Building a New Israel, Activist by Activist
The Hour
By Leonard Fein
When it was first performed, all the way back in 1969, there were more than a few raised eyebrows. That performance was by Lehakat Hanachal, an immensely popular military choir. But the lyrics were very far from what one might expect of a group sponsored by the Israel Defense Forces: “S’u einayim b’tikva,/lo derech kavanot;/shiru shir la’ahava/v’lo la’milchamot” — “Lift your eyes with hope,/not through a rifle’s sights;/sing a song for love and not for wars.” Make love, not war. For a time, the song — “Shir La’Shalom,” it’s called, a song to peace — was banned by the chief of the IDF Central Command.
It might have been relegated to “Kumbaya” status; instead, it became an anthem, most famously sung by Miri Aloni, flanked by Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, at the end of the monster Tel Aviv rally in support of the Oslo Accords on November 4, 1995. Rabin, in a wonderful mood because he’d feared the rally would be poorly attended, had actually sung along, and when the song was done, he turned to Shimon Peres and said, “This has been the best evening of my life.” Minutes later, he lay dying, assassinated by Yigal Amir; a blood-stained copy of the lyrics was later found in his breast pocket.
What brings this to mind just now is that I attended, the other night, a festive Jerusalem reception hosted by the New Israel Fund as the kick-off event of its annual board meeting in Israel. Some hundreds of people were there, many of them activists in the broad network of social change agencies the NIF supports, along with a group of 18 girls from Shani, an Arab/Jewish girls’ choir from Haifa. The girls sang several songs — among them, “Shir La’Shalom.” “Don’t just say ‘the day will come’; bring on that day!” And what was especially noteworthy about their performance (available, as is pretty nearly everything, on You Tube) was that they sang it not only in Hebrew but also in Arabic.
That may indeed sound Kumbaya-ish, but when it comes to Arab/Jewish relations in Israel, even the Kumbaya experience is a step forward. In the context of the NIF evening, an event showcasing the work of a dozen organizations (out of hundreds) devoted to social change, it is one of many such steps. Here, together, a new face of Israel; these NGOs are the very best examples of Israel’s emergent civil society, every bit as important to Israel’s tomorrow as is its endlessly publicized high-tech sector. (In the local CD stores, they’re featuring a series of “Classic Israeli Songs From the Good Israel That Was,” which suggests they’re out of touch with the rising reality, with the good Israel that is becoming. Nostalgia has its attractions, but it makes a very thin gruel — and in the case at hand, it is simply misleading.)
The key people of the NGOs are introduced, say a few words, and hand the microphone on. Here is the new head of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, a young man with a background as a gay community organizer. ACRI is an old war horse of the NGO community; without its often successful legal challenges to the government, Israel’s Supreme Court would have had much more time on its hands over the years and been of much less interest and impact than it has been. Then comes a young Ethiopian woman who walked with her family through Sudan when she was 5 years old to reach this place and now organizes for the advancement of her own community as also for others who live at the margins of Israeli society. Environmentalists, educators and others, mostly young, and then veteran pursuers of social justice, pleased to be witnessing the emergence of a new generation to carry on the struggle: Alice Shalvi, winner last year of the Israel Prize, founder of the Israel Women’s Network, universally recognized mentor to generations of thoughtful feminist activists; Mordecai Bar-On, historian, long-time Knesset member, former chief education office of the IDF, above all, life-long peace activist; Nabila Espanyoli, a Christian Arab educator and activist in Nazareth, reminiscent of Janusz Korczak in the utterness of her commitment to children and in her gifts as an organizer and educator. And then, the outgoing (after six years) chairman of NIF, a man of singular decency and devotion, Peter Edelman, so moved by the occasion that when he was invited to the dais, it took him some time before he successfully fought back his tears and spoke of what the New Israel Fund has meant to him.
Years from now, when a social historian sits down to write the story of how Israel developed a civil society, how citizens learned that by working at the grass roots they could make change happen and enrich immeasurably the political culture of the place, a long chapter will surely be devoted to the work of NIF. Perhaps by then it will be able to describe how a country with such radical income inequity (tied, roughly, with the United States for first place in inequality of income) rescued its social contract before allowing it to be rendered an obsolete relic. Perhaps, too, it will acknowledge the grandeur of an intergenerational cadre that, despite the endemic exhaustion that is the chronic conflict’s toll, manages to find the energy to do battle on behalf of the once and future values that are Zionism’s — and Judaism’s — proud legacy.
