Jerusalem Day this year falls on May 8, marking 46 years since Israel took back the Old City in the Six-Day War.
It was a watershed moment in Jewish self-identity. Until then, Jews hadn’t internalized the full significance of Israel’s creation two decades before. It took that lightning victory in Iyar 5727 (June 1967) to lift the cloud of horrifying vulnerability from atop our collective heads, bowed so low in the Holocaust.
The dazed bewilderment of the first few days after the war quickly gave way to joy and pride. Yes, we could walk in the Old City again. Yes, we were strong.
Brooklyn-born Israeli journalist Yossi Klein Halevi was 14 that summer, in Israel for the first time. “Pudgy and pale” at the beginning of his trip, he recalls, by August he was “tall, lean, tan and wearing a bullet around my neck — that was very popular that year.”
1967 was, Halevi says, “the height of the American Jewish romance with Israel.” But the decades passed, terrorism intensified and peace treaties proved elusive — and today the legacy of that stunning military triumph no longer unites the Jewish people, but, just as often, divides them brother from sister, diaspora Jew from Israeli.
That’s the subject of Halevi’s upcoming book, “Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation.” Set for an October release, the book profiles seven veterans of the Six-Day War — some of them settlers in the West Bank, others now left-wing political leaders — to illustrate the complicated legacy of that unintended conquest.
The Jerusalem-based journalist was in town last week on a speaking gig for the Shalom Hartman Institute, where he is a senior fellow. As always, his analysis of Israel-diaspora relations was razor-sharp, yet delivered with great heart. In a compelling hour-long talk in San Francisco, Halevi attributed the disconnect between American and Israeli Jews in large part to American Jews remaining trapped in the ’67 paradigm.
Halevi calls it the “May ’67 Jews” versus the “June ’67 Jews.” (Others label it Purim Jews versus Passover Jews, but the pathology is the same.)
In May 1967, Israel was tiny and vulnerable, encircled and facing imminent attack. May ’67 Jews, he said, still live in that anxious state. They look at Israel’s precariousness, the uncertainty in Syria and Egypt, the attacks from Gaza, and say this is the worst time to take risks for peace.
June ’67 Jews, by contrast, are buoyed by the confidence borne of victory. They view Israel as strong enough to offer peace, and focus instead on internal threats: the growing gap between rich and poor, debates over religious pluralism and the viability of Israel’s democracy in the face of an ongoing military occupation.
So we have one group that sees Israel as the only country in the world surrounded by nations dedicated to its destruction, and another group that sees Israel as the only democracy in the world that is also an occupier.
Both anxieties are legitimate, Halevi says. But rather than remaining stuck in one group or the other, American Jews would do well to follow the lead of Israeli Jews, who have by and large internalized the paradigm.
Some days, he said, he wakes up and is certain Israel is about to be attacked. Other days he is equally convinced that Israel must take every risk for peace. And he’s not alone: A recent poll showed 70 percent of Israelis favor a two-state solution, yet 80 percent believe it won’t bring peace.
“The model of Israel as divided into left and right camps is outdated. That argument that divided Israel for 40 years is over. Most Israelis have internalized it, and we argue the left and the right within ourselves, in our own heads.”
American Jews would do well, he suggested, to adopt more of that nuanced approach to the issue.
“As an Israeli, I will be more open to hearing American Jewish critics if they don’t only express concern about my soul but also about my physical well-being,” Halevi said. “A Judaic politics that would be true to who we are would integrate body and soul, Israeli security and morality.”
Good advice to remember this May 8.
Sue Fishkoff is the editor of j., and can be reached at [email protected].