The Resurrection of Baruch Goldstein

One of my key arguments in support of Israel for the last decade has been that one cannot judge a society by its bad apples, but how the society deals with them. Yes, there are extremists in Israeli society, yes there are those who have wantonly taken Palestinian lives, but they are tried and jailed for doing so. They are not celebrated on the streets. They are seen as abhorrent. This to me has always been the defining difference between Israelis and Palestinians — that far from condemning terrorism and violence, Hamas revels in it and the PA tacitly supports it. One cannot frame the number one line item in the PA budget being the so-called “pay for slay” any other way than tacit support of tactics they supposedly left behind. If a Palestinian woman’s dead, naked body was driven through the streets of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, you would not see Israelis cheering en masse. You would not see Israelis cheering for the dead bodies of Palestinian children, for the evidence of mass rape visited on teenage girls. Because that, fundamentally, is not who we are.

The problem is, what happens when you have people in government now for whom cracking down on these problematic elements is less appealing, due to political expediency? What happens to the moral high ground then?

The fundamental issue for the Jewish community, inside and outside of Israel, is to recognize that the struggles in the Jewish state currently reflect the same conflict happening in many Muslim countries in the Middle East. While Israel describes itself as the “only democracy in the Middle East” — and it is — simmering underneath that is the growing threat that all Middle Eastern countries are facing in some way: what do they want the future to look like? What do they want the state to look like? It it one of moderation or is it one of religious and political extremism? Life today is defined by polarities. Liberal/ conservative. Republican/ Democrat. Oppressor/ oppressed. White/ BIPOC. Right wing/ left wing. Far-right extremist/ far-left extremist. The list goes on. And we, as a Jewish people and as citizens of the world have been swept up in this cultural and psychological split, the defining of the world into camps. As the world seems progressively more dangerous, as conflicts heighten, complexity is often the first thing discarded on the altar of tribalism. In periods of war and crisis this only gets worse, and we may survive it, but not unaltered. But it is this polarity that is the exact threat to all of our societies, in Israel and outside of it. And perhaps we need to stop framing everything within the increasingly circular political spectrum (far-right v. Far-left) and instead frame it as an “extremist – moderate” spectrum.

From the discontent around the Charedi population’s control over religious status, their negation of army service, and their growing influence, to the wide scale protests against the judicial reform of the far-right coalition that formed after the latest election, this extremist-moderate spectrum is on full-display in Israel. Baruch Goldstein, the perpetrator of the 1994 Hebron massacre, was rightly labelled a terrorist by Israel, his party (Kach) outlawed. Now, the security minister, Itamar ben Gvir, proudly hangs a picture of Goldstein in his living room; he even took his wife on their first date to his grave. That in 30 years Goldstein would go from persona non grata to a someone that a cabinet minister feels comfortable adulating indicates where Israel falls currently on this paradigm. That’s not to say that most people in Israel would agree with Ben Gvir; indeed, he is deeply unpopular. That said, when Netanyahu created this coalition, he gave Ben Gvir, Aaron Smotrich and other extremists the patina of legitimacy. What anyone could have foreseen was their extremist beliefs — including Kahanist racism, violence & incitement to murder — beliefs that once went directly against everything the State of Israel stood for, would be given that same patina.

Supporters of Likud (but not Ben Gvir & Smotrich) would point to the coalition-building process, when all moderate parties in the Knesset effectively refused to work with Bibi. They could make an argument, a realistic one, that in failing to unite behind an unpopular leader, they caused a situation where said unpopular leader would do anything to stay in power, including uniting with people he once called “unfit to hold office.” But this is far from an aberration at this point. Where once the State of Israel was capable, even across many parties, of drawing a line in the sand about parties and politics that have no place in a modern, democratic state, that moral clarity is increasingly uncommon.

As the war drags mercilessly on, as Iran threatens another attack, as North American Jews brace for the results of the American election, this tendency towards extremism will only grow. And if we do not point to those in our society who are acting immorally, regardless of whatever political benefits they may provide, we are failing the generations who have preceded and will succeed us. But even more so, these people are the worst representatives possible for the majority of North American Jews. Their baser instincts are living exemplars of many of the lies told about us and Israeli society. As we fight the 8th front here, it’s hard to not cringe whenever Ben Gvir or Aaron Smotrich says something about upsetting the status quo on the Temple Mount, re-occupying Gaza, invectives against Palestinians or scuppering another hostage deal. To say nothing of Ben Gvir’s driving record. In times like this, the lure of hatred and division is real, and it is seductive, but it puts all of our futures at risk. If we allow leadership who advocates for violence and racism, who seem to wish to turn the lies about us (supremacy, apartheid, violence) into reality, what hope do any of us have for a future that looks better than today?

In the choice between what is easy, and what is right, we all know what path we should go down. We are all at a crossroads: what level of political and religious extremism are we willing to permit before we draw a line in the sand and say enough is enough? Like Yuval Noah Harari said, there are only two outcomes to this internal war: falling into extremism, or coming out as a stronger democracy. I pray that Israel is better able to fight extremists in their society than many other Middle Eastern countries are. But that fight was weakened substantially the minute Bibi made Ben Gvir, a modern-day adorer of a convicted terrorist, a cabinet minister. Kach may be outlawed, but their politics live on.  And this time we don’t have a prime minister with enough moral clarity to call them out for what they are. God help us all.