All this under a full moon at the base of Mount Zion, in a land so marked by cynicism and by resignation, by corruption and by confusion. But not here, not this night.
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Yahudah, remember the old question asked of the rabbi: Rabbi, why does the dog wag his tail...and the rabbi answers: would you rather the tail wag the dog? Your answer to my post reminds me of that. Lets be a little genetic. Arabs and Jews are the same stock (you can't have people living so close together from so long wothout mongralization, a better term "genetic drift"), also historically, the former coming from the latter. There's a common onery personality there too that I soooo love, I admit, but modern Israelis and modern Arabs can come to terms, not only because they can but also because they have to. I don't want the Jews out of Mideast, just as I don't want them out of US and Europe-- some of my best teachers were and are Jews, and I want them for my children to also experience-- similarly, I want them to be as appreciated by Arabs because if there's one thing Arabs appreciate it is their teachers. And, it happens, that there's no one to modernize the Mideast as qualified as the Israelis. Now, the Bklyn Jewish Jihadis are a small group and they fill only 10 % of the new houses. The "settlements" of Jerusalem are really fancysuburban housing for Israel's high-teckers or sitting there empty to become "facts on the ground." Don't you think that the Palestinians wouldn't mind the Israelis to be amongst them if they were their teachers and advisers in high-tech?...and the Pals could be a hell of a link for Israel to Arab world. It's all in how you think. If you are a Likudnik who thinks that anti-Zionazi is anti-Semite, then you are a Jewish Jihadi and, just as Arabs are developing "Jihad fatigue," as in Iraq," Israelis are developing Zionazi fatigue, read Haaretz on Likud. YES, THEY CAN ALL GET ALONG-- Arabs and Jews-- except for the shysters with multiple passports trying to milk them both. But that's not what Jews are all about, nor what real Zionists are all about. One Palestine multi-ethnic nation is as good a solution as one Arab Mideast. But since no one wants one and only one brand for the product, like Yugoslavia, the Mideast will break up into lots of little places. Even the Haridi may chose a state of their own. and the Mizrahi, hating the Ashkanazi, may do the same. But truth is, no matter how many states you have, unless they are economically integrated they will starve. And to economically integrate they need to politically integrate to some degree. So far Israel survives because of America's outrageously generous aid. But that is going to stop because American generosity has a habit of ending when it hurts and we are no longer the world's top dog so it will soon hurt. Israel wouldm, therefore, do well to integrate with its cousins rather than think the great American cash give away will last forever....Anyway, the dollar is losing value so fast that you are going to have to get rich on your own by giving real value to the shekle. I have no doubt that Israel can and MUST become a "light onto the [Arab] nations," otherwise why would God have brough you guys back to thwe Promised Land from cushy jobs in LA?
I think the problem with Israel is that, since by now most Americans are old farts of this me,me,me-ist 60s, 70s, 80s boomers generation, many Israelis are the same. So Israel's problem is america's problem. But as America sinks in its own crap, OUR kids decided to take it in hand and save it-- from us as much as from our enemies. They suddenly "got involved." Now I know that young Israelis are the cream of the Western cultural crop so all Israel needs is for all those narrow minded one-point young activists to get together and come up with a common strategic plan for Israel's integration into the Arab world of its Semitic family. Then it has to call forth the young-- serious, not criminal type-- Palestinians and bring them into this cabal of cousins and together make Israel first a fellow Mideast region nation, then the leader of the Mideast Renaisence. You can do it because you are too smart to be rigid and too clear to be as amoral as your parents' boomer generation, my generation. I saw those young sabras in action in recent crisis and I know they can lead Israel out of the corrupt Bush-Olmert world of multipassports and foreign bank accounts and foreign masters who fill those accounts for Israel's current boomer leaders
When will Israel become a modern Jewish, Islamist, Christian, and Atheist state? Nothing good can come from prolonging the Zionist delusion. It is the endless righteousness that is the real killer that produces all the paranoia and megalomania.
