with the influence of a
cynical father they were a little suspicious that any country, especially a
country in the news all the time, could be just so perfect. And now so was I because while I admit I
didn’t quite believe them, I took them seriously enough to look in to it.
And you know
what? Turns out they were right. We are teaching Israel badly at camp and not
only just at camp. We’re teaching Israel
badly everywhere. We are teaching it in
a way that is turning off most Jews under the age of 30 and probably a generation
or two older than that as well. As we
enter into Yom Kippur with a willingness to be reflective and self-critical, we
need to do the same with how we talk about Israel. The reason we need to do that is simple. If we love Israel and we want others to love
Israel, we need to be honest about Israel
Where to
start? How about we start with the
understanding that not everyone in this room loves Israel. Truth is a few of you do, many of you have
some sort of positive association, a whole lot of you are completely passive
and a sizeable minority of you are suspicious if not hostile towards
Israel. It’s difficult for me to explain
why I love Israel. It’s the place of my
history and my mythology. It is a place
of vibrant Jewish culture that exists naturally and outside of a
synagogue. Knowing Hebrew I have a
thrill using my Biblical and modern
Hebrew for purposes holy and mundane.
And it is a thrill to see what our people has developed, the country our
people has created in just 68 years. I
could go on and on but that’s another sermon -- and that would be the
problem. Just telling you how wonderful
it is no longer cuts it. It is an amazing place and you do need to
go but until you trust me and do that, we have other problems and that’s what
we need to talk about.
The tale of
Israel’s founding was a story so good if it were fiction no one would believe
it. A secular newspaperman is energized
into activism after covering the trial infused with anti-Semitism. Tales of quixotic diplomatic derring-do are
combined with tragic stories of 19th century Russian Jewish farmers.
And then World War II came and out of
the ashes the small Jewish community of Israel maniacally brings in any Jew
they can breaking naval blockades and other skullduggery. And then 1948 came with a war that showed the
world how quickly Jews can go from striped death camp garb to soldiers’
uniforms. What a tale! What a story!
And it’s all true! Amazing!
Jewish kids in America who used to get beat up going to school walked a
little prouder. And then, catastrophe hit. We got too good. In 1967, during the course of the Six Day
War, Israel took over the West Bank and we became military occupiers. Now things got tricky.
At first it wasn’t
too much of a problem because surely this was just the temporary result of war. But as the military occupation dragged on, we
became something other than the underdog.
Now there were Arabs under Israeli military rule not in the course of
battle but day in and day out and these Arabs developed a sense of Palestinian
identity and they did not like being under Israeli control.
And now, 50 years
later they are still under Israeli control and they still don’t like it and
this is where the problem arises. You
can say that the Palestinians have chosen a violent path to attain their own
self-determination. You can say that
other Arab countries have done little to nothing to alleviate their
plight. You can that the Palestinian
Authority is rife with corruption and you can say that the PA and the PLO
before it, having been founded in 1964, before there was any occupation let’s
remember, are focused on the dissolution of Israel over and above solving the
problem of the Palestinians. You can say
all that and you would be right but it wouldn’t matter.
The problem with
teaching Israel today is that we Jews have the hardest time acknowledging one
basic fact. Palestinians are
suffering. Life is really bad for a
Palestinian in the West Bank. Check
points all the time, arrests all the time, work permits restricted or
removed. Harassment by soldiers, by
settlers, a terrible economy. There
really isn’t any justice for the Palestinians.
Jews who support
Israel usually say, well, whose fault is that?
Fair question. The PA has a lot
to answer for what they’ve done to their own people. The UN has a lot to answer for as well. Here’s a fun fact. The UN has an amazing office called the High
Commissioner for Refugees. They have
done tremendous work all over the world setting up temporary housing for
refugees and then, in a reasonable amount of time, resettled those refugees. The High Commissioner for Refugees alleviates
the suffering of people within a reasonable amount of time. But in the West Bank, the UN set up the UN
Relief and Works Agency in 1949 when the West Bank was part of Jordan. Let that sink in. This agency was set up exclusively for the
Palestinians and redefined the word refugee just for them. For
Palestinians “refugee” was no longer something we think of as a temporary
condition of people fleeing danger but a permanent status. When it was set up there were 700,000
Palestinian refugees. Today there are
five million because UNRWA declared that the children of refugees through the
male line are themselves considered refugees and that means that a native born
American whose grandfather lived in Nablus before moving here counts as a
refugee. Let that sink in, too. Generations of Palestinians who live in
Jordan or Syria or Lebanon are considered refugees. This stretches the limits of what we commonly
think of as “refugee” but there it is. We
should know that. And we should know
that UNRWA’s mandate is not to resettle the Palestinians which would end their existence
as refugees. UNRWA has tragically kept
the Palestinians in some kind of limbo, neither resettling them nor helping
them rebuild their lives in the West Bank.
