Is Jstreet about pressuring Israel, or is it about
pressuring the American government to pressure Israel? With American and
Israeli politics so intertwined, only a fine line separates them, but it is an
important distinction to make. As an
Israeli at Jstreet this week, I was always perplexed by the question “how
Israeli are you? Full, half or quarter Israeli?” Since I speak English with an
American accent they had to check my bona-fides, since no “true” Israeli can
speak good English. “So, did you actually
serve?” was the question that always followed. I couldn’t help but see the
irony in a bunch of American, liberal college students who came to a
“Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace” conference who were measuring my “Israeliness” by
serving in the army.
When I moved to the US from Israel three years ago I wanted
nothing to do with Israelis or Judaism, but when I learned that a conservative
synagogue would take a non-believing heathen, as I had been called by Israeli
Jews, to be a Sunday school teacher, I had to check it out. My romance with the
local Jewish community has lasted since then, because I learned that here
Judaism is about identity before it is about belief and that it’s about “Bein
Adam LeHavero” before it is about “Bein Adam LeMakom”. As a liberal Zionist
Israeli, I was relieved to learn that a liberal Judaism and a Jstreet existed.
The JstreetU students who attended the conference came
because they were passionate about the justness of the cause. They wanted to learn how to pressure Israel
to do the right thing. At every Q&A
I attended, a similar question was consistently asked by a student to an
Israeli speaker: “what can we do to pressure Israel from here?” They wanted a
clear cut answer to what the role of American Jewry was. But Jstreet is an American
lobby born as a reaction to AIPAC in order to speak about liberal Jewish values
and connect them to Israel. It’s about
pressuring American Congressmen and Senators to pressure Israel, it’s about
American taxpayer money going to Israel, and most of all it’s about caring
deeply about Israel. But Americans don’t vote in Israel, they don’t pay taxes
in Israel, and they don’t serve in the army.
When one “half-Israeli” college student asked me how Israeli I was, I
asked if he intended to go back and serve in the army. His reply said it all:
“Hell NO, and it’s not even ideological, I just don’t have time for that”. I then
understood that the fight about Israel wasn’t about Israel, it was about giving
liberal American Jews an identity that they could sympathize, reinvigorate and
recruit for. It was about having a
cause, but not necessarily about the cause itself.
In 2002, the year before my IDF service, the high-school
senior letter, Michtav HaShministim, which called for Israelis to refuse to
serve in the Occupied Territories, came out, and the Intifada was at its
height. My brother was serving in Hebron, and had secluded himself from the
world when coming home, to ensure that he wouldn’t have to share the burden of
his duties with others. As a leftist
activist at the time I faced a dilemma, and had to make a conscious choice to
serve. What was annoying about this student’s dismissal was not that he didn’t
serve like me, I don’t expect him to, it was the dismissal of the dilemma. In a
latest Pew Poll about American Jewry, 69 percent said that being Jewish means
“Leading an ethical life” and 56 percent said it was about “working for
justice/equality”. The core of these
Jewish values is the skepticism and the dilemmas that come with them. But the young Americans Jews at this
conference had forgotten that the question of Israel is not just about a cause
and a mythical land on the other side of the Atlantic they visit every once in
awhile, it’s about people with real lives, and real dilemmas, and real
consequences.
It was inspiring to
see so many Americans talk about peace in Israel at the Jstreet conference. At
the same time it was saddening to think of Israel’s Rabin Square not filling up
this coming Rabin memorial with tens of thousands of Israelis who are as
pro-peace as these Americans are. When
Stav Shaffir talked about the social protests, the twittersphere pressured her
to talk about peace, not the socio-economic issues. They came to the conference to hear about
peace, not the “other stuff”, but the only thing that has filled the Rabin
Square lately, was exactly the “other stuff”.
I don’t blame these young American Jewish idealists for the “disconnect”,
it is only natural that as Americans they don’t see the entire reality of
Israel. They don’t live in it. I only ask that they remember that Jstreet is
about putting pressure on the American administration to put pressure on the
Israeli administration. If they want to
apply direct pressure, they need to be in Israel, and fill up the Square
themselves.
