The Complexities and Challenge of Ari Shavit s My Promised Land. Rabbi Sim Glaser. April 25, 2014

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1 The Complexities and Challenge of Ari Shavit s My Promised Land Rabbi Sim Glaser April 25, 2014 Tonight at Temple we find ourselves in a period of time as holy as any other on the Jewish calendar. Biblically we are marking the trek from Egypt to Sinai, and to the covenant with our God. On the modern calendar we approach Holocaust remembrance day, then Yom Hazikaron remembering the fallen soldiers of the tzahal, the Israeli Defense forces, and finally Yom Ha atzma ut, Israel Independence Day. This year Israel turns 66. When Ari Shavit, leading Israeli journalist, television commentator, and columnist for the Israeli newspaper Ha aretz, spoke at Mt. Zion several weeks ago he told a large gathering that he wrote My Promised Land because he felt that until now there has not been a book examining the big picture of Israel s complex history written in a deep personal way. He said that this was no accident, because in the ensuing decades after becoming a state Israel lost its narrative. Shavit maintains that celebrating the glory of Israel and the reality of Zionism in the modern age requires looking at the flaws as well. As his subtitle has it, the triumphs and the tragedies of the Zionist dream. No love, he said, can be built on lies or the denial of truths. Engaging the world on the topic of Israel requires of us an understanding of the facts, even when they disturb us. Toward the end of Ari Shavit s My Promised Land, the author describes Babi Yar, one of the most horrible of all Holocaust atrocities, in which 34,000 Jews were taken to the Ukrainian forest, shot and killed and buried in a mass grave. He notes that more Jews were killed in those 48 hours than died in the first 120 years of the battle for Zion, more than in all the wars of Israel to date. And so it makes sense that after descending through the tortured history of the Shoah at Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial, visitors walk up a gradual incline, through a tunnel that leads to a bright terrace overlooking the deep green of Jerusalem s mountain forest. For the many of you who have made that pilgrimage, you know what I am talking about. It is the stunning affirmation that Israel had to happen, and that never again would we find ourselves vulnerable to a world that has been cruel to us right up to the 20 th century. 1

2 Shavit returns often to the motif that just as the first half of the 20 th century was the worst on record for the Jewish people, the second half was the most blessed. The vision of Zionism was brilliant, prophetic and courageous from its inception. 50 years before Auschwitz becomes a reality the die has already been cast by Theodore Herzl and those who would follow him. Der Judenstadt the state of the Jews is that the Jewish people require a homeland. The publication and popularity of this important book is, I believe, a watershed event in the recorded history of Israel and of the Jewish people. Shavit s work is honest and unflinching. It basks in the warmth and splendor of Israel s greatest achievements, but faces with critical intensity the darkest moments in forging a Jewish state. Israel s first president, Chaim Weitzman, once famously said that a State is not handed to a people on a silver platter. Later incorporated into a poem, the statement speaks volumes about the sacrifice of young Israeli soldiers in defending that land s security and stability. In Shavit s book we come to terms with the tragic circumstances of the indigenous Arab population in the region. For several chapters we bathe in the glow of the establishment of the early Kibbutzim and their amazing accomplishments. The draining of the swamps in the valley of Harod and the planting of hundreds of thousands of olive and orange trees. The early halutzim the pioneers seem virtually unstoppable. It is striking and almost bizarre to contemplate that as the racist Nuremberg laws were being enforced in Nazi Germany in 1934, Jews in Tel Aviv were celebrating Purim, the 2 nd annual Maccabiah games were taking place and the Jews of Palestine had exported over 7 million crates of citrus. An article in a local weekly read: Our project is an historical necessity. We shall not recover without this country and this country shall not recover without us. Such was the heady conceit of Jews who were living the dream, bringing the biblically promised land back to life and prosperity. Another almost incomprehensible reality was that in 1941 the Jewish settlers were experiencing a dual threat from not only the Arabs in the region, but a potential Nazi invasion from the north. It is around this time that the fortress on Massada grabs an ideological hold on the nation. The ancient story of Jews having rebelled and taken refuge, a last stand against the Roman destroyer is being played out again 2000 years later. It is hard to deny the symmetry, as Masada becomes engraved on the Israeli psyche for keeps. To this very day young troops climb Masada on the eve of their military induction. When they reach the summit, they swear their allegiance to defend Israel declaring, "Masada shall not fall again." 2

