At my Passover seder, an elderly relative who suffers from senility was having a particularly foggy day. Though I’ve known him all my life, my grandmother -- sharp as a tack into her nineties, realized the man had forgotten me. “Mira is a professor who tries to get the world to love Israel,” my Babba said. Though she delivered it with a wink, it was an obvious jab at what she sees as my dovishness when it comes to the question of Israel.
Seems that grandmothers come up a lot nowadays when Jews discuss Israel. University of Toronto’s Jenny Peto caused a small firestorm in 2010 with her controversial MA thesis on Holocaust Education which she dedicated to her late grandmother. If she were alive today, Peto wrote, “she would be right there with me protesting against Israeli apartheid.” (Soon after, her incensed brother sought to correct that view of their grandmother in a letter to the National Post.)
Grandmothers also figure in the opening sentence of Peter Beinart’s new book, The Crisis of Zionism. “I wrote this book because of my grandmother, who made me a Zionist.” Beinart sees Zionism undergoing an intense moral and political crisis, and seeks to do everything he can to keep his beloved Jewish and democratic Israel afloat. By this he means push for a two-state solution and an end to the highly undemocratic occupation that has plagued Israel’s moral profile for forty-four years.
It’s clear to me from ongoing conversations with my grandmother -- and with many other Jews -- that the Jewish community needs to think seriously about what it means to care about Israel.
What does it mean to feel attached to a country of which one may not be a citizen, but whose anthem one sings at community events, whose birthday one celebrates in Diaspora communities, which receives a portion of funds raised through annual Jewish Federation campaigns, to which we send our kids on Birthright, and where we may visit, live or mark our kids’ Bar or Bat Mitzvah?
If we truly and deeply care about Israel, do we remain silent in the face of shocking actions of brutality like the recent video clip of the IDF soldier slamming his M-16 rifle into the face of a Danish protestor? Do we attempt to silence criticism of Israeli policy with accusation of anti-Semitism? Do we decide to sign up for Israel advocacy training, so we can act as Likud government spokespeople?
Or do we chart a different path, one where we wrestle with Israel, and think deeply about the implications of its current policies for Israelis and for Palestinians? Most importantly, do we recognize that the officer who beat the Danish protestor is a symptom of the bigger problem of occupation?
I have heard people say that we shouldn’t “air our dirty laundry,” that the subject of Israel is a family affair. Surely our synagogues and other Jewish organizations represent the metaphorical family living room. But when it comes to those venues, voices seeking to pierce the silence are few and far between.
Beinart writes that if Israel ceased to be a liberal democratic Jewish state, “it would be one of the greatest tragedies of my life.” To that end, he calls for a boycott of settlement products from what he calls “non-democratic Israel.”
Beinart has a public voice: author of wide-circulation books, editor of the new Daily Beast blog Open Zion, and writer of a much-discussed 2010 article in the New York Review of Books where he demanded that the American Jewish establishment be more responsive to the moral sensibilities of younger Jews who are being forced to “check their liberalism at the door” when it comes to engaging Israel.
Not all of us enjoy a regular public platform. But each of us can decide when to speak out, how to vote, to whom to donate money, and how to talk with our kids. Those who care about Israel’s future might reconsider where their charitable efforts go. Groups like Ameinu, the New Israel Fund, Peace Now, Rabbis for Human Rights, and, in the U.S., J Street, are desperately digging in the avalanche for the keys to a democratic and Jewish Israel, keys that some days are being camouflaged by the dirt of occupation. The alternatives -- a “one-state solution” or perpetual occupation -- are simply not tenable if one wants Israel to remain both democratic and Jewish.
There’s a reason why young progressive and liberal writers on Israel -- from the radical left to the Zionist left -- invoke their grandmothers. In different ways, these young Jews are trying to honour their ancestors’ legacy. Beinart concludes, “Either our generation will help Israel reconcile its democratic and Zionist ideals, or we will make our children choose between them.”
**A version of this column is appearing in this week's Ottawa Jewish Bulletin**
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