Daniel Gordis
Israel from the Inside with Daniel Gordis, Nov. 7, 2022
“But much of the responsibility lies with the Left and even the Center, who have abdicated any meaningful form of Jewish discourse. What has that Jewish vacuousness gotten us? It’s gotten us a slice of the young generation of Israelis who can no longer articulate why they’re here—and the lives they live reflect that.”
On Israel-interested social media, complaining about Tom Friedman’s columns in the New York Times has become something of a sport. I’m neither a fan of nor a participant in the sport. I like Tom Friedman, and on many issues, I find him thoughtful and deeply informative. On Israel, I often disagree, but that’s life. When he and I are in dialogue, I find him menschy and interesting, and I try to be the same.
So it is with some hesitation that I respond, however indirectly, to Friedman’s recent Op-Ed in the NYT, in which he argued, post Israel’s elections, that “the Israel we knew is gone.” I’ve got no interest in joining the “jump on Tom Friedman fray.” That said, I don’t think it’s gone at all.
Neither, apparently, does Dennis Ross:
Rather than a line-by-line commentary on Friedman’s piece, I’ll make just five prime points.
Point #1: American Jews want a tepid Israel; most Israelis have never wanted that, and don’t care about the discomfort of those who do
Here’s the heart of the problem. There are many people around the world who want Israel to be something it does not wish to be. They want it to be successful, but humble. They want it to be strong and secure, but still desperate for foreign support of all sorts. They want it to be Jewish, but in a “nice” kind of way. Israeli dancing (which I haven’t seen here in years), flags at the right time, a country filled with “Hatikva moments” as some call them. A country traditional enough to be heartwarming, but not so traditional that it would dare imply that less intense forms of Jewish life cannot make it. A country steeped in memory, but also one that is finally willing to move on.
An Israel moderate in every way would be an Israel easy to love. It would be a source of pride, but not a source of shame. It would be an Israel that would make us feel great as Americans and as Jews.
The only problem is that that Israel doesn’t exist, and it never has. Of course, there’s also never been an America like that, or an England like that. But Israel is somehow expected to hover above the messiness of history, above the sort of ugliness that statehood always brings with it. The early Zionists knew that statehood would be messy. That, in fact, is precisely why Ahad Ha’am strongly opposed it. Let’s build a cultural center here, he said. We’ll study and learn and write and create. And we’ll leave the ruling to other people.
Right, said Herzl and Ben-Gurion among many others. We’ll study and learn and write and create. And we’ll be dead. … SOURCE
