And You Expect to Possess the Land?

At the start of high school, I was Israel activism exemplified. As an upstart freshman, I even co-founded our school’s Israel club. I sent many a letter berating “anti-Israel bias” to the New York Times and emailed even more letters urging elected officials in Washington to support the Jewish state. I was raised in a Zionist home, experienced summers at a Bnei Akiva camp and even spent a year in Israel with my family during middle school.  So my deep concern for Israel was natural and the positions I took on the issues only typical of a Modern Orthodox Jew.

The rhetoric I spewed in my advocacy efforts is familiar to us all. At the dinner table, in the classroom and at community meetings with congresspersons, I was wont to make such impassioned and blanket statements as “the Palestinians don’t want peace” and “a greater Israel, is a more secure Israel.” I held these beliefs to be true with great intensity and considered them the obvious expression of my firmly held religious convictions and deepseated love for my people. Today, my perception of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is more nuanced, but no less informed by my Judaism.

In retrospect, I’m not quite certain when my positions began evolving into what they are today, but I do know that the shift was gradual, painful. And, while the particulars of my journey are obscure, I nevertheless recall a fateful moment when I realized that the words coming out of my mouth were incongruent with the values in my head. It was then that I began to internalize my dishonesty, and gained the courage to admit that I could no longer, in good conscience, defend and justify a country whose actions I considered morally questionable. How could I advocate for a country that occupies another nation, a government that deprives citizens of their natural rights?

It was difficult for me to confess that the country I loved dearly, and the state that meant so much to my people, was also a guilty player in the unending conflict. And more, it was hard to realize that the numerous settlements I had come to believe crucial not only from a religious perspective, but also from a security perspective, were in fact roadblocks to peace and that many were even built on Palestinian land. Even tougher was coming to terms with the fact that what we perceived as “security” necessities, often only engendered more hatred and distrust of Israel within Palestinian society. I began to understand that these policies were in a sense counter-productive; only generating the need for more roadblocks, curfews and walls. Above all though, what was most challenging was acknowledging that maybe the rest of the world wasn’t totally “wrong” – maybe there was something behind their incessant, albeit unbalanced calls against Israel’s “systematic humiliation and human rights violations.”

It wasn’t that I stopped believing in Israel’s legitimacy. To the contrary, I realized that by embracing these beliefs, I was in effect delegitimizing my homeland. Israel’s entitlement to exist is often connected to not only the right, but the need, especially in the aftermath of the Holocaust, for the Jewish people to defend itself. But, when Israel, the country of the Jews, a people that has endured thousands of years of persecution and the victim of countless injustices acts immorally, does this not call into question the very legitimacy of its existence? On a practical level, it’s clear that these policies have only come to hurt Israel, fanning the flames of the cycle of violence and further distancing the possibility of peace. This reality not only hurts Israel’s image abroad, but might even be the country’s undoing. 

Furthermore, religious Jews that we are, we turn to the Torah for ultimate legitimacy, which it seems we are increasingly losing: “Then the word of the Lord came unto me, saying: “Son of man, they that inhabit those waste places in the land of Israel speak saying: ‘Abraham was one, and he inherited the land; but we are many; the land is surely given us for inheritance.’ Wherefore say unto them: ‘Thus said the Lord God: You eat with the blood, and lift up your eyes unto your fetishes, and shed blood – yet you expect to possess the land? You have relied on your sword, you have committed abominations, and you defile every one his neighbor’s wife; and you expect to possess the land?’”¹

It is impossible to go back in time and undo past injustices; we can’t reverse our driving out of over 700,000 Palestinian refugees and neither can we fully dismantle over 250,000 Jewish settlers and their communities in the West Bank – not to say the least of the East Jerusalem corridor and the Golan. While we can’t make up for the mistakes of yesterday, we can surely approach today with greater sophistication and sensitivity – to recognize that one can be both a victim and a perpetrator, to be at once a David and a Goliath. We must realize that confessing and correcting our crimes is not a sign of weakness, but instead the greatest sign of strength – for, when we act immorally we lose our legitimacy vis-à-vis both the world and God.

Looking back, part of me wishes I still had that enthusiastic fervor; that black-and-white perspective so very simplistic in scope. I now know though, that such an approach is appealing because of the assumed security it provides – concealing reality’s troubling texture. Sixty years have gone by and Israel is no more secure than it was at Independence – clearly the status quo isn’t working. Perhaps it’s time we collectively emerge from our adolescence, pause in our wisdom and reflect: are we acting with the responsibility expected of a people who have endured our history and a nation founded on the principles of justice and morality – are we losing our legitimacy?

Gilah Kletenik is a Managing Editor of Kol Hamevaser               

¹ Ezekiel 33: 23-25