I have lived in Israel for close to thirty years now. My children were born and raised here. I was in the army here and served for twelve years in the reserves. I learned Hebrew here, in a good way. I became religious in Israel. I believed in the idea of a Jewish state when I came here, and all through the years, I continued to believe. I believe now. But I, too, am worried. And at rare times, feel what I felt quite a bit in the first few years here, but then lost in the course of being here; i.e., that perhaps I really do not belong here and should be back in America minding my own business, and letting the goyim handle the politics.
I am disappointed, deeply disappointed. I write this the day after yet another eight Israelis were murdered. The government is restraining its reaction because of a hearing in the Hague regarding the legality of the fence Israel is building to ensure suicide-bombers stay out. I find the government?s inaction infuriating, as I have through most of the past three years. The head murderer sits, it is true, in a cage in Ramallah, but he still sits with his crown on his head. And he continues to give the orders.
Our leadership is by and large silent, leaving us, as it were, leaderless.
There are innumerable theories about what has happened to Ariel Sharon, or about what he is ?really doing?. One is that he is simply doing what the Americans demand, so as to not interfere with the war in Iraq. The Americans, this theory goes, do not want to be isolated in defense of Israel in international forums. Another theory is that Sharon has grown tired, old, lost his flare, faith and initiative.
Whatever the reason for Sharon?s relative paralysis, he radiates helplessness and projects an image of an Israel as weak, as the victim who cannot really defend himself. Moreover, no one else really has come in his place to speak out for an alternative path. The one most expected to do so, Treasury Minister Netanyahu, is dedicated to rehabilitating the economy , and seems to have an agreement with Sharon that prevents him from criticizing the prime minister. There are voices like that of the great hero of the Jewish people, Natan Scharansky, but they do not set the tone, or carry the day, in the broader public.
Along with what might be called the ?mumming? of the right, there is the renewal of the Oslo-Geneva left. And worse. What truly discourages is how the media elite, the academic elite in the humanities and the elite in the arts are all dominated by those of the idiotic self-defeating Left. To see these people honored, applauded by the institutions of the state, to feel they have a monopoly stranglehold on the cultural life of the country, makes me feel alienated in a way I had never felt before. This year?s Israel Prize for plastic arts was to go to Igal Tumarkin, whose work almost from the beginning is devoted to attacking the soldiers of Israel and Israeli society as a whole.
When I came here, I loved Hebrew song, and still do. But how do I listen to Chava Alberstein after she sang the Passover ?Had Gadya? song with verses making it into a blood libel? How to feel toward Hebrew poetry, when the dean of Israeli poets, Natan Zach, is for a Palestinian Arab state and against a Jewish one? How to feel connected, when young draft?dodgers like Aviv Geffen and Assaf Amdursky are most honored by their peers? How, that is, can I feel I belong to an Israel in which those who represent it to the world culturally continually deride it?
One answer is, of course, to connect with other voices, others who do care for the well-being of Israel as a Jewish state. But they, again, are least honored, and, to tell the truth, often less successful in their work than the nay-sayers. And the nay-sayers, the pro-Palestinians, shamelessly cant their nonsense even on days when Israelis have been killed.
All this, some might say, is truly encouraging, for it shows how rich a democracy Israel is, how it allows alternative voices to flourish. I am not so sure. No other country in the world bears in its parliament those actively supporting its enemies as the Israeli Knesset does. No country in the world allows, in the name of democracy, so much subversive activity among its legislators and public officials.
The massive illegal Arab building, the Arab rip-off of the state in which they receive huge National Insurance payments, while paying no taxes in their municipalities and businesses, and the mobilizing of the judiciary of the country in their defense, too tremendously discourage. Israel is simply not enforcing the laws in regard to its Arab citizens, who continue to benefit from the welfare state while working to undermine it.
All of this situation is even made more problematic by the fact that the one newspaper that has the greatest influence in the country is owned and operated by an extreme leftist. Amos Schocken sets the daily agenda of Israel, though he calls it an apartheid state. And the most widely read newspaper in the country, Arnon Moses? Yediot Achronot, also tilts to the Left.
Time and again, one hears unfair attacks against the Jews of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, who are blamed for the Arab violence against Israel, a violence that long preceded their appearing on the scene.
There is thus much - much - in the present Israeli reality that I feel estranged from, that I feel works against everything I believe in.
And yet, I am never going to leave Israel. I know this . I know I will spend the rest of my life here and be buried here. I cannot leave. I know I cannot. I care more for what is here than for what is anywhere else. This is not simply my children, my wife, my family.
It is for the friends, also, and the many I have known in my thirty-plus years here. It is for the beauty of the land and of Jerusalem. And it is because of my Jewish religious life. One can be a Jew here as nowhere else.
And more. It is because I am continually aware of the devotion and sacrifice that went into building a Jewish state. And it is because it is the only Jewish country that speaks to the Jewish aspiration of generations. It is not that it is the ideal or even the best that we can do, it is rather that it is the only Jewish country.
And there is so much here I love and so many people who are good, and devoted and great, here. There are worlds I do feel a part of here. And it is because the whole enterprise of my life is connected with this place. All I care for and believe in is bound up with the Jewish people in the land God promised them, the land of Israel.
