Letters to the Editor
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Isreal has always been a dream.
It was with profound sadness that I read this article.
Israel, like America, was a country whose origin was an idea. But, like America, Israel has lost its way. When one reads the poetry of the Biluim and Chalutzim one can understand that idea: to become one with the land, to finish its creation, to join or begin a community whose goal is not merely its own perpetuation (though that is assured if they achieve their goal), but the betterment of the world through the work of their hands.
We may look upon their self-appointed task as naïve, the malicious among us may say they were usurpers, colonizers, imperialistic, arrogant. From our postmodern perches we sneer at them and at their pronouncements: “You cannot do anything great without getting in someone’s way.” But they were motivated by a dream not of idle nights, but of idyllic vistas wrenched from the desert and the swamp by their feverish imaginations and their ceaseless efforts. Whatever their faults, they were not irresolute, and they were not complacent.
My great-grandfather became an oleh in 1876, the year the Japanese brought Kudzu to America for its centennial celebrations. He started schools to revive the Hebrew language, so that the tongue of the prophets would once again echo off the walls of Jerusalem when the exiles came home. That was the power of the idea, the dream that was Israel: it reawakened a language that had slept in books for more than a thousand years. No dream has animated another people to rouse their language from such slumber.
But Israel, like America, has lost its way. The dream has melted in the crucible of our fear. Golda Mier: “I can forgive the Arabs for murdering our children, but not for turning our children into murderers.” The Arabs did not do that to us—we did it ourselves and needlessly so. Like Pharaoh, we have hardened our hearts so we do not consider either the suffering of our enemies, nor the suffering of our own children.
So it is that Israel, like America, must find itself, slough its hardened heart and reach out tenderly to friend and foe alike. Though wolves surround us, we needn’t become wolves; we did not sing for thousands of years “By the rivers of Babylon” simply so that, upon returning to Zion, we could become Nebuchadnezzar.
If we are to be a light unto the nations we must first rekindle our own dreams.
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This Article's Written In Such Vague Terms that...
unless one lives in Israel, it's impossible to understand what the author's talking about. That there was a disastrous war I know, but what is this about Israel being "intolerably opaque"? What does it mean to say that Israel has ceased to be a 'home'? It sounds awful, but I don't know what any of it means.
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We?
"We haven't gotten off the hook because we haven't yet really gotten onto it. We have not yet dared to face, open-eyed, this war's deep and frightening significance."
Interesting article, but after reading 'we' this and 'we' that while sitting in San Francisco in a San Francisco based publication I couldn't help but thinking of the line -
What you mean 'We', kemosabe?
Unfortunately, if/when Israel really gets into trouble, the US gov't will invariably do whatever stupid, brutal things necessary to make it that much worse.
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Everyone wants the same thing
Every parent wants their children to live in world where they feel safe, where they are safe. Every parent wants the best for their child - this is true regardless of time, faith, or culture. However, it is when petty jealousies and desires for power are allowed to take root at the expense of someone else, that is when people can no longer be safe. Look at Hitler, he used everyone that was different or not Germanic enough to become the scapegoats. Millions of people have died at the hands of such monsters. The US is not immune from this either - millions of native American were exterminated for the desire of their land.
Petty desires and jealousies and the need to be right have made lies into truths. Truth about events in the past changed to fit the current need to be right, the need to justify the madness that exists today. This is no less truer for the Is ra elies than it is for their neighbors.
We all want the same things, but when we have it at the expense of others, we no no longer have the same things.
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Israel's angst
Here's a fun thought experiment that, I think, shows the bankruptcy of all sides in the middle east these days -- what would happen if the Palestinians just said "Screw our own state, we've been living in Israel for 41 years now. Most of us were born here and we'll never manage to negotiate mutually agreeable borders anyway. Just let us vote."
What's more depressing, that the Palestinians have never suggested such a democratic solution, or that the Israelis would have no conceivable response?
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when you face reality..
maybe you will find that depression, apathy, cynicism and corruption are the natural results of living on someone else's land, taken and held by militarism.
talk to hamas, find out if they are willing to share the land with you in a secular nation called palestine. if they are not, you are doomed.
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Thank you Gadi, and Asher
Gadi, really interesting and well said, Asher, I agree completely, I forced my way through the article but had no idea what it was saying.
Sadly, because this is a largely San Francisco publication, we'll see lots of people come by that have no idea what the article is about and they will give us all their wise and learned and easy to spout talking points -- that Israel is at fault for the entire mess.
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Why am I not moved?
What a self-absorbed, narcissistic article! I feel sad at Israel's path towards self-destruction, and a bit disgusted.
Grossman makes no mention of the Arabs that Israel is displacing (or should we call it what is is, ethnic cleansing), the false democracy that it practices, or the willful subversion of US interests by the Israel Lobby? He should know that in the US we believe that all men are created equal, so that Jews are not inherently superior to Arabs. Israel will survive only if Israeli Jews understand this, and behave with humanity towards their neighbors.
An excellent new book by Joel Kovel, "Overcoming Zionism" suggests that a one-state solution is the only real answer at this point. This may well be the case, and if this is so then Israelis will have only themselves to blame.