3 When the first European settlers landed at Jaffa port Shavit writes: something both grand and terrible occurred. The sons and daughters of the Christian continent fled the hatred and discovered they were all alone in the world. They had to survive. That is why they came to Palestine and why they clung to the land with such desperation. By 1935, with European Jewry threatened by increasing viciousness, Zionist justice is, as Shavit writes, became an absolute universal justice that cannot be refuted. In those early years there is only the suggestion of what the clash of the Zionists and the indigenous population would come to mean. What My Promised Land does more so certainly than any other book on Israel I have read, is to force the reader, the Israeli, the American Jew, the Zionist, and anybody else who picks it up, to confront in detail what it meant for the Arab populations of Palestine to be forced from their ancestral homeland to make way for the Jewish state. Shavit s chapter on Lydda, aka Lod and the original site of Israel s international Airport, is heartbreaking and disturbing to say the least. Initially the Arab residents of Lydda prosper from the Zionist transformation of the land. Their population doubles. Their infrastructure radically improves. Lydda is a booming city with Arabs and Jews living side by side. But Lydda is also emerging as the center of the nascent Jewish homeland, and just prior to the establishment of statehood a vicious civil war between Arabs and Jews erupts. Terrible killings occur on both sides and ultimately there is a bloodbath in Lydda where hundreds of its native inhabitants are killed. A large number of survivors are forced to leave in search of a new home. Shavit calls Lydda Israel s black box, containing a dark secret of Zionism that has hitherto gone unacknowledged. Here is the heart of why the book is subtitled The Triumph and the Tragedy of Israel. As Shavit frames it: If Zionism was to be, Lydda could not be. If Lydda was to be, Zionism could not be. And the attendant understanding that if Zionism dies, what has happened time after time to European Jews will happen again here: we will be helpless. This was the point in time when the Zionist way of buying land gradually and building from the bottom up had ceased. This was when Israel had to accomplish by means of war what it could no longer do in peace. And this was the historical moment when a Palestinian Arab identity took hold. These facts are hard for many of us to incorporate into our view of Israel s birth and current circumstance. But Shavit clearly maintains that liberal critics of Israel policy years later who decry what happened in Lydda, circa 1948, must accept that if it were not for that sequence of events, the State of Israel would not have been born. Shavit takes a cold hard look at the settlement movement as well in his interviews with settlement founders Pinchas Wallerstein and Yehuda Etzion. He describes the settlement movement as an outgrowth of both the 1967 Six Day war and the 1973 Yom Kippur war. In the 3

