Audio: No More Taking Sides (Israel/Palestine)
I think one of the hardest issues for Jews By Choice to wrap their heads around is the Middle East Crisis. At least that’s the case with me, and for what seems like a lot of the other JBC’s I meet. Let’s face it most of us were not raised with the same kind of connection to this issue, that Jews by birth have been. We (at least here in America) are physically so far removed from the situation, that its easy to push this issue to the back of our minds. With that in mind, I think learning more about the Israeli/Palestinian situation, is a task all JBC’s (and all Jews, but especially JBC’s) need to seriously take on. So it is with this in mind, that I share the following with you all.
Last Sunday NPR’s Speaking of Faith aired what looks to be an interesting program on the Israel/Palestine conflict. I haven’t listened to it yet myself, but I usually like what this program has to say and I’m confidant the program will do it’s best to present both sides of the coin.
Anyhow give it a listen and feel free to share you’re impressions, if you do check it out.
Here is a synopsis.
Robi Damelin lost her son David to a Palestinian sniper. Ali Abu Awwad lost his older brother Yousef to an Israeli soldier. But, instead of clinging to traditional ideologies and turning their pain into more violence, they’ve decided to understand the other side — Israeli and Palestinian — by sharing their pain and their humanity. They tell of a gathering network of survivors who share their grief, their stories of loved ones, and their ideas for lasting peace. They don’t want to be right; they want to be honest.
You can down load a podcast version of the program here.
Also here is a link to more information on this episode.
I’m hoping to write...
1) http://www .jewber...
It’s uncanny that you posted this, Avi. I was telling my Shabbat guests at lunch today about JBC.org, and imagining how difficult the Israel connection must be to people who did not grow up with Zionism (or Judaism, for that matter) in their homes. For me, and for most, I imagine, Phase 1 of the journey is getting one’s head around Judaism, and Israel gets saved for Phase 2 or beyond. Kol hakavod (kudos) to anyone who feels ready to take on the challenge of trying to understand Israel and its struggles.
It will probably come as a surprise to no one that as an Israeli, I have something to say on this issue. I began to listen to the show, then had to leave it to go do something else. But based on the first few minutes, I can say I’ve heard this sort of thing before. It’s got all the appeal of presenting both sides, of focusing on the common pain shared by individuals, and calls for an end to the conflict. For those looking for first-hand accounts of the emotional havoc wreaked by the conflict, this is one-stop shopping. But for those seeking to understand the conflict between Arabs and Jews in this region, it is utterly useless.
The savvy media consumer needs to bear in mind a few things to try to understand the conflict:
1) NPR is notoriously anti-Israel. I am not just saying this because I listened to them for years and heard obvious bias in favor of the Palestinian Arabs in their reporting. I’m saying this after having read a transcript of an interview with a station manager (Boston) who said that his listenership was more interested in hearing pro-Arab stories than pro-Israeli, and it was his intention to give them what they want. I don’t think he’s exceptional in this.
2) Chat shows like these are aimed at getting to the raw, emotional core of the conflict, not the facts. The repeated goal of the participants stated in the show was to “be honest, not to be right.” Yet in their opening speeches, the Israeli mother and Palestinian brother kept very much to the pattern of most of these sorts of interviews/shows/forums where the Israeli confesses sadness and a desire for reconciliation with no other political motivation, and the Arab inserts the eternal buzzwords, “occupation,” “resistance,” and “revolution” into his speech. If this is what “being honest” is, one can see that they clearly have different agendas. What follows cannot possibly be called “balanced.”
3) The best way to examine and try to understand the conflict here is to fill one’s own head with facts, not emotions. Read books on the history and politics of the region by reputed, qualified experts. My hands-down favorite is called The Siege by Conor Cruise O’Brien, a multi-career genius who was once the Irish ambassador to the U.N. and sat between the representatives from Israel and Iraq (quite a seat, I imagine). He understands both sides uncannily well. There are other great books too. My point is that reading this stuff is much more valuable than paying too much attention to anecdotal attempts at making peace. I won’t get into why I think those don’t work here; just that information is more useful for the beginner than hearing the airing of feelings. I believe one gains the most from starting at the beginning, emptying one’s brain of preconceived ideas or received opinions, and slowly building a knowledge base on one’s own.
