When I see the love fest between Netanyahu and Trump (a nativist,
corrupt, narcissist, liar) it makes me cringe. I was dismayed recently when I
opened a Middle East magazine in the local book store that portrayed the
Palestinian Arabs as innocent victims of a demon Israel. I am also dismayed
when a commentator on television news says that some nativist action by Trump
is only applauded by Russia and Israel (without acknowledging that not all Israelis
are pro-Netanyahu or the extreme Right just as not all Russians are pro-Putin).
I am a Zionist in that I am concerned for safety of the 40% of my fellow Jews
in the world who live in Israel. Israel faces an existential problem in its
relations with the Moslem world including the Palestinian and other Arab people
as well as the government of Iran. But is the belligerency of Netanyahu’s words
really promoting the safety of the people of Israel or undercutting their safety?
I am disheartened when I hear many of my fellow American Jews beginning to
question their fondness for Israel. I want desperately to speak only good about
Israel, and there are certainly many good things to say about Israeli democracy
(although incomplete), science, technology, stability (better than in much of
the surrounding neighborhood), but the settlements and the actions of the
Israeli Far Right interfere. Theodore Herzl (the founder of the Zionist
movement) in his novel Old New Land envisioned an Israel where Jews and Arabs
would work together. He saw the danger of the revisionist extreme Right in
Zionism.
The Arab leaders can not be taken off the hook. They have
missed many opportunities for Palestinian self determination. Israel would have
accepted the UN partition if the Arab League armies had not invaded the land in
1948. Most Palestinian Arabs moved out of the land to make way for those invading
armies. During the Jordanian occupation
of the West Bank and the Egyptian occupation of the Gaza Strip, there was no call
for an independent Palestine. In 1967 it was Egypt and Jordan that invaded the
land putting all of it plus the Sinai Peninsula in Israeli control, although in
the long run it was Egypt and Jordan that gained from that war by transferring
the occupation headache to Israel. In fact Jordan later wisely cemented its
freedom from the West Bank by renouncing any claim to it. When Ehud Barak
offered Yassir Arafat the best deal he could offer, Arafat made no counter
offer and started an intifada to which Barak overreacted. This ended a decade
of peace building. A pro-Palestinian acquaintance once justified Arafat’s
actions by saying he had to do what he did because the other Palestinians would
have killed him if he had done otherwise. But that is exactly the problem. If a
Palestinian leader has to risk his life to make peace, there will be no peace.
On the other hand Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated because he was a hero for
peace.
I have some advice
for the Center, Left, and Arab parties in Israel. Together you might actually be
the majority in the State of Israel. You guys might very well be the hope for
peace, but it won’t happen unless you put aside your less important differences
and get together to take the government back from Netanyahu, the Settler
Movement, and the Far Right. And my advice to the Palestinians is if the Center,
Left, and Arab parties in Israel can form a coalition that can win over the Israeli
government in the next election, you better get together and reach a compromise
with that government, because that is the best deal you are going to get. Of course,
that’s assuming you really want to come to some reasonable agreement (or
perhaps you just prefer playing victims over actually taking the responsibilities
of leadership). Maybe all sides prefer the status quo of dragging their feet. After
all there is a kind of peace punctuated by an occasional riot. But I am afraid
that this peace is a temporary illusion which will not last forever. I don’t
think real peace will come only from some grand peace treaty, but rather from
the ground up by people on the ground learning to live together either as
separate nations, one nation, or some kind of confederation. Also it won’t
happen overnight but if it is to happen at all, things have to start to move in
that direction. I remember someone once said something like “a journey of a thousand
miles begins with one step."
