Community and Society Archive
Welcome to Community and Society where you will find the latest thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on the changing nature of community and society in America today. What are the challenges and opportunities these changes represent for the Jewish people in America at the dawn of a new century?
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Beyond the Silence: New Conversations about
Israel’s Future
By Shari Cohen
“We
just don’t talk about it -- the family is split,” complained an Upper West Side
couple at a recent dinner. Almost every Jew I
speak with reports a similar experience. My
family is the same way – we cautiously hint at our positions, but conversation never
really begins. The issue of Israel’s
future engages most Jews on a visceral level -- advocates of opposing sides may even see
one another as traitors. But as a community
and as individuals we hide this intensity and veil our disagreements behind a screen of
silence. However, this is surely untenable in
the long run. Quietly this issue is tearing
apart the Jewish community. And this also
includes the broad group of Jews who are not involved in synagogues and other Jewish
institutions.
There is another source of silence as
well, and in many ways this describes my own position until recently: Being strongly
committed to Israel’s security and to its being a democratic state, and feeling
paralyzed by the seeming irreconcilability between these priorities, we exit the
conversation both intellectually and emotionally.
Ironically, while there are ongoing
efforts to create a dialogue between American Jews and Palestinians (the New York based
Dialogue Project and the California based Jewish Palestinian Living Room Dialogue, to name
two in this country), there are few attempts to initiate dialogue among the polarized
segments of American Jewry that are splitting institutions, families and friends and
yielding a collective sense that we are at an intellectual and political dead end.
Of course, there is no reason to
think that more or better conversation would help to speed up a resolution of the Middle
East conflict, but clearly this lack of dialogue signals that something is wrong.
The positions of the two sides are
well-known. One side argues that security
must be first and foremost, that the very existence of the state of Israel is under threat
and that only the force of arms can bring security. The
other side focuses on human rights, contending that the moral character of Israel is
eroding through the continued occupation of the territories. From this perspective, there is no choice but to
withdraw from the territories and even contribute to the rebuilding of a Palestinian
state.
While the policy spectrum in Israel
is more nuanced, many Israelis like many American Jews are filled with despair in the face
of what Ari Shavit in a recent article in Ha’aretz called a catch 22: “On
the one hand, if Israel does not withdraw within a few years from most of the occupied
territories, it will cease to exist as a democratic-Jewish state. It would become a decaying state of
injustice….On the other hand, if Israel withdraws in the near future under pressure
of Palestinian violence, it is liable to bring upon itself the worst possible wars.”
Most situations that are highly
polarized are also highly complex. And
typically the intensity of the polarization prevents the invention of new frameworks. To grapple successfully with such complexity takes
imagination and intellectual flexibility, both of which are in short supply where
polarization prevails. It also requires a
readiness to take the long view which is the antithesis of the short-term thinking that
tends to prevail in an atmosphere of crisis like the present.
Even those of us who are trying hard
to integrate the seemingly irreconcilable priorities of security and human rights have
great difficulty taking the longer view. It
seems that we lack the methods for talking together about new options, about new ways of
integrating or balancing these priorities.
At present, the only public
conversation with a long-term focus concerns Israel’s demographic challenge –
that is, the future difficulty of maintaining Israel as a Jewish state as the relative
percentage of Jews in the general population declines.
But even these conversations do not seriously grapple with how Israel would
need to change in the face of a smaller Jewish majority.
Might there be other ways of thinking about this? Might these conversations pioneer a new way of
thinking about national identity?
Taking the long view and expanding
the conversation requires considering unexpected scenarios which might, nevertheless,
affect the shape of the situation in the future. Considering
these possibilities might, in turn, shake us out of our existing assumptions.
While not exhaustive by any means,
the following are some examples:
The political character of Arab
regimes is critical. Whether or not the Arab
world democratizes or becomes more fundamentalist is critical. Are there possible ways to affect this?
What if a successful formula was
found for rebuilding and democratizing collapsed states such as Afghanistan? How might this affect our approach to creating a
viable new state of Palestine?
While the issue of oil dependency is
frequently part of the conversation, we need to think through the costs and benefits of
reduced oil dependency for America’s role in the Middle East.
The possibility of serious cultural
and political conflict in Israel is another critical factor which often falls out of our
considerations: Who would take which side? Would
it be a nationalist underground versus the rest or would it be a battle between the
religious and the secular populations?
The emigration of a large number of
Israelis or the influx of a large number of people claiming to be Jews are other
possibilities that should be considered. So,
too, might we consider the impact of the simultaneous increases in the popularity of
things Jewish and of anti-Semitism.
What would it mean to add these
considerations to the discussions taking place, or to begin new conversations? I believe that Jews, both in America and in
Israel, would welcome a new way of talking and thinking.
But American Jews are especially well positioned to initiate this
“longer view” conversation by virtue of not experiencing the day to day
insecurities of life in Israel. If American
Jews were to embark on this path and initiate such conversations, they might prove to be a
resource for opening creative possibilities.
The absence of dialogue and the
polarization that lies beneath it also have implications for the American Jews’ sense
of themselves both communally and individually. Some
have even suggested that a fissure in the Jewish people could develop over support for
Israel. In a less extreme sense, however,
over the longer term this silence will probably negatively affect the character of
American Jewish identity.
The deep split within each individual
and our seeming inability as a community to integrate the values of security and human
rights should be the impetus for conversation rather than silence.
To read additional articles by Shari Cohen, click here.
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