In some refugee camps, there is still sewage running in the streets to
this day. That’s UNRWA’s fault. Many, including Arab leaders, have suggested
that they stay this way as a permanent thorn and intentionally keep the
Palestinians suffering because a settled and satisfied Palestinian is one who does
not demonstrate and commit violence against Israel. You can look it up. But we’ll see why in a minute why that won’t
matter.
Where did these
refugees come from? We don’t talk about
this much but we should. In 1948, during the War of Independence, many
Palestinians became refugees. Some of
them were the elite wealthy who escaped early knowing war was coming. Some were told by Arab leaders to leave their
villages in order to get out of the way of the advancing and presumably
victorious Arab armies. Some were indeed
expelled from villages by the Israeli Army.
It is estimated that 15% of Arab villages were evacuated in this manner. That means 85% weren’t but still, 15% is
note worthy.[1] And then, like in most conflicts, the vast majority
of Arabs became refugees because they were running away from the conflict.
To the extent we
even talked about it, Israel education only focused on Arabs fleeing the
conflict on their own or the Arab nations telling them via radio and loudspeaker
trucks to do so. We never spoke of the
Israeli Army chasing Arabs out of their own villages. First, because we didn’t want to (and it was
an open secret) and secondly, because the State archives held these documents
as classified. But in the last decade,
the State of Israel has declassified documents and Israeli historians have been
studying and publishing these things openly.
So now we can’t ignore it and we should talk about it because Yom Kippur
is a time of honesty and we should talk about it because others are talking
about it. We don’t have a choice
anymore.
You’ve heard of
BDS? Boycott, Divestment and Sanction is
a movement that speaks for justice for the Palestinians but really has as its
goal the end of Israel. Their goal is to
plant the idea that Israel is a rogue nation and ought to be a pariah, that
Israel among all the countries in the world is the worst offender of human
rights. Not North Korea, not China in
Tibet, not various dictators around the globe.
Israel. It would be laughable if
it weren’t working. BDS is making
inroads and they are getting Americans of all persuasions to listen to a new
narrative. It is a narrative of a brutal
Israeli army viciously murdering Palestinians.
It is a narrative of Israel stealing land and houses, of Israel cruelly
working to destroy Palestinian life and treating Palestinians as second-class
citizens. If you are a Jew and wishy-washy
on Israel, there is a strong chance that the BDS narrative has reached you.
BDS often fails
when reason takes over. When trustees of
universities look at the reality of Israel they vote down these calls for
divestment. Outside of the boardrooms, they
are having more success because they are able to take a small bit of truth and
twist it into something massive and our people, our children who go to college
campuses, are unprepared and caught completely off guard. BDS will tell them that the Israeli army
committed ethnic cleansing in 1948. That
is, of course, false but since it is
true that some Arabs were kicked out
of their villages and BDS has no interest in context or nuance, they gain the
ears of our kids. Just as the American
army had Abu Ghraib, Israel had Deir Yassin.
However, the US Army should not be judged by Abu Ghraib alone and
neither should Israel for Deir Yassin.
But our kids don’t know that. They
never heard of the things BDS says and so they can’t refute the charge. And don’t forget, we have taught our children
to care for the oppressed. We should be
extraordinarily proud of how we have taught them to be decent human beings and
care for the oppressed and alleviate suffering.
What do we expect when someone comes up and says, “did you know this
suffering is going on?”
They don’t know
what to say except, and I have personal experience with this, they come back at
their teachers angry and hurt and frustrated.
They want to know why we betrayed them.
Why didn’t we tell them the truth?
Why didn’t we tell them what is really going on in Israel?
And why didn’t
we? They need to know that Israel is
great and the very notion of self-determination of the Jewish people after 2000
years in exile is an awesome thing. And
they need to understand the difference between the State of Israel and a
government of Israel. They need to know
that criticizing the governmental policies of the State of Israel is fair
game. Criticizing the legitimacy of the
state to exist is a different thing entirely.
