I recently returned from a fantastic trip to Israel — an interfaith delegation sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona. Our group consisted of 28 open-minded people — a vibrant and deeply engaged mix of faiths, ethnicities and professional backgrounds.
Together we walked, climbed and explored the land — from religious, historical and archaeological sites in Jerusalem, Masada and the Golan Heights to the military complex of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), a leader in both the defense and commercial markets, where Iron Dome was developed.
Our understanding was enriched by the texts, from Biblical to contemporary. We read Jewish, Christian and Arab sources that informed the foundation as well as the continuing conflict that defines the only democracy in the Middle East.
We focused our attention on the diversity of people who inhabit this thriving country. Israelis and Palestinians, Muslims, Christians, Baha’is and Druze, settlers in the West Bank and immigrants from Africa, Russia and the Philippines. Secular and religious, Ashkenazi and Sephardi. Each sharing a different story, a different struggle, a different Israel.
As we wove a tapestry of these three aspects of Israel — land, people, texts — a common thread emerged. In fact, a single phrase defined our major takeaway: “It’s complicated.”
I first lived in Israel in 1974 when Israel, at 26, was only five years older than I. Now, 45 years later, its hard to reconcile the Israel of today with the one I knew back when my apartment had no hot water or heat and the (non-Arab) world was predominantly sympathetic to and supportive of the fledgling country, established as the Jewish homeland.
The Holocaust enabled us to support a country where Jews would always be welcome and safe. American Jewry was proud to support Israel with dollars, slogans, new immigrants and even life.
Today the majority of American Jews view Judaism as a religion based on universal principles of social justice and liberal Jewish values. Liberal thinking is universal and applies to all people, regardless of race, sex, gender, nationality. It requires fairness, justice of the highest resort. Israel poses problems to this type of liberalism, or so it seems from the optics and the news we read.
But in Israel, Judaism is much more than religion. It is a national concept emerging from Biblical times; it’s where civilization, history and culture reside. Judaism was and is the basis of Zionism, the national yearning for and mandate to establish a country which any Jew can call home.
This difference between American Jews and Israeli Jews leads to more than diversity of opinion. It leads to a crisis of identity and identification. And it’s “complicated.”
It’s hard to fathom in the safety of our homes in the US what the daily need for national security in Israel means. But an incident occurred during our trip that really brought the point home.
After we visited Israel Aircraft Industries, we visited Kibbutz Netiv Asara, a small Jewish community on the Gaza border. There we met with a Jewish artist and participated in Paths for Peace. Within yards from the Gaza border, an Israeli artist engaged us all to add to the beauty of the security wall with tiles that said “peace” in Hebrew, Arabic and English.
We knew that behind that wall in Gaza, Palestinians were struggling to live. We also knew that from behind the wall, rockets were sent daily, weekly, at all hours into Israel, forcing Israeli families to run for shelter so as not to be killed.
We had dinner that night with families who live in Netiv Asara. They welcomed us with open arms and home-cooked meals and shared stories of what it is like to live so close to death.
The mom with whom I had dinner shared her fear that when she takes a shower, a siren would go off. She only has 15 seconds to get her family to the shelter in order to keep them safe. Just three days later, 11 rockets were fired from Gaza into the very town we visited.
We met people in Israel who believe that peace is still possible.
They are working in organizations like Shoreshim, which envisions a social and political reality founded on dignity, trust and the mutual recognition that Jews and Palestinians have a legitimate relationship to the land. Israelis and Palestinians, side by side, work together at the risk of their own safety to create a new reality.
It would be hubris to think that I have any answers. In fact, this trip only created more questions. But I know that any resolution over time will require sacrifices, which cannot be unilateral. Sacrifices must be made on both sides.
When Jews and Arabs work together to save rather than to destroy what is most precious to them, be it their children or their land; when they mutually agree to educate their children about the necessity of peace rather than to deploy them in the cause of hatred; and when love for life trumps hatred and revenge, we may see a new beginning in the land of Israel. In the meantime, it’s “complicated.”
Copyright © 2019 by the Intermountain Jewish News
Good Muslims? Yeah right………..
Israe is a national concept emerging from Biblical times”, lol.
The pious Jews of Palestine—the only kind before Zionist settlement—enjoyed a certain degree of autonomy granted by the sultan. They had never contemplated national status, a concept as foreign to the Palestinian Jews as it was to the Ottoman authorities in Istanbul.