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Gil Troy is a professor of history at McGill University in Montreal. He is the author of published by Gefen.
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By Gil Troy
November 8, 2002
Originally published in the Jerusalem Post.
Last spring, an Israeli seeking American Jewish tourists lamented, "Our marketing campaign has failed. We're not getting the kids to come to Israel." I told him to banish talk of failure from his vocabulary, especially because "It's not you have failed us, rather, we who have failed you."
More than two years into the Palestinian war against Oslo, the results are clear. In this hour of great need the American Jewish community has let Israel down. Behind all the solidarity talk, despite thousands of e-mails bouncing back and forth in the virtual Jewish echo chamber daily, even with, finally, belatedly, millions of dollars flowing from the land of the free to the home of the truly brave, "we" are not really "one."
By our actions, and even more dramatically, by our inaction, we American Jews demonstrated that Jews here and Jews there are living very different lives, following two different narrative trajectories, practically, ideologically, and existentially.
American pro-Israel activists have generated an effective smoke screen that obscures this harsh reality. The galvanized lobbying-FAXing-phoning-fundraising minority has compensated for the passive, disaffected, and overwhelming silent majority. In the United States the hyperactivity and organizational political power perpetuates the illusion, and many talk about the mobilized and monolithic American Jewish community.
Most Israelis, however, see it clearly: Most American Jews have not inconvenienced themselves to support the Jewish state. American Jews have voted with their feet - and virtually stopped coming to Israel. That inaction speaks much louder than all of our community leaders' words. When the Palestinians turned to terror, we turned to our travel agents, and cancelled our visits.
The empty restaurants and abandoned hotels tell a tale confirmed by statistics. The number of North American youth participating in Israel Experience programs dropped by over 92%, from close to 10,000 in the summer of 2000 to only 820 in the summer of 2002. Even the British youth drop-off was only 65%.
Moreover, much of this abandonment has been guilt-free. In fact, there is a certain underlying resentment many American Jews feel toward Israel, for being so darned inconvenient these days, for ruining our peace and quiet. While Israelis worry about their survival, many of us fret about our sensibilities, which have been ruffled by Israel's gruff behavior and the resulting Arab hostility which has even crossed the Atlantic.
To be honest, this American Jewish mix of inaction and annoyance is actually logical. If we don't think about Israel through a Zionist or a peoplehood paradigm, it is easy to understand why American Jews see Israel as more of a blessing than a burden. The Israeli government line over the last two years has compounded the trouble. You cannot constantly detail to the American media all the horrors Palestinians have imposed on Israelis in this war, then flash a smile at American Jews and say, "come have fun in the Tel Aviv sun."
In a post 9/11 and post-Bali world, the lesson may be that terrorism can strike anywhere, but Americans have responded by engaging in all kinds of magical thinking that determines which destination is "safe" and which is not.
The American Jewish commitment to risk avoidance is as much a product of American Jewish history as Israelis' relative insouciance in the face of danger is a product of their history. The American Jewish narrative is a tale of escaping from history, with all its traumas and constraints. The American Jewish story begins with the arrival on the mythical "boat" from the horrors of Europe to the shores of die goldene medina (the promised land). The central motif in most family legends is how we were able to bury the burdens of the past, of the old country, and achieve freedom and success in America. Part of the American elixir entails a certain kind of amnesia, transcending and forgetting one's past.
In contrast, the Israeli narrative is of a return to history. The story once again begins with the passage from the old country to the new, but Israel is a country of memory, of dilemmas, of tragic trade-offs and rollercoaster-like ups and downs. It is a clash of Masada versus Disneyland, of Israelis remembering traumas as a way of steeling themselves to face future troubles, versus Americans burying them to achieve "closure" and move on. Americans, as the old song goes, just want to "pack up their troubles in an old kit bag and smile, smile, smile."
Israelis are told in so many ways, about the near past and ancient history, commanded to remember.
And yet, try as we might, American Jews cannot fully escape our past; we cannot so easily jettison our roots. These last two years of pain have proved once again that the Jewish people's nerve-endings are interconnected: When a Jew is cut in Israel, we feel it from Miami to Montreal, from Lakewood to Los Angeles.
Seven Christian charity workers are slaughtered in Pakistan in early October, and their Christian brethren throughout the world barely notice; that same week six Jews die in a suicide bombing on Tel Aviv bus number 4 and world Jewry mourns. However, we should not overstate it we feel it, but we don't bleed. Just as our suburban comforts, our supermarkets, and our vacations insulate us from the rhythms of nature without completely cutting us off, we are insulated but not completely insensate.
Here, then, is the challenge. We have to begin the conversation about American Jewry and Israel with an awareness of where American Jews are, with neither illusions nor anger. Guilt trips will not translate into Israel trips.
We need to build on the feelings of peoplehood, of connectedness, which do distinguish most American Jews in their relation to world Jewry from that of most American Christians in their relation to Christians throughout the world.
As important and wonderful as they are, we need to go beyond "solidarity missions" with their Florence Nightingale notions of noble North American Jews coming to heal the pain of suffering Israelis.
We need to encourage "Israel friendship trips" or even "roots trips" where we focus on the mutual nature of the Diaspora-Israel exchange, how much we gain by going, by returning to the lodestar of Jewish life.
We need to remember that a scant two years ago more and more American Jews were recognizing that trips to Israel, and positive engagement with Israel and Israelis were answers to some of our communal challenges, our identity and continuity problems. That was the genius behind the "Birthright Israel" initiative, which continues to inspire thousands of young Diaspora Jews by sending them on free trips to their homeland. Of course, this needs to be part of a broader reorientation of Jewish life, wherein we look at Israel as an answer to some of our communal and individual challenges, not just as the central headache of the Jewish people.
We need to take back the word "Zionism" from our enemies, and glorify it with our positive associations, with our own meanings.
We need to rediscover pride in this plucky Jewish democracy which continues to grow and thrive and remain relatively safe and normal amid a murderous and most aberrant onslaught.
We need to make our tribalism transcendent, going from ethnic solidarity with all its attendant obligations to ethnic identity as a gateway into tradition, community, and history with all their attendant payoffs.
And while we are waiting for this ideological paradigm-shift, we need to pick up and go, if nothing else than to satisfy our curiosity, and feel a bit heroic while having a helluva lot of fun.
We need to experience the magic of Israel ourselves, up close and personally.
In these last two awful years, as we have started to feel targeted, as we have felt compelled to put guards on many of our schools and synagogues, we have started to "pay the price" for our ties to Israel. Now it's time to start appreciating the blessings we reap from them.
Views expressed by the author do not
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