It was a split second
decision, prompted by a friend back home through the Facebook Hive – come home and vote, we need a beach day.
Something deep inside switched on – I could not simply passively watch another
Israeli election happen with baited breath on the other side of the world. So
just like that, a ticket was booked I am home to vote.
Maybe it’s because I have
lived straddling two places in my heart and home my whole life as an
Israeli-Canadian. Maybe it’s because when I made the painful choice to leave
Israel just for a little while with my children over a decade ago the place I
loved and left is nearly unrecognizable now. Maybe it’s because now I spend
more time as an observer rather than as an active participant in daily Israeli
life.
Why? If only there was one
answer. To show my children that we do not have to settle for governance that
doesn’t mesh with our values? Perhaps to teach them that we can do something
about it at the ballot box by not sitting silent, no matter where you are in
the world.
Why? Because if you love
something enough, you don’t put it on the mantel to stare at, you dust it off and
dig deep and find the parts that make it shine again.
Israel did not get to this
critical point by accident. It has always been a place where there are
dissenting viewpoints that can reach a blaring pitch. But in the name of Jewish
unity Diaspora communities including Israelis living abroad, have up until now have
generally remained relatively silent on the internal divisions in the name of a
higher priority to support Israel and its raison d’etre of existence even in
spite of itself.
But while Israel has grown
beyond its incubation, the memory of the values that propelled it to statehood
have been tragically lost in a noisy cacophony. At first glance from the
headlines this Israel is not built on hope. It is built on tropes of fear,
protracted conflict, and rising religious extremism. It is an Israel scarred by its wounds. It has seemingly
allowed for its leaders to foster and bubble over into new levels of racism and
a myopic view of itself from the lens of existential survival. Its government
has given permission to outwardly segregate and delegitimize the Arab sector
population in the name of preserving Jewish nationhood at all costs under the
Nation State Law; declaring Palestinian-Israeli citizens are equal, but not
really.
The impact of these shifts
and the Nation State Law can be felt daily within the ripples of Israeli life;
from municipalities such as Afula attempting to create segregated public parks
as part of their by-laws, to members of Knesset declaring that Arab citizens
should accept video surveillance of their democratic rights to vote because”
they are not Jews” and thus not part of the “special race” that makes up the
Jewish State.
This Israel is unrecognizable
to many at home and here in the Diaspora. The guiding principles that
established it were ones that arguably fostered Jewish unity to create the
democratic State of Israel. Paragraph 13 of the Declaration of
Independence envisions that the State of Israel would be based on
freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will
ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants
irrespective of religion, race or sex;
These are the values that my
grandparents held when they arrived to British Mandate Palestine in the 1930s –
a home for the Jewish people; modern and a nation among nations. Zionism is not
a dirty word, it’s what drove Jewish unity to create the state. But its
founders recognized that Statehood also comes with responsibilities, and that
is why non-Jewish citizens whether they identify as Arab or Palestinian-Israeli
is not a dirty word either.
While all of this noise of
deep political divides in the past were often brushed off as this is what makes
Israel, well Israel, the deepening discomfort of witnessing Israel as it veer
towards a deep and dark reality is actually a good thing. Why? Because we can
all finally agree that at this moment in history the place that matters to all
Jews is very far from where the founders of the State of Israel envisioned its civic
society would grow into. Yes it is a Start-Up Nation, yes it is innovative,
modern and vibrant. It is also deeply divisive in its policies and current
legislative attempts. It has legitimized devaluing the rights of non-Jewish
citizens, and members of the LGBTQ community. It is deeply racist towards its
minorities and does not see itself as a light and shelter or future home to
asylum seekers fleeing war. More troubling is its drive to diminish the powers
of justice, and elevate the powers of leadership and not hold it accountable to
corruption and embedded cronyism.
When I moved back to Israel
in 1995 driven by both Zionism and prospects for peace, I brought with me a
healthy dose of Israeli chutzpah along with Canadian humility (yes sorry). I
came “armed” with a deep understanding of what multiculturalism combined with
liberal democratic values can do to shape a diverse society. While not perfect,
Canada over the years has recognized that it is a country in a constant state
of growth and repair. Be it to apologize to the Jewish community for the
government’s actions and embedded anti-Semitism in 1939 that turned away the
refugees of the St Louis back to the horrors of the Holocaust, or to
acknowledge and apologize to First Nations of its destructive policies that
resulted in lost generations through Residential Schools. Canada is learning as
it ages. Just as we all do.
Facing one’s history allows
us to move forward, however the core values of our society create a foundation
from which to grow democracy, equality and justice. These were the principles
that guided my career in Israel through peace work during the Oslo accord years,
to my time spent in Israeli politics learning from my mentors including a
former Prime Minister. A focus on
values steer policies that are clear and that benefit all of its citizens, not
only to maintain the existence of the State at their expense.
Many from within Israel have
been frantically scrambling to get it back on track, while others see the
efforts to steer the ship back to these values as naïve at best, traitors at
worst. Today more than ever, they need
our help. Maintaining Israel’s Jewish identity does not contradict its
democratic institutions that should and must protect all of its citizens secular
or religious, Arab or Jewish. To state otherwise is to view Israel with a
handicap of blindness. However, this blindness is not only among Israelis,
here in the Diaspora we often view Israel as “Jewish Disneyland” on tours and
special family trips, or as that statue on the mantel, loved but distant. This
blindness does not see Israel as a diverse and complex society where race,
religion and economic access collide in politics and policy every single day.
In my home away from home in
Canada I watch my children pouring over Hebrew homework from their Orthodox
Jewish day school. Here they live in a mini version of the divisions of Israel,
with a secular Jewish Zionist, Hebrew and Arabic speaking mother, and a
religious Zionist Israeli father. They
are being educated in a system that often teaches the values of the Land of
Israel rather than the State of Israel, while at the same time enjoying and
studying the freedoms and protection of rights they enjoy and often take for
granted in Canada.
They are being taught at school
not to criticize Israel, to have a love for a place that they have only seen
from a bird’s eye view. Taught to place value in prayer, study and Hebrew
language above all else. In recent years I have found myself going into their
schools to ask their educators why if they teach about the terrorism that so
many Israelis endure, do they not name the “enemy” correctly – not as Arabs,
but as Hamas, as Hezbollah? That if they wish to educate them on Gush Katif and
the tragedy of the withdrawal that it is with the lesson that democratic
governments make decisions on what is best for a society as a whole, that it
takes risks for peace but at tremendous loss with mixed results. Yamit in Sinai
was also a difficult uprooting of Israeli settlements, but it came with a cold
yet stable peace with Egypt until today.
At what cost do we educate
our children to love Israel but remain silent in the face of the elections
today? How do we teach them that to love Israel, as a modern state isn’t only a
matter of religion and Jewish identity? How do we show them that its future is
layered in questions on equality, feminism, access to democratic rights,
religious freedoms, justice AND peace?
At what price for a future
Israel that my children wish to visit, live and thrive in do we chose Jewish
unity and silence over what is right and in fact rooted in the deepest core of
Jewish values? I, nor how I have taught my children, would tolerate deporting
asylum seekers. We would not stand for hate crimes, nor would we allow for the
limitations of one religious group over those of another. Whatever the virtues of preserving Jewish unity, it cannot
come at the expense of addressing the real issues that divide and make connecting
with Israel today profoundly uncomfortable.
For myself it is not only a matter of
defending a democratic Israel that my children see today, it is the Israel of
their future, the one that is standing the day after the elections, this one
and the ones to come. So I am home to vote for another way.