Even though my formal conversion was completed less than a year ago, I do not feel that I have ever been any less engaged, interested, or invested in the Israel-Palestine conflict. True, I may not, today, agree with many of the opinions most Zionists around me would like me to, but I disagree that this is necessarily because I chose Judaism on my own. For me, it was never Judaism step 1, Israel step 2. Eretz Yisrael, The Land of Israel is inextricable from Judaism, for me, it’s the State of Israel that is a different question.
Zahava,
I was interested to read your comment. I don’t assume that only Jews feel a closeness to the land; I’ve known many non-Jews who feel their religious roots here strongly, visit, etc. How did you come by your connection to Israel in your pre-Jewish life?
-Shimshonit
What makes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so unusual is that while the conflict is still blazing hot it is possible for people from opposing sides to meet and practice nonviolence together, as the bereaved families forum does. There are perhaps more examples of nonviolence happening in Israel - Palestine than anywhere else in the world. To me Judaism is inextricably tied to these Israeli-Palestinan experiments in nonviolence and not, as with Zahava, to any government.
Warning: Rant alert. Proceed only if willing to confront uncomfortable truths. (In other words, if you’ve had an amazing day where everything has gone right and you’re at complete peace with the world, hold on to the mood and go read something else.)
The Bereaved Families’ Forum and other groups who get together grieving families for “peaceful,” “non-violent” activity is, perhaps, a constructive healing process for some of the families who are involved in it. However, a negative byproduct that results from their activities, and especially the publicity these groups garner, is the creation of an idea of moral equivalence between the two parties in the Arab-Jewish struggle. There is NO moral equivalence. Most Westerners like to patronize groups of foreigners involved in ethnic struggles and land disputes by seeing them as two children on a playground fighting over the same toy. Sharing (splitting time, quantities, etc.) is the natural solution to a morally equivalent situation like that. But no one involved in the struggle here over the Holy Land is a child, and what we disagree over is not a toy on a playground.
I’m sorry to burst anyone’s bubble, but embracing one’s enemy is a Christian concept, not a Jewish one. Jews are bound to protect themselves—their bodies, their psyches, their faith. Blinding themselves about why their loved ones died, even in their overwhelming grief, does them and their fellow Jews no good at all. The Israeli mother’s son died because he was an innocent civilian; the Arab’s brother died because he was a militant and a terrorist. When the IDF confronts terrorists embedded in a civilian population, they do their utmost to avoid harming civilians, often putting Israeli soldiers at great risk or allowing the bombardment to continue unchecked; and when Arab civilians are killed, the IDF apologizes and investigates the incident. Arab terrorists, on the other hand, deliberately target civilians, and when they kill or maim them (as they did an 8 year old boy who lost a leg last week in a Kassam attack in Sderot), they fire their guns in the streets and pass out candy to their children. And when they embed themselves among civilians, they do so deliberately to try to protect themselves, with no regard at all for the innocent (if they are really innocent) lives around them.
It’s very easy to sit and criticize the Israeli government. (Israelis do it all the time.) But to see the State of Israel or its actions as causes of the violence here is fallacious. It is the presence of Jews here, not what we believe, say or do, that is the cause of the conflict. The only way for the conflict to go away is for the Jews to pack up and depart, leaving the land to be overrun by joyous Arabs. I’m not making this up as some kind of extremist: it’s in the Kuran, it’s in their culture and belief system, it’s in their religious and political leaders’ proclamations and speeches over the last 100 years, and it’s in the behavior of the Arabs themselves who harassed, raped, butchered, and robbed their Jewish neighbors long before there was ever an “occupation” or even a state. There are some people, even Jews (including Avrum Burg, the former head of the Jewish Agency), who think we should just hand everything to the Arabs and go back to Europe, North America, or Australia. But let’s remember what life was like for Jews before there was an Israel. Israel doesn’t exist because of a U.N. vote in 1947. It exists because we came here (before many of the Arabs who falsely claim generations of heritage here). It exists because we purchased land here. It exists because we miraculously and successfully defended ourselves over and over against Arab multitudes who made war on us in the hope of grabbing up our land. And it exists because we can’t and won’t go anywhere else.
