It Feels Like Redemption

We who don’t live in Israel have been stuck to our social media as though with velcro.  As I write this, an immediate danger has been averted. The crisis, which feels existential, continues.

We continue to wait, we continue to hope. We are too removed, in a variety of ways, to have anything very helpful to add to the avalanche of commentary.

Except this —

We are awe-struck by the ever-present sea of Israeli flags at all these ongoing mass demonstrations. It is the sign of a mass public renewal of something fundamental. The Israeli flag had been hijacked by a certain brand of ethnic chauvinism, by a kind of messianic Zionism with which many of us do not identify. Not the vision of Israel that we still carry.

It feels, amid all the fear and anger and sadness, that something real, something that’s been hidden, has been revealed again. The flag itself has been redeemed.

This is indeed a moment of great crisis for Israel. May the forces of unity in diversity, pluralism, and democracy prevail.