4 case of the former, the defeat of the neighboring Arab armies and the seizure of the Sinai Desert, the West Bank and the Golan Heights moved Israelis from the threat of near extinction to resounding triumph and visions of absolute hegemony over the entire land. In the eyes of the international community, David had defeated his Goliath. Some saw it as the dawning of a third Temple period. In the case of Yom Kippur 1973, the trauma of near defeat caused a major failure of faith of the people in Israel s leaders. Giving back land, even for the blessing of peace, was, and continues to be, in the eyes of the settlers, a terrible about-face in the history of Zionism. No longer expanding, Zionism was retreating. A mass movement was born pressuring the government to allow the building of a first Jewish settlement north of Jerusalem. Shavit notes that it was not the work of rabbis or right wing religious party leaders, but young charismatic types that were clever, idealistic and determined. The birth of the settlement movement came out of a fear that Israel was losing its stronghold; that the best defense was a good offense. Shavit s view is that the settlements have placed Israel s neck in a noose, creating an untenable demographic, political, moral and judicial reality. I thought it was interesting that in his argument with settler Wallerstein, Shavit maintains that the early Zionist enterprise saved the lives of one people by the dispossession of another people, but at least they knew what they were doing and endeavored not to be colonialists, whereas the settlement movement is operating illegally in a sovereign state. Shavit argues what he considers the crucial difference between the early Zionists blindness toward their Arab neighbors and the modern settler s hope that the Arabs will simply go away as Israel expands into its sovereign territory. A recurring motif in My Promised Land is the telling of individual s stories beginning with their roots in Europe, and most often directly affect by the Holocaust. Aharon Appelfeld s witnessing the murder of his mother and grandmother; Gush Emunim settlement founder Yoel Bin Nun arriving on one of the last ships to escape Europe; Shas Party political leader Aryeh Deri s family s difficult transition from Europe to the nascent Jewish State. And yet aside from the Yad Vashem, Shavit writes, the Holocaust is also not given major attention in Israeli society other than to acknowledge it as the low point from which the Zionist revival arose. Shavit thus assesses four denials operating in the Israeli imagination the denials of the Palestinian past and disaster and the denials of the Jewish past and European catastrophe. He suggests that these denials were essential for the success of Zionism in the early years and have to be recognized. 4

5 Were it not for both of these tragic realities it would have been impossible to function, to build, to expand, to live. If kindness and compassion toward neighboring Arab populations, and constant dwelling on our own historical trauma had ruled the day, there would be no Israel. Why is My Promised Land an important book? The identity of world Jewry is supremely challenged in our day. The recent Pew study was revealing in many ways. Young Jewish people of the diaspora are seeking connection but not finding it in the traditional ways. They are not necessarily drawn to synagogues as a matter of course; they no longer see the Holocaust and international anti-semitism as a raison d etre for their affiliation; and for many, Israel doesn t play the same role as it has for those of us who became aware in the 50 s 60 s and 70 s when Israel s future hung by a thread and its resilience and courageous defense garnered the world s admiration and affirmation. There are a growing number of younger Jewish people who take little interest in Israel, who may or may not have plans to visit there, and notably, thousands of our kids who are on college campuses, or will be shortly, who are exposed to an unprecedented amount of vitriolic anti-israel rhetoric and are returning confused and shamed. As Shavit has correctly stated last month at Mt. Zion, we are not giving our young Jewish adults the proper tools to be pro-israel. Their response is to retreat from the conversation. And apathy is the worst kind of response a Jew can have toward Israel. Shavit s contention is that today, more than ever before, it is critical that we tell the whole story, and the history of the occupation is a part of that story. We can still communicate our love of the Jewish state while acknowledging, as so many Israelis do each and every day, the facts of history. It is the honest and practical way to go. We and our children need to know the facts so that we can engage in an honest and, it would be hoped, fruitful dialogue about Israel s future. At the same time, as Jews, one must recognize that much of the world is still ready to throw Israel under the bus. If we join in the international chorus of Israel criticism without our ever important support, who will be left to celebrate Israel s existence which is still the greatest modern miracle of the Jewish people? When I have found myself over the years speaking with non-jewish critics of Israel I will come away hurt and frustrated, not because they don t have legitimate talking points, and not because I don t know the facts, but because I know in my heart of hearts that if Israel were truly endangered, or, God forbid, should disappear into a haze of middle eastern warfare and destruction, my friends would not lose a lot of sleep. For 99.8% of the world, Israel s existence is not critical. It is another news story for them. But for us it would be devastation. The reality and right of Israel s existence is not up for discussion and it never will be! 5

