Living in Different Time Periods

I recently had the dubious pleasure of reading through a learned analysis of why American Jews are "falling out of love with Israel". It was not the article that bothered me; Sarna, as always, delivered a tightly argued, convincing and well-written discussion of how Jews have had difficulty with Israel's behavior, both real and alleged, post-1982. Rather, it was wading through the comments ("talkbackim", we call them in these parts) on the article itself. Most of those that commented on the article made me realize that more than there is a difference of mentality between American and Israeli Jews, they both use different historical lenses.

Put bluntly, American Jews are still living either in the 1980s, when the Lebanon War and the First Intifada convinced many that Israel was either partly or mainly at fault for the continuation and even the origin of the conflict, or the 1990s, when peace was supposedly around the corner, and every delay was the fault of a recalcitrant Israel. I still remember how victims of terrorist attacks in the halcyon Rabin days were called "victims of peace" (the term "korbanot" in Hebrew has even worse connotations).

Indeed, many of the old arguments are still being used: This is a simple territorial issue like the peace with Egypt and Jordan; the Palestinians are essentially defenseless; all offers of negotiation are made in good faith and at least worth pursuing; Israel is racist; the choice whether to make peace lies entirely in Israel's hands etc etc etc. Stop me if you've heard this all before.

American Jews' problems is that (most) Israelis have a different historical perspective - that of the second Intifada post-Camp David. There we learned that peace is not entirely in our hands - the Palestinians can always say no; that negotiations can be interpreted as simply a sign of weakness, used to buy time to arm or pocket concessions without promising anything in return; we learned that the Israel-Palestinian conflict (as opposed to the ones with Egypt and Jordan) is NOT just about territory but about millions of "refugees" and the Palestinian concept of "historical justice" etc. There were, and are die-hards here who also continue to place the blame solely on us, but it's hard to hear them over the noise of the suicide bombings and flying rockets.

While American Jews seem stuck in conceptions of "justice" (a subjective term if there ever was one), we Israelis have long since moved on to a more sober view of reality. We no longer think in terms of peace, justice etc. Read any political discussion in Hebrew, and you'll notice how much it depends on hard-nosed realist analysis of the actual facts, rather than idealistic debates. Here, we deal with the real, not with what "should be". We know that Palestinians can lie just as much as we can; that Hezbollah is a well-trained army division funded by Iran, not some rag-tag group of peasant guerillas; and few, if any, seriously belive that even a full territorial withdrawal behind the green line will "end Palestinian terror and rejectionism" - so far it's been just the opposite.

So how can one bridge this divide? I'd like to propose something rather simple - that American Jews visit and talk to Israelis. Just like that. Not political or cultural leaders, or reporters and foreigners - everymen and women in various parts of the country. There you'll learn, just like you want us to learn about the Palestinians, that Israelis are not all foaming-at the-mouth racist oppressors. That we'd gladly negotiate a deal if we could be certain that we'd then be left alone and not get shot at or blown up. That most of us are not militarized Spartans; that we'd much rather be trekking in India or South America or getting a high-tech degree. That we might be more amenable to "critique of our policies" if you'd stop insisting the Palestinians are blameless innocents and that we are only human beings trying to cope in very difficult circumstances, rather than superhuman beings from another planet. That the "Jewish" part of the "Jewish and Democratic" equation is still very important to most of us, and ignoring that will make whatever democratic critiques you have fall on deaf ears.

Then maybe, just maybe, we'll both stop looking throgh distorted lenses and see reality for what it is - both light and shadow. This is the essence of true "maturity".