David Nilsson, I loved your post-- as well as past ones. I wish we could get a group together to listen to your views and discuss them....Ah, but that was Jews back in the 60s....Now they are real Americans who only want to make money, not argue anymore. Nothing I nejoyed in America or gave as much meaning to "FREEDOM" as the days in the shools arguing seven opinions with six guys that were all so good that the debate would never resolve. Are you one of my 60s pals?
Beautifully said, and after that NIF can speak for itself for those who want to learn more: http://nif.org/
As we see in the controversy over prisoner exchanges covered elsewhere this issue, Israel is a very different country from 1948 or 1967/73, and the sabras have made it so by their well justified dissent and disillusionment. If you're a grizzled old Irgun type or Brooklyn settler, you think the young are weak, decadent, lazy guys who trust their mortal enemies too much, dream of emigrating and wouldn't fight Hezbollah hard enough that summer. Oy yoy, what can we do with the young people! If you're more constructive (like Fein) and realise that israel is on a collision course with demographics and the contradictions always inherent in political Zionism, you feel sorry for the under-40s. They will have to steer the land through this horrible mess. A country which has never reconciled ethnic favouritism with being noisily "antiracist"; which now harbours an increasing Arab minority which hates it and is cordially hated in return, if usually quietly-- give or take a YB or two. A country which says it wants to live in peace with all, but has to shame itself by constant, pitiful lying about its fearsome capacity to wipe out its neighbours. A country that only wanted a little patch of historic soil, but is cruelly forced to keep taking more and more of other folks': chasing them off it, enslaving them on it, starving them inside it, surrounding them with fences, choppers and friskers, and telling them they should be glad to live under any conditions in a civilised state. A country whose founder looked forward to Jews flourishing honestly under their own governance, whose charities now constantly have to appeal to the poor persecuted (voluntary) prisoners of the Diaspora to help succour the children and the old of Israel, even as its corrupt, thieving elite boasts of its wonderfully thriving GDP. "Make love, not war" was the slogan in the summer of 1967, when other events were afoot. I doubt if the most triumphalist IDF officer back then would feel happy with how things have panned out since the last unequivocal Israeli military victory, which now seems so long ago and irrelevant. From Begin to Halutz... and from idealism and genuine empathy with tyrannised Muslim cannon fodder even in the moment of that victory, to the fatalism, chauvinism and Masada-ish hawkishness of today's Knesset and its American financiers and cheerleaders.
"Semitic" has only one real meaning: It is the name of a family of languages. So Hebrew speakers and Arabic speakers - together with Maltese and Amharic speakers - are already a kind of "Semitic family". Obviously, DE Teodoru's suggestion ("...a common strategic plan for Israel's integration into the Arab world of its Semitic family") is not merely a question of language; rather, it is a question of our collective identity that he raises. It would seem that he is hinting that Israel's non-Arabic character is problematic - as if she doesn't have the right to be herself. Interestingly, this argument was used by certain European political movements throughout the 19th century to justify the denial of civil rights to the Jewish population. The Jews, so it was argued, are outsiders. Sadly, many assimilationist Jews adopted such opinions as well, blaming the continuing and persistent Jewish identity as the obstacle to acceptance in Europe. Well, people - individually and collectively - have a right to their unique identities. Negating our right to be ourselves is discriminatory. Moreover, the rise of Israel is a central expression of Jewish continuity. Not only is it our right to continue being ourselves, it is also our right to expect others to accept us for what we are - without any conditions.
Actually, it could be that an anti-Zionist position could be another way of expressing the historic anti-Semitic hatred. There are many such people. Perhaps, on the other hand, there are others whose anti-Zionism is an attempt to negate Israel's legitimacy without harboring the old animosities toward the Jewish people. In the case of Mr DE Teodoru, there doesn't seem to be much doubt that his motivation is not simply politics. His use of the term "Zionazi" is obviously motivated by extremism and hatred. My disappointment, however, is not focused on all those people out there who hate Jews or hate Israel (or both). We know that this is the reality of the Jewish experience for centuries. My disappointment is focused on the Forward which has declared that "name-calling" is not welcomed on this site - and it "reserves the right to remove comments for any reason". Since very nasty and rude anti-Semitic comments remain here day after day, I'm left puzzled as to which kind of comment the Forward deems worthy of removal.