6 In rabbinical school we were instructed in our homiletics classes that all sermons require what is called a nechemta or uplift at the conclusion. The reason for that, of course, is that you wouldn t be much of a clergyman if you don t leave your parishioners with some element of hope as they leave the building. Obviously Ari Shavit doesn t minister to a congregation, and it seems, from the way the book winds to its close, that he doesn t feel overly obliged to end on a note of hope. He writes that while Israel may have strived for normalcy, it is a Jewish nation in an Arab world, a Western state in an Islamic world, and a democracy in a region of tyranny. Peace plan after peace plan has failed; Hezbollah is entrenched in the north amassing rockets; Hamas in the south. The threat of a nuclear Iran hovers. Shavit cites a tragic catch at the heart of Israel s current dilemma. If Israel does not retreat from the West Bank it will be politically and morally doomed, but if it does retreat, it faces an Iranianbacked Islamic extremist-inspired regime that would put Israel at great physical risk. Finally, Shavit likens Israel s precarious situation to a lonely rock in a stormy ocean. He writes: that at this moment he sees no hope for peace. If there is any good news, he writes, it is that Israel is constantly growing stronger economically, militarily and technologically, especially in comparison to its neighbors. The bad news is that the surrounding Middle East is growing more unstable by the hour. While these are demonstrable facts, Shavit suggests that Israel s greatest challenge is to regain national potency; to elect a strong leadership; to continue to build its strong economy; to celebrate the talented individuals who live and work in cutting edge high tech industries; to bring back the Hebrew identity that was the soul and dominant spirit of Israel s most productive years. Shavit does not talk solutions in his book. He ends on a discouraging note that Israel today exists at the epicenter of seven concentric circles of threat from the outside moving in they are Islamic, Arabic, Palestinian, internal, mental, moral, and identity based. However, when he spoke in St. Paul last month he did offer a prescription for a peaceful future suggesting that Israel commence a slow gradual retreat from the West Bank and with each retreat ensuring that a viable Palestinian infrastructure exist in order that a new Palestine might eventually emerge as a peaceful neighbor. Such action, he believes, would plant seeds of peace, but in order to make this a reality, the international community, including the Palestinian people and their leaders, would have to reinforce its commitment to the Jewish state and universally recognize Israel s right to exist. With all the amazing contributions to the Western world Israel has made over the decades it has a right to expect full recognition of the nations of the world. 6

7 Somehow Israel has always thrived between calamities. In a way this has fueled her vitality and immense creativity. We joke about the wandering Jew but in effect Jews have always been on the move and continue to be on the move and on the edge in Israel today. Perhaps this is our nechemta. Israel is still an exciting, spiritually uplifting, magnificent land. Those of you who have visited there or lived there know what I am talking about. Those of you who have not, need to make that important journey. Soon. Exploring and understanding the situation from an experience in the land itself is completely different from trying to make sense of things from a long distance news-biased media-filtered encounter. Sigmund Freud once said that our monotheism, the Jewish people s embrace of an invisible all powerful God prepared the Jews to achieve distinction in law, in mathematics, in science and in literary art. It gave us an advantage in all activities involving the making of abstract models of experience to achieve control over nature or to bring humane order to life. The Arabs themselves, in more harmonious times, gave us the name Um Il Khatib the people of the book a people that could and would transform itself and its surroundings by virtue of our creative intelligence and sense of Justice. A people, to put it in the terms spoken to Abraham at the very beginning of the Jewish journey, who would bless all nations with who bless us. Zionism and the transformation of the land is a something out of nothing miracle brought about by a remarkable people. Over the decades since its inception Zionism has had to adjust to radical shifts in politics, physical hardships, religious upheavals, international praise and condemnation alike, and, put quite simply, to existence in a tough neighborhood. This book is about how Zionism made its way through the turbulent 20 th century. This book explains why Israel had to happen, and how it did. Even in its most challenging and disturbing moments, the story of Israel as told by Ari Shavit, is a testament and tribute the monumental spirit of the Jewish people. Am Yisrael Chai the people of Israel continues to live. May we go from strength to strength, and let us strengthen one another. 7