When my maternal grandmother was about 7 years old, she almost fell victim to a pogrom. It was the late thirties. Europe was a stretched rubber band that would soon break. My grandmother visited the family in a small Polish town. One day, the non-Jewish inhabitants used knives and sticks in chasing Jews. My grandmother ran, closed the blinds, hid and waited.
I heard this story about the pogrom in two related contexts. First, as proof of anti-Semitism – even without Nazi coercion. Second, as part of the need for a state where Jews can be safe.
Last week, Jewish settlers staged a pogrom in a Palestinian village called Hawara. They set houses and cars on fire. They threw stones. In one sickening video, settlers pray as the city smokes in the background, as if their violence honors God rather than desecrates sacred commandments and the rule of law.
I have never been so ashamed to be an Israeli. I have never been so angry as I watched these settlers twist Jewish victimization into a right to harm innocent people and twist Jewish practices into their colonial ambitions to create a license for abuse.
While the colonists’ actions were extreme, they cannot be categorized as perks. Not when Treasury Secretary Bezalel Smotrich said afterwards that Hawara should be “wiped out” by the State of Israel. Not when National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir legitimizes illegal settlements and talks about destroying enemies “one by one”. Like the Trump years in the United States, government actions and statements, however unrepresentative of the will of the people, still carry the weight of institutional approval.
My grandmother just celebrated her 92nd birthday. She lives in Haifa in a residential care home. When I speak to her, she is distraught at the state of the country – settler pogroms, racist government officials and a judicial coup led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Yet she insists that Jews should still have a country.
The anti-Semitism my grandmother experienced in her childhood has not gone away. Jew-hatred is on the rise around the world and in the United States, as seen recently in anti-Semitic pamphlets in Maryland, Montana and Ohio and a plot to assassinate Jewish elected officials in Michigan. Anti-Jewish hate crimes in California are at an all-time high.
That’s just part of the grief. At a time when Jews feel less safe in our communities, Israel no longer feels like a safe option. As countries around the world tend toward autocracy, Israel is part of the dataset rather than an exception. The important thing is to see that some members of a group that has experienced so much persecution can shamelessly hurt others.
In a lecture he gave at Stanford in January 2007, the late Israeli author Amos Oz spoke about the nature of dreams.
Israel, he said, is “a dream come true, maybe a dream come true. Oz said it’s not about the nature of the state of Israel, but about the nature of dreams.
I do not agree with it. Because national dreams, like personal decisions, are not projectiles whose trajectories are determined the moment they are released. They are large tanks, prone to inertia due to their weight, yet manageable. Israel will always be flawed in some ways. But it doesn’t have to be as flawed as it is today.
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis are protesting against autocracy and racism, for democracy, equality and common dignity – for a better Israel. “Where were you in Hawara?” They sing for the security forces. They hold up banners depicting Netanyahu as “minister of crime”.
They understand that loving Israel right now is tantamount to condemning it. That external threats such as Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah cannot destroy Israel the way the Jews within that country can. American Jewish leaders, some of whom have historically been hesitant to openly criticize Israel, must fight for an Israel they can be proud of, not just Israel today.
My paternal grandfather almost certainly escaped death as a teenager when he was deported to Siberia from the Soviet Union. Soon after, the Nazis murdered 90% of the Jews in his native Lithuania. He eventually escaped the Gulag, spent a few years in post-war Germany, and moved to Israel in 1949.
In the weeks leading up to his death, my father asked him what Israel meant to him for one of my writing projects:
“In a word… mine.”
“And in two words?” my father asked.
“That I feel that my destiny is in my own hands, that I am not a foreigner.”
My grandfather found a new home in Israel. He felt a sense of personal self-determination – a freedom from the historical forces that had pulled him from Lithuania to the gulag – made possible by the collective self-determination of a nation.
His wife, my other grandmother, recently celebrated her 90th birthday. She is with other family members following the recent protests. Because Israel is currently betraying my late grandfather. It reveals the memory of Jews of the past and the perspectives of future Jews. And that means betraying Jews in Israel and Jews abroad.
So shame on the settlers, on Netanyahu, on Ben-Gvir, on Smotrich, on their hundreds of thousands of supporters and on the seething hatred they represent. To deal with these racists and autocrats, we must learn from our experience with anti-Semites and show no compromise, tolerance or legitimacy of their policies and actions. We must fight and shame them while it lasts.
Nadav Ziv is a writer whose work includes Essays about Judaism, anti-Semitism and Israel. @nadavsziv
Source: LA Times