On Yom HaZikaron, the memorial day for Israel’s fallen soldiers, I called my relatives in Israel to tell them that my thoughts were with them as they once again went to the military cemetery where their son was buried after “falling” during the first Lebanon War in 1982.
A few years ago, when I visited my cousin’s grave, his father explained how he had convinced army officials to change the grave marker to read “Fell in Lebanon” rather than in the “Peace for Galilee Campaign.” After all, the war was not in the Galilee and did not create peace. The Israeli army, it seems, has some sensitivity to parents’ wishes.
And then there’s Im Tirtzu, a new party in Israel that says it is aiming to strengthen Zionism in the Holy Land. Im Tirtzu (“if you will it”) used Israel’s national day of unity to distribute Yizkor (memorial prayer) pamphlets — including text that changed the traditional memorial prayer to include a denunciation of those who criticized some of Israel’s actions during last year’s Gaza war as traitors who “befriended the worst enemies of Israel” (www.tinyurl.com/y6tj8ez).
At a time when I am remembering my cousin’s death defending Israel, I find this incredibly insensitive and divisive to the solidarity of the Jewish people.
This is a continuation of Im Tirtzu’s campaign against the New Israel Fund, whom the group blames for the embarrassment of the Goldstone report. Part of that campaign included an antisemitic caricature of NIF President Naomi Chazan.
Rather than the strengthening of Zionism that Im Tirtzu claims is their aim, their tactics remind me of the talmudic passage that interprets the destruction of Jerusalem 2,000 years ago as the result of unjustified hatred between different Jewish factions.
Speaking of Goldstone, it seems that some right-wing groups that consider him a traitor to the Jews threatened to disrupt the bar mitzvah of his grandson in South Africa if he attends. Regardless of whether you think the Goldstone report was correct in part or not at all, this is a reprehensible way to treat a fellow Jew.
Goldstone is taking the high road by saying he will stay away from the bar mitzvah — a tactic of shaming those threatening violence. Maybe it will work, but maybe it will just encourage these folks that violence, or the threat of it, works.
A similar viewpoint was expressed by Ed Koch in a recent advertisement (j., April 9). Titled “Never again should we be silent,” the ad implied that President Barack Obama’s policies are almost as dangerous to the Jews as Hitler’s, and that Jews who do not criticize the president are guilty of staying “mute” — just like the American Jews of the 1930s (no matter that this is historically incorrect, why let history get in the way of a good polemic?).
This means, of course, that any of us who happen to agree with Obama’s policies regarding Israel — which, according to a recent poll, includes a majority of U.S. Jews — are, by implication, self-hating Jews. I take a bit of comfort in knowing that there sure are a lot of us!
But maybe the phenomenon we see here is not “self-hating” Jews but “other-Jew” haters.
With all of this happening in close succession, I connected the dots and began to see a pattern: an international effort by the right to delegitimize those who disagree with them about Israeli policies, including those who are supporters of Israel but believe that some (or many) of its government’s policies are misguided.
Not that I think there is a conspiracy, but these views are encouraged by the words, actions and policies of the most right-wing Israeli government in history, many of whose members are quick to label their opponents as self-haters or antisemites.
My greater concern is this: Many American Jews today, especially younger Jews, are less identified with Israel and also less identified Jewishly (to the extent that Israel is bound up with Jewish identity).
While I am proud of some young Jews I know who have volunteered to be in the Israeli army, they are few; for many others, Israel has become more of a problem than an object of pride.
Ironically, precisely because it has become so easy and acceptable to be a Jew (thanks in large part to the existence of an independent Israel over the last couple of generations), it has also become easy to assimilate and have nothing to do with the Jewish community.
The more that being Jewish is defined as being an uncritical supporter of a narrow way of being Jewish — whether politically or religiously (let’s not forget that the only official rabbis in Israel are Orthodox) — then the more we will have a self-fulfilling cycle of fewer Jews engaged with Jewish life, with only the most fervently political and/or fervently religious remaining.
And that will be bad for the Jews.
Ron H. Feldman of Berkeley has a Ph.D. in Jewish history and culture. He has taught Jewish studies at four local universities and was the co-editor of “The Jewish Writings,” a collection of Hannah Arendt’s essays.