Critiquing Israel?

 Being part of an ethnic and cultural minority can be a very rewarding experience: I feel blessed to be able to balance my Brazilian, Jewish (Israeli?) and American heritages. Nothing is more delicious than a Thanksgiving meal of falafel and pumpkin pie, topped with some guarana and sonho de valsa - and don't even get me started on my love of mixing belly-dancing with samba and the latest hits from Lady Gaga.

But this rich complexity also comes with its own challenges: Recently, I find my desire to publicly criticize Israel competing with a feeling that to do so would transgress some unstated rules of group loyalty. I try to tell myself that I want to criticize Israel for the same reason we often don't tolerate in loved ones what we tolerate in casual acquantances (and hence wind up picking stupid fights with said loved ones.*): In a certain sense, critique is a sign of caring. Then, there is also the fear that maybe your loved one's misdeeds are caused by your own wrong action - parents, for example, often freak out at kids' misdeeds because they fear it reflects negatively on their own parenting abilities. Every time Israel does something "wrong", I consider myself partially responsible. Some might say I am taking the rabbinic statement "All of Israel are responsible for each other" a bit too seriously, but I actually think that phrase contains a larger truth: All micro-members of a society are partially responsible for the society's shape as a macro-unit. If I bear less responsibility for Israel's social woes, that is only because recently I've been less a part of Israeli society, having been abroad since November. At the same time, as someone who has been spending at least two months a year in Israel since I'm eighteen, I can't really say I'm completely divorced from that society, and thus, completely guilt-free. In fact, now that I am living in the US, I also feel responsible for the US's social flaws, however, I feel less guilty about critiquing it, simply because its the most powerful country in the world. My words are not going to harm the US, though they might (hopefully) inspire just a bit of social change.

Israel however, is a severely embattled nation. It faces terrorism threats from within, not to mention hostile neighbors with nuclear ambitions. Then, there is the sheer amount of anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Israelism. That is not to say that anti-Israelism equals anti-Semitism, simply that anti-Semitism often finds anti-Israelism as a useful disguise to wear in a politically correct world.** For all I know, some random neo-Nazi could stumble across my blog, take one anti-Israel sentence out of context, and then use it in an argument to convince some naive and ignorant internet-junkie to join the cause. That kind of terrifies me.

I keep on telling myself that criticism is the first step both to taking action, and to inspiring others to do so. I also look to the prophets, who were about as critical of Israel as they come***, but then again, they tended to prophecize in Hebrew (except for Ezekiel, whose Aramaic differs greatly from the Judeo-Aramaic of the Talmud.****) and not only did they prophecize within Israel, but they also often did so at the Temple Mount, which would kind of be the equivalent of me walking into a synagogue today and yelling about the Occupation. That is extremely different than criticizing Israel in English, via the internet, which makes it available to an  international group of strangers.

Yet I do not wish to switch over to Hebrew - not just because at this point in my life, writing in English comes easier to me (that could change if I started writing in Hebrew again, as I used to do in highschool, when I spoke Hebrew nearly everyday of my life, as opposed to now, when I rarely use it), but also because I want my writing to be available to English-speaking people, and I want it specifically to resonate within the American Jewish community, which is very involved in Israel in a variety of ways.

I suppose my critique of Israel stems from my vision of Zionism: Theodor Herzl saw Israel basically as a modern nation state that happened to have Jewish citizens, because they needed their own state in order to be safe. Even though the Dreyfus affair, progroms, and Holocaust, are all events of the past, I do believe that given the long history of anti-Semitism, it is important for Jews to have a safe haven, just in case mass anti-Jewish violence flares up again (and ocassional instances of anti-Semitic violence do indeed exist - the recent events in France were a reminder).

But on a broader scale, I see Israel not just as a place where Jews live, but also as a state meant to reflect Jewish values -and anyone who has read the prophets or the work of the rabbis, will have a hard time disagreeing with me that peace and social justice are Jewish values. I believe in cultural Zionism, a la A.D. Gordon: I want Jews to speak Hebrew globally, the same way Spanish people who live in the US might speak Spanish at home. I want my children, no matter where I live, to know not only the poetry of Yehuda Halevi****** and Yehuda Amichai, and the songs of Naomi Shemer, but also whatever crappy Israeli soap operas and pop music happen to be reigning the airwaves. They can choose whether or not they want to be religious, but they'd better know Tanach and Talmud, because those are major literary-intellectual achievments of the Jewish people. I believe it is important to make informed choices about one's Judaism, and knowing one's cultural and intellectual heritage is a prerequisite to that.

If I had to list the worst contribution of religious-national Zionism to Israeli society, it would not be the settlements or any specific political policy per se, but rather its Messianism: If this is the beginning of the redemption, then the Jews are in Israel for good, no matter what they do or how badly they act. Victory is inevitable. Taking away the possibility of failure also takes away the impetus for social change. Much of the sprouting of social change in the US right now is because many in the US feel that it is standing at the edge of the abyss, and they want to make sure it doesn't fall - but if you believe that you can't fall, there is no need to prepare the parachute.

