Volume 67, Issue 7

Rethinking American-Israeli Relationships

Nationalists in their Diasporas can often be more politically radical than their peers in their homeland.  Some examples include Irish-Americans in the nineteenth century and Tamils in Canada today.  Being in another land can make events seem greater than they are, for example, we see all the daily horror in Israel, but may forget that life goes on behind the cameras.  As disgusting and obscene as terrorist attacks are, they kill no more then traffic accidents.  Living in North America, with little violence in our history, violent events such as the Holocaust are not seen in light of all the bloodshed in Europe, but become even more grim events when transported to our shores.  I can’t speak for Israelis [yet], or for other nationalities, but as an American I can say that our support for Israel, wonderful as it is, may be skewed.  Yelling, trying to outdo each other in Zionism and hate of the Palestinians may be cathartic, but what good does it do?

While there is a great need to attack the Anti-Zionism at other universities, among ourselves we need to engage in a debate over Israel’s future, how much of an voice we deserve to have, and above all, how to have a dialogue of ideas, not just rhetoric, with those we disagree with.

Every community brings its own way of thinking to Israel, but because Americans and other ‘Anglo-Saxons’ emigrate to Israel by choice rather than conception, there is inevitably a sense of superiority in political and economic ideologies.  This has led some North Americans immigrants to play an explosive role in aggravating Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and Arab world.  A large amount of the extreme right hails from the United States, and includes such notorious figure as Baruch Goldstein, the worst Jewish murderer in perhaps thousands of years, Meir Kahane, who was barred from the Knesset for his racist views, and Shmuel Feiglin, also banned from Knesset for sedition against the Israeli state.  Such people believe that we have no to teach Israelis than learn from them.  They preach to teens who are indoctrinated to be Zionist, but their passion for Israel is abused by teachers who don’t teach them about other views, only about religious and right-wing Zionism.  Culturally, many of my peers view Israel as extension of their American lives, and look down at elements of Israeli society that they find primitive and non-western.  In summary, an angry Israeli told me that Americans have given Israel ‘the materialism of shopping malls, fanatics we have to defend, and yeshivot, really glorified summer camps that are enclaves of an American culture.’   The banner of Ahavat Yisrael really is one of religious nationalism.  I once wanted to wear those clever kippot that said ‘I love every Jew’.  Then I realized that in Israel it sends a statement to the Muslims and others who read Hebrew. 

This leads to the farce of Americans trying to support at all costs any political figure who utters a word in favor of Israel.  Aren’t our senators minor protagonists in the conflicts of the Middle East?  As a teen, I remember campaigning for the move of the embassy to Jerusalem, something I was later told that the Israeli government didn’t really want.  Why are there all these American organizations, such as the Israel Emergency Fund or Americans for a Safe Israel, who operate in an American vacuum?  I think more is to be gained from working with Israelis, and Israeli organizations.  I’m all for making any contribution to the state, but do our soldiers want our selling chocolate chip cookies for Israelis, or rallies trying to evict the Palestinian Authority from New York, holding trading cards and posters of the deceased? 

A comment in the last Commentator saying Abba Eban was a great man despite his ‘shockingly left-wing’ views and an article praising the settlers of Hebron is the last straw that has broken my political silence.  I now will say explicitly, I am a religious Jew with left-wing views on Israeli politics and I am tired of being spoken for, gratuitously insulted and deemed nonexistent by teachers, students, and publications of this institution.  So many of my Judaic teachers have gone on political tirades that are not only irrelevant to the class, but make me feel uncomfortable.  One teacher claimed that Moshe Dayan gave the Waqf the Dome of the Rock after the Six Day War due to the influence of his Arab mistress.  Another talked of his relationship with Meir Kahane, calling him ‘a tzaddik of blessed memory’, even though his political party was deemed as racist under Israeli laws and banned from running for office. 

The emotional outbursts and some of the simplistic questions asked to guest speakers disgrace this school.  Remember the farce of an leader of a grass-roots group revealing to the Israeli ambassador of the United Nations that ‘we Jews are the prince of all peoples’ and fellow activist challenging the dignitary, a former politician within the Labor Party, for his political past?  To give another example, what about those posters in Furst Hall asking students to talk to ‘A German’, another ambassador to the UN, asking him to comment on Israel, when he came to talk about the status of Jews in Modern Germany?  This well-intentioned but misguided patriotism extends to the treatment of students as well; a friend of mine from a European country actively involved in the ‘Peace Process’ is belittled because of his nation’s political views.  Despite the fact that he was a member of a community of several thousand Jews in a nation of millions, and accosted there for being a Zionist, certain teachers, and peers still show him hostility on this homogeneous campus. 

YU’s publications do not manifest their political views itself in a confrontational way, but in the simple assumption that one political view is the norm.  Again, I’d like to remind my peers, Zionism is not synonymous with having right-wing political views or a belief in G-d.  In a time when Israel is in a de facto war, it cannot afford to have activity working independently of the government that has not been approved by a national consensus.  I’m not blind to the fact [and this is a bit of an understatement] that YU has a strong tradition of Religious Zionism, with many graduates settling in ‘Yesha’, which is likely supported by a majority of students.  That’s fine, I accept and understand their reasons, as long as they are grounded in geopolitics and research.  A discussion of Israeli politics should be based on concrete facts, and an intellectually honest introspection.  But some fragments from editorials, cavalier assumptions of the typical student may help explain my alienation.  ‘I do not download Arutz 7 on my palm pilot’ [mentioned in a editorial as the standard way for a YU student to keep in touch with Israel] , because it is a poorly written, illegal, grossly biased publication which is run by Rabbi Zalman Melamed, who called on Israeli soldiers to defy orders that conflict with the goals of Yesha settlement.  I remember another editorial in the Observer which described a student’s shock at hearing an Israeli politician admit he supported giving away areas of Jerusalem [never mind that these were Arab villages that were annexed to Israel in 1967, and de facto Palestinian]. An American student questioning an Israeli politician representing an Israeli consensus is sign of political immaturity.