The last thing Israel needs are more liberal activists, especially ones that Fein approves of. They will undoubtedly be clueless moral relativists who will be unable to distinguish between good and evil. They will promote policies that make them feel good without any consideration to whether those policies are practical, or if they will work and improve people's lives, or cause more harm. When those policies prove to be damaging to the country (as virtually all liberal policies of the last 40 years here in the US have been) they will continue to support them because they originally meant well. For liberals it's not about whether it works it's about how it makes them feel. Pitiful.
As a Palestinian, I dont accept the artificial argument of bozhidar bob balkas that ashkenazi and mizrahi Jews are distinct. In fact, a Jewishly written book, the Blood of Abraham, makes it convincingly clear that ashkenazi and misrahi Jews have astonishingly similar genetic backgrounds. I do agree with bozhidar bob balkas that all jews should be resettled from Palestine, perhaps in Nevada, because there is no Jewish historic claim, and we will never accept a Jewish state just like the body doesnt accept a splinter. Mr Fein, if you are a real progressive, you will support our cause. Otherwise you are no better than Baruch Goldstein
_The Blood of Abraham_, "Jewishly written"? By Jimmy Carter?
Yehuda sounds like a Jesuit prosecutor in the Middle Eages.. Am I declared a witch or not?
But before he answers, he better look up the term "Semitic." There's a very interesting article on the genetic basis of European Jews in Commentary and a very intersting history of the European Jews in Le Monde Diplomatique. Both distinguish the Semitic Jews from the Euro Jews, the latter as converts. But no one is denying the regious legitimacy of European Jews by combining the Semitic Jews and Arabs under one term, "Semites." The prosecutorial pseudologic by which Yehuda "analyzed" my inner intentions is the schizophrenic style that distinguishes neurosis from psychosis, where the imaginary is inseparable from the rational. If you look out your window like a psychotic, you can't expect to arange your furniture sanely, nor can you be expected to be the rich pillar of Western culture that are the Jews. So Yehuda, before you go nuts condemning me for opposing assimilation, let me remind you that the ADL's Abe Foxamn defined his mission in America as "fighting against assimilation." I'm not your enemy, I just see America as a nation at 20 to Krystalhacht and want the clock stopped. We can argue about the sanity of my fear, but I would remind you that there's a search after every graffiti Swatzstika for a Nazi Movement that must be preempted with suppression of freedom of speech by the likes of Foxman. Better to look at how the neocons endangered the American Jewish Community by pushing for a Mideast "World War IV" Crusades and calling all critics "anti-Semites." In fact, about the same proportion of Jews as Blacks voted for Obama, so they are well assimilated, despite Mr. Foxman's mission.
Forgive me Yahuda
I think it important for me to express my frustration with Yahuda more honestly rather than in rage; this would make a heck of a lot more sense because I am really most grateful that he took the time to read my post, the time to think about it and then the time to respond. So why the rage? Sorry for that, but I can't stand the assumed knowledge of my inner MOTIVE, validated by some simpleton logic. The issue is not that Yahuda is a simpleton, certainly not, but that he would respond to my genuine effort to be helpful with such a demonetization. I am used to a warm welcome to the Jewish and Arab house on whose door I knock full of good will. Disagreement in the greeting as to whether it's a "good day" or a "lousy day" should not alter the assumption that I am there because I care and that I was let in because the man at the door was kind. So here you go. I do not see HAMAS as Palestinian for the same reason as I do not see the Muslim Brotherhood as Egyptian. Their ideologies make them distinct from such national labels because they are TRANS-ISLAM. For HAMAS a shahid is not one who dies for the liberation of Palestine but rather one who dies for the glory of God. HAMAS, in fact, is not fighting against Israel or for the Palestinians. It is fighting to draw through tragedy Muslims into the Sharia Sans Frontieres. Few Palestinians are in that mood; after all, they had undergone six decades of socialist and nationalist materialist "why we fight and why we die?" indoctrination. HAMAS uses the Palestinian and Israeli hate for each other as a means, not an end. It's equation is rather simple: (P hate) X (I hate) _____________________= Devotion to Allah + Islamic Sharia nationalism + death
