How Did We Get Here?
The massacre of October 7th and the ensuing wars that have exploded around the Middle East as a response, have brought to the surface a deep chasm that has been brewing within Israeli society for some years now. They have also brought to light a growing rift within the Jewish diaspora.
Division, scorn, distrust, anger, and even blind hatred are on display in the streets of Israel, in the press, online, and in the halls of the Knesset, as well as in synagogues and Jewish organizations around the world.
To be clear, for Jews, disagreement and argument are baked into our historical, cultural, and religious DNA, for better or for worse. This is a biblical fact, a Talmudic tenet, a diasporic truism, a modern-day Israel condition.
Argument can be stimulating. It can lead to intellectual rigor, deeper analysis, exploration, and inventiveness. Argumentation, however, can also lead to discomfort, endless acrimony, alienation, and division.
I have always been fascinated by, even obsessed with, this question: what are the markers, the road signs that can help explain in some way how we end up where we end up? Do such markers even exist, and are argument and disagreement a part of this process?
The Middle East offers so many complexities, so many ambiguities, conflicting narratives and competing aspirations as to dizzy and confound the most robust spiritual seeker and intellectually keen pilgrim. There is never a single answer to a question in the Middle East. Never.
There is, ultimately, one truth, but do not seek it in one place only, and never succumb to the easy answers offered up by roadside sages, ideologues, sloganeers, and thrifty merchants of platitudes.
I want to share with you a piece I wrote 14 years ago. I was angry as I wrote the piece, and so I decided not to publish it at the time.
I now feel it is important for me to offer it as one of the many possibilities to explain in some small way how it is that we find ourselves today in the bitter waters of division and despair.
It is Friday morning, March 16, 2012, and I am reading articles by Denis Prager and David Souissa in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal and seeing red. Perhaps that is because I am, in Denis Prager’s words, a “leftist.” I’m not sure what a “leftist” is precisely, but I know it’s not a compliment.
Perhaps it’s also because I’m a little child in David Souissa’s eyes, due to the fact that I refuse to grow up and see a “reality” of war and hatred that are caused by Palestinians and directed towards us, simply because “they” hate us. I feel like a perverse version of Sally Field, accepting an award of shame and publically weeping: “You hate me. You really, really hate me.”
Unlike David Souissa and Denis Prager, I actually grew up in Israel, served in the IDF, and participated in two wars. Unlike Denis Prager and David Souissa, I saw what I, and my fellow Israeli soldiers, did to our adversaries. I also saw true hatred in the eyes of Palestinians on the West Bank, when I’d drive through their towns and villages in uniform, fully armed. Funny thing is, much as I hated feeling hated, I completely understood from where the hatred was emanating.
I, just like David Souissa, hate being scared; I hate fearing for my children, my wife, and my friends. I, like David Souissa, am tired of war. Really tired. Unlike David Souissa and Denis Prager, however, I do not believe all of this wickedness is caused simply by Arab hatred. In a way I wish it was: it would all be so much simpler then, but I know better. I know that, occasionally, in spite of good intentions, decent people can end up doing foolish, hurtful, and even cruel things.
My country, Israel, has done much that is good, generous, noble, and compassionate for the benefit of people around the world, including Arabs, both Christian and Muslim. At the same time, however, my country has also, from time to time, done much damage; wrought havoc and destruction; dispossessed, exiled, and killed too many Palestinians. Currently, Israel is even hurting and dispossessing Bedouins, who have been our allies since the foundation of our state in 1948.
These are not merely “leftist” opinions I hold – these are facts, well documented and easily available to the intellectually curious. They are also inconvenient truths to the morally smug and to those who cling to their status as the perpetual victims of history.
“They hate us and they always have.” “They want to kill us and always have.” I heard these mantras growing up. They made me cringe when I was thirteen and they still make me cringe. The point is not whether or not someone hates me – I have no control over the hearts and minds of my fellow human beings – the point is to ask: what am I doing? How am I acting? What can I do better? These are the profound Jewish questions to be asked – not “why do the Goyim hate us?”
If I, in any way, contribute to the pain and suffering of humanity I need to do something about it – that is the Jewish way. Dispossessing people from their land or throwing them in jail is not a solution. Devising laws to deprive people of their rights is not a solution. Blowing up people’s homes for any reason other than clear and present danger is not a solution.
It ought to be obvious by now that neither side in this insufferably protracted mess in the Middle East has succeeded in solving the problem. Hamas, Hezbollah, and their ilk are cynical, disgraceful, hate-filled, militant organizations that, in the long run, are their people’s own worst enemies. I have not a scintilla of sympathy or patience for them. That said, they have not grown in a vacuum. They feed on real frustration, despair, pain, humiliation, and ignorance.
To pretend as though there are no alternative narratives in the Middle East, of all places, is to be willfully ignorant of history. It is also harmful, in the long run. It feeds intransigence, suspicion, moral certainty, and arrogance.
I come, on my mother’s side, from a long line of active, philanthropic, committed Zionists who have lived in the Holy Land since the turn of the last century. My father was a Norwegian Lutheran pilot who volunteered for Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, stayed after the war, converted to Judaism and remained in Israel till the day he died. I come honestly by my love for Israel and my belief in its right to exist and I will not sit idly by and listen to flippant and dismissive comments by fear mongers and ethnocentric opportunists, no matter how good their intentions may be. I am not interested in mud slinging contests with “conservatives,” “right-wingers,” “fascists,” “Leftists,” “Bleeding heart liberals,” or any other lazy assignations upon whom Mr. Prager wishes to pin the woes of the universe.
I believe in self-defense. I believe in being vigilant and smart. I believe Israel faces real dangers from real enemies. I also believe this is the time for courageous, honest, smart, and forward-thinking solutions to the problem. Telling Jews: “they hate us”; belittling “leftists”, and mocking attempts at out-reach, no matter how naïve they may appear to be to the two gentlemen, is neither helpful nor intelligent.
We need to move Arabs and Jews towards life-affirming solutions, no matter how hard that movement may be; towards a modicum of co-existence, no matter how tenuous; towards some measure of healing, no matter how deep the wounds. Scaring Jews to death and hurling verbal insults at Arabs and “leftists” does injury to all of us who deeply care about Israel and about the very core of our Jewish souls.