So if reading about (and watching) bereaved families coming together in grief seems like a little glimmer of peace, think again. Over the years, Jews and Arabs have often shared close friendships and partnerships, and not as a result of having killed one another. But it still doesn’t change the fact that we want the same piece of land. And that is not going to change any time soon.
Whew! End of rant. Have a great day.
Just as there is a minority of Christians who advocate nonviolence on religious grounds, there is also a minority of Jews who advocate nonviolence on religious grounds. For example, Rabbi Aaron Samuel Tamarat(1869-1931) and Rabbi Steven Schwarzschild (1924-1989), an Orthodox and a Reform Rabbi respectively, were advocates of Jewish nonviolence. Jews by Choice should know that they do not have to forsake religious nonviolence when they convert to Judaism.
Ross, I appreciate your persistence with regard to Jews practicing nonviolence. Certainly there is no reason why Jews cannot do this as a personal choice. But a distinction should be made between “Jewish nonviolence” and Jews practicing nonviolence. Judaism holds peace up as the ideal, to be desired above all things; when the wholeness of peace is disturbed, it is, in the words of my rav, “a sad compromise with reality in need of Tikkun.” Given the right adversary, nonviolence can be a powerful and effective tool in pursuit of peace, as we saw in several situations in the 20th century.
But at the same time, it is anachronistic to say that nonviolence is a Jewish concept. My rav continues: “Most often, peace is built with peace. But sometimes, as in the case of what is known in contemporary political theory as a just war, violence may actually be a means toward peace, as dissonant as that sounds. Certainly any reading of the Hebrew Bible or Talmud does not yield a philosophy of non-violence. And if you can find a verse, episode or passage which seems like it will support a philosophy of non-violence, I do not believe that it will represent a comprehensive and systematic approach, but invites the complementary engagement of Jewish values of peace with nonviolence theory.”
So by all means, embrace nonviolence as a personal choice, or as an extension of your love of peace as a Jew. But Judaism’s holidays–Chanukah, Purim, Tisha B’Av, Yom HaShoah v’HaG’vurah–demonstrate that while Judaism embraces peace and laments war, nonviolence is decidedly not a traditional Jewish value.
Shimshonit - writing from my own Christian past, this paragraph is classic (I’ll explain after the quote): “So by all means, embrace nonviolence as a personal choice, or as an extension of your love of peace as a Jew. But Judaism’s holidays–Chanukah, Purim, Tisha B’Av, Yom HaShoah v’HaG’vurah–demonstrate that while Judaism embraces peace and laments war, nonviolence is decidedly not a traditional Jewish value.”
As an Eastern Orthodox Christian - a tradition that does not include the “just war” concept - I was often amused at the fact that many saints are, in fact, men of war; from the Roman Period right on up to the modern period, several of the most-popular holy people are, in fact, violent. You paragraph is classic (for me) because it justifies violence the same way these Christian saints do and the closing phrase, “embraces peace and laments war, nonviolence is decidedly not a traditional Jewish value”, is pretty much a verbatim quote from an Orthodox priest (with the religion, changed, of course.)
Without picking sides in this conversation, you’ve hit on the biggest issue I have in conversion: I can justify my Christian non-violence, even in the face of clergy who speak as you do. But I’m not familiar enough with Judaism to justify such a choice - or even to reply to your constant posting on this thread.
Advocates of Just War theory in every religion tend to deny that their religion, when properly understood, advocates nonviolence. I don’t have much ground for complaint since many advocates of religious nonviolence as a way of life also say that advocates of Just War Theory have misunderstood their religion. Judaism, like all religions, has had advocates of Nonviolence and of Just War Theory throughout the centuries. But it is certainly true that advocates of nonviolence are in the minority and need to know about each other so they don’t feel alone and rejected.
Shomer Shalom is a new organization, founded by myself and Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, for Jews who are committed to nonviolence and the Jewish nonviolent tradition. On our website you can find some information about Shomer Shalom (not much yet since I just put it up yesterday) and information about our founding gathering in Chicago May 16-18, 2008. The events of that weekend are open to everybody. Soon I hope to have a bibliography of the Jewish Nonviolent tradition up on the website.