What the Left can learn from Trump’s dream of Gaza

I have never and will never vote for Donald J. Trump. Speaking bluntly, I find him odious, a polarizing populist, a corrupt convicted criminal, an abuser of people and laws. The embodiment of avarice and greed. The Jewish tradition, however, teaches us that the wise “learn from every person,” and that even fools can speak prophecy. Which is why I believe the political camp self-defining as the Left – both in Israel and around the world – has to seriously contend with his dream to transform Gaza into the Eastern Mediterranean Riviera, and more importantly learn from his very act of dreaming.

Because Trump was right when he said Gaza is a hellhole. Trump was right to say that decent people would not want to raise their kids there. Trump was right when he pointed out that most of Gaza’s urban areas are construction sites, and much of Gaza’s agricultural land has been harmed for at least a few crop cycles. Because Trump was right that we cannot build a better future without first clearing the ruins of the past. Trump proved to us that if we do not put forward a new dream for how we will finally live in this region in peace, someone else will.

The saddest thing for me was listening to the reactions to Trump’s dream from the Left, the anti-communist wing of which remains the political tradition that best defines my own views of the world. For much of my childhood, it was the Left who knew how to dream. It was the Left who dreamed of universal education, of universal healthcare, of a social safety net, and made it happen. Of workers rights. Of racial and gender equality. Who inspired the world to affirm the right to vote. It was the Left who dreamt up the Jewish State, pioneering communities, the Israel Defense Forces, and made them real.

The Left gave its students the permission to dream by affirming two axioms: first, the past should never determine the future; second, the needs of the individual should never be sacrificed for the wants of the collective.

By following the first axiom, the dreamers on the Left were freed to imagine progress towards a better future, liberated from the expectations and social conventions of the present. This is what set the Left apart from the conservative Right, which was committed to maintaining the social order of yesterday through tomorrow.

The second axiom put in place critical guardrails to ensure the desires of the many would not permit injustice towards the few. This is what set the anti-communist Left apart from the communist Left on one hand, and the fascist and zealous Right on the other, for whom the ends justify all means.

It was the anti-communist Left’s commitment to these two core values that gave birth to the peace processes in the Middle East, a dream that defined our reality by setting people for or against it since it was adopted by political leaders. It is difficult to remember how revolutionary the idea of peace was at the time, how it flew in the face of human history’s propensity to give to the victor the spoils of war. This dream of peace was best represented by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the victorious general who repeatedly destroyed Arab armies and yet decided it would be better to return conquered land (land any other nation would have kept for itself) in order to bring about the dawn of a new day.

Yet in the 30 years since Rabin presented his vision uniting “the enemies of yesterday” against the enemies of tomorrow who who employ “terrorism that sows death in our homes and on the buses that ply the streets,” the global Left granted legitimacy to those same terrorists, leaving the Israeli Left with a dream deferred.

We are now left staring at the stark reality of the terror which is Gaza with no practical dream for how the long-suffering people of this region will overcome our past. With no dream for how Israel can live securely without the wholesale destruction of the people who aid and abet genocidal violence against us. With no dream that will inspire Palestinians and Israelis to fight side by side each for their own right to a State while giving up their aspirations to conquer the other.

Instead of spending time and energy debating Trump’s dream for Gaza, it is time the Left develop an alternative to the dream that was raped and murdered and kidnapped by three decades of fanatics who have taken an entire population hostage and prevented its realization with their blood and the blood of innocents.

Perhaps Gaza will never become the Riviera of the Eastern Mediterranean, but what else could it be? What would inspire the millions of Gazans who aren’t Hamas to throw off their chains and eliminate the 50,000 fighters locking them and us in the cycle of violence? What would empower Israeli leadership to contend with its own zealots and put an end to their messianic mission? And to use the strategic tool I teach leaders in my FutureTense workshops, where are we in the history of our desired future? Only a dream can change reality – and it is time we woke from the nightmare of the past three decades and began to dream once more.

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N.B. What is my dream, you might ask? I believe we Israelis have no right to dream for the Palestinians. We have enough troubles of our own. My dream, therefore, inspired by Isaiah and the Zionist prophet-pioneers, is that Israel take up its calling as an Am Olam and become the World’s Campus: a global laboratory for humanity to engage in applied research and development to solve the problems facing humanity.

To do so, Israel would have to stop defining itself against the Palestinians, focusing on an Our State Solution (who do we want to be and what will it require for us to get there) as opposed to the Two State Solution (who do we not want to be and how do we separate from the others who aren’t us). I believe by focusing ourselves on this old-new mission we can inspire our neighbors to join in the work side-by-side with us, but only after they’ve beaten their swords into plowshares.