Sometimes-Zionism
Listening to Ben Dror Yemini speak, I couldn’t help but remember the first time I heard Israel accused of ethnic cleansing. In June 2010, a friend and I went to a San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting where public comment was being held on a resolution to condemn Israel for intercepting the “freedom flotilla,” the convoy of ships trying to break the naval blockade on Gaza.
The issue was the last to be discussed, and waiting in the meeting room for four hours, I had managed to work my way to the front of the line and ended up as the fifth speaker — and the first not there to criticize Israel.
I knew things might get ugly at the meeting. Public debate about Israel tends to bring out the worst in people. Nevertheless, I felt waves of shock wash over me as I listened to the four speakers ahead of me in line:
“The Zionist Israeli State is not only suffocating the Palestinian people but they are ethnically cleansing [them]!”
Gaza is being “strangled from the inhale of the universe”
“Israel killed [members of the flotilla] in cold blood.”
I stood and — taken aback by what I had just heard — disregarded my written statement: “I didn’t actually get up here to defend Israel from ethnic cleansing,” I said, “But apparently that’s what they’re being accused of.”
Ethnic cleansing? What the comment meant, at its heart, was that Israel was no better than the Nazis. That if the world, in this case the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, failed to eliminate Israel, then a crime on the level of the murder of six million Jews would be allowed to continue.
After pointing out that it was Hamas’s charter that threatened to search behind every tree and rock in Israel — save for the “Jew trees,” which will naturally hide the Jews — and kill all the Jews, I made it through my original statement.
“By all means speak out for the rights of Palestinians and speak out against the blockade [of Gaza]. But do not condemn Israel’s right as a sovereign, democratic nation to defend itself and protect its citizens,” I said.
Yemini, the opinions editor for Ma’ariv, a leading Israeli newspaper, came to JCHS on March 3, as part of a public-speaking tour in the Bay Area. He spoke to Aaron Pollock’s Media and Advertising F Block class, and prior to that I had an opportunity to interview him.
In a brief but wide-ranging interview, Yemini got across his main point: I don’t think “Israel has any exemption from criticism, of course not — I mean it would be so stupid to say,” he said talking at a fast-clip. But Israel “is facing a huge campaign of demonization, a huge campaign of what I call,” he paused for dramatic effect, “an industry of lies.”
That’s what I encountered at the Board of Supervisors meeting years ago, and that’s what Yemini is trying to fight against: demonization, or “politicide” as he calls it.
Yemini talked with classic Israeli bluster, waving his hands and trying to slip pro-Israel trivia into answers. “Israel is enjoying the same kind of freedom of speech just like in the United States, sometimes even more!” He said in response to a question about whether his belief that Israeli settlements should be evacuated would be palatable to the Israeli public. The relation of answer to question? Something about how he could write whatever he wanted regardless of what people believed because Israel is democratic.
Perhaps this was just a bit of reflexiveness on the part of a man who must endure his share of tough crows when he visits the Bay Area.
But once he had tolerated my questions about such trivial matters as settlements, the future of Israel as both a Jewish and democratic country and whether hasbara — or Israel advocacy — was simply a mask for the country’s ills, he got to talk about what he really cared about.
See, Yemini is a political columnist in a country full of plenty of politics to comment on. But he primarily focuses on the negative obsession he sees the international media, and the people of the world at large, having with Israel.
This is nothing new, and there are many American Jewish organizations dedicated to “exposing media bias,” and showing how the international fixation on Israel is rooted in anti-Semitism rather than legitimate human rights concerns. I’ve always understood this view, as it’s true that many people hold an incorrect worldview wherein Israel is one of the worst offenders of human rights in the world. However, as a Jew I’m inherently attached to Israel, so I allow myself to hold Israel to a high standard and be consistently and deeply disappointed with its record of treatment toward Palestinians, its continued occupation of their land, its societal racism toward Arabs and the disregard some members of the current government treat democracy with.