We need to acknowledge and teach that Palestinians are suffering because
only when we acknowledge that will our children be willing to investigate the
complex reasons as to why.
The enemies of
Israel today are those who are committed to alleviating the suffering of
Palestinians. The real enemies of Israel
no longer come with tanks. They come
with moral outrage. They are the enemy
of Israel because they do not care why Palestinians are suffering only that
they are and it must end. Let me repeat
that. For those seeking justice for
Palestinians, how their suffering came to be is of little consequence. The Palestinians are suffering, Israel is
maintaining a military occupation, end of story. Why Israel maintains a very tough occupation
is of no interest to them, only that it does.
That it is in response to violence taking the place of diplomacy, that
without the wall or fence Israelis would be murdered daily, that suicide
bombings are just not acceptable to Israel and that Israel maintains the
responsibility to keep its citizens safe from being hacked to death with a cleaver
is of no interest to those laser focused only on the suffering itself and the
moral outrage against this suffering translates as a desire to see the end of
the State of Israel.
On Yom Kippur, a
day of introspection, we should teach Israel in a way that acknowledges some
responsibility for the suffering of the Palestinians or we will lose the
support of those who weep for the pain the Palestinians truly feel, those good
souls who don’t like to see suffering, like for instance, our children and a
lot of you. We need to be honest that
the current Israeli government has a settlement policy that little by little
removes the chances of a State of Palestine from ever being realized. When you look at the map you see a land mass
that looks like Swiss cheese. No country
can be formed out of this and we need to acknowledge what is happening because
the BDS people find our kids and adults and scream how Israel, the Jews, are
the ones who are no partner for peace, that the Palestinians just want a
country and it is the Israelis are uninterested in two states living
peacefully.
You can say it is
for security and you can say it is for this reason and that reason and you
might be right but the bottom line is that the policy of the Israeli government
is making the prospect for two states a diminishing hope. If the idea of two states goes away then there
will be a catastrophe. Palestinians will
either have to be given citizenship in which case they could vote Israel out of
existence in a couple decades or they will have to be occupied by the military
forever and the military will have to use strong and brutal methods to keep
down the resistance. That is how it
works. A single state can either be
democratic or Jewish but it can’t be both.
Only two states will allow Israel to be Jewish and democratic. Israelis
talk about this all the time. We have to
talk about this, too.
There is a new
approach to teaching Israel. It is an
approach of honesty. It is an approach
that recognizes the grievances of the Palestinians and doesn’t pretend they
don’t exist. The new approach is to be
honest with ourselves and acknowledge that Israel is no longer the little
underdog but a mighty force. The new
approach does not absolve the Palestinians from their own misery. It does not absolve the neighboring countries
who, did you know, have laws that forbid Palestinians from full employment and
even citizenship regardless of how long they’ve been in those countries. The misery of Palestinians is real and hardly
only Israel’s fault. But for too many of
us, we were never taught that their misery was even real and so when learning of
it and being told it’s all Israel’s
fault, we have very little to say. We
just don’t know enough because we were never taught the whole truth.
The new approach
is an honest approach, a fuller approach.
Mind you, some of those who weep for the suicide bombers whose mothers
give proud interviews praising the death of their children in the service of
killing Jews, some of them could stand to be more self critical as well. Seeing Palestinians as innocents is as
foolish as thinking Israel is perfect.
They need to be reflective and honest as well. But for now, since it’s Yom Kippur, it’s our
turn for reflection.
Let’s be honest
and talk about Israel honestly. Let’s
not get sucked in to the claims of our haters but let’s teach ourselves to
understand what they are talking about.
Let’s teach ourselves to be sympathetic because suffering is suffering
and no decent person can just ignore that.
Let’s teach ourselves not only the gloriously uplifting Israel -and it
is gloriously uplifting- but also the trials and tribulations a real country
endures. And let’s teach ourselves to be
honest so that we can understand the difference between legitimate criticism
and straight up anti-Semitism. But if we
are not honest with ourselves we will never be able to do that.
And finally, let’s
commit to getting ourselves to Israel.
Go see it for yourself. If you
are ready, we could have a trip in two years, plenty of time to prepare and
save up. We can hear a variety of voices
and meet a variety of people. We can do
it if we’re brave and honest. Let’s be
brave and honest.
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