While, as a religious Jew, I do believe that Israel's founding, as well as its various victories, and the large number of qassams that fall into empty fields (and I've sat in a mamad and heard them fall), are all miracles, I do not believe that God gave us the land scot-free: The Hebrew Bible is full of warnings that if the Jews do not act properly, the land of Israel will literally vomit them out - and while much of the Biblical warnings might refer to idol-worship, the rabbinic tradition holds murder as tantamount to idol worship, and claims that the Second Temple was destroyed, and the Jews exiled, for social ills, not ritual malfeasance. That is leaving aside explicit warnings by the prophets that ritual worship is worth nothing if not accompanied by social justice.******  Furthermore, Jeremiah constantly exhorts the people not to think that just because God promised them the land, he won't kick them out of it. Because of this, I do not assume that the state of Israel - which is after all - and should be - a secular state - is eternal. I believe, on a political-historical level, that it can fail as other states have failed, and on a religious-spiritual level, that the more social injustice there is, the more likely it is to do so.

I also agree with Yeshayahu Liebowitz, a) that the rabbanut should be abolished b) that considering the secular state to be a holy entity, is in a certain sense idol worship, because it is taking something religiously neutral, and investing it with an inherent holiness - which is essentially what idol worship is. You take a piece of wood, and say it is a god.

For me, when the State of Israel has a rally in which politicians describe Sudanese refugees living in Israel in Nazi-istic terms - because yes, describing a certain group as a cancer that is ruining society, is indeed Nazi-istic - even though the prime minister officially condemns said rally, I still have a religious obligation to speak out, to ask what kind of society Israel becoming if such a rally can take place at all, if any Israeli politician can be present at such a rally and get away with it - and yet I must also acknowledge the Israelis who held a counter-protest the next day, to condemn racism, and those who called for a criminal investigation into the actions of the politicians who spoke at the racist rally. And this religious obligation for words counter-acts any secular notions of ethnic loyalty that stir within me, even as it does adhere to the rabbinic maxim of Jews taking mutual responsibility for each other's actions - because if I stay silent, I become a bystander, who is only one degree removed from the label "perpetrator", because one of the greatest perils of our time is not evil itself, but rather, indiffirence to evil, because, as Mordechai says to Esther (which is one of my middle names) in Esther 4:14, "For if you will remain silent in this time, salvation will come to the Jews from another place, and you and your father's house shall perish, and who knows if it is not for a time like this, that you reached the kingdom?"

So within one blog post, I've gone from being the frustrated belly-dancer to the five-year-old Disney princess, if Disneyland were Persia. I suppose I should end with links to a letter from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a speech by Elie Weisel, in an effort to reclaim my dignity.

* Exhibit A: The eternal boyfriend-girlfriend battle over the raised toilet-seat.

** Furthermore, while it might not always be anti-Semitic, the extent of global anti-Israelism and how acceptable it has become, is ridiculous. The UN has issued more statements about Israel than about Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, or China - all of which are such terrible human rights violators that Israel looks like an angel in comparison. It is politically acceptable to call for the destruction of Israel, a nation founded by UN-charter and by a defensive war, when it's neighbors all invaded it in response to its declaring independence, but not for the destruction of the afformentioned nations, which were founded as a result of colonialism and not-necessarily-self-defensive wars. Nearly every country in the world was founded by some sort of war or revolution - even the US was founded with a war against the British -but somehow, the fact that Israel was founded on a purely defensive war, all of a sudden becomes a major international issue.

*** Isaiah called the people of Israel "captains of Sodom" and the "nation of Gommorah", in Isaiah chapter 1, verse 10. Also, Isiaah and Jeremiah are two of my favorite prophets. I had a huge crush on Jeremiah in highschool.

**** That makes sense, because he prophesied in Babylonia, not in Israel - which, by the way, the Talmud has issues with, because it tries saying prophecy only exists in the land of Israel, and winds up saying God makes an exception if you're standing near water, which is why Ezekiel could prophesize in Babylon. Anyhow, Ezekiel can not be used as a proof for anything because he is different than the other prophets in many ways. Also, if you want to read my Ezekiel and menstrual blood rant, click here.

***** I misplaced my copy of his poetry a week ago and it's driving me crazy!

******To quote Isaiah, 1:11-20: "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me? saith the LORD; I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. 12 When ye come to appear before Me, who hath required this at your hand, to trample My courts? 13 Bring no more vain oblations; it is an offering of abomination unto Me; new moon and sabbath, the holding of convocations--I cannot endure iniquity along with the solemn assembly. 14 Your new moons and your appointed seasons My soul hateth; they are a burden unto Me; I am weary to bear them. 15 And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide Mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear; your hands are full of blood. 16 Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes, cease to do evil; 17 Learn to do well; seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. {S} 18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. 19 If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land; 20 But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword; for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken."