Not long ago, a friend in the United States arranged an evening on Israel for a local, non-Jewish group. She asked me and another friend at the opposite end of the political/religious spectrum for our impressions about Israel today.
Response from Nina
Dear Sandy,
I’ve been mulling over how to answer your questions about life in Israel today. What I want to write isn’t easy because what is happening here is so disturbing.
I came on aliyah to Israel 55 years ago as a very committed secular Jew and Zionist. And that hasn’t changed at all. But Israel is changing in a direction I couldn’t have anticipated and, in my eyes, not a positive one, I have no respect for our prime minister and most of his cabinet. And that is putting it very mildly.
The trend toward extreme religious views – including among groups promoting the hope of rebuilding the Temple so we can perform sacrifices again and among those championing ultra-nationalist notions of the divine right of Jews to all of the Land of Israel, without regard for others who have lived here for generations – are leading us toward a bi-national state or, more probably, toward a state where the rights of minorities will be curtailed.
These are no longer extreme edges of the rainbow of views expected in a liberal democracy but rather the direction the country seems to be taking – and the government is encouraging – for its own political motives.
We recently commemorated the 20th anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s murder and nothing seems to have been learned from it. The same groups that threatened him for his efforts to find a peaceful solution to our conflict with the Palestinians, which in the end led to his murder, now threaten other people, including our president (himself a member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party) for not toeing their line.
This is not to say the Palestinians are blameless or justified in the ongoing conflict – far from it – but we are the ones with the power and our government has managed to destroy any hope on either side for a solution. The knife attacks by young Arabs on innocent passersby are deplorable but I think they are at least in part an expression of total hopelessness on their part which this government and this prime minister have helped create by doing nothing to try to diminish it.
I’m sure what has been happening here looks very dangerous from a distance, nonetheless I still feel safer walking down the street here than I would in America. We’ve had many guests from abroad this past month and they all were surprised to find this true for them too. That, in a nutshell, is what is troubling me.
Your old friend,
Nina
My Response
Dear Sandy,
Like Nina, I, too, came on aliyah over 50 years ago. I came as a very committed religious Zionist Jew who believed that this is indeed our God-given land. Which is not to say that no one else may live here. When Jews began returning here in large numbers over 200 years ago, there was never any intention to “curtail” anyone’s rights. Yet even long before there was a dream of a Jewish state, when there was only a tiny Jewish presence in the Land, the Arabs attacked, killed, and destroyed at every opportunity. (In the 28 pre-state years from 1920 until 1948, 686 Jews were killed in Arab terror attacks and many more wounded.) Not much has changed since then.
I am also not enthralled with the present government (although for reasons other than those expressed by Nina) but since this government was democratically elected by the majority of citizens, I accept it as valid even while disagreeing with many of its actions or policies.
When the Socialist Left was in power, it governed as it saw fit and the opposition be damned. But what to do? That was the democratically chosen government at the time. Today, the Left is unable to comprehend, and unwilling to accept, that it is no longer the Power behind the State. So leftists unceasingly attack and try to delegitimize the government. The game must be played their way or they will take their ball and go home (to where?). So much for democracy. Israel is indeed changing in a way the Socialist Left never expected. There is a new majority – large and growing – that is more traditionally religious and right-wing oriented. The secular, liberal, leftist minority is utterly distraught at this growing trend.
Despite what the Left decries, the Right is not an “extreme edge.” It is a majority – not a homogenous one, but a majority nonetheless – comprised of committed, loyal citizens whose children serve in the army, who pay taxes, and who love this country and believe it is ours, Jewish, and yes, even God given.
(Why is it that when an Arab talks about his belief in Allah, jihad, or Islam, his religious beliefs must be respected, but when a Jew talks about the divinity of the Torah and the Land of Israel as given by God to the Jewish People, it is considered fanatic, racist, unacceptable?)
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Re Rabin: I belong to the religious Right. I did not kill Rabin, nor did any of the other hundreds of thousands of religious Zionists in the country. Rabin was engaged in making drastic political decisions that were a source of great controversy and that a large portion of the population objected to vociferously. In a democracy, it is permissible to dissent, disapprove, and dispute. The Left unceasingly criticizes and censures today’s rightist government. We opposed Rabin’s policies, but this was our democratic right. We did not kill him nor do we accept any guilt for his death.
What Yigal Amir (Rabin’s killer) did was evil. He is guilty. No excuses or explanations for his act. Amir, however, did not become a martyr like today’s Arab killers. He became an outcast. Because he wore a kippah and committed a horrid crime does not make anyone else with a kippah – or anyone else on the Right who objected to Rabin’s policies – guilty. More than 1,000 Jews were murdered after and as a result of the Oslo accords. Does that make every liberal or leftist who supported Oslo a murderer?
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The “total helplessness” you describe among young Arabs is no ticket to stabbing, blowing up, or kidnapping people. Jews were often totally helpless in the past. Did we ever, in our long and bloody history, go on murder sprees as a result? And why are these young Arabs “helpless”? Arabs who do not wish to live under Israeli authority can live under the friendly, beneficial wings of the Palestinian Authority or a freely elected Hamas government in Gaza. Billions of dollars have flowed into these areas. They should be blossoming.
Jews who pity the “helpless” Arabs are so totally confused that in their burning desire to help The Other, they have come to hate themselves. The rabbis wrote in the Talmud long ago that one who is merciful to the cruel will eventually be cruel to the merciful.
Any Arab or Christian or atheist who lives here has the same civil rights as a Jew. But that does not give him the right to change the national character of the Jewish state. Arabs who want to live in a Muslim state with sharia law have the entire Middle East and much of Asia to choose from. Unfortunately, what they want is not their independence but our destruction. No one here is persecuting – let alone stabbing, stoning, or blowing up – Arabs.
We are accused of apartheid. Come see our Arab members of Knesset, the Arab doctors and nurses in our hospitals, the Arab judges in our courts, the Arab professors in universities, the Arab owners and customers of so many of our stores, factories, and businesses. Take a ride across the country and see the thriving Arab villages and magnificent Arab homes.
Approximately twenty percent of Israel’s population is Arab. Contrast that with the fact that not a single solitary Jew resides in Jordan and the few score Jews in other Arab countries make themselves invisible. And did you know there are statutes that effectively bar Israelis from purchasing or leasing land in “liberal” Jordan?
Recently, our Supreme Court decided that a synagogue with hundreds of congregants that had been standing for twelve years had to be destroyed because it was built illegally on private Arab land. The land was purchased and paid for but twelve years later the legal inheritors of the original owner claimed the sale was not valid. It was a complicated transaction but the Jews thought they were buying the land and they paid for it. Israel’s Supreme court decided otherwise. Now tell me about the lack of rights for Israeli Arabs!
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Palestine, as you may or may not know, was never a “state.” It was an undeveloped backwater province of the great Ottoman Empire and the number of Arabs living in the area was negligible. In her book From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine, Joan Peters uses official Ottoman and British documentation to show the size of the Arab population in Palestine. It was small in the extreme.
Large Arab immigration from neighboring countries began only after the influx of Jews in the 1800s. They came to find work and jobs – the result of the great economic growth caused by the Jews who preceded them. When Arabs claim they have been living here in a Palestinian state for “thousands of years,” it – like so much else they claim – is nothing more than myth.
Two thousand years ago, Rome conquered the Land of Israel. The Byzantines eventually defeated the Romans; the Ottoman Turks then conquered Byzantium. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, the League of Nations partitioned the entire area and Great Britain was entrusted with the Mandate for Palestine where it promised to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish national home.
Yet three-fourths of that territory was soon taken from the Jews to became the Kingdom of Jordan. Further reductions were made in Jewish Palestine until the end of the British Mandate in 1948. (This period saw the establishment of the modern Arab states of Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. All three were originally part of the Ottoman Empire and the Mandates. No one, however, claims they are illegal.)
When a small, truncated Jewish state was declared and recognized by the UN, the Arabs were vehemently opposed to any Jewish presence in the Middle East. They immediately declared war. Seven Arab nations united to fight the Jews but were miraculously beaten back. Yet half of Jerusalem (including the Temple Mount) remained in their hands. A “temporary” cease-fire was declared, borders and barbed wire went up, but the long-awaited peace treaty never materialized.
In 1967 the Arabs were preparing another massive attack but suffered a staggering defeat. Such is the way of the world. This time, the entire city of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount returned to Jewish hands together with all of Judea and Samaria, the historical, biblical backbone of the country.
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We pray and believe that someday, in Messianic times (which to us means a time of universal peace, impossible as that may seem today) all the nations will recognize our right to the Land of Israel. And yes, we do hope to rebuild the Temple. What shape or form it will have I do not know but it’s really irrelevant because at the moment it’s pretty theoretical.
But our Divine claim to this land is not theoretical. It is our mainstay – our eternal, moral claim to this country. We are now home and although it may not be easy, we aren’t going anywhere.
The Knesset, half of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University, and half the country from Ashdod up to Haifa is built on what Arabs claim is “their” land. And when they talk about destroying the state of Israel and cleansing it of Jews, they mean every word. Unfortunately, the naive, credulous West doesn’t believe the Arabs are really serious. (Or maybe the West just doesn’t care.)
Too many people – Jews among them – still think that if only we would be more compliant, peace would reign supreme. ISIS, Iran, Hamas, and Fatah would miraculously becomes Partners for Peace.
What will be? Well, things will probably be difficult for a while. Some problems have no immediate solutions. You just learn to mitigate the difficulties as much as possible and you continue to march on. Unexpected changes come about with the passage of time. At the moment, there is nothing to discuss with an enemy that has but one goal in mind – the destruction of Israel. With God’s help, we will do our best to see that that does not happen.
I cannot end without mentioning the current wave of anti-Semitism. Yishmael’s hatred of things Jewish is an old story but now the winds of hatred from Esau and Edom have been stirred and are again encircling the globe, posing great potential danger to the Jewish people and the Jewish state. I pray that we have the wisdom to react in a manner that warrants Divine support and assistance.
Pardon me if this response was somewhat lengthy, but we carry four thousand years of history in our hearts and it’s our key to understanding our world today. Here’s to Am Yisrael!
With blessings,
Yaffa
