On Israel’s 73rd Anniversary of Independence

 

Israel’s Basic Law mandates that, after an election, the President meets with representatives of each elected political party to ask who they would back as Prime Minister before inviting one MK to form a ruling coalition. With Israel’s electorate balanced so precariously, last week’s meetings took on an intriguing significance when President Rivlin invited in the cameras. At the age of 82, at the end of his term as Head of State, Rivlin took an opportunity to imprint on the leadership of each of Israel’s political parties a vision of what Israel could and must become. Noah Efron, of The Promised Podcast, shared an extraordinary synopsis of the day. I have drawn heavily on his reporting in this post.   The President asked the Likud representatives whether a President should consider ethical considerations in considering to whom to offer the opportunity to form a coalition. They responded that such matters should be left to the courts – for who is to say that the President’s ethical compass should overwhelm the expressions of the populace at the ballot box? It was an argument Rivlin accepted as serious and ‘probably correct.’   Rivlin, a lifelong Revisionist son of Revisionist parents (political hawk), greeted the Labour representative Omar Bar-Lev – dove and founder of Peace Now - with great warmth. Rivlin served in Israel’s army under Bar Lev’s father. Bar-Lev Senior, Rivlin noted, had danced at Rivlin’s wedding – despite their political difference.   When the Joint List group entered Beit Ha-Nasi – the House of the President, Rivlin commended their the decision, after the last election, to recommend a Prime Minister from the Zionist parties; the first time an Arab-Israeli party had expressed support for any Zionist potential Prime Minister. Party leader, Ayman Oded shared his party had ‘taken up the gauntlet,’ demonstrating a desire to be partners in forging Israel’s narrative as a country of both Jews and Arabs.   Ra’am MK, Mazen Ghnaim, was also warmly greeted. Ghnaim, previously, was Head of the remarkably successful Bnei Sakhnin Football Club – at a time when Rivlin was Head of Beitar Yerushalayim FC. “My friend,” Rivlin greeted the Islamicist, “We knew back then how to work together, and how to win with teams of both Jews and Arabs.” Rivlin went on to say, “Israeli Arabs are the bridge, the possibility of creating some sort of understanding and mutual trust between the sides, because trust is what will bring peace… These things are etched onto the tablet of my heart as an Israeli citizen and as the son of the translator [into Hebrew] of the Koran.”   The headline, the next day, was that, as expected, the President invited Bibi Netanyahu to form a government. But behind the headline – which seemed to reflect only the intractable nature of Israel’s many political conundrums – lay nuance and hope and a willingness to reach out of silos towards a democratic future for a State whose existence and flourishing is so close to my heart. Maybe that is always the case with headlines and the multi-layered reality they both reflect and conceal.   Kol Od BLeivav – still in the heart of this Jew lies that great hope – HaTivkvah Bat Shanot Alpayim, of freedom, empathy, security and peace. The seeds that will, please God, eventually become the great cedars of this vision of hope have been planted, nurtured and tended by so many for so many years. To those who have built, and even died to protect, the State whose 73-year-old existence we celebrate today, we salute you. To those for whom the Declaration of Independence represent a disaster – the Nakba – we seek to empathise and respond bravely to your loss, even as we affirm Israel’s right to exist in security. And to the future – we still hope. We will always hope.   Yom Ha'atzmaut Sameach

 

I'm a Zionist

I'm a Zionist because I believe the Jewish people have a right to a nation in the Land of Israel. Not the only right, and not all the land, but a right that stretches back through time and a right no less just than the rights of so many other nation states of both modern and ancient creation.

In the words of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, "the Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books. After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom."

I applaud the extraordinary achievements of a state whose created only a blink of the eye ago; Israel's contribution to the global society in which we all live, in worlds of thought, art, science, commerce, medicine is staggering. I applaud Israel's democracy, its commitment to freedom of speech and press, its vigorously independent judiciary, I even applaud a society where Prime Ministers and Presidents have been incarcerated for criminality and abuse of office. It was Hayim Nachman Bialik who said the Jews would know that their dream of a nation state had been fulfilled when there were Jewish prostitutes, Jewish thieves and a Jewish police force. That part of the dream is fulfilled. Normality deserves respect set against the disaster that is the current fate of so many other countries forged in the last decades But there is still much more to dream.

My dream is a dream of peace, two states for two peoples. There are hard compromises that must be fought for by both Jews and Palestinians. The physical and psychological scars of years - frankly millennia - of violence and hatred need to be given time to heal, but more importantly there is a desperate need for courageous leadership on both sides of the Green Line and the support of the entire international community. In the meantime, good fences may be necessary, but the dream is the dream of the Biblical prophet Micah, "They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig-tree; and none shall make them afraid." Despite the pain and the violence, I still dream this dream.

I stand in respect for those whose love for, and need of, a Jewish home led for them to make the ultimate sacrifice to her survival. The memory of 23,477 fallen soldiers and victims of terror attacks has rightly been honoured this week by the entire nation of Israel and will be honoured in our Shabbat service. I feel guilt that these heroes - and every able-bodied young Israeli - have made such sacrifices to protect a country I love, but in which I don't intend to spend the rest of my life. It's a stunning luxury to be a diasporic Jew in the time of the State of Israel. It's a stunning luxury to complain, as I do, of Israel's failures to live up to the totality of the vision articulated in her own Declaration of Independence, 'of [a] country developed for the benefit of all its inhabitants; based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; [ensuring] complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; failures to do even more to bring a Two-State solution into being. These are the critiques of love, as the Rabbis of Bereishit Rabba taught, 'all love without critique isn't love.'

Happy Birthday Israel.

Shabbat shalom

Rabbi Jeremy