I cannot leave. I will never leave. I will die here. I pray with all my heart that in the time left to me here I will be able to make some small contribution to making this the land and state of the Jewish people as it should be, in accordance with the dream inherent in G-d?s promise to, and covenant with, us.
I am disappointed, deeply disappointed. I write this the day after yet another eight Israelis were murdered. The government is restraining its reaction because of a hearing in the Hague regarding the legality of the fence Israel is building to ensure suicide-bombers stay out. I find the government?s inaction infuriating, as I have through most of the past three years. The head murderer sits, it is true, in a cage in Ramallah, but he still sits with his crown on his head. And he continues to give the orders.
Our leadership is by and large silent, leaving us, as it were, leaderless.
There are innumerable theories about what has happened to Ariel Sharon, or about what he is ?really doing?. One is that he is simply doing what the Americans demand, so as to not interfere with the war in Iraq. The Americans, this theory goes, do not want to be isolated in defense of Israel in international forums. Another theory is that Sharon has grown tired, old, lost his flare, faith and initiative.
Whatever the reason for Sharon?s relative paralysis, he radiates helplessness and projects an image of an Israel as weak, as the victim who cannot really defend himself. Moreover, no one else really has come in his place to speak out for an alternative path. The one most expected to do so, Treasury Minister Netanyahu, is dedicated to rehabilitating the economy , and seems to have an agreement with Sharon that prevents him from criticizing the prime minister. There are voices like that of the great hero of the Jewish people, Natan Scharansky, but they do not set the tone, or carry the day, in the broader public.
Along with what might be called the ?mumming? of the right, there is the renewal of the Oslo-Geneva left. And worse. What truly discourages is how the media elite, the academic elite in the humanities and the elite in the arts are all dominated by those of the idiotic self-defeating Left. To see these people honored, applauded by the institutions of the state, to feel they have a monopoly stranglehold on the cultural life of the country, makes me feel alienated in a way I had never felt before. This year?s Israel Prize for plastic arts was to go to Igal Tumarkin, whose work almost from the beginning is devoted to attacking the soldiers of Israel and Israeli society as a whole.
When I came here, I loved Hebrew song, and still do. But how do I listen to Chava Alberstein after she sang the Passover ?Had Gadya? song with verses making it into a blood libel? How to feel toward Hebrew poetry, when the dean of Israeli poets, Natan Zach, is for a Palestinian Arab state and against a Jewish one? How to feel connected, when young draft?dodgers like Aviv Geffen and Assaf Amdursky are most honored by their peers? How, that is, can I feel I belong to an Israel in which those who represent it to the world culturally continually deride it?
One answer is, of course, to connect with other voices, others who do care for the well-being of Israel as a Jewish state. But they, again, are least honored, and, to tell the truth, often less successful in their work than the nay-sayers. And the nay-sayers, the pro-Palestinians, shamelessly cant their nonsense even on days when Israelis have been killed.
All this, some might say, is truly encouraging, for it shows how rich a democracy Israel is, how it allows alternative voices to flourish. I am not so sure. No other country in the world bears in its parliament those actively supporting its enemies as the Israeli Knesset does. No country in the world allows, in the name of democracy, so much subversive activity among its legislators and public officials.
The massive illegal Arab building, the Arab rip-off of the state in which they receive huge National Insurance payments, while paying no taxes in their municipalities and businesses, and the mobilizing of the judiciary of the country in their defense, too tremendously discourage. Israel is simply not enforcing the laws in regard to its Arab citizens, who continue to benefit from the welfare state while working to undermine it.
All of this situation is even made more problematic by the fact that the one newspaper that has the greatest influence in the country is owned and operated by an extreme leftist. Amos Schocken sets the daily agenda of Israel, though he calls it an apartheid state. And the most widely read newspaper in the country, Arnon Moses? Yediot Achronot, also tilts to the Left.
Time and again, one hears unfair attacks against the Jews of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, who are blamed for the Arab violence against Israel, a violence that long preceded their appearing on the scene.
There is thus much - much - in the present Israeli reality that I feel estranged from, that I feel works against everything I believe in.
And yet, I am never going to leave Israel. I know this . I know I will spend the rest of my life here and be buried here. I cannot leave. I know I cannot. I care more for what is here than for what is anywhere else. This is not simply my children, my wife, my family.
It is for the friends, also, and the many I have known in my thirty-plus years here. It is for the beauty of the land and of Jerusalem. And it is because of my Jewish religious life. One can be a Jew here as nowhere else.
And more. It is because I am continually aware of the devotion and sacrifice that went into building a Jewish state. And it is because it is the only Jewish country that speaks to the Jewish aspiration of generations. It is not that it is the ideal or even the best that we can do, it is rather that it is the only Jewish country.
And there is so much here I love and so many people who are good, and devoted and great, here. There are worlds I do feel a part of here. And it is because the whole enterprise of my life is connected with this place. All I care for and believe in is bound up with the Jewish people in the land God promised them, the land of Israel.
I cannot leave. I will never leave. I will die here. I pray with all my heart that in the time left to me here I will be able to make some small contribution to making this the land and state of the Jewish people as it should be, in accordance with the dream inherent in G-d?s promise to, and covenant with, us.