There is, it seems, a bit of an occupational hazard to this column-writing
business. It probably holds for all sorts of topics, but it’s undoubtedly true
when thinking aloud about Israel. Here’s the choice: You can either plant
yourself firmly on one side of the political divide, being predictably “right
wing” or “left wing,” or you can, depending on the issue, say what you think but
appear a bit less consistent.
The advantages of the first option are
clear.
Once you are tagged as a “right winger” or “left winger,” people
assume that they know what you’re going to say. If you’re “on their side,” they
read and nod approvingly, feeling ever so validated by yet another column that
says precisely what they already thought. And if they assume they’ll disagree,
or worse, that the column will annoy them, they can just skip it altogether or
sharpen their proverbial pencils and bang out the inevitably dismissive
talkback. Either way, though, we know what we’ll think of an argument – and of a
writer – before we’ve even read a word. Ah, the eternal quest for a predictable
and comfortable life.
But I’ve never thought that thinking, or
citizenship – or love – work that way. If we love our children, do we validate
them or criticize them? This is the wrong question, obviously, for the answer
should depend on the context.
Parents who never have a kind or defending
word to say about their child probably don’t love them enough. But parents who
never critique their children are incompetent.
It’s true of marriage,
too. None of us would want to be married to someone who never had a kind word to
say about us or to us, or who never made clear that they were proud of
us.
But if all we want is that validation, we’re probably better off
buying an iPhone 4S and talking to Siri than being in a real
relationship.
A functioning relationship is one in which our partner
wants us to be better than the person we now are and can lovingly suggest,
pretty regularly, how we might get there.
It’s an anemic conception of
love that would describe our role as parents, spouses, lovers, friends – or
citizens, no less – as assuming a position of constant validation or of
relentless criticism.
That’s why some of us who write about Israel take a
different approach. We don’t care about being neatly classifiable as “left” or
“right”; because to love a country is not that different from loving a person.
It means defending but also critiquing. It means loving unconditionally but
knowing that love does not mean overlooking serious flaws. To love Israel, I
believe, is to know that the Jewish state is not just a flag or an army or some
holy place. To love Israel is to love the real Israel, with all its many warts
and imperfections. And to love Israel is to know that there is a difference
between a wart and a serious disease; when an imperfection is so serious as to
threaten the entire enterprise, then the most loyal thing that one can do is to
insist that Israel be better.
But this approach makes life complicated
for readers because they don’t know, up front, precisely what they’re going to
get. They will have to read, and then think.
Not everyone responds so
well to that sort of challenge. In recent weeks and months when I’ve defended
the very legitimacy of the idea of a Jewish state, or pointed to the
Palestinians’ obvious disinterest in peace, or stated my abiding belief that
none of us (tragically) are going to see this conflict resolved in our own
lifetimes, then one entire set of readers trots out the “he’s a
peace-talk-pessimist” line. He must be in Bibi’s pocket. He doesn’t care about
peace.
But the opposite is also true – critique this government’s
entirely unimaginative mishandling of the so-called peace process, or point a
spotlight at the medieval religious leadership that has Netanyahu wrapped around
its pinky, and the opposite camp goes berserk. One regular reader wrote to say
that he used to like my columns, but now I’m “beginning to sound a bit like a
Meretznik, or even worse – like Thomas Friedman!” (Except for those three
elusive Pulitzers, I guess.) Meretz is mostly gone, of course, but the derisive
label seems likely to outlive the party. If you ever sound like them then you
obviously don’t care about Israel. You’re hostile to Judaism. Or you’re blind to
the dangers of our enemies. And if you ever sound like Likud then you don’t care
about peace. And if you occasionally sound like both then you don’t know how to
think. Eventually Leonard Fein will write a column in The Forward (June 23,
2011) called “Will the Real Daniel Gordis Please Stand Up?” Because you either
seek peace (or care about social justice) or you defend Israel.
But you
obviously can’t do both. Right? At a recent conference of the American Jewish
Committee in New York one participant noted that she prefers, instead of “left”
and “right,” the labels “prophets” and “guardians” – for those labels each cast
the “other” in the best possible light. This nomenclature reminds us that
“prophets” are more than mere leftwing social critics – they reflect a critical
dimension of the Jewish tradition, Judaism’s classic vision of social justice.
And “guardians” is better than “hate-mongers” or “peace-pessimists,” or
“Bibi-supporters,” apparently, because every people needs “guardians,” as does
every state. To be a guardian is not to be a dinosaur, but rather to recognize
that the State we’re discussing is sacred, in desperate need of
protection.
As I thought about it, though, I realized that “prophets
versus guardians” still isn’t good enough. For the distinction nonetheless
implies that either you’re a “prophet” or a “guardian.” You choose one. And then
you write, vote, agree or disagree.
But life doesn’t work that way. We
dare not force people to pick a camp, no matter how elegant the terminology. The
Hebrew prophets railed against the injustices of ancient Israelite society but
they were desperately concerned about the survival of Jewish sovereignty. And
guardians need to protect against not only the obvious threats from the outside
but also against the cancers that threaten to devour us from within. Will the
Jewish people be any better off if Israel falls because of Jews than if it is
undermined by the Palestinians? Either way, we’d be done for.
Genuinely
loving this country means that there will be moments when we defend it and other
occasions on which we bemoan its grievous shortcomings. Is that muddled
thinking? Does that merit the cynical demand that our “real” self “please stand
up”? I think not. It reflects, I think, the real messiness of life, of love and
of hope. Imagine our world, and our discourse, if every one of us found the
renewed courage to read, to think and to recognize that those with whom we
instinctively tend to disagree might still have something to teach
us.
Daniel Gordis is president of the Shalem Foundation and Senior Fellow
at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. His latest book, Saving Israel: How the
Jewish People Can Win a War that May Never End
(Wiley), won the 2009 National
Jewish Book Award. His next book, The Promise of Israel: Why Its Seemingly
Greatest Weakness is Actually Its Greatest Strength
, will be published this
August.