Please note that the name of the PLO declares for LIBERATION OF PALESTINE while the title of HAMAS declares INDEFINITE Struggle for the glory of Allah. In other words, HAMAS wants the Palestinians to forever be in JIHAD with others so they will never end their JIHAD with themselves. They made the Palestinians their target because they failed in Egypt. They are working on the Palestinians (30% Takfir Christians) because Israel invited them in to destroy the PLO. It was OK so long as they were shahids. But once they became a political movement, in the eyes o Sharon, he had brought in a mouse to scare the homeowner's wife and ended up with a lion that attacked the Israelis in the street....and for a TOTALLY DIFFERENT REASON. That is why I am so hopeful in the new Netayahu approach: leave political issues aside and ECONOMICALLY integrate the Palestinians with the Israeli. MY experience in the area makes it quite clear to me that Palestinians want nothing more than a life for their children that is much like the life the Israelis give their children. There's another benefit. While an Israeli would never forget the humiliation he suffered at the hand of his teachers and, though the student loves the teacher, will try to up-one him some day, an Arab REVERENTLY loves his teacher and will be enamored of the latter for the rest of his life. I used the term ZIONAZI to indicate that Israel has done to Palestinians what Germans did to Israelis. A better term-- with which I am most familiar, being one myself, is the psychotic SECULAR doom and gloom mentality of East Europeans, making them very mean to their ethnic neighbors as ETHNIC GROUPS but not as INDIVIDUALS. Israelis are simply East Europeans who quite rightly despised the way they were treated as "other" by their fellow East Europeans so they went to Palestine where they treated the locals EXACTLY as they were treated in East Europe. Netanyahu sees this as key. He realizes that despite how Israel treated Palestinians all these decades, Shin Bet still had some 32,000 Palestinian "eyes and ears" in Gaza. This does not go to prove the power of gelt, but rather the power of the next couple of steps up in social order. Many Palestinians keep ties with Israel because they want for their children what the Israeli give to theirs. The Nekba was brutal, yet until now everyone sought to come up with political solutions that seek to ameliorate the Nekba (eg. the Two States solution). This mans that there is no sweetener, for peace can only come when the Nekba is enshrined in stone as a two-states solution. But what if you set that side and provide an in loc dream fulfillment for BOTH peoples. Obviously you cannot, in a two-states solution, give either side satisfaction, so that cannot be the solution because Palestine is too small to be viable for EITHER side. But what if you lay aside TEMPORARILY the Nekba and Greater Israel-- the political issues-- and focus on the commerce and education integration of the two peoples? Then, if it succeeds (and I am confident that economic and social integration will succeed if fair to both sides with laws fair to both), Israel will invariably slide into economic integration with the Arab World. If Iran gets a nuclear bomb it cannot test so it cannot perfect it, instead using its shadow to scare the Arabs from hitting it as Saddam used his A-bomb, then the Arabs will have to go to Israel for protection by its nuclear umbrella (one fully tested when allied with apartheid South Africa) because they can't afford to start nuclear programs of their own. They are trapped in untenable one-crop (oil) banana republic economies. That's what makes me confident that after economic integration with the Palestinians will be achieved such integration with the Arabs is inevitable. The Arab nations are a glut with young people who are so frustrated with their prospects that they are willing to die as martyrs only to be heroically remembered. But if Israelis share their sci/tech advances with them to modernize the Arab World, it will indeed be, in the words of Zionism's Founders "a light onto the [Arab] nations." The Sabras of today lack the doom and gloom psychosis of their East Euro ancestors. They are born and bred of the Middle East; so they have more in common with the Arabs than any Jew. And, like the Arabs, they know no other homeland but Israel. Rather than Israel, in the words of AZURE, "losing its minds" in a reverse aliyah to LA, why not teach them Arabic so they can do close to home the wonderful things they did so far away as olims in reverse? Note that all this is an ECONOMIC grand scheme, with the POLITICAL issues set aside while everyone-together focuses on the former. NO solution of the NATION issues is imposed, as no serious borders exist anywhere in the giant sandbox of the Mideast. Now that a flat broke America is moving its focus to South Asia, the nations of the Middle East must solve their own problems....And they all know that Israel alone has the know-how. So long as no one has to be humiliated, there is no problem. Many Jews and many Israeli already do business in the Arab World. And many tell me that, rather than anti-Semitism, what they face is a cultural affinity. Let us not forget that Arabs and Jews are FAMILY-- made by the same God from the same sand.
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