As for the article last month about Hebron, I do not think the settlers of Hebron are heroes and I’m not going to visit them. I think they are a danger, fighting their battles using the IDF as their proxy army, and I have no plans to make soldiers risk their lives defending me there.  I’m not bothered at all by a professor signing of a divestment petition concerning Israel [though I personally disagree].  These four comments are from a litany of political comments in the Commentator and Observer that so many of my classes are spiced with. In my opinion the true hero of Israeli society is not the settler grabbing another hill, but the policeman who must attack his brother by force, who is enforcing law-against people who defy their nation, who take their money, who take their hooligan ways and call it patriotism.

There are many important figures who are religious Jews who are left-wing.  How about the ambassador to Israel and YU alumnus, Daniel Kurtzer, and the Speaker of the Knesset, Avrum Burg, not to mention members of the Meimad party such as Rabbi Melchior, Rabbi Gilad, and Rabbi Amital.  Not that any of them have been invited to speak at YU.  Instead we had Netanyahu three times in two years, paid him 25,000 dollars a visit to crack jokes, in what really was a overt monetary donation to his political cause.  And how about the figures who have been here or met in Israel?  Benny Elon who advocates expulsion of Arabs?  Samuel Sackett who wants to build the Temple and engulf us in war with the Arab world?  Contrast the way our university embraces such political dilettantes and with how figures such as Shimon Peres and Yossi Sarid are called ‘enemies of Israel’.  It boggles my mind how an Americans can call a Jewish Israeli politician a hater of their own people. 

Yeshiva students have lost the forest for the trees.  The religious-nationalist view is the political minority.  Most Israelis are not religious, most don’t want all of the land, and they don’t want a state according to Halacha.  Israel would not exist without the efforts of socialist pioneers and the Labor Party.  What role G-d has played in Israel is debatable, but the role of the IDF and the Kibbutz movement isn’t.  Many of the state’s early residents, politicians, and soldiers were not religious, and the religious parties were left wing politically.  Then came 1967 and the Six Day War.  Every community brings its philosophy of thinking to Israel, but often Americans have political views that even the most extreme Israelis don’t have, and have played an explosive role in aggravating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, from Moshe Levinger to Meir Kahane. 

What bothers me most is that most of these right-wing views are not the product of careful thought or serious deliberations, but instinctive reactions to the violence of the Intifada.  I am as pained by attacks as they are, and I too have friends and relatives at risk.  However the grief that violence spawns should not just be a carte blanche to escalate or commend.  I share some values with the settlers of Hebron, such as Zionism, a love for the land of Israel, recognition for it’s historic importance.  Nothing they do, or Palestinians [strange how all ‘Arabs’ all lumped together and responsible for every terrorist action, but when Jews respond in kind it’s ‘the extreme right’] do to them can take that away. 

Israel is a democracy and not a theocracy, and also to blame in the rise of the right are religious political parties.  Politics is a dirty business, and any religious figure involved is going to be accused of dishonesty.  How can they say it is ‘chillul hashem’ not to vote for their party?  Furthermore, what gives a Rabbi the knowledge to decide issues of security and economics?  It’s not necessary to have a political party to maintain the desires of the religious community, and it enlarges the rift between secular and religious Israelis.  If the attempt to make halakha of the land is to promote observance, then it’s counterproductive.  On the topic of religion, we fast on the Tzom of Gedaliah because a Jewish leader was killed by a fellow Jew, two thousand years ago.  So where is the introspection for the murder of Yitzchak Rabin z’l?

When I’ve mentioned some of the opinions above, I have been dismissed as a self-hating Jew or even called a traitor.  Just because I have a different view, which is common many places outside of the American Orthodox bubble, doesn’t mean I have any respect or ties with Anti-Zionist protestors.  My Zionism will be questioned even though I am obsessed with Israel, spend my free time studying Hebrew and listen to Israeli music, though I plan to make aliyah after college, enlist in the army, and move to a development town to teach.  At a meeting of the Israel Club I mentioned development towns and was mocked.  I fail to see how see how the average settlement, a middle-class suburb of 1,000, placed in the middle of barren land for strategic reasons, dependent on commuting, is more important than a city of 30,000 in the Negev or Galil, where residents suffer from poverty, poor education, and crime.

As I put posters and publicized the visit of Yitzchak Frankenthal, I knew there would be protest and discussion, which I welcomed.  What shocked me was seeing that someone, likely a student, scrawled ‘Rasha, Soneh Yisrael’ on the side to describe this man.  I’d like to think this was one fanatic, but the vernacular used is commonly used by elements in the Haredi community in Israel and their Rabbinical figures.  I ask you, the graffitier, how can you, likely an American, with your Israeli yeshivish peers who didn’t serve in the army, call a man who is living in Israel, and a man who had his beloved son kidnapped and his body burned by terrorists, an evil man, a hater of Israel [which Israel are you talking about?] ,akin to Haman?  You, the one who practices sinat chinam, the one who uses the word rasha so glibly, you are the one who hates Israel.  Have the courage to talk to me.  Now that I’ve written this letter, what I am to expect?  Printed insults?  Ostracism?  I hope that the YU community will remain in a dialogue with me, and see me a fellow Zionist.  I am sure that there are other students who can at least respect my views if not agree with them.

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