I am a sometimes-Zionist.
I struggle with what it means for a country to be both Jewish and democratic. I firmly believe a country’s purpose should be to ensure the best life possible for all its citizens, and a country dedicated to just one ethnicity — in this case Jews — can never do that for its minorities. Furthermore, to the extent being a Zionist means supporting Israel, I see so many wrongdoings in its founding and history that I am ambivalent about supporting it.
However, I can never say that I would be happy if Israel didn’t exist. I read about anti-Semitism in Europe. I see the American public turn against Muslim-Americans, picketing their mosques and questions their allegiance. And I think, that could be here, that could be us.
When I walk off the field following a soccer game and I hear an opposing player mutter under his breath, “go back to the furnaces,” I can’t help but be glad there is at least one place on earth where I am not a minority and where there is a powerful military that — no matter its moral missteps — will fight to keep my people safe.
I love walking the streets of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem and being surrounded by Jews. It gives me tremendous pride in my people to see what we built in such a short period of time. Every time Israel hits a new milestone it makes me proud. I find joy in each new Nobel Prize given to an Israel, each time an American university pairs with an Israeli one and each time an Israeli artist makes it onto mainstream playlists. I feel connected to Israel, and I am glad the Jews have a homeland.
So with this ambivalence in mind, something Yemini said near the end of the interview stuck with me. I pointed out to him that for all the anti-Israel attitudes he described the world as holding, Israel is actually doing quite well lately. Its trade deals with foreign countries are increasing, tourism is healthy, the boycott movement hasn’t caught steam, and here we are attending a relatively new Jewish school in America with strong ties to Israel. What was the real effect of all this “bias”? All this demonization?
“The point is, it’s coming… In Irvine, it’s coming, in many other places, it’s coming,” he said resolutely.
I had heard this before, but what got me this time was that I realized he was right.
Following the conviction of several UC Irvine students for conspiring to disrupt Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren when he came to speak on campus, a friend in Los Angeles posted a status expressing outrage that, “students who were exercising their freedom of speech in a peaceful way against someone who is responsible for deaths of so many are convicted.”
The deaths of so many? Michael Oren the murderer? This was a girl I liked and respected, one who paid attention to the world and thought deeply about political issues. And yet, here she was treating Israel with as much scorn as if it were an evil, oppressive and murderous regime.
This is the attitude taken on by so many young people today. In some respects, this is the “pro-Israel” lobby’s fault. Instead of telling the truth, the whole truth, that Israel is a deeply flawed, and yet still wonderful country, they force people to choose sides. On one side is the powerful, noble, righteous Israel, which can do no wrong and which is deserving of no criticism. On the other side is oppressed, impoverished and humble Palestine, which is living under the iron first of the Zionists.
These narratives are both false. But in this world of sound-bites and shallow thought, this is the reality. And Israel cannot win this game.
The person who spoke right before me at the Board of Supervisors meeting was a 15-year old girl. She got up there to speak out against Israel. Several hundred people spoke at that meeting, ignoring the resolution much of the time and delivering speeches for or against Israel. Out of those hundreds of people, many teenagers stood up and spoke with passion for their cause.
My friend and I were the only two non-adults there to support Israel, and in a meeting where Zionist was essentially a stand-in for “Jew,” that was unsettling to say the least.
This doesn’t mean we should all run out and become huge advocates for Israel. In fact, blind advocacy for Israel will accelerate Israel’s downfall. Israel cannot win the war of narratives, because it is Goliath to the Palestinian David. Instead, we must educate ourselves, understand Israel’s flaws, and its strengths. Decide for ourselves what we truly believe, and more importantly why, and then be prepared to break friends and other people we encounter out of their ideological molds and into a reasonable discussion about what the reality of Israel is, and what should be done about it.
It’s only then, when we turn the discussion to real facts and real thought, that Israel stands a chance.
Originally published May 2012 in The Observer, the student newspaper of Jewish